A photo of Felicia Davin
Hi.
I’m Felicia Davin, a writer and reader of romance, fantasy, and science fiction.
A photo of Felicia Davin
I’m Felicia Davin, a writer and reader of romance, fantasy, and science fiction.
Pourquoi le beau sexe ne prendrait-il pas de temps en temps une revanche ?
Why shouldn’t the fair sex, from time to time, take revenge?
Honoré de Balzac, Les Secrets de la princesse de Cadignan, 1839
1822-1825
Unsigned, left behind a loose stone in a churchyard wall
My darling,
I need to get lost, but I want you to find me. I have left you the means to do so, hidden under the floorboards of a top-story room in the Maison Laval, the one where the garret window faces the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève. The current resident is called Forestier. He’s unaware of what I have put in his room, and has a generally unpleasant air, but I’m reasonably certain he won’t stop you from retrieving the package. I trust your skills; you’ve charmed sterner men.
When you do, you will find my compass—your compass, really, as you were the one who divined its unusual function—and a linen kerchief shoved into one of my old stockings. Don’t touch the kerchief with your bare hands. I’ve used it to forget something I can’t know right now. Keep it hidden for me. I’ll remember some day when it’s safe.
I don’t know where my journey will take me, but the compass will tell you.
Avoid Maximilien Taillefer at all costs.
Unsigned, written in duplicate, one copy left in the churchyard and the other hidden
My darling,
What do you mean by this alarming letter? You make me fear you will never read this, but I write in hope. I know I once complimented your alluring air of mystery, but I meant your serious, dark eyes and tendency to gaze into the distance while lost in thought. Leaving me bizarre instructions and then disappearing is not at all the sort of mystery I enjoy.
I wish I thought you were joking, but I’m the funny one. To be clear, since I know you are not well-versed in humor, in case you were attempting a joke: this is not funny, and I would never do it to you, and I would like you to come back now.
I did do as you asked. It took me two days to plan my attack, hence the delay in my response. You know it’s not easy for a girl of my status to stroll into a shabby boarding house on a whim. (To think that you lived in such a place and refused all my offers to pay for somewhere better! You do know that the purpose of a roof is to keep water outside? A man with your scientific education ought to know that.) My mother has become fanatical about marrying me to that ogre and won’t let me out of her sight, so I had to make use of all my cunning wiles and enlist a lot of help. Fortunately for me, I am rich in wiles and friends.
It’s also not easy for a girl of my status to get her hands on a crowbar to pry up floorboards—I did not even know the word “crowbar” before I embarked on your quest—but I did that, too. F*** was as gruff as you said. I regret that your trust in me was misplaced, but he was unmoved by my pretty face, my ample bosom, my social graces, my fluttering lashes, and my many other wonderful qualities, except he did smile a little when I slid the world’s shortest, daintiest crowbar out of my skirt pocket. I interrogated him about your comings and goings prior to your disappearance, but he knew nothing useful. Thankfully, he asked no questions about why you’d buried something for me under the floorboards of his room. He doesn’t know what it is, as he pointedly averted his gaze. He must think all this was something disreputable related to our love affair, which is, I suppose, not false. I made him promise to contact me if he learns anything. He was surprisingly amenable to that, offering me one full, silent nod of his head.
I have your compass in hand, and whenever I think of you, the needle points south and slightly east. Every so often it wobbles, but it always aims south and east again in the end. What am I meant to do with this information, you handsome riddle? Where are you? You know I cannot wander Paris until this device leads me to you, as it once led you to me. I remind you: girl, status, mother, marriage, ogre.
Regarding that impending marriage, there is something I need to tell you, but I think it best not to record it in writing. The spot where we exchange letters remains undiscovered, and my name isn’t attached to this paper, so it isn’t entirely secrecy that stops me. There are some things that ought to be shared face to face and hand in hand.
As for M*** T*** and your warning, the idea that you would need to tell me which men are vile and untrustworthy lechers is laughable, though I wouldn’t characterize it as funny. I will continue to avoid him as I always have. Why do you think I’ve spent so many years honing my wiles? It isn’t to ensnare men—until you vanished, I had the only man I wanted—but to repel them.
Ah, but you, you I would track down and ensnare and keep forever if only I knew how.
Unsigned, written in duplicate, one copy left in the churchyard and the other hidden
My darling,
I have sent A*** to check for a response every day since my last letter. Sometimes twice a day. She humors me because she’s very kind and she can see how your absence haunts me.
I have also sent L***—he works in the stables and always smiles at me, and I gave him a silver bracelet for his troubles—to search for you on several occasions. Teaching L*** to use the compass required telling him who you were, not merely in name but in character. It took quite a few stories before he could reliably make the compass needle point toward you as I can. He knows now how much I love you, but I deemed the search worth that risk.
Every time L*** has followed the compass, he’s gone southeast until he’s surrounded by pastures, and still the needle urges him on. You are not in the city. I don’t have enough silver bracelets to send him on an unknown journey outside Paris.
No letters and no movement. Your compass needle has not so much as quivered in seven full days. I sleep with it under my pillow. Every morning and every evening I hold its brass case until the metal is hot and clammy from my desperate grip. South-southeast. South-southeast. South-southeast.
Either you’re dead or you abandoned me in my condition—in which case you’re not my darling. I know you didn’t know because I never had a chance to tell you, so it’s not your fault, but still there is a little ember of anger lodged in the ache of missing you. From a great distance—a cosmically great distance—our collision of catastrophes is almost funny. How dare you get in trouble when I was already in trouble. One of us ought to have waited their turn.
In either case, dead or gone, I shouldn’t be writing to you, but this letter is the least of my futile grasping. I am so very alone.
I know, I know, I’ve just mentioned A*** and L***, so I do have people who can help, but there isn’t any help for these circumstances. A*** is in my confidence and she offered to find someone who could “solve the problem,” but even if it wouldn’t kill me, which it might, I don’t want that. I might possess the last trace of your life. It’s not you, but what if it’s the closest I can ever come? I have failed you in everything else. I would do anything to preserve this remnant of us. Sometimes envisioning our child is the only thing that gives me hope.
In a matter of days I will marry.
I dream of you climbing through my window in the darkness to whisk me away from my dire fate, but if you’re going to do that, you need to do it now. Admittedly my novelesque imagination fails me after the scene where you slip in and lift me from my bed—in addition to scaling the walls of my family’s townhouse in the dead of night, you can also carry me effortlessly in this fantasy, your soft, intellectual physique and my rather more generous one notwithstanding—and I am not sure where we would go, or how we would find shelter or food for ourselves, let alone keep alive (nurture? educate?) the other consequence of our actions, but I know in my heart that if you were here, we could find a way.
I’m the one who needs to climb in through your window to rescue you. But I don’t know how. Too much of the world is south and east, and in any case, I am not free to explore.
Please don’t be dead.
Unsigned, written in duplicate, one copy left in the churchyard and the other hidden
My darling,
It’s been months since I’ve written, but I suppose in the absence of any response, it doesn’t matter. I’m a mother now. He’s named after a Roman emperor, and I had no more choice in that than I did in his family name.
But I love him. I wanted to tell you that.
Unsent, hidden
My darling,
You know I’ve never overflowed with spiritual feeling, but the scent of fresh bread is heavenly. I missed you so much that I sent Amélie to a bakery in the Marais to bring me some of the challah you once described. It was delicious. A little less so after being splashed with tears, but it didn’t go to waste.
I wish you to think of me beautifully overcome with sadness like a woman in a painting, draped over a bed with tears shining in my lashes, perhaps robed in folds of cloth that artfully cover my nudity, rather than splotch-cheeked and sniffling into a loaf of bread. But I suppose you don’t think of me at all, or read these letters, so it doesn’t matter.
In February, I asked Amélie to put a letter in the churchyard wall, and when she did, she found the previous one I’d asked her to deposit. The paper was spotted with mold and the words were illegible. She brought them both home. I will not bother to leave a copy of this letter.
Thinking of you is the sweetest of bittersweet things. I would have gone back to that bakery myself every week if only my husband didn’t forbid me to leave the house. (That isn’t the bitterest of all bitter things, but it’s tongue-shriveling enough.)
You and I used to talk so endlessly about what an unacceptable match we made—myself wealthy and Christian, beautiful and uneducated except in manners, and you, poor and Jewish and educated in all things except manners, and beautiful, Ari, beautiful. I must write it twice. Since you never write back, I can at last say that to you without argument. I miss your rough dark stubble and soft lips. I miss the way your formidable brows used to draw together when you were giving solemn consideration to whatever idly curious question I posed about how to make Thénard’s cobalt or how steam locomotion works. No one else ever takes me seriously, you know. The frills and the giggles put them off, but not you. It is my favorite of your many wonderful qualities, though I also love your less wonderful qualities—an excess of spleen, for instance, and a strong inclination toward distraction and forgetfulness, and a sort of simmering anger about the world that never causes you to raise your voice, but manifests instead as fatigue and disgust. I miss all these things. I even miss how you stoop your shoulders out of habit because the ceiling in your room slopes so low. I know I’d be happier shivering in your leaky garret than I am being titled marquise and married to a villain.
I didn’t do it for the money, Ari. I’d wither if you thought so. You’re the one who made me think about where all this money comes from, and how wrong it is for a few to have so much while most have so little.
I did it for Octave. We’d have starved otherwise. Yes, I know that’s a question of money; what I meant is that I didn’t do it for the riches. I do need food and shelter, and more importantly, so does Octave. My happiness is a trifle, but I would carve out my own heart before I would see him suffer. So I married the villain and did my best to scramble my tracks on the question of when Octave was conceived. No need for jealousy. Drowning that particular fish was ghastly work, but necessary.
Fortunately, my husband is a dullard, lacking both curiosity and perception. It is his best quality. Well, that, and the fact that he ignores our child. He probably thinks he’ll have ten, but I use a sponge and drink an eye-watering brew that Amélie makes every month. I gag every time and I would drink it morning, noon, and night. This secret refusal is the only power I have.
You see how unsuitable I am for my well-matched marriage? Duplicitous and adulterous. I’ll have to burn this letter, but it feels good to write freely.
Amélie, by the way, has no need of her own brew at this time. She is solely devoted to Marthe, Octave’s nursemaid. I discovered their love by accident. Marthe had taken Octave into the garden to give me a rest—I spend more hours a day with my child than is proper, according to my husband—but I was taken by a sudden whim to hold him again. When I entered the garden, Marthe and Amélie were kissing. It was quick and discreet and seemed to me the greeting kiss of long-time lovers. They broke apart when they noticed me.
I could think of no way to make Marthe trust that I wouldn’t tell except to give her a secret of my own—Amélie, of course, already possesses my most valuable secret—so I said I wanted sponges and anything else they knew of that could prevent children. They proved enormously resourceful. Marthe even knew of a shop that sold unusual artifacts and found two different wedding rings there with contraceptive properties, but if I wore a new ring to bed, it would raise suspicion. A sponge, at least, can be inserted unseen.
We have also had several illuminating conversations on the appeal of women kissing other women. Marthe and Amélie have been in love for some time, though Marthe is married to a man named Eugène who works in the stables. She reports that he is decent, both a good friend to her and a good father to their daughter Caroline, a sweet girl of the same age as Octave. Imagine that! To be friends with one’s husband! He is not troubled by Marthe’s liaison with Amélie because he has a male lover of his own. It is a situation of some complexity, but everyone involved seems happy.
These conversations with Marthe and Amélie have made me reconsider some moments of my youth—I know, I know, I’m only twenty-three, but marriage has aged me. Anyway, reflecting on all that made me think of you, because everything does. (I still check your compass every day.) Do you remember how flustered you were when Hassan flirted with you, and then again when I asked if you’d tell me what you liked about men? You did it, though. You always did what I asked.
Since I will throw these pages on the hearth, or lock them away and bury them, or devise one of your strange magical objects that will make these words illegible to anyone but us, I can first tell you about Octave, who makes life in this wretched house almost bearable. He can crawl on his belly now. Five hundred times a day, he grabs my skirts in his little fists and pulls himself to standing. Every time he sees me anew, he smiles with his whole face and flaps his arms. He makes the sweetest cooing sounds when he’s fascinated, which is most of the time since he’s so avidly curious. He has your big brown eyes and your unfairly lush fringe of lashes. His face is mostly cheeks and he doesn’t have much hair yet, but something in the brows and the shape of the lips reminds me of you.
Oh, damn it. These pages won’t burn if I soak them with tears. I wanted to tell you something happy. Every happiness in my life is like watered wine now. The flavor is familiar, but it used to taste better.
If you come back, I’ll be drunk so fast that my face will redden and I’ll trip into your arms. Entirely unsuitable, but I never wanted to be suitable for anyone but you.
Unsent, hidden
My darling,
Even though I will not send this letter, the urge to beg your forgiveness for not writing is almost overpowering. It’s been a year. I suppose I’ve resigned myself to your absence—except that I’m writing.
My husband is as hateful as ever, but I’ve become adept at wheedling my way out of the house, or sneaking if he forbids it, and going to a few parties and salons has made me feel almost myself again. That’s not why I’m writing, though.
I’m writing because I met Camille Dupin.
I had to buy myself a new copy of her novel Virginie to replace the one we read together, you know. After I carried that poor, beloved book in my skirt pockets for all those months, it was quite worn. You must remember the thrill of reading it. There was always the slimmest chance we’d encounter each other at some gathering and be able to hide ourselves away in a corner and read a few pages together—among other things. I’ve never read such a good novel so slowly, but I couldn’t stand the thought of turning the page without you. We sustained the pleasure of reading far beyond the end of the book, too, discussing it constantly and then cataloguing every bit of gossip we could find about its mysterious, androgynous author.
She—Camille is a she, though she wears trousers (seeing a woman in trousers is a revelation, in case you haven’t been so lucky, and it made me question what kind of world we live in that would frown on such a wonderful thing, though in a strange way it was the forbidden nature of the sight that thrilled me—well, that, and her bottom, to be perfectly frank, though I tried my best to exercise subtlety in looking)—oh I’ve tangled my sentence and will have to start over. This is how it goes with my embroidery, too. I should spend less time thinking about Camille’s bottom, but I won’t. I don’t want to.
In her suit, Camille was very handsome. She’s only a bit taller than me, but managed to appear far more imposing through means unknown to me, and I think her handsomeness is the same way. It has little to do with her features—brown hair, brown eyes, an unremarkable mouth, a long, narrow nose in a long, narrow face—and everything to do with her presence. You know how dearly I appreciate a well-dressed person, so it’s her clothes, certainly, but also her postures and expressions. She has an air of such strength and confidence that it almost crosses the line into haughtiness and disdain, but I overheard her speaking voice before we were introduced and it was low and warm like a banked fire.
Can you blame me for wanting to stoke it?
Camille was preceded by her reputation of having many lovers, and on seeing her, I understood it immediately and wished to add my name to the list. I will, but the game itself is a joy. To give up before we’d even played would be such a disappointment. From the way she smiled at me and said her name, she was clearly accustomed to an easy victory.
It pleased me to refrain from falling at her feet. “And what do you do?”
“I’m… a novelist?” Camille said.
“Oh?”
“I wrote, um, Virginie, that’s what it’s called.”
Ari, the thrill of flustering my favorite novelist nearly sent me floating to heaven. I could have beamed, I could have giggled, I could have grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her into an embrace. Instead I tilted my head and offered a sliver of a smile to encourage her to continue.
“It’s, uh, about a girl. But also how the institution of marriage crushes women. She falls in love anyway, though. There’s a dog in it.”
She blinked and drew her brows together, adorably stunned and mortified. I swear I am recording exactly what she said, Ari. You know I love to dismantle men, but until then I’d never had the pleasure of discomposing anyone else. The only thought in my head was Camille Dupin finds me attractive. I was soaring so high I think I heard angels.
I laid a hand and my most wicked grin on her, closing my fingers around her arm as I leaned in to whisper, “I know. I wept all through the ending. It was brilliant.”
The realization that I’d been teasing her caused Camille’s jaw to snap shut. I don’t usually bother to soothe anyone else afterward, but I wanted her to like me, so I did more or less fall at her feet then. She was still too frazzled to do anything about it, but I am determined to see her again. It will be a bit like after you met me and followed me all over the city for days, except I won’t use your compass for anyone but you, so I’ll have to devise some other means of finding her.
I wish you’d been there. Your presence wouldn’t have prevented any coquetry on my part—indeed, the opposite—but you would have found it amusing, having such common ground with Camille Dupin, and you do love her novel so very much.