The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

This all seemed quite impossible, though, without contacting Simonet. And as that lie had been inspired by Simonet’s own seemingly ridiculous confession to me—well, I mistrusted him and his novel even more.

  Even worse, I had begun to believe he—and Madame Verdi—were right, and my little lie was the truth and, perhaps, always had been.

  Doro opened the door then and brought in my tray. As she set it down, she asked if, as it was Thursday, I was to go to Madame Viardot’s as usual, for madame had written, her note was there on the tray, and if I was to go, what would I wear, would I dine in or out. . .

  I cried out and hugged her, at which she protested and laughed, and left me to my breakfast and my note.

  If Mondays were for Euphrosyne when I was in Paris, I usually saved a Thursday or a Sunday for my teacher, Pauline Viardot-García—the teacher the tenor brought me to study with in Baden-Baden. Pauline’s salon on Thursdays at her home on the rue de Douai in the ninth arrondissement was the most exciting of its kind in Paris and the most important. She lived with her husband, Louis Viardot, a former director of the Théâtre-Italien and now an art historian, as well as her friend and intimate of many years, the writer Ivan Turgenev, the three of them living amicably together under one roof much as they had when I first met them. Together they attracted an audience of actors, singers, painters, composers, musicians, and writers. It was not uncommon to attend and find Delibes, Fauré, Brahms, Clara Schumann, and the newest genius or the oldest living one, not just in attendance, but singing, presenting, playing. Something about her put these talented and distinguished men and women at their ease and brought out their best performances. There was a very good chance that the Verdis or Simonet or even the protégé himself would be there. Whoever this man was, someone there would know, Pauline, I was sure, most of all.

  Pauline’s note apologized for not being able to attend Faust, and she insisted I return to the salon the moment I could to perform for her.

  I heard a story about you, several, actually. One is that you are leaving the stage and finally marrying our mutual tenor friend, which seems impossible, for you would not dare become engaged without both of you coming here with this news first, yes? Another is that you were a sensation at the Sénat Bal last week, with an impromptu Jewel Song in the garden. A sensation! This I believe. Perhaps you will repeat the sensation tonight? Come, and if you do intend to sing, wear some conspicuous jewels so that I will know at once.

  I remain your teacher,

  Pauline

  She meant only one thing by her request. And so, dressed in my conspicuous jewels, I went.

  §

  On entering Pauline’s salon one passed through a gallery of painting masterpieces separated by red-velvet drapes that led to her astonishing Cavaillé-Coll pipe organ, installed along the far wall of the downstairs gallery like a throne for a queen—a queen who could also play music. The organ had been made for her so she could face her audience seated on a beautifully carved wooden pedestal and accompany herself on the organ as she sang. At the foot of this pedestal was a piano, and chairs were set out near this for any fellow musicians who were also to play. Rows of chairs in circles ringed this for the rest of us in attendance.

  The scene was somber at the start due to the news that both M. Viardot and Turgenev were in poor health. I’d heard Louis was not well, but the truth described in the conversations around me was worse than imagined—he’d had a stroke. In the meantime, Turgenev, often afflicted with painful gout in recent years, was now said to be suffering from an angina as well. Pauline took a moment to address us all and assured us we were very welcome and that our merriment would not disturb her patients—some had expressed concern. She said Turgenev, who occupied the fourth floor by himself, had even had a long listening tube installed so he could hear us. To cancel would sadden them, she said. They had asked us to carry on, and she extended it to us as a duty to be happy for their sake and improve their spirits also.

  I had not seen Pauline since my return. She seemed vital still, if also weary from nursing what were effectively her two husbands. Leonine in appearance, she wore her hair in something of a silver crown; her skin was still smooth, her large dark eyes still shining, her cheeks full. She was the youngest of the trio, but there was something else to her, some vitality that had brought her all this way and remained, undimmed by her trials.

  She then went around the room to greet us, and if we at first were somber, given the news, we soon saw she was happy to see us and tried to match her. When it was my turn, she kissed me on each cheek and, touching the earrings, said, Ah! You are prepared. How I love you, thank you. Now tell me, I must know at once—are you truly marrying? And what is this nonsense about curses and retirements?

  Lies, every one, I said, and she laughed.

  You were away too long, she said, and set her face in a moue. You must return Sunday when you can see the men at dinner. They won’t forgive me if I don’t get you up the stairs. Come early, though. And wear something especially beautiful. And forgive me for not seeing you in Faust. I don’t dare leave them alone.

  With that, she swept on, greeting the next of the room’s guests.

  Paris had been cruel to Pauline as a young woman. She came of age as a singer amid a field of established singers who’d felt they’d only just emerged from the shadow of her older sister, the legendary Maria Malibran, who had died some years earlier, far too young. If Pauline had been only half the singer Maria was, she would have been a threat to them, but she was much more than that from the beginning—a mezzo-soprano with a three-octave range, she could sing freely in many roles.

  After her debut, the Paris opera houses turned their backs on her on the orders of these older, more experienced, vengeful sopranos. She’d needed to go abroad just to sing. Once there, she made herself into someone who could not be ignored by any opera house anywhere in Europe. She eventually returned to Paris with much acclaim, basking a little in the fury of her enemies.

  Now that she had retired, this salon in Paris was her revenge on those earlier enemies, whatever else it was—a stage in her own house that she commanded, where no one could dismiss or surpass her. Those other singers might have paused at her age as their voices faded; her technique and her command of her repertoire was such that she made more of her ailing voice than most younger singers did with theirs.

  Here was Pauline, then, still accompanying herself on her organ, beginning the evening with a song from Sapho, which thrilled us all. She went on to perform songs from Alceste, La Sonnambula, and Orphée et Eurydice, and then, after applause, she gamely gave curtsies to us and then moved down to her piano, where she announced she was to play Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor, op. 48, no. 1 and began.

  If Chopin’s Nocturne in F Minor, op. 55, no. 1 is like looking for a love lost in the darkness, this is the descent into love, in all its richness, mortifications, and subsequent glories. It begins mournfully and then becomes tender, then passionate, then seems to rage in a movement from despair into redemption, then passion again, and at last, a plaintive, even affectionate acceptance that this will die and leave us. In Pauline’s hands that night, it was a storm of arpeggios, a passion made more beautiful by the way it aspires to immortality despite the knowledge of its own death approaching—a love that knows it can be lost and still loves hopelessly as long as it can. Pauline played it as only she could—which is to say, as someone who was a dear friend to Chopin, who had studied with him, collaborated with him, played four-handed beside him, and then sang Mozart’s requiem over his grave. A tenderness mixed with grandeur illuminated it all. Her performance was extraordinary, and the last bars sounded as if they were thrown over that final wall that is death, a last farewell to a lost beloved passing on into whatever lay beyond.

  When she was done, the room was silent, humbled. We had been startled by the force of it, I think, or, at least, I had been—and the force of what I felt. I had wept. As I reached for my handkerchief, a movement near the door to the stair
s caught my eye: a silver-haired shadow that could only be Turgenev, still in his dressing gown, his eyes bright with tears.

  His listening tube abandoned, it had taken him all this time to descend the stairs.

  At that moment, Pauline waved for me to come forward, thundering into the introit to the Jewel Song—she intended to accompany me, of course, a great honor. I hesitated—I wanted to ask someone to help Turgenev back to bed, remembering how painful his gout was, or to tell her to sing or play something else for him—but as I looked to the door once more, he put a finger over his mouth, a gleam in his eyes as if he were a naughty child, and then withdrew farther into the shadow.

  I went to Pauline’s side instead and obeyed them both as I always had since meeting them.

  I was finally able to speak to Pauline alone near the evening’s end when she approached me and thanked me for singing for her—as if I could have refused her.

  You have truly grown into your artistry. You sing to give pleasure, she continued, but it is not with that craven approach that goes out begging for applause; instead, it is a gift given from your own store of pleasure, a pleasure taken from the music. This is the only honest way to give this, I think. The result is that your Jewel Song was exquisitely handled. But what’s more, I can tell you finally understand what is in that beautiful throat.

  Thank you, I said, made shy by this, but not too shy to ask the questions I had come with, all of which amused her. But Pauline had none of the answers I needed. She apologized for not remembering the name of the Prix de Rome winner from several winters before and said she had heard nothing of Verdi protégés, nor did she know of a writer named Simonet, much less his novel. She, like me, doubted he was Sand’s nephew. I am an old woman at last and have no gossip to share, she said, even as I protested it couldn’t be true.

  Only the gossip that comes in with the doctors, she said.

  And then she leaned back her head with the faintest smile and, tapping her chin, asked, Are you in love with him, this mystery composer?

  How can I be? I asked in return. I don’t even know him.

  Almost every opera is about this, she said, her smile growing. Love before first sight.

  I laughed.

  You laugh, she said, but it is so. How I wish we were still in Baden-Baden, she said. Walking across the lawn back to supper as we used to. Do not forget Sunday, she said, with a wag of her finger.

  I promised I would not and kissed her good night. I returned home to contemplate my little mystery some more.

  §

  Was this love before first sight?

  Perhaps, I told myself, as I entered the foyer to my apartment and Doro greeted me there, lifting off the coat and the fur collar I’d worn out, and tutting at me for wearing the emeralds to Pauline’s—they were too ostentatious for a salon! I assured her my hostess had invited this.

  Whoever this composer Simonet had mentioned was, yes, perhaps I did already love him, or would. Perhaps it was time to love again. I had loved exactly once. After the circumstances under which my first and only love had died, I decided to set this heart of mine someplace safe forever. If I could not save him or be with him, I at least wanted never to betray him.

  But even as I reminded myself of this, I knew my heart had at last begun to disagree with me. It had grown hungry and, at the scent of love in the air, suffered the temptations of any hermit who has stumbled onto what seems to be the preparations for a feast.

  I went to stand alone in front of the falcon. I took the earrings from my ears and returned them to their trap.

  The answers I sought now, they could very well set me free from at least my suspicions and fears. They could also matter not at all. On that long-ago evening, as the tenor’s carriage passed through the streets of Paris taking me to my next life, I had vowed to learn the nature of what was hidden to me in this transaction, for I was sure the answer was the answer to everything—sure the answer would free me and return my life to me somehow.

  But if the earrings were a reminder of that evening’s singular defeat, the falcon that hid them reminded me that when I’d at last fought my way through to my long-sought answers I discovered these answers would not have released me from this strange bondage. And, say that they had—I would never have become a singer. This was the real irony to my situation: Everything I had as a singer I owed to this bargain.

  The falcon statue was a gift from the mysterious man who had set the terms of my return to the tenor with the Comtesse. He had given it to me along with my freedom.

  That last artificer, hidden up above them all.

  §

  As a story of discovering you are in another story, Il Trovatore is a tragedian’s sleight of hand. It is a love story until Manrico dies, and the Gypsy’s daughter stands and shouts her victory, and the Count understands he has ordered the murder of his lost brother and driven Leonora to her death. In a single instant, we find we are in another story altogether, the opera only the last chapter in the Gypsy’s daughter’s long plan for revenge begun so long ago.

  Victory, defeat, victory, defeat, victory, defeat.

  And so my tenor and I had found ourselves to be in quite another story from the one we believed we were in. A story begun when the Comtesse arrived at her first ball in Paris, and the music stopped, and the Emperor and Empress stopped their conversations to see what had happened.

  Only I knew this to be true, however. He never knew. Just as I never knew what, if anything, Pauline had been told of my situation when we first met. Her mock hurt at the thought the tenor and I might marry and not announce the news to her in person told me she still believed the tenor and I might still be the happy lovers she met when we went to her in those last days of autumn in 1868. Yes, if we were to marry after all this time, she would have to be included in some important way. And certainly, the tenor believed in our love then, and so why wouldn’t she?

  I never once suspected her as having a role in the events surrounding me now because she was too good to me, too purely my teacher—my only good teacher—to concoct schemes of that kind. And she would never endanger even one of us for fear of losing even the smallest piece of what remained of our time there.

  But, certainly, I suspected her then.

  It amuses me to remember how suspicious I was of her, just as I was suspicious of all I saw, convinced I moved through a country populated entirely by the Comtesse’s plan for me. From the train to Baden-Baden, as I watched through the window, this country seemed made of an unbroken forest braced for the coming winter, bordered by meadows with the grass gone brown and wet from the rain. Baden-Baden, the tenor assured me, sat at the edge of the Black Forest, just over the border from France, in Germany, in a valley of extraordinary beauty and mild climate.

  He had been speaking of Baden-Baden until then and describing its various virtues and history, but these had slid across me like the rain on the window at my side.

  We were at luncheon, nearly at our destination, seated in a luxury dining car at the table assigned to us for the trip. I was afraid and also afraid I could not hide this fear; I had the feeling of riding an angry horse indifferent to its rider. Behind the tenor was a mirror set into the wall, and so when I did not look out the window to the landscape during our meals, I used the mirror to help me modulate my expressions so as to better perform the part of his interested fellow traveler—our meals on the train like rehearsals for the days ahead.

  I was almost accustomed to him again. He had changed during our time apart. His beard had darkened and grown longer, though his hair was still golden, still worn past his ears and swept back with pomade. He still wore evening dress often, though not for this trip—he had dressed the part of a proper Prussian gentleman in a beautiful traveling suit of a dark blue wool and a waistcoat embroidered with flowers. This drew attention to how he had thickened as well, but it suited him. He seemed less a former soldier and more of a tenor.

  All of this activity with the mirror, to which he seemed obli
vious, sometimes distracted me from his actual conversation, and so I found I had not been listening carefully to the description of Germany, and this was in part because I was indifferent to its details for not having chosen to come—it was the same as any other confinement to me. With some surprise, then, I understood he had finished speaking to me of Germany and Baden-Baden, and turned to the subject of me.

  When you died, or when I believed you’d died, he said, I couldn’t tell anyone. So I invented a story that you’d gone to Baden-Baden, to study with Pauline Viardot-García. I’m so happy I can make this true.

  He said this ruefully, quietly—we were surrounded by fellow travelers—and pushed at his wine glass.

  Neither of us said anything more for a moment. I sat back again. There was only the unearthly sound of the crystal and silver set on all the tables ringing as we went, as if the train were a mystical bell of many parts. This strange concert was oddly comforting.

  The instinct I’d had to simply act with him as I once had, to resume our easy banter and nicknames, was more difficult as time went on. Sustaining it meant some part of me had already papered over the rupture, but at moments like this, scenes from that other time intruded, alien and alarming, which chilled me, though I knew he meant his remarks to please me.

  Grateful but contrite happiness, I told my face in the mirror, as if I were again in Delsarte’s classroom and he was pointing to my next expression. Though I was well past his room of portraits, deep inside my own. I reached for the tenor’s hand. Please forgive me, I said.

  I have, he said. And I hope you also will forgive me. Madame Viardot-García is the greatest voice teacher in all of Europe, you see, he said. I have sung with her informally and learned something even just in singing across from her. I hope, in introducing you to her, she will make up for the mistakes I made earlier with your training. Also, she is not so concerned as to whether you have a proper French education; and she has room for you and was moved to hear of your situation.