The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. by Carole DeSanti Page A

at his touch, the fingers sausage-thick, tobacco-stained, damp. He prodded my palms, one then the other, felt around my fingers and thumbs—the second time in half a year that a man had examined my palm to determine my future.
    â€œYou’ll find them smooth as silk. This one’s no blistered tin cutter or maid of all work. And no identity papers when she arrived, either,” interjected Françoise.
    â€œMademoiselle, you have left your family and province to reside and be employed at the Maison des Deux Soeurs, rue du Temple, third arrondissment, Paris? You arrived at that address this morning and stated your intention?”
    His eyes were blue and mild. “You are a long way from home.”
    â€œShe wants to work,” said Françoise, by way of assistance. Another voice, neither Noël’s nor Françoise’s, behind my ear, playful, mocking, clear as a bell:
“The mother says nothing, and the girl cannot speak up for herself!”
Françoise looked vexed and impatient; M. Noël’s face was impassive, his pen for the moment stilled. “Is your father living? Your mother? . . . Any relative at all?”
    â€œIf you get into a scrape, wave it under someone’s nose!”
I’d laughed when Stephan had signed his name to that letter, but I could not produce it now.
    Â 
    Françoise and Noël were head to head, joking about something else; the pen scratching again, sputtering dry. Inkwells were scarce at the Préfecture these days; too few of them to take account of the river of girls who flowed through the place.
    And my two Selves were silent, foreign to each other, too slow to catch up. My recent lovers, their influence and sometime-protection, were leaking wounds in separate chambers of my heart; their names stuck in my throat. Gascon stubbornness; that ignorance of sycophancy; a rustic muteness that knows so well how to survive in its element—a tongue to bargain and barter, to haggle over the qualities of a
foie d’oie
or supplicate the spirits at a running stream—that tongue could not speak. My back ached and I wished, so badly, to sit. (Was it a backache, merely the longing to rest, that finished the transaction?) Some emotion, like nausea, and the gulf widened.
The rutted road, Papa’s body in a cart.
It would have to be another road, now. I saw it stretching before me, a sharp curve into blackness.
    The paper, when it was finished, read:
    Â 
Whereas the woman established as Eugénie R—, ex­–department of the Gers, is charged with prostitution without being registered, it is consequently in the interest of public health . . . that she be submitted to the administrative regulations . . .
    Â 
    A flurry of administration: a babble of voices and Françoise’s high-pitched laugh. The mood turned almost celebratory; a milling around of uniformed officers and men in dark suits. Françoise smiled to this official, then that one; fingertips cold against my hand as she steered a swift passage through the halls. How was I to have guessed that I had been arrested, convicted, subjected to an injurious penalty, all without judge, jury, or argument—and in the flick of an eyelash?
    â€œAll we’ve done, here, is to help you use what you’ve got to get what you need. Clean and legal, no more worries. And I don’t know Nathalie Jouffroy if she doesn’t find you to her taste. But I’d never’ve shown you without getting you on the books; I’d be out of a job! You’ll thank me, you know.”
    A rank of benches filled with young women—most poor and disheveled, a few wearing hats and gloves, and our passage caused a fluster and commotion.
    â€œMadame! May I see you?”
    â€œLet me walk with you, madame, just to the door.”
    â€œI can work, madame, I can
.
 .
.
”
    Françoise quickened her step, pulling me by the arm. One poor soul went so far as