The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  They looked to be a last gift, the Empress no doubt guessing she was unlikely to see the Princess again. And unhappy, perhaps, to have gifts from her German friends, no matter how beloved.

  Did he still come here, take down her dressing gown, and press it against his face? He had not washed it. The room was unchanged since her last visit, it seemed, except for the stones he’d removed from the bracelet to sell. I had grown so accustomed to the myth that I was the one who’d stolen him away from the Empress, it had not occurred to me it might not be true.

  A draft blew faintly, shaking the taper’s flame and reminding me the door was still open.

  I followed the breeze, found my way to the far wall, the way to open it easy to see—a simple bar and latch. I stepped into what could only have been the Empress’s office, decorated much as her other rooms had been and then undone by a storm. A massive directoire desk sat near another for a secretary, but all their drawers were thrown about the room, the contents strewn, and the chairs kicked over. The place had been ransacked. Several empty bottles sat on the desk.

  I went back through that secret door and dressed quickly, slid the little pouches with my jewels back into their hiding places on my body. He slept through this all, deeply; his thick snore told me he would not know I was gone for hours.

  I passed through the secret door one more time. As I did, I left the ruby rose by the Empress’s bracelets and then was gone.

  That, then, was the room I speak of. And there that cursed flower would sit until so many years later when it would somehow leave this room and return for me.

  Seven

  A LONG DREAM HAD closed its doors to me.

  I walked away into the dark, into the street, the buildings huddled close like kindling, rattling emptily in the winter wind.

  He seemed nothing more than a story I had told myself, a way to stay alive as I passed the days in Baden-Baden.

  And it had led me astray.

  As I walked through the deserted Marais, his ring at my neck grew cold in the wind and reproached me.

  I could not return to his bed and I could not stay.

  If I could save myself, I might forgive myself, but only then.

  Never love came Cora Pearl’s warning, floating back to me on the air and her mocking eyes in the mirror reappearing before me, enormous in the night. Her advice that night had seemed to me that of a cruel fool; her wanting to keep a distance from any of her admirers so she could dispose of them or add them as she saw fit. But I had misunderstood her. You kept yourself from love so you could always leave, yes; you did this so you would never stay a moment too long in harm’s way. They would never have your interests in mind. Most men would be more careful with a horse.

  He was a prisoner to something I could not see, as I had just been, and I would die if I stayed, waiting for him to free himself. My asking him to leave for London was as impossible for him as it would have been if he had appeared in Baden-Baden the year before and begged me to return with him to Paris.

  I would have told him no, just as he had told me no to London. And so I at least forgave him that.

  I still wanted to live, and to stay there was to wait for death. And to wait for death this way was to die in advance of death. If I could not have the dignity of my own life, I at least wanted to have it in death. And so I would not die in a house the Empress had bought for her lover, I would not die in the night for having led the tenor to that house, I would not die obeying the tenor’s ridiculous instructions. I would instead prefer to die trying to escape as I should have escaped. As the Commune was now in charge, I would go to them, and I could bribe or charm whatever guards or officials I found, I could make my way to the nearest boat.

  I would try to get to London and use those francs the tenor had left me to leave an ad in the Times to pay my way.

  I consoled myself with this new plan of mine until the sight of the ruins of the Tuileries came into view, and I understood I had walked here through the dark like an automata, a girl in a cuckoo clock, returning as if drawn along a wire beneath my feet.

  The palace looked broken open, like something monstrous had hatched from inside it, scorched, pocked, and cratered, but still somehow very beautiful, graffiti scrawls coloring the walls like bruises.

  An entrance had been shelled and fallen in, but the stairs beyond were still good and so I walked in, finding my way into what was once the Salon Vert. Mirrors there had been tossed to the floor and smashed, curtains burned and cut to pieces, the beautiful floors charred and the wood sticking up in places like broken black teeth. I walked through the glittering refuse and smelled smoke somewhere inside; the palace still burned.

  I found the stairs to my old room remained intact. I climbed them carefully, my thoughts full of the Empress’s flight. I couldn’t imagine her running—had I even seen her run once?—the sisters and Pepa throwing clothes into cases, too serious to cry out until later. Pepa would have been the one to have with you when you needed to escape, perhaps that was always the secret of her, the reason the Empress kept her—she would know which guard to trust; she would have a cache of coins for bribes, horses, and supplies.

  If I had stayed, I would have been expected to flee with the Empress past the crowds screaming for her death as the Tuileries became a pyre they hoped to burn her on. How surprised she would have been: no parley for the Emperor’s return and no thought of keeping her without him. Instead, her people had moved to expel her viciously, as if some honor of their own could be saved by destroying her.

  And I had learned from Pepa. I had my own cache of coin, I recalled, as I pushed open the door to my room. The one I had kept safe, hoping to take with me, abandoned when I ran from Compiègne but still, I hoped, hidden in my bed post in a chamber I’d hollowed out with a knife.

  I lit a match as I pushed open the door. My little stuffed otter friend greeted me, still at his post. The room seemed whole, as it once had been. No one thought to defile this. But as I went to the bed, a young man moved in sleep in my bed, using his coat as a blanket, his arms tucked carefully underneath, and still wearing his boots. It was all done so carefully, I first feared he might be dead, as if he were laid out here, until he started and sat up as I blew out my match.

  I lived here, I said, when I served the Empress. This was my room. Who are you?

  I am Eugène, he said, part of the Commune force here to protect the palace from further attacks on the property that should rightfully belong to us all. And who are you?

  This question could still confound me. I could say anything; anything could begin as a result. But I surprised myself.

  Lilliet, I said.

  Saying the name was like catching something that had briefly fallen from a table. I could not give her up, not yet. Not when so much had been destroyed. There was something in this little lie of a life I had found that was real; I would keep it a little longer.

  I have information I need to get to a Commune commander, I said, and am uncertain to whom I should speak.

  You are in luck, he said. And he gestured to his chest. I present Eugène, Communard commander.

  It made me smile, that the palace had once belonged to a Eugénie and now to a Eugène.

  I told him about the tenor’s message to me, of the deal he said the government had struck with the Germans. And the dates and his plot to get me out of the city.

  Do you trust this man? he asked.

  No, I said. But I believe him . . . I believe this. I paused, for the next I’d never said aloud. He is a Prussian agent.

  It is possible he has done this to save you. But not one of our balloons returns to us yet—they can only leave. And the Prussians took to shooting them down or chasing them to meet them as they land—this explains the signal you are to tie to the rope. He might also have done this knowing you would come to us and tell us something to get us to prepare for the wrong day. It could even be just to kill our spirit. And, given the record of survival for the balloons, to kill you. Or all cou
ld be as he says. We simply do not know.

  As Eugène said this, he seemed placid in the face of certain death.

  Did he know you came here? he asked.

  No, I said. I did not go out knowing this was where I would come.

  I want you to come here and speak with me again if he should communicate with you. He may leave another message. Out of all of his wrong information will be some that is right, and perhaps we can find it out.

  An immense weariness took hold of me as he said this. I was again on a stage of the tenor’s making, always performing as he knew I would, even out of his sight.

  I would ask you a favor, I said.

  Please, he said.

  May I sleep here tonight and leave in the morning? I have nowhere else to go.

  Of course. Share my coat, sister, he said.

  I agreed and then slept as I once had, next to this stranger.

  There is the great love of one’s life, and then there is the first to come after. Eugène taught me to love in a very simple way, without dreams or hope, to simply set something inside my heart and let it be. From the very beginning, it was easy to be with him. In the morning, I woke before he did and slid my cache out from its hiding place. We parted happy, and he again asked me to come see him at the Tuileries if another letter came, or if I was hungry or cold. He seemed content without me, and this was one of his most charming qualities.

  §

  I returned to my old apartment—there was nowhere to go. I could not return to Aristafeo, not yet.

  I sold the furnishings for food until I had just the small table in the kitchen the maids had used, a chair, the piano, and my bed. I took to sleeping there again.

  The food was nearly as expensive as the furniture had been.

  I returned to something like the silence I’d once enjoyed, speaking to no one sometimes for entire days at a time. This silence was broken only by my regimen at the piano; mine was the only voice I heard most days. For all the training I had done before this, to sing now meant something different to me. I could no longer believe in secret gods, I could no longer believe in love, I could no longer believe even in finding my heroes again. I could no longer believe in fame—I could barely believe in life. Alone with myself and my talent, I chose it in some way I never had before. I chose myself also. The person I was and had been all along, the one who had not belonged to the place where she was born, nor to the places she found along the way, the one always under the mask, here she came out and breathed the air and felt at home. I had always believed that to be this person might destroy me or the world, and so as the world seemed to end, this made the end of the world seem nearly a paradise.

  When Pauline would say to me many years later that I finally sang for pleasure, here was where I learned to do so. I took possession of my voice at last, though at the time, it only felt like simple survival. When I sang, I thought of nothing else. Only when I stopped did the world around me rush back in.

  April began with a decree from the Commune closing the pawnshops, accusing them of criminal lending practices. I had also suspected this of them, but the decree put an end to what income I had, though with little furniture left to leave with them as it was, I understood it was time, yet again, to find another way to feed myself.

  On my return from a final visit to the pawnshop, another letter waited in the apartment.

  Dearest,

  The agreement I spoke of is now in force—we are releasing French prisoners into the custody of the French government, giving them numbers sufficient for the Versaillais to defeat the Commune and reclaim Paris. The violence I spoke of is at hand—they will kill all of the Commune, taking no prisoners. You must make plans to leave by no later than the twenty-first of May. And tell no one.

  Do not fail to take out the ad in the Times, addressed to one André Lavertujon, and with the date on which you will leave, the numbers only. Tie the signal to the ropes of the balloon you choose. To forget this will mean certain death.

  I went out to find my new Communard friend.

  §

  I have an idea, Eugène said. He swatted the tenor’s folded letter against his thigh.

  Yes, I said.

  We sat in chairs in front of the Hôtel de Ville in the sun. Thousands of National Guard soldiers, paid in bread, sat in rows in front, their loaves stabbed through by their bayonets, smiling grimly as they bit down. It made me hungry to look at.

  I am sure he is here, in fact, he said. I do not believe he is running in and out now that the Commune is in charge; it would be too dangerous for him. I believe he is here.

  As you like, I said.

  No, he said, and sat forward. This is quite serious. Now, did dressing the Empress require any feats of dexterity? Are you at all nimble?

  I was an equestrienne before my service, in a cirque, I told him. I sang from the back of a horse.

  Truly? Now you will be an aerialist, he said, and sat back with evident delight. I will get you to that balloon, he said. And, in fact, I will train you in how to ride it. Because, make no mistake, we are going to die. But you must live.

  We looked at the men seated with their bread.

  Listen, I will put you in that balloon myself and slit the throat of the Prussian agent waiting for you. He sat back. I believe that “agent” your friend speaks of is, in fact, your friend himself.

  Why would you do this? I asked.

  There is a very good chance you will survive if I do, he said. That is enough.

  §

  Eugène took me on a tour of another Eugène’s work, as he explained it, that of Eugène Godard, the pilot who had masterminded the national hot-air balloon program during the first siege.

  In the empty station of the Gare du Nord we found the remaining balloons he’d manufactured sitting empty, like the gowns of giantesses laid out to dry.

  They stopped the program, Eugène said, as he walked around the enormous shellacked balloons. It became too expensive, the one-way departures. Each balloon is very costly to make and they never return. It was too much to spend for the one trip. There is no air current to bring you back, he said, and grimaced. You might end up in Bavaria, or Belgium, or anywhere other than where you are to go.

  Hell, for example, he said.

  Hell is here, I said.

  Here is Paris, he said.

  He took me next to the Gare d’Orléans, where we found the station hung with empty balloon baskets hanging from the girders, laced by riggings that allowed trainers to simulate for student pilots the conditions in the air. They were dusty and abandoned.

  By order of the Commune, he said, as he tugged at one of the lines, I restore to service the balloon program of the Commune. Now then. The pay for the job of balloon pilot, he said, is three hundred francs. To be paid in full once you agree to the conditions of the contract. You are to surrender, he said. And you must go in disguise. You cannot wear the uniform of the Commune. To do so will mean certain death, or worse, rape and then death. On landing, you are to pretend to be a private citizen of Paris with no affiliation.

  He handed me a vial and something that looked like a thimble with a thorn.

  What is it? I asked.

  Prussic acid, he said. If you are captured and it appears they will torture you, this means you will die swiftly instead. Or you dose this, and with one prick of your finger, your foe is dead.

  I remembered the poster for the Amazons of the Seine, dressed in black, with their poisoned needles, and laughed, which confused and amused him both. I didn’t explain. I put his gift in a pouch I kept at my waist.

  I accept, I said. I am proud to reopen this important program for the security of the workers of the Commune of Paris.

  He seemed to struggle for what to say. He still wanted to live.

  Thank you, I said. You honor me.

  It was a love gift, for all his talk, one with no strategic value. The last gesture of a doomed man toward a doomed woman. If he had been a count, it would have been a diamond b
racelet, but he was Eugène.

  Per my plan as the new and only member of the aerial balloon program of the Commune of Paris, I went to the newspaper’s office after I left him and took out the advertisement as the tenor had asked. Addressed to André Lavertujon, Oui, 2151871 is all it said.

  In response, I received a last note.

  Comprimaria,

  Be sure to leave before nightfall, my Falcon. And be swift.

  §

  Eugène trained me at the Gare du Nord nearly every day for the next few weeks as we prepared. Afterward, he would make love to me in the training basket suspended from the girders of the abandoned station. A caution against a casual observer, he said each time. He liked to sit underneath me on the balloon basket’s floor, reaching up to trace my neck in the aftermath.

  I did love him, such as I could—I loved him because he loved me. I wanted to find a way to betray him in his plan, to force him to live, and for me to find some way to do more than leave. So today I asked him, This impulse to save me and not you. And not your men. Have you given up?

  No.

  He said this clearly, quickly. The answer ready. I was prepared to lecture him, and he continued, almost amused.

  Just because I feel prepared to die here doesn’t mean I’ve given up.

  It would be a better world if you lived, I said.

  Perhaps, he said. But perhaps it will be an even better world if I may die as I choose.

  I had shown him the new note; he said it only confirmed what he believed, that I was observed by the tenor. He then asked why the tenor called me his Falcon. What is this? “My Falcon”? Are you his spy?