The tears came unexpectedly and Eve did not attempt to restrain them. Relieved sobs shook her as she collapsed on the wooden floorboards of her flat. He tears fell unbidden onto the letter she was trying to read through her blurry tear streaked eyes. She tried to blink the tears away so that she could finish the letter, but she was unsuccessful. It did not matter really what the rest of the letter said, because she had held herself so tight for so long. The paranoia had kept her alive. She had carefully groomed her appearance and mannerisms to blend into the mob. She was just another radical face in the crowd and she was careful to never let the façade drop. The charade had proven to be a stressful lie to maintain. She was afraid and while she still believed in revolution she knew that this was not it. Fear now gripped her heart and it had strained every aspect of her life which had become a mechanical imitation of what it should have been.
As a business owner she was in more danger than other people. She had thought the worst was surely over when the king had been led to the National Razor, but it had only been a lull in the tide. The counter-revolutionaries made their move and rebellions had popped up in the country-side aided by England and Prussia. Six months after the brutal September massacres the committee for Public Safety had formed and began sending suspected counter-revolutionary spies to the guillotine. Unlike the previous wave of executions, there was no easy characteristic that the mob could focus its manic energy on. The inmates of the asylum were starting to turn on each other, and with each day the blood flowed from the Place de Revolution causing the flood waters to rise.
With this letter though, she could see a boat on the horizon that would save her. Her husband was coming to Paris and she would leave this debilitating fear behind. It was still sometime before she was able to pick herself up from the rough wooden floor of her grey apartment. The relief had almost been too much, but now she felt emotionally drained. She wiped her face with her dirty apron and then pulled her overly curly hair back from her face. She stuffed the unruly mop into a some-what clean bonnet.
Tonight she would make an onion soup in celebration. She had gotten a hold of some cheese which had all but disappeared from the city. It would be a treat and she would make sure not to charge too much for it. She walked back down to the restaurant and began to work over her cauldron and hearth. The smell of the savory soup wafted out of the kitchen out into main floor of La Salle de Soupe and began to mingle with the earthy smells of Paris. As the aroma began to fill the cave like interior of La Salle de Soupe, she walked to the walls and threw open the shutters to let dusty grey light into the room and allow the smell to meander out into the streets. People began to follow the smell instinctively into her restaurant and it wasn’t long before a large dirt-covered crowd made up the dinner rush. Before she could get a bowl of soup herself her cauldron was empty and she wandered through the room and around the tables to collect dirty dishes and talk with the clientele.
By the time people began to leave she knew she had done well for the night and she allowed herself a smile. She just needed to hang on a little longer and things would work out. She finally sat down when the restaurant was all but empty and took off her bonnet letting her mess of curly hair fall around her face. She moved her fingers through her hair as she huddled over the table and gently scratched her fingernails against her scalp. She let the mess of curls fall in front of her face curtaining her off from her grey reality. The savory smell that clung to her locks filled her nose and she breathed it in as she gently tugged at her own hair trying to remember what it meant to feel something instead of this weight of numbness. Eve so wanted to feel again and forget all that happened. She wanted to forget the endless sea of bodiless heads. She wanted to forget their glassy eyes that looked at nothing and yet at the same time saw into her very soul. She just wanted to forget, so when she flipped her hair up and out of her face it was like someone who had swum to the surface after holding their breath for too long. Her arms gently shook from a mix of exhaustion and hunger and she poured herself a glass of merlot before she gulped at the contents of the glass. The alcohol began to work quickly on her empty stomach and she closed her eyes letting the liquid envelope her in a gossamer veil of denial.
“You seem to have done well for yourself here.”
She looked up to see a short gaunt man standing at her table. He had bushy eyebrows and narrow sunken yellowish green eyes. His medium length sandy blonde hair flowed down his face into overly grown muttonchops. His nose was round and bulbously large for his face which gave him a clownish appearance. He looked like any other poor Jacobin with dirty navy blue trousers, a faded white and red striped vest and a dusty brown knee length coat. A red Phrygian cap covered his head which marked him as one of the many Sans-culottes who currently overran the city.
While she had done well that night, it would not bring her any fortune by offering up that information. People with money were often accused of being spies and sent to the Coniergerie to await a ‘trial’. “Not so well, I am only trying to help in these trying times of little food. If you noticed, no one else in Paris gives such good deals on soup as La Salle de Soupe.” she replied carefully.
She slid her hand under her petticoat and grabbed the hilt of the knife she hid there while eyeing the man suspiciously. He only responded by snorting at her. It was then that she noticed that there was only one other man in the restaurant who was at that moment closing the shutters on the windows. He was taller than the man that stood in front of her and had to bend over slightly to walk in the low-ceilinged room. He had on brown trousers, a blue jacket and the same red Phrygian hat. She glanced around the short man in front of her to look at his face as he approached. His face was lined with a scraggly brown beard and a moustache that was too large for his face. His nose was long and narrow and his eyes close set. White topped bumps and blisters covered his face and some were bleeding where he had picked at them. Her nostrils were immediately assaulted by his smell as he approached her, which was hard to do in Paris. His clothes looked to be so worn that they were the only ones he had and they seemed to have been covered at some point with swine feces.
She slowly began to stand gripping the blade under her skirt. The situation had grown dangerous and her body began to tremble as her mind raced through the options. She carefully said, “I’m sorry gentlemen, but La Salle de Soupe is closed for the night. I believe you should leave.”
The tall man smiled, revealing a mouth almost devoid of teeth. The few he had were yellow and rotted. He replied to her, “We’re not going nowhere until we get what we came for.”
The short one lunged at her and she twisted with cat-like reflexes out of his grip slicing with the blade. She had succeeded in opening a gash on his hand and he gripped it to stop the bleeding hissing through clenched teeth, “The bitch cut me!”
Unfortunately, as she spun out of the reach of the short one she danced backwards directly into the arms of the tall one. He used one hand to grab a fistful of hair and the other to grab the wrist attached to her knife wielding hand. She cried out in pain as he simultaneously yanked on her hair pulling her head back and squeezed the bony part of her wrist painfully until she was forced to drop her knife. As soon as the knife had been dropped he pulled her into him wrapping his arms around her. He buried his face in her curly hair, breathing in her savory aroma. She struggled as he said breathily into her ear, “You smell good, ma fefille” The mixture of his rancid hot breath on her cheek and the smell of manure on his clothes made her nearly empty stomach convulse and she gagged uncontrollably. “Pierre, look for the money, I’ve got ma fefille subdued”
Pierre, the short man, was wrapping a cloth around his injured hand with a scowl on his face. She continued to try to wiggle free as Pierre stepped forward and backhanded her across the face, leaving a stinging hand print on her cheek. Her face had turned with the blow and she was now looking at the floor at her side moving her jaw painfully. The slap had hurt but she decided to play up the injury to lull them into a false sense of security. She went limp in her attacker’s arms, and gave a pained groan as Pierre began to search her apron. It did not take long for him to find her coin purse and he moved to the table to count the coins. When he turned his back on her she whipped her head back into her assailants face shattering his nose with the blow.
She ran from his arms but Pierre was too fast and slammed her into the brick wall, knocking the wind from her. “Damn it Roche! You let her go!” Pierre slammed her head against the wall and used his weight to keep her pinned there. Her vision went white with pain as he grunted into her ear, “You’re going to regret doing that” He used the moment of incoherency to pull her from the wall and slam her face first onto the nearest table. The second blow made her lose all of her bearings and she truly went limp. She fought to regain her senses so that she could attempt to fight off her attackers, but by the time she came around she tasted blood and realized that she did not want to be conscience anymore. The gossamer veil had disappeared and left her naked to the inevitable.
Roche had hold of both of her arms pulling them tight across the table while Pierre used his weight to pin her from behind. He was slowly pushing and ripping through the layers of fabric that made up her skirt and underclothes. She wiggled but realized the two had her effectively pinned. She looked up into Roche’s bleeding face and as she made eye contact he smiled at her, blood flowing down into his mouth. When he spoke droplets of blood and saliva sprayed onto her face. “You could have just taken it, but now when we are done with you we are going to take you to the Coniergerie and see how you like meeting Robespierre.”
She had a sudden vision of the Princesse de Lambelle and remembered how her features had twisted into a grotesque caricature of her normally soft features and for the second time that day she began to weep uncontrollably. The morbid irony of her situation was not lost on her as Pierre and Roche took turns with her. Her screams echoed throughout La Salle de Soupe and even escaped out into the streets surrounding her restaurant, but so pedestrian were these noises that no one paid them any mind.
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