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Despite everything that has and will happen, those really were the happiest years of Clemenceau’s life:
Getting lost in New York, asking for directions with hand gestures and broken English while passersbys tried their best to help while laughing at this utterly disoriented Frenchman; stumbling into a job in Connecticut, where a strong Yankee dialect sank into his English, welcome to stay as long as Clemenceau could keep his rolling French ‘r’s. Perhaps Clemenceau already knew then, but his foolish youth in America was the only time he would be truly happy. Not that he wouldn’t be happy again-- he would experience highs his young self could never imagine, right before being dragged to the lowest pits of hell itself until he had nothing, nothing left-- rather, it was the only time Clemenceau could live without looking over his shoulder.
Clemenceau could not have asked for better parents, but it was a simple truth that the virtues of his father had meant Clemenceau was doomed to an interesting life from the very start. Their family were outcasts in Vendée, which his father imparted onto Clemenceau so candidly that Clemenceau simply accepted it as a fact of life. Clemenceau never doubted that his father was a very impressive man who also loved him very much, because his father would write long, long letters to Clemenceau from prison, reassuring Clemenceau that he would be away for a time and that meant Clemenceau could have his father’s horse all to himself. In those days, his mother would make sure Clemenceau never skipped his fencing lessons, because it would fall to Clemenceau to protect his sisters if anything were ever to happen to her. When strangers knocked on their doors and his mother told Clemenceau in Latin to make sure father’s gun was loaded, she had been so perfectly calm throughout that Clemenceau only realised they had been in danger many years later. When Clemenceau began picking his own fights and recognising the look in the eyes of people who hated him from the faces of the strangers who visited when they knew Clemenceau’s father was too far away to do anything to them.
It was no surprise when Clemenceau began to take after the both of them: his father, for his penchant of getting into serious trouble with the government, and his mother, for her ability to remain composed while wondering if his life was going to end right there, where he was standing, for some stupid reason. When Clemenceau refused to repent after seventy-three days of prison, the buffoons of the Second French Empire threatened to have him swallowed up for good. But by the time the state was ready to trap him, Clemenceau was long gone-- holding a letter from his father, warning him that policemen had come looking for Clemenceau and boarding a boat headed across the North Atlantic Ocean. The fact that Clemenceau had recently become heartbroken served as a true yet well-timed excuse.
Perhaps that was why Clemenceau’s parents did not put up much of a fight, even though they clearly disapproved of Clemenceau staying in America for longer than a few short months. Perhaps a part of them had even hoped he would stay there, in that little room in America, tucked away in the deserted but well-kept library that barely anyone else entered besides him. Reading of the American Enlightenment, learning of all the things that were different while marvelling at everything that was the same. If only Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire had met earlier, perhaps they could have saved each other from their mistakes.
“You mention your children sometimes, but you’ve never said a thing about her before.”
Speaking of mistakes.
Clemenceau glanced up from his desk. Saionji was sitting on the other side, his head turned so Clemenceau could only see the soft locks of Saionji’s black hair, but Clemenceau could tell what Saionji was looking at. “I’m not jealous,” Saionji added, and Clemenceau instantly straightened his back in alarm. “Though, that’s what someone who’s secretly jealous would say, right?”
“Don’t joke around about that, Saionji! You’re scaring the shit out of me,” Clemenceau grumbled, and Saionji turned around with a cheeky smile on his face. “Though, if you were truly jealous, you have certainly taken a long time to reveal it.”
“Hahahah! Hey, do you think Japanese people don’t have love affairs?” Saionji’s tone was cheerful, but his choice of words stung, even though Clemenceau knew it was the best way to describe their relationship. They could exchange a hundred thousand confessions of love for each other (and perhaps they have), and it would do nothing to change the nature of what they had: something more or less ephemeral, with the deadline looming closer with every one of these evenings, spent speaking to each other under candlelight. “It’s not as though I expect you to only sleep with me. Everyone needs progeny, right? Besides, for all you know, I could have a wife back home I’ve never told you about.”
“Bah, impossible,” Clemenceau scoffed. “You like receiving too much. I doubt you’ve even slept with a woman before.”
“Excuse me!” Saionji’s eyes twitched slightly, and he placed his elbows on the table before leaning forward. “I used to live in the heart of Kyoto’s pleasure district! I have slept with plenty of women!”
“Ahhh, that doesn’t count. You have to pay for those, so you can make them do all the work, like you do to me.”
“You-- are changing the topic,” Saionji huffed, pushing his face closer to Clemenceau’s. The light from the nearby candelabra illuminated Saionji’s pretty, dark eyes. “You really don’t like talking about her, do you? Your wife.”
What’s there to say, Clemenceau almost retorted. In truth, he has not thought of the woman on the wall for an awfully long time: painted in watercolours, a small chin framed in red hair, smiling coyly at the artist. Her portrait was hung up in front of his desk, but it was not her that Clemenceau thought about when he looked at her painted face.
He only worked there on Mondays. He was doing a favour, really, because the boarding school in Stamford was sixty-six kilometers from his apartment in New York, and it was terribly difficult to find someone living close by who could teach the girls French. So Clemenceau, partially driven by the kind request of the headmistress Aiken and also by the need to keep his staggering debts (he has never been good with finances) under control, took the job. It was an old institution for women from wealthy families, and the pay was almost worth the travel time.
It was the students who convinced Clemenceau to stay: the girls were all very charming, if rather wild for French standards. Clemenceau flirted with all of them, just out of playfulness-- nothing more than the usual nonsense of a man in his mid-twenties living on his own, still too dazzled by the New World to realise how quickly loneliness was beginning to nip at his heels. At some point, the headmistress realised Clemenceau was an expert horseback rider, and he was made to teach French while guiding the women on the basics of equestrianism. It became a running joke during riding lessons for Clemenceau to compliment his students on the length of their legs, right before receiving a swift kick in the back of his head for his troubles.
Mary Plummer had been different. She was eight years his junior, possessed of exotically delicate features. She was also very devout, her belief seemingly unshakeable until she met him. Clemenceau caught her by the waist just before she tumbled off her horse into a ditch, and after that, all his compliments to her became different from the rest. He spoke at length about her pretty, dark eyes, or gorgeous curls of her hair. Eventually, foolishly, Mary allowed him to run his hands along her scalp. Whenever he saw her, he would bring the red locks of her hair to his lips in a kiss. When she fell ill, he stayed at the boarding school for an entire week, barking medical orders from her bedside until she was all better. Everyone with eyes to see and a brain between their ears could tell that Clemenceau had fallen in love with her.
For a time, she slipped out of his jaws. Her friends all warned her against it: don’t do it, Mary, this man flirts with every girl he meets, his affections are just pretensions, and besides, what future would you have with him? No matter what Sir Clemenceau promises you now, he is not American. He is a fascinating, brown-bearded Frenchman, and sooner or later, his destiny will call him back home.
And they were right. Already, the end of Clemenceau’s happy days in America were drawing to a close; the Second French Empire was on its last legs, and no one was looking for Clemenceau anymore, because no one was keeping records or maintaining any order. France was headed towards change. Whether this change would make a nation or ruin her came down to the people who were willing to take the reins, and Clemenceau knew he could not live with himself if he continued living in gaiety, far away from his home.
So he asked her to marry him. When she said no, he nodded to her, left the room, resigned from his post and got on the next ship back to France. A heartbreak caused the start of his happiest days and a heartbreak signalled the end of them. A fitting conclusion to three brief years, easily summarised in a single sentence on the first page of a biography.
But then the daft girl had asked for him back.
“She’s lovely,” Clemenceau decided to say. “A lovely, stupid girl.”
Saionji rested his chin on his palms. “I’m surprised you’d ever marry someone you considered stupid.”
Because Clemenceau had been stupid then, too. He practically flew back to America, back to Stamford, and convinced her to give it all up for him: her faith, her family, her country. She begged him for a Church wedding but he married her in the New York City Hall. Clemenceau’s mother had been the same, he convinced her-- his mother’s family were diehard Protestants that opposed her marriage to his father for years. Well, she married him anyway, and it had worked out in the end! It shall all work out! He loved her and she loved him, so what else did they need?
A brain, Clemenceau thought, and he felt quite rather horrid, but not horrid enough to change his mind. Without any evidence, Clemenceau had constructed a perfect life for the both of them: Mary would arrive in France, learn French manners, French dress and French literature. She would follow him to Paris with her beautiful red hair always perfectly coiffured, flowing freely down her shoulders, and everyone would be unable to stop themselves from comparing her to Helen of Troy. She would arrive at each salon littéraire dressed in the finest silk Clemenceau could buy her and impress everyone with well-timed comments drawing from her knowledge of American history. She would be wonderfully exotic yet also fit into the jagged edges of Parisian social life like she was always fated to be there. And she would speak French with the most charming American accent--
“My American never did learn how to speak French,” Clemenceau said.
Saionji tilted his head slowly. “...American? I did think she doesn’t look French, but American? Wait, so you seduced an American girl and brought her back to France with you?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Hahahah!” For some reason, that made Saionji burst into laughter. “You know, people back in Japan are spreading rumours that I’m going to return home with a French wife and half-French children. It drove me mad, and I’ve been writing letter after letter, trying to explain the French education system so people understand I’m actually studying, not fooling around--”
Clemenceau raised an eyebrow. Saionji stopped himself and waved his hand around. “At least, not with a woman,” Saionji corrected, his smile turning coquettish. “They don’t need to know anything more than that, heheh. Though…”
Saionji looked back at the painting. “When did you come back from America, again?”
“Right before the Franco-Prussian War.”
“Wow.” Saionji went silent for a moment. “Nearly ten years ago, and she still doesn’t speak French? She really must be stupid.”
Inexplicably, there was nothing scathing about Saionji's tone. “Yes…” Clemenceau looked back at the half-written article on his desk and realised there was no way he would get this done tonight. “Stupid, stupid girl.”
When Mary finally arrived at Vendée and relied on Clemenceau for everything, he had thought it cute. Watching her try to speak with his parents reminded him of his first days in America, stuttering through English syllables, supplementing broken sentences with exasperated French words, only reducing his own intelligibility.
His mother had found it less impressive. She, perhaps knowing that the duty of helping Mary adjust to French life would fall squarely on the mother-in-law’s shoulders, had given Clemenceau an earful for recklessly marrying a foreign girl that couldn’t even read a single page in a damn children’s book. His father, whose wrath Clemenceau was expecting most, surprisingly accepted this turn of events with grace; he took one look at Mary, turned to Clemenceau and grimly declared: I understand. She is beautiful, Georges.
The months passed, and Mary never moved past stilted, broken French. But the poor progress of her language skills were not on the forefront of anyone’s mind, because Mary was pregnant, pregnant! Clemenceau’s mother was so dizzy with delight at the news she would be a grandmother that she forgot about ever having disapproved of Mary at all. Nevermind everything else, let Clemenceau’s first child be born first! And Madeleine was born, perfectly healthy with not a complication, and then war…
Saionji looked back. “Does she have any friends?”
Clemenceau shook his head. “Of course not. Save for our three children, no one in Vendée speaks English.”
It really had been terrible to leave Mary and Madeleine, but the war commanded Clemenceau’s presence. He would have fought and died happily if that were all he was good for, but Clemenceau’s skills were better put to use treating the wounded in Paris. When the Siege of Paris began in earnest, Clemenceau, well aware he might end up dead at any moment, wrote long letters of genuine adoration to Mary, all in English. Dear love, he wrote, I am as well as ever, the feeling of blood still lingering on his hands long after he had scrubbed them off his skin. My dear little wife Mary--
“That’s sad,” Saionji whispered, almost sounding upset. “You should send her home.”
Clemenceau’s eyes snapped to Saionji, somewhat narrowed in shock. “Just five minutes of hearing about my wife and you are telling me to get rid of her? And you said you were not jealous, little prince!”
“Living away from home is difficult enough,” Saionji said, and Clemenceau realised, in slight horror, that Saionji was not going to acknowledge Clemenceau’s attempt at distracting him with a joke. “Having no friends is worse. Being unable to speak the language… she may as well be locked up in prison. If she’s really too stupid to learn French, you should send her home.”
The war ended, the Commune began. Clemenceau had left home as the charming French tutor who laughed while being smacked with handkerchiefs by blushing American girls. He returned, two years later, a tiger. He had cut his fangs on the mayoralty of Montmartre and kept his claws sharp after witnessing Lecomte and Clément-Thomas slaughtered in front of him. He was a different man now, very different, and Mary had stayed exactly the same. Still beautiful, still in love with him, still stupid beyond belief.
“It would be far too cruel to send her home now,” Clemenceau stated, as clinically as possible. “I am all she has.”
Saionji looked straight into Clemenceau. “And you’re all she’ll ever have, as long as she stays here.”
Thérèse was born next, to much less celebration. Then Michel, and with the birth of a son it felt like Clemenceau had extracted all the usefulness out of her. He reneged on his earlier promise to bring her to Paris, because what was the point if she couldn’t be seen next to him? Yes, she looked like Helen of Troy, but she could barely fucking speak French, and the only words she could read were of Clemenceau’s name-- she still kept all the newspaper clippings where Clemenceau was mentioned, unable to tell if they were speaking good or ill of him. So he left her in Vendée, and he should have left her in America, in the happy days that now only existed in his memories. Maybe there, she would have stayed beautiful. Not that she had changed-- Mary had not changed at all, that was the fucking problem--
“It is more complicated than you think, mon lapin.”
“I’m sure,” Saionji responded. “But you should consider it, Clemenceau. If I had to live like her, I would have already killed myself.”
And there it was: Saionji’s words tore into Clemenceau’s chest like a hand of ice, grasping at Clemenceau’s heart like the cold look on Saionji’s face was enough to rip it right out of him. “Don’t say that,” Clemenceau said, “don’t--”
When Clemenceau had just become the tiger and begun to understand the dismal future that lay ahead of France, Saionji Kinmochi walked into Acollas’ classroom. Saionji was eight years his junior, possessed of exotically delicate features. He was also very devout, and though his God looked very different, his belief was seemingly unshakeable until he met Clemenceau. He had pretty, dark eyes, and coiffured black hair that framed the small chin on his thin face. For some foolish reason, Saionji allowed Clemenceau to run his fingers along Saionji’s scalp, and before Clemenceau could even begin to describe the feelings that Saionji sparked in him, he already knew that he enjoyed caressing the top of Saionji’s head with his hand. That he adored making Saionji laugh. This time, no one could tell Clemenceau was falling in love, because they were both men.
No, but Saionji was different. Saionji had arrived in France on his own. He had learnt French manners, French dress and French literature. He followed Clemenceau around Paris with his hair always perfectly parted in the middle, and everyone was astonished by Clemenceau’s little prince from the Far East. He arrived at all of the salons by Clemenceau’s side and stole the spotlight with witty remarks that combined both an incredible knowledge of European culture with a staggering three thousand years of Asian history. He was wonderfully exotic but somehow fitted into the jagged edges of Parisian social life like he was always fated to be there. And Saionji never did manage to get the Marseille accent out of his French.
Clemenceau was older now, wiser now, but perhaps not quite old or wise enough to stop himself from repeating his mistakes. And he wasn’t-- he wasn’t going to repeat anything, anything at all-- Saionji was going to sail home next year, and there he would remain, in the second happiest part of Clemenceau’s life. Clemenceau would keep Saionji’s gifts to him in spots he could look at from his desk, his dinner table, his bed, and in that way he could surround himself in memories frozen by time, beautiful forever. Forever, because Clemenceau knew Saionji was too smart to ask for him back.
But sometimes, Clemenceau still had those silly dreams:
He dreamed of an eastern wind blowing through his apartment, carrying the scent of the sea. He dreamed of Saionji standing at the door, looking just as beautiful as the day they met, just as he still was now because he it felt like he hadn’t aged a single fucking minute through all his years in France. He dreamed of hearing impossible, sacrilegious words falling from Saionji’s red lips: “Damn the Emperor,” Saionji always said first. In truth, it was ridiculous of Clemenceau to ever be worried of Saionji becoming envious of him; between the two of them, it was Clemenceau who harboured all the jealousy. “I love you, Georges! Keep me forever!”
It was telling, how Clemenceau could not escape reality, even in his dreams. Because he could definitely keep Saionji. He could keep Saionji in the same way rich birdwatchers clipped the wings of white storks to keep them trapped in their gardens instead of migrating south in winter. He had enough political pull to have Saionji locked up, arrested, or otherwise held somewhere no one would be able to find him. He could tell the Japanese legation that their little prince has gone to the countryside to recuperate from some illness, then bring terrible news that Saionji has died, and that would be the last anyone would ever hear of him. Was his dear Emperor Meiji going to come looking for Saionji, the way Saionji would fly back halfway across the earth for him?
He wouldn’t. He would never. (But he could.)
“Hey.” Saionji placed a hand on Clemenceau’s face, and Clemenceau suddenly realised Saionji had walked right next to him. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t live like her. I’m happy here, Georges.”
Clemenceau’s neck felt stiff as a statue as he tilted his head up. “Are you?”
“Of course!” Saionji almost shouted back, and then he stepped closer, hands moving to hold Clemenceau’s head to his chest. “You don’t even need to ask. These years have been the happiest time of my life!”
The only truly happy one, Clemenceau added. He didn’t need to say it out loud. Saionji knew. They both knew. But if Clemenceau kept Saionji in France, Saionji would always be nothing but a curiosity by Clemenceau’s side.
Sometimes, Clemenceau wondered if he should just force Mary to say the word. That it had always been impossible, the perfect life he had constructed for her. That she was not fit for the role he had forced her to play. It was never a fair one, anyway. She would have never been anything more than an exotic curiosity, a pretty little bell with dark eyes ringing along Clemenceau’s neck.
But she wouldn’t, because she still collected his newspaper clippings, and still sat dutifully at home in Vendée, completely unchanged. She was still, stupidly, in love with him. And Clemenceau, in his greatest moment of cruelty, refused to clamp his teeth down around her, because he did not want to admit that he had been the stupid one to ever bring her home. She will sit in that house in Vendée to rot, or maybe she will snap, and that will give Clemenceau the excuse to be rid of his American.
“Saionji.”
Saionji stroked his fingers down the greying hairs on Clemenceau’s head. “Yes?”
Clemenceau’s arms slid around Saionji’s waist, holding him in a tight embrace. “You’re beautiful.” Stay with me and that’s all you’ll ever be.
“...I’m sorry,” Saionji said, his tone feather-soft. “I didn’t realise I was making you sad until I looked into your eyes. I won’t bring your wife up again.”
As Saionji’s hands grasped the back of Clemenceau’s head and pushed Clemenceau’s right ear against his anxious heart, Clemenceau realised that Saionji had become slightly jealous after all.
But of course. Everyone would assume it was the thought of Clemenceau’s poor little wife that was making him sad. And Clemenceau, tiger claws gripping onto Saionji as he purred reassuringly into Saionji’s chest, had no intention of correcting that misunderstanding.