A Silent Life of Borrowed Movements

By the age of thirteen, Rose Favereau had learned a great many things from her cousin, Louise — all by peeping through a keyhole.

One keyhole in particular.

It was found in the attic of Madame Félicité’s house — on the door separating the narrow room Rose shared with Louise from the large one Louise called her public room.

This keyhole was no wider than a pearl, yet it contained the entire world for Rose. Through it, she watched the episodes of Louise’s life unfold each night.

Men came and went. Louise laughed with them, sang for them, sometimes cried because of them, and other times sat at her vanity staring at herself as if waiting for an answer to a question she never asked aloud, humming an old tune.

But Rose wasn't only a resident of the house on Rue de la Poterie. She, too had to earn her keep. Madame Félicité had a habit of making a good use of everything that passed under her hand, so she put Rose to work.

"At age thirteen, a girl is old enough to help around the house."—was what she told her.

From that day on, Rose dressed the beds, washed the linens, swept the floors, polished the mirrors and brought wine to the girls' rooms. And soon after, she began peeping through other keyholes too.

The house was full of forbidden rooms — rooms nearly identical to Louise’s. They smelled of cheap perfume and wilting flowers, littered with empty bonbon wrappers and rouge-stained undergarments. Rose learned early how to move quietly among them, learning the secrets of every keyhole without being caught.

They called her petite souris — little mouse — because she was always creeping where she wasn’t meant to. Louise caught her once watching one of the girls with her guest from afar.

She only laughed — “You’ll break many hearts one day, petite souris.”

At first, no one noticed the change. She grew quieter, which in a house like that was a blessing. She carried out her chores without a sound, so the girls could sleep until noon undisturbed.

She thought, as children do, that watching was harmless — but by age fifteen, Rose learned a great deal of things she didn't yet understand.

For instance, she knew how to put on and take off a bra before she even owned one.

She knew how to bathe herself in Hungarian rosewater.

She learned how to flip her hair and where to apply a single drop of perfume on her body (behind the ears, and on the inner sides of the wrist).

She learned how to lean towards someone without really listening. It required a simple, yet special tilt of the head that exposed the side of the neck to light.

She learned how to tie knots that held firm, but loosened easily when needed.

By day, Rose would sneak into Louise’s room and stand before the full-length mirror. She mimicked Louise as she flipped her hair, held her own gaze the way her cousin looked at men and licked her lips almost imperceptibly.

She'd pull her shoulder up and rest her chin on it and let her silk strap slip off, just as the girls did. She didn't know why but the men seemed to adore it.

At first, it was a game but over time, with each borrowed movement something original dimmed in her.

At age fifteen, Rose Favereau didn't understand what she was doing, not really. She only knew that Louise was beautiful and mysterious, and that beauty and mystery had power. And she wanted to be just like Louise.

The men brought Louise coins, flowers, jewelry, letters folded like birds or heart. They sent her gifts when they couldn't visit her. They made weird sounds when she touched them, they promised her Heaven and Earth — and for Rose that seemed like something close enough to love.

Some nights, when Louise forgot to pull the curtain across the door, Rose could see her with these men, the old lamp painting her skin the color of pomegranate wine.

Rose would press her eye to the keyhole until the brass rim left a mark on her tender skin, watching every movement closely, slowly beginning to understand what women really did with men.

And so, by age fifteen, Rose Favereau already learned how to climb on top of men in bed and whisper words that meant nothing to her.

Madame Félicité, who could smell a secret the way a cat smells milk, begun to notice how Rose mimics the girls — their tone, their walk, their knowing half-smiles. She caught Rose once before the long mirror in the hall, moving her hands the way Louise did when she tied her corset. But when Rose noticed her in the mirror, she ran away.

That winter, Louise fell ill. Too many nights, too many men who left their scent of cologne but took something of her each time. Rose brought her broth, wiped her forehead, listened to her feverish humming of the same old tune.

“Promise me you won’t stay here,” Louise whispered once. “This house destroys pretty girls, and you are far too pretty.”

Rose nodded, but she wasn't sure if she meant it.

She watched her cousin fade. Her beauty wilted like those roses left by her last customer. When the doctor came, Rose was peeping through the keyhole again and learned another secret. One she didn't want to know.

When Louise stopped breathing, Rose sat for hours on the other side of the door, holding onto the handle like that could bring her cousin back.

It wasn't the first time a girl died in the house on Rue de la Poterie. But Rose never thought it could happen to Louise. Louise was too beautiful to die; it was always the plainer girls who fell ill — the ones who didn’t have the luxury of refusing unclean men.

That night, Rose begun to understand what she had been really seeing through the keyholes, and why Louise told her not to stay.

On her eighteenth birthday, Rose woke to the smell of wax and lavender polish. The house was unusually still, as though it was waiting for something to begin.

Madame Félicité called her into the study, that velvet-draped room where deals were made and debts recorded. The Madame was seated behind the desk, the morning light made her face look almost kind.

“You’ve grown,” she said, studying her. “And you’ve learned.”

Rose didn’t answer. She knew by now that silence pleased the woman more than words.

“You move like Louise,” the madame went on. “Do you know that?”

A small nod. Of course she knew. She had practiced her movements for years.

“She was one of my finest girls. She had a gift. And so do you” she said. “And gifts, my dear, are not meant to be wasted.”

The eighteen years old Rose Favereau knew exactly what the Madame meant. She remembered Louise’s last words and knew she’d stayed too long — but she had nowhere else to go.

That evening, she was given a birthday gift from everyone. A new dress from the Madame —pale blue silk, too fine for errands. Perfume and rouge, lavender soap, silk stockings and lace underwear from the girls.

She was given the room upstairs on the third floor, the one that belonged to Louise before. The gas lamps hissed softly, making the room dim enough to suggest that anything might happen here.

Rose sat on top of her new bed and waited in the perfumed dark, her hands trembling against the bodice she had watched Louise lace a hundred times. She stared at the keyhole — how small it had seemed now, how much it had shown her... She realized she had been looking into her own future all along.

When the door opened, she closed her eyes. The scent of tobacco filled the air. Madame Félicité escorted a handsome man into the room, a gentleman in his forties. She gave Rose a meaningful nod and closed the door behind her.

And in that moment Rose finally understood that the great may things she’d learned through the keyhole had a purpose, after all.

She took her place and repeated every movement she once memorized through the keyhole and said every word at the right time, though she still didn't understand all of them.

When the man reached for her, she didn’t tremble anymore. Her body already learned the gestures long ago.

In the narrow room next door, Madame Félicité pressed her eye to the brass keyhole, ensuring everything went well with her precious customer — the one who had paid a fortune for Rose’s first night.

She glanced around and thought idly that the room would soon be perfect for that little girl she’d found on the street a few days ago. She had icy blue eyes and hair like fiery copper, the perfect addition to her house.

Then she quietly moved downstairs, and poured herself a drink as she begun to hum Louise’s old song. The melody drifted through the cracks in the floorboards, soft and low, like the wind through an empty corridor.