The Colors of Cold

Начало книги

She paints and powders her face, pins her hair, tightens a corset over her shift, dons petticoats, chemisette, dress, jacket, shawl, elbow-length gloves, turban. She gathers her papier-mâché flowers back into the basket. The much-thumbed blues with the word Voir, Watch, inscribed on their petals, reds with Effleurer, Touch Lightly, and whites with Ressentir, Experience Physically. Her flowers are admission tickets, and the inscriptions, pretty names for three grades of entertainment she offers. Blue, white, red—the three revolutionary, patriotic French colors, they don’t just stand for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité—they are her colors too. She’s known no others. She is twenty-two years old, and the Revolution is twenty-four.

She thinks back to the prior evening. A young man named Julien came to see her. He had purchased a red flower, Touch Lightly. He was a veteran of the Russian campaign. His left leg ended at mid-thigh. When he plunked into the chair in her room, he kept his crutches under his arms, and they angled to the floor on each side like bony, flightless wings. He kept bouncing his good leg up and down, the heel of his boot clacking on hardwood. He asked for her name and she said Constance, the first one that came to her mind. Just another nom de guerre. A day later she wishes she were gentler with Julien, refrained from telling him ghastly stories. Wishes she told him her real name.

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