Chapter 28: A Cough

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To use Mrs. Martin’s kitchen, Lionel and Petty ate each day half an hour to an hour after the communal meals had ended—slightly earlier at noon and somewhat later in the evening.

Petty had a natural talent for cooking. Although she currently knew only how to stew everything together in an iron pot, she was already quite skilled at using side dishes and spices.

The tenants of the apartment had grown accustomed over the past two days to having the aroma of meat assault their nostrils. Yet no one dared cause trouble anymore. All they could do was repeatedly swallow the saliva that welled in their mouths.

To them, Lionel was no longer the Alpine bumpkin they could mock and bully at will. He was now a promising young man about to soar to the treetops and become a phoenix.

To offend him at a time like this was to invite misfortune at some unknown date in the future!

Every utterance of “Master Sorel” was now delivered with the utmost deference, entirely stripped of its former teasing tone.

Even Petty had risen in their estimation. She was a maid worth fifteen francs a month—and she could stew delicious meat!

Once Master Sorel truly made his fortune in a few years, Petty might become his head maid and perhaps earn a hundred francs a month, more than her father, who worked as a domestic servant.

Mrs. Martin had not even pressed him for the following month’s rent, as though she knew Lionel would not be living there much longer. More often, she simply regarded the young man with a complicated expression.

Lionel and Petty slurped spaghetti at the dining table Mrs. Martin had just cleared and set. As she ate, Petty chattered away with her report.

“Master Sorel, the beef at the market was five sous more expensive per kilogram today, so I didn’t buy any. I bought duck instead…”

“Master Sorel, lots of the letters in the manuscript you had me copy today were joined together. I couldn’t quite tell which ones they were. Will you teach me how to recognize them later?”

“Master Sorel, besides spaghetti, could we buy some fine noodles? I ate some at my grandmother’s house in Brionne when I was little, and they were delicious. I saw some at the market today. They only cost four sous a kilogram!”

“Master Sorel, could I move up into the attic too? Don’t worry, I only need to sleep beneath the writing desk. It’s too noisy at home at night…”

“Master Sorel, actually… Cough, cough, cough-cough…”

As Petty spoke, she suddenly began coughing. It continued for quite some time before gradually subsiding, and a sickly flush spread across her cheeks.

Lionel set down his fork. “Slow down. Don’t choke yourself.”

Petty nodded repeatedly and patted her chest several times, steadying her breathing.

After hesitating, Lionel glanced toward the sitting room. Seeing that Mrs. Martin was not beside the stove, he lowered his voice and said to Petty, “There’s no need for you to move into the attic just yet. I’ll look for a new apartment this week. You’ll have a room of your own then.”

At his words, Petty’s eyes widened in disbelief. Once she had absorbed the astonishingly novel ideas of a “new apartment” and “her own room,” she was about to cry out with joy.

Lionel raised one finger to his lips, signaling her not to make a fuss. She barely managed to swallow the sound, but then coughed several more times.

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When her breathing had steadied again, Petty suddenly looked concerned.

“Master Sorel, you must take care of yourself. Don’t work too hard!”

Lionel blinked. “Hm?”

Petty’s little face became solemn. “Mother and the neighbors say that those baronesses and wealthy ladies have very great ‘needs.’ Even the strongest young man couldn’t withstand what they demand of him.”

Lionel fell silent.

Petty’s little mouth kept going, prattling on like a miniature grown-up. “Mother also said there used to be a young man in this apartment who was as tall and strong as you. He worked as a porter for a shipping company and was as powerful as a bull.

“But after he got involved with Mrs. Leeds, the wife of a freight merchant at the docks, he quickly became thin and died the following winter.”

Lionel remained speechless.

Seeing that he said nothing, Petty assumed she had hit upon a sore subject and hurried to comfort him.

“Master Sorel, it’s actually fine to keep living here. We don’t need to rush to move. That would save us quite a bit of rent.

“I really can sleep beneath the table. All I need is one extra blanket… We don’t have to eat meat every day, either. I think once every three—two days would be enough…”

Unable to listen any longer, Lionel pushed the noodles aside and asked, “Do you even know what a ‘need’ is?”

Petty shook her head blankly, then nodded. “I heard those ladies are all very fat. Each one weighs more than five Petties put together, and you have to push them…”

Lionel hurriedly stopped her before she could continue. Then he pressed a hand to his forehead and looked at the little girl before him with an expression of profound complexity. After a long moment, he said, “Don’t you think that sort of thing is, well, a ‘shameful affair’?”

Petty looked confused. “Why would it be a ‘shameful affair’? Isn’t Miss Meryl on the third floor doing the same thing? She just isn’t as lucky as you. Her customers are only the dockworkers. Sometimes my father goes to her room too…

“Mother used to curse me all the time, calling me a little whore and saying she would sell me to a brothel. I heard that a prostitute there can earn a hundred and fifty francs a month, and she doesn’t even have to practice ballet…”

Lionel was speechless once again. He had still overestimated the moral standards of the ordinary people living in this neighborhood, in an apartment like this.

He quickly interrupted Petty. “You must remember what I’m about to say, Petty.”

Seeing how serious Lionel was, Petty hurriedly put down her fork. Her bottom even left the chair as she stood up.

Lionel’s tone was more solemn than ever.

“Petty, as for the way you just described—using one’s body in exchange for money—I, Lionel Sorel, will never do such a thing, whether in the past, the present, or the future. It is not dignified. I have my own way of earning money, and it is certainly not that.”

Petty was frightened as well. She did not dare even breathe loudly and nodded again and again.

Lionel continued, “Miss Meryl on the third floor took up that work because she had no other choice in life. I don’t consider it shameful, but neither is it something to be proud of. I believe that if she ever had the opportunity, she would do everything she could to escape her current circumstances.”

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Petty continued nodding.

Finally, Lionel said, “You will one day become an outstanding woman. You will be literate, able to speak and write, and you will earn far more than a hundred and fifty francs. Everyone who meets you will address you as ‘the respected Madame Petty.’

“You will not become a prostitute. That is not discrimination against them, either. It is simply that you have the opportunity to choose a different path from theirs. If you choose that path, then you must understand what it means to become ‘the respected Madame Petty,’ rather than thinking that becoming a prostitute would be no great matter.

“Can you do that?”

Petty only half understood the final two sentences, but since they came from Lionel, she nodded firmly all the same.

“I can do it, Master Sorel!”

Only then did Lionel relax. He had Petty sit down and hurried her into finishing the remaining noodles and duck.

That evening, as usual, Lionel sent Petty home early to sleep while he lit a candle and began to write.

Only after the candle had burned halfway down did he rise, shaking his aching hand.

Writing by hand was truly inefficient, especially now that he had to complete three manuscripts at once.

One was a weekly piece for The Uproar, titled The Honest Parisian’s Journey Through the Provinces, which had to be at least one hundred and fifty lines each week.

Another was The Old Soldier, for the Sorbonne Literary Review. Its length had not yet been decided, but it ought to run no fewer than five or six hundred lines.

And, of course, there was The Decadent City. Although he had a full four months to complete it, the sheer length of the work made the schedule extremely tight.

“I wonder whether typewriters exist yet. And how much does one cost?” Lionel mused as he prepared to extinguish the candle and go to sleep.

Just then, he heard a heavy, hurried tread ascending the stairs from below. A moment later, it reached the door of the attic where he lived.

“Master Sorel, are you resting?”

A woman with disheveled hair stood in the doorway.

When Lionel saw who it was, his heart sank. She was Petty’s mother.

The woman’s face was alternately illuminated and obscured by the candlelight. In a slightly trembling voice, she said, “Petty began coughing not long after she came home tonight, and she hasn’t stopped yet. I touched her forehead—it was as hot as a stove just lit…”

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