Aillette

In the village of Bas-le-Château, in the département of Haut-Savoie, every year on the seventeenth of January, there was a fair. Farmers would come from miles around, bringing with them stock and produce for sale, more often than not their good-wives carrying the lion’s share of the goods while their husbands drank and gossiped along the way. Husbandmen would come with their breeding rams, stallions and bulls to gain as much as they could for their reproductive prowess. The local merchants, such as they were, displayed their meagre wares with a well-weathered expectation. And the lord in his fine house taxed everyone.

In Bas-le-Château lived a woman called Hélène, not renowned for her beauty, her piety or her goodness. In fact, she was notorious for her drunkenness. On this particular market day she was drinking in one of the three small wine shops in the main street, alone. She was becoming more and more morose, her wine-addled mind turning in upon itself and creating for her a grey and black world from which there was no escape. Suddenly, jarring her from her reverie, a man sat down opposite her, helped himself to the wine bottle and held her hand, all the time uttering blithe reassurances as if she were a child. She cried, naturally, and continued to cry as they coupled in an alley off the main street of the village, while the rain came down in sodden lumps, after a particularly brooding afternoon.

Almost exactly nine months later, Hélène gave birth. So shocking was the child’s appearance that the priest refused it baptism, young children fell in convulsions on the street and one particular evening its mother tried, unsuccessfully, to kill it. Afterwards, as she knelt over it, the pillow she had tearfully tried to stifle it with still in her whitened knuckles, she cursed God and the Virgin for this cruel punishment.

Later, when she had sobered, she took the child to the cemetery by the church and left it there, naked upon a freshly filled grave, sure that the elements would complete the task that she, in her fear and weakness, could not. That night it rained again and if anyone had passed along the muddy paths in the cemetery they would have seen the pathetic sight of the abandoned child, exposed to the weather, soaking wet, crying its eyes out, the vestigial wings growing out of its back flapping slowly and impotently in the moonlight. But no-one did.

Later, the next morning, a funeral took place. At that time, taking advantage of the annual fair, a circus had stopped at Bas-le-Château. In truth, it was not exactly a circus: there were no elephants, lions or tigers. But there was a dog boy, a bearded lady, an inorganic girl and a one-legged trapeze artist. Now, unfortunately, the bearded lady had gone the way of all flesh and was due to be interred that morning. Because of the humidity there was every reason not to allow the corpse to rot. The motley assortment of circus performers and sundry hangers-on approached the cemetery, six of them carrying the casket. It was made of unvarnished pine and if an observer was astute, the fact that the shorter end was hinged for ease of disposal and reuse could easily be discerned.

But then, the party stopped, some in mid-step. The child screamed and the rain started to fall again, dripping off the lid of the coffin. The child continued to scream, the burial continued to be delayed and Monsieur Actéon du Pont d’Auvergne, the director of the circus, looked and began to think. His thoughts were deep, convoluted and not particularly Christian. Soon, the child was rescued and the body buried, slipping like a slug in its dirty shroud into the communal grave pit, followed by a generous helping of quicklime.

For many years the child was kept in a cage, the charge being five sous an adult and only a single sou for children. She was named, eventually, Aillette, after the apocryphal patron saint of poachers and escaped slaves. The life of Aillette was, at least in her infancy and early childhood, defined by bars and entrance fees. She only learned to speak slowly and never acquired the ability to use words longer than two syllables. She was, however, deeply sensitised to the attentions of others, she was a natural performer and could effortlessly bring in the tips, the applause, the acclamation. But she was, of course, mortally lonely.

It was after a short stay in a town in the Dauphiné that Aillette decided, slowly and quietly, that she had to escape. The group of villagers who had paid to enter the darkened tent that concealed her cage had been especially belligerent: they stared, they ridiculed her, indeed some of them had even thrown crusts of bread. Aillette had responded by becoming angry, her teeth bared, her wings drawn up in a defensive posture. Naturally, this hadn’t really helped.

Later that night she slipped out of the cage as she was being fed, hiding her nefariousness behind her innate docility. She was caught almost immediately, but the pattern was set. She tried again the next night and the beating she received at the hands of Monsieur Actéon du Pont d’Auvergne was severe enough for her to desist for some weeks.

For Aillette, escape quickly became an all-consuming obsession. She contemplated her freedom while she ate, while she slept and while she performed for the ever decreasing crowds. The very idea of freedom had become her only hobby, her sport, solely what she dreamed of. It wasn’t until much later that Aillette’s plans came to fruition. She had fashioned a rudimentary lock pick from three pins that she had acquired clandestinely over the course of two years. Because of her meticulous planning, it was only moments before she had opened the door of her cage, her hands shaking and her heart pounding. Using legs that were little more than articulated flippers (such was her infirmity from the years of confinement) she dragged herself along the ground, constantly slipping in the sawdust.

Of course she hadn’t counted on the proclivities of Actéon du Pont d’Auvergne, her erstwhile keeper. He had met a woman who was not, in fact, his wife Céleste, but a total stranger. Still, her breasts were large enough and she found herself quickly pinioned against a post that supported a nearby tent. She didn’t complain, nor did she enjoy it, for she was being paid. Such were the depths of her iniquity. But Aillette was caught and, with the rage of a man not only caught in flagrante delicto but also in coitus interruptus, the domineering director of the circus beat her mercilessly. Just when his anger should have abated, it resumed, multiplied by his embarrassment and unfulfilled passion. Withdrawing a knife from his back pocket, he held her down as she screamed and struggled and proceeded to bodily remove both the source of her difference and of a sizable proportion of his income. Aillette’s wings lay on the ground, covered in blood and sawdust, the wounds on her back bleeding freely. She looked up, terror and agony on her face at the still enraged figure of Monsieur du Pont d’Auvergne and the woman he was rutting, her skirts bunched up around her waist.

It was many weeks before Aillette consciously made the choice to live. She was left in her cage for the most part, the director not wishing to see the ignomious fruit of his rage and lust. She starved and she lay there dying for some time. Finally, it was Jacques, the one-armed trapeze artist who found her, fed her and bound her wounded shoulders. By subtle ministrations he encouraged her to no longer wish for death. So, by chance, Aillette became the trapeze artist’s assistant, holding his cape for him as he launched himself off the ladder, encouraging him and comforting him when he failed to perform the manoeuvre he had advertised. They became closer, in a friendly fashion, and Aillette no longer wished to die. No-one else seemed to notice her continued presence. Somehow Jacques managed to hide her from the overbearing gaze of the director. His wife, Céleste du Pont d’Auvergne, was equally disinclined to see the stricken Aillette. She moved about the circus like a ghost, her presence concealed by embarrassment and denial.

One day, when the circus was performing in Paris itself, Aillette found herself alone standing at the top of the swaying ladder. Below a group of people, who could almost be described as a crowd, awaited the performance of the trapeze artist: a double somersault was all that was required of him. But because of providence or, indeed, because of a surfeit of brandy the previous night, Jacques was not there. Aillette stood atop the ladder; her eyes directed downwards, her arms extended in preparation for the usual proffered cloak, unaware of what else to do. Below her, people whistled expectantly. She waited.

After some time of this, there was little point in waiting longer. Jacques was not coming. Below her, people began to swear and some made to leave. Suddenly, as if inspired by a divine spark, she launched herself off the ladder, seemingly uncaring as to where she fell. Of course, she missed the trapeze completely and for a split second people began to run this way and that, trying to avoid the falling body.

Aillette was unconcerned. Only inches from the ground the thin fabric of her bodice split with a strangely audible tearing sound. The feathers that sprang out from her shoulders were no longer rudimentary, but large and silver and made an angel out of her. Without a word she beat her wings, gaining ground, her bare feet rising slowly above the crowd. In seconds her figure had risen and diminished, a minute later she was only a speck against the Parisian skyline. Her wings had grown back.