The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  I thought as much.

  That he knew—

  It does not surprise me.

  Several bars passed before we spoke again.

  He will join us tomorrow, as well, I said. To sing Elvino.

  He nodded without comment.

  I returned my attention to the music. You are composing this now? I asked.

  Yes, he said. You’re too kind, however. It’s terrible.

  No, it’s not, I said. But now you must make an opera with a role for me, for I have said you are.

  Is it just music for now, or is there a libretto?

  I did not answer; instead, I listened to him play for nearly an hour more like this.

  Escape with me, I said. Can it be done? Could we leave now?

  The light shadowed his face. He seemed to be thinking of it, but he had not answered immediately, and I instantly doubted myself. You are asking me, he said, but you, I think, are the escape artist.

  What will you say to him tomorrow, I asked, when he asks you about the opera I have said you are writing for me?

  But I am still planning our escape, he said, his smile like thunder.

  §

  I found Amina first in the wig room at Pauline’s Baden-Baden Haustheater, one wig among many on the shelves of blank-faced wooden mannequin heads, some with their eyes scrawled in with pen to make hideous glares, jowls, sly winks. Or rather, she had found me. I had not known it was one of Pauline’s most famous roles, that it nearly belonged to her. Under each wig was a card with the name. Madame Viardot walked purposely toward this one, with black curls in a ridiculous pile, almost like shearling. Small pink satin bows glowed here and there among the ringlets.

  Amina, the name read. She shook the wig at me.

  I took it from her and held it up, examining it from underneath. There were small loops to pull it with. It was a small cap sewn with hair.

  Put it on, Madame Viardot commanded. There’s not much trick to it. She walked over as if to help me.

  I slid it over my head.

  I pushed and pulled at it to settle it into place. When I looked into the mirror, I had the oddest experience when it was in place. I knew exactly how to smile, different from my own smile. As if the wig were a door for this other girl to walk through the moment I wore her hair.

  I went home with the libretto and the music, a little afraid of it.

  The opera began in a village haunted by the ghost of an angry young woman, her eyes on fire, her hair like smoke as she ran the streets at night. She is not a ghost, though, but a sleepwalker, an orphan girl engaged to be married to the town’s most handsome and suitable bachelor. One night she walks all the way to the hotel room of a visiting gentleman and awakes to find herself in his bed. This sets in motion a plot that unravels her engagement—she is thought to be untrue to her fiancé, Elvino, who breaks their engagement. As he prepares to marry her rival, she tries desperately to prove herself to him, failing until, as he marches to his wedding, he sees her asleep, walking the roof of the town’s mill, singing in her sleep of her love for him. He rushes to her side to rescue her from falling to her death, and she wakes to find herself in his arms.

  It was ridiculous, and yet the music was extraordinary, and I loved it—and it was not Il Trovatore. I had found a role to focus me that was neither the role I lived for nor lived inside of.

  The tenor had adjusted his disappointment and kept assuring me we would perform this together at the Paris Opera next spring as my debut, a season I doubted would come. And yet I knew there was the slightest chance that I would still be allowed to debut, and so I knew there was nothing else for me to do. Whatever was to happen to Paris, it was time to leave. He would wait for us in the music room; I would be gone. And would try to convince Aristafeo to come with me.

  §

  The next morning, after the tenor had left, I asked Lucy to have the phaeton rigged up, then thought better of it and asked for just my horse.

  I wore the general’s coat, my jewels bound in plain pouches hidden at my waist and ankle. My face hid even the slightest hint of a good-bye. Until later, I said.

  Pardon me, but if I may say something, Lucy said.

  By all means, I said.

  Take a driver, she said. Or perhaps your horse won’t be there when you return. If you take ours, he may still sell it while you’re away, but if you tip him, he may fight for the horse and wait for you.

  I hired a driver to take me to the Place Vendôme instead; and near there, at a chapel I didn’t recognize, I asked the driver to stop.

  I haven’t had confession, I said, and stepped out of the carriage, though I didn’t need to explain to him.

  In case I was being followed, I entered the church, slipped a few sous from my purse into the slot by the door, and took a candle, following the line of women ahead of me, kneeling and lighting it, crossing myself as the sisters had taught me. I looked up. A figure I didn’t recognize presided above a thick field of candles—so many had come to ask for favors, the flames had the warmth of a hearth fire, so I lingered until the women behind me glared and then I left to find Aristafeo.

  There were no men in the line as I passed out of the church; the men of age to fight were at war. We were a city of women, children, and old men. The streets had filled with garbage that was no longer collected. The stench overpowered any fear I had of being caught.

  At the address Aristafeo had given me in the Marais, I found an elegant town house within a courtyard, which impressed me. I rang the plain bell knocker and heard the sounds of dogs running and barking inside, vicious. I drew back from the entrance and was close to leaving when he pushed his face out, straining with the exertion of holding back two large black dogs. One moment! he said. And then his face vanished as the door closed again. I could hear the yelping and begging of the dogs and his voice, weary as he spoke to them in stern, swift Spanish until they were quiet.

  He unlatched the door again, smiling. Forgive them, he said. They are loyal protectors but also quite hungry. I had not expected you, and so they were outside.

  I stepped cautiously through the wooden gate, pausing at the sight of the dogs before entering completely. What are their names? I asked.

  Gaston and Frédéric. Or, as I call them, the Lords of the Lower Garden.

  I took in the courtyard. The dogs, both large black hounds nearly the size of ponies, sat grinning at me, anxious to approach but clearly having just been disciplined.

  Come this way.

  He walked so that he stood between the dogs and me. Once inside, he closed the door, and they began to whimper. He shouted to them again through the door and then turned to me, and said, I have nothing to feed them, of course. I am worried that soon they will turn on me.

  I unfastened the ribbon on my hat and then undid my hair.

  Take me upstairs, and then we will speak of food. And everything else.

  He stepped close to me, studying my face, curious, amused again. His eyes betrayed nothing of the bitter appraisal I’d seen the day before—if he had not forgiven me for the insult of the day previous in rehearsal, he had upon my arrival. In the carriage over, I had been full of fears, each of them turning over to reveal another one underneath until, by the time I stepped through his door, I had a single mission I could be sure of: I was here to see him this one last time and to ask if he would leave with me. Here in his house I could admit what I hadn’t previously, that I did not know him—I only desired him. Was it only lust, the lust I might feel for any beautiful thing, for he was beautiful, how had I not remembered? Had I somehow reduced his beauty in memory or had it grown? Why did I love him? Did he love me? And what if he would not leave with me? I might not have the strength to leave him behind and go on alone—and I would need to, to live; and yet I could not bear it if he was to die, even if it should be that he did not love me; and thus went my mind even as he reached for me and unlaced my dress at the back with a nimble, practiced hand.

  How stupid you are, I told myself,
and yet how wise to finally be here.

  As he kissed me, I entered again the world that existed only with him. I fought the old habit I still had of retreating from the sensations of my own body as I delivered myself over to the pleasures of others. To be here felt like pulling myself out of my own grave. This impulse to stay hidden in this life that was death, the fear that it was the only safety, this was what I hoped to smash now in myself. To break the lock on the cage I had made of myself.

  His hands pulled open my corset and his face pushed into my hair, stopping when his chin touched my neck.

  He paused. What is it? I asked, as he brushed his fingers across my back, finishing the unlacing.

  You don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of this, he said, touching his brow to my own.

  Dream no more, I said, to him as much as to myself, and drew back, leading him along behind me as my dress fell off me in waves.

  I stepped from the traveling costume and lay across his bed on my back, making a display of myself before him as he smiled down at me, my smooth belly and breasts, my nipples pinking in the cold.

  I enjoyed this no matter the man—the power it gave me over him to simply appear naked before him. But now it was my turn to be in silent wonder. Aristafeo stood over me, and as I watched, he stripped off his waistcoat, his shirt, his pants until his long slim body rose up, a dream of him in the afternoon light, as soft as smoke. He was like a faun, in that way I suppose most men are—it is right to paint them as half beast, I think, especially from the waist down; and his was a trim waist, too, and a long one. In the garden that first night he’d been only a silver violent desire, the night’s hot center, but here in his bedchamber, I could see all of him. He smiled as he came near, reaching out to trace a line from my hip bone to just under my breast so that I cried out softly, surprised by pleasure. I could feel the warmth of him just before he touched me, and as he completed his descent, our skin touched in the cold air of the room and then he burned across me.

  I went into my own hunger for him and stayed there under him until it was gone.

  He took me three times that afternoon—the first like a race, hard and fast, as if it were just to be done with to make room for the others; the second slower, gentler, tender, if excruciatingly so, the pleasure drawn out until it was almost agony; the third a true descent into another place altogether, where I felt afterward as if we were finally revealed to each other, who we had each been all along and perhaps had never known until then. Each of the first two times, he would rise up, smiling, and I would say, Again. After the third time, I said nothing. For at least an instant, there was nothing of who I’d been before, nothing seemed to remain. I lay quiet instead, wanting to hold only this oblivion, and as it receded, there came the slow rise and fall of his chest as he slept against me in the gathering dark.

  I smiled in satisfaction and then fell away until I slept as well.

  §

  After some time, I opened an eye. The room was nearly the color of the inside of my eyelid. I knew the sun had set and remembered my lie to the driver, who, if he still waited at the church, was no doubt beginning to wonder how many sins I might confess to and was still likely hoping to be paid. I could see him finally going in to search before driving away, the church door opening as he looked in and closing as he left.

  When I did not return, I knew the tenor would go through my rooms for signs—and there he would find my clothes still waiting, the shoes all there except the one pair. He would ask Lucy as to my whereabouts, and she would say I’d gone to confession and that she’d told me to take our driver. He would notice I had not. It was then he might go to see if I had taken any money and my jewels.

  I had left the money. I wanted him to imagine I was still preparing to leave, not that I had left.

  Whether he believed this or not, today was the beginning of all the tenor would never forgive, and if there was the slightest chance he learned I was still alive, it would mean our deaths unless we left now.

  Wake up, I said.

  He rolled to the side, his beautiful face smiling at me as his eyes blinked open and he kissed me.

  Have you finished our plan of escape? I asked. For we should leave, and soon.

  He laughed. Ah, he said. Yes. Where are we going?

  London, I said. Or if not there, perhaps Leipzig.

  I see, he said. And how will we eat?

  I reached out to my dress and withdrew one of the little bags, this one with my earrings and the rose pin, which I dropped on his stomach. Bijoux, I said.

  He pulled it open and held one of the earrings up to his eye. You have also been a baroness of some kind, it seems, he said.

  Gifts from admirers, I said, and shrugged. You may know of this tradition.

  I once played with the Conservatoire orchestra for a very rich baroness, he said. She had been trained to sing and wanted to have a concert with a soprano friend of hers. She hired the entire orchestra of the Conservatoire and brought them into her vast ballroom, where we played accompaniment to the two women for more than three hours.

  Were they talented? I asked.

  The friend had some talent, he said. We laughed.

  We were rented for less than the cost of their bracelets. Our director asked the one with talent if she gave concerts, and she said her family would be scandalized if she took to the stage. She laughed at the idea.

  He sat up and looked off into the garden, brushing his fingers across his moustache.

  I had a fantasy of barricading the room to make them listen to us instead and to take, for our pay, everything they wore, he said. Leave them naked, tied to the chandelier. And the baroness, she liked me. He winked. Instead, we took our pay and drank. I have lived on the generosity of women with bracelets that could pay for a room full of men like me. But this is not how I wish to live with you.

  He set the bag back on my thigh and sat up to push back my hair.

  You may notice, we are surrounded by Communards who would shoot us as deserters, he said. And should we escape them, Germans who may shoot us as spies. And then, apart from the patriots, the siege takers, and the partisans, there are the ordinary thieves who would kill us just for one of these. He pointed at the bag.

  I must leave, I said. I must leave him, and Paris, and he must not know where I go, and you must come with me.

  So it’s like that, he said. I had wondered. This was your first stop.

  I said nothing.

  I’ve just only found you again, he said. I am not ready to lose you or to die as quickly as that. But we should not go now. He touched the little bag with a finger. But don’t go back. Does he know you’re here?

  No, I said. Well, he may. I left no evidence of a next address. But he is clever.

  Stay here then, he said. We will be safe here until it is safe to leave.

  You don’t know him, I said. He’ll find us if we stay in Paris. And then he’ll kill us both.

  You don’t know me, Aristafeo said, smiling, and he kissed me again. I keep the dogs a little hungry for a good reason. He may try to kill us. But he’ll die first. And if not, then at least I’ll be sure we’ll all die together.

  This silenced me.

  I won’t let him have you, he said.

  I only nodded.

  He helped me dress again, laughing at all of the strings and undergarments, but he was very able at it all the same, and it was then I looked around at his surroundings.

  A few touches seemed to be entirely his, like a walking stick by the bed, topped by a silver fox head. The rest was a bland elegance: In his study there was a golden velvet couch and a Persian rug in red, blue, and white. A dark walnut chair with legs like corkscrews and dark leather upholstery sat by an old desk painted black wood with gold leaf. A sword on the wall and a musket.

  I felt myself looking for a sign that the Empress had been here, but I could not see it.

  Welcome to your new home, he said.

  With that, he leaned in and kissed my head once mo
re, and whispered, as if he’d guessed at what I suspected, She was never here.

  §

  In those first days I was anxious; I stayed inside as much as possible, and when I went out, I wore kerchiefs to shadow my face. I did not know the tenor’s regular path through the city; I did not know where to expect him. I did not even know which markets Lucy attended, which butcher and so on, but I knew enough to know they would not come to the Marais for goods. I knew to avoid my little perch at the Opera, but this no longer mattered as it once had.

  And while thoughts of the market and seeing Lucy or Doro sometimes gave me pangs of missing them, the moment I understood that one of them had betrayed me to the tenor on Aristafeo’s visits meant that among their tasks was spying on me, and the memory of my affections for them now humiliated me instead.

  I would spare you such trips, Aristafeo said. I assured him I would do my best to help him with whatever errands could still be attended to as I didn’t want to stay only in the house. This was another Paris I was meeting there in the Marais, one without the tenor, and I began to enjoy the city in my newest disguise in some way I never had before.

  Soon enough, there was less and less need of going to the markets for there were only long lines in the cold for what little was there.

  Is it time to leave? I would ask him every so often.

  No, not yet, he would say each time.

  By December, the food crisis in Paris was in extremis. The cold at least kept the smell of the garbage down, and there was less garbage also, and what there was had less and less in it that would rot.

  The Third Republic had proved no more effective at ending the Siege and fighting the Prussians than the Second Empire, though, of course, I wanted to know only when we could eat again. As winter started, the hunger became unbearable, and now there was also a need for wood for fires. I sometimes longed for my dresses, but the last dresses made in Paris would bag on me where once they had fit perfectly. I could no longer wear them even if I could retrieve them, for fear of appearing a woman of means. I instead contented myself with my one dress and took hat pins and pinned it for some time so it fit until I became too thin, and then I let it hang loose so people would not stare.