The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  How close it had been. How very nearly I had set my neck back into whatever collar waited for it on the other side of Simonet.

  I sent a letter refusing the role officially that very night. I offered no explanation.

  No response came in return. Not the next day nor the next week. The strange storm out of my past, with my own life painted on its face, seemed to have gone all at once. Only the novel, which stayed on my table, ominous and still oddly mute, beside its twin, the copy I bought to give to the Comtesse, remained as proof that it had happened at all.

  I had consoled myself with the thought that in refusing the part I had somehow protected my memories of Aristafeo. This gradually became the feeling of having defended him somehow, a sense of victory that lasted perhaps a day until I went to discard the novels, believing I was done with them—and yet I could not, not yet.

  He had gone to the chapel to pray for me before he left to go to the performance—and take me to the balloon. When I screamed for him in the street, it was the answer to those prayers. If his final opera for me had been found and misused, I would be foolish to pretend what was in this novel could not hurt me. Whoever it was on the other side of Simonet was still there.

  I had one more delivery to make if I was brave. And I was.

  §

  At a Paris dinner party I attended several years into the Third Republic, a guest told the entire party a story of the Comtesse. She came to the Exposition on the arm of Prince George of Prussia! He drove her up the Seine in his enormous bateau mouche, no less, all just to view the portrait of her by Pierson on display in the Exposition Hall.

  He spoke as if this were some disloyalty of hers, the vanity of an aging professional Paris beauty once again betraying the nation like the rest by accepting the aid of any patron who would pay, even a foreign enemy. Talk at the table roundly scorned her for associating with a Prussian prince, as if she owed France any loyalty, having once seduced its Emperor.

  I experienced a strange shock on hearing this—I’d nearly believed the connection between the Prince and the Comtesse was my own invention. I remembered well how the crowd that day had looked on her in awe, not hatred, as they’d parted for her. How easily that awe had turned her into the dinner party joke she was to them that night.

  Next, another guest told a story of the Prince. Some years after the fall of the Empire, he’d found himself at the same hotel as Eugénie, and as she had entertained him at court, he sent her flowers—She left the hotel at once! Can you imagine? He was part of the army that had turned her out of Paris and he sent her flowers.

  None spoke of how Parisians, not Germans, had chased Eugénie from the Tuileries.

  A line drew itself in the air that day between the end of the Emperor’s affair with the Comtesse and her entrance into the Paris World Expo on the arm of the Prince, extending all the way to Eugénie’s fleeing the Prince’s flowers in her hotel. But as I pondered my possible antagonists, I saw now I had not drawn the line all the way to me.

  Much of Paris mocked the Comtesse as her beauty faded, yet she lived in an apartment on the Place Vendôme, and Eugénie was in exile in London. So many of those who had lost to her before had done so because they believed her beauty was her only power, but I knew better.

  As I tried to think of why she would involve herself with me again after all this time, I thought back to her at the time I’d met her. She was in the first year of her mourning, the free woman any widow was, her mission in Paris now entirely her own.

  I remembered how she sat and told her stories to me, luxuriating in the victories of her past, preparing to pose for more of those portraits, angry at the glory she believed denied her but rightfully hers. As I remembered those stories, I understood I was mistaken to think my value to her was based entirely on my affair with the Empress’s lover. With the Empire gone, another picture came into view.

  On the day I returned from Compiègne, when she discovered the mute girl she’d told her stories to could speak.

  A last game of hers, then. What better as a message than to write a role for me in which I ended as a mute again.

  And so, sure the Comtesse was my antagonist, I pushed my way into her rooms.

  The day the policeman sent me away from my vigil outside the Comtesse’s apartment on the Place Vendôme, I first left in the direction I’d seen her girl take, thinking to myself that I could wait there until she passed and try to bribe her into letting me in. I tried to guess as I walked where she might stop to do the shopping and what she would take as a price.

  A girl, as I well know, is the key to a household. A maid is often her lady’s only true confidante. Whatever it is you need you can often get from her, but she must be vulnerable to bribes or flattery. Or threats.

  I was sure she was lonely working for the Comtesse. I knew there were likely no great pleasures and little gratitude. But then I passed the window of a new atelier and paused, examining the display.

  I knew her well enough to also know she would never let her dressmaker go. No woman would.

  As I also knew this meant her dressmaker was my dressmaker.

  I let her girl pass on. There was no more need to follow her. I knew I could pick my moment later.

  I already had an appointment with Félix, and it was time to begin the dresses owed me from what I had come to call the Dukes’ Bargain. I went to him looking for the opening I was sure was there.

  That first morning, as Félix moved among the dress forms, the muslin shapes were like a garden of the days ahead.

  There is, he said, a new silhouette.

  I’d made him promise no copies, but sly one that he was, he would have me debut a new silhouette. This he could reproduce innocently, and I could not forbid it.

  There were to be crinolines that began at the thigh, not the waist. The fit was tight; the hip, more natural. There was already a new, looser sort of corset to the relief of a number of women, the dismay of others. He pulled drawings out.

  Will you debut the silhouette? he asked. A formality, for he knew I would.

  He did not look up as he said this. I held a cup of tea and traced its warm porcelain sides.

  I only nodded, knowing he would see my answer. The shape under his pencil spread down the page.

  Satin, velvet, chantilly, point d’Angleterre, sable, ermine, fox, red and white nutria. Gold thread and silver. Ostrich and peacock and pheasant. Jet, garnet, glass. The dresses I was ordering, some would take months to finish. The way the other women in the rest of Paris lived made its way in front of me for my regard: tea gowns, visiting dresses, afternoon gowns, riding suits, robes de chambre. I would rarely if ever use an afternoon gown, for example, preferring the quiet of my apartment in the afternoon and receiving no one then who would ask for such a formality from me. I was not a member, precisely, of polite society. I did not have the needs the rest of them did. But tea gowns were another thing; I had not thought of tea gowns in some time.

  The most extravagant of these would cost what I could earn singing in a year. I loved to think of the different elements to be trained by Félix’s thirty seamstresses’ hands, buttons and silk made to practice until the shape was right.

  I knew my dress orders would be seen as gluttony, but appetite was an excellent disguise for motive. I did not ask about her on my first few visits, only observed to see if I would see her. I did not. After two weeks without a sighting, I went to where his appointment book lay open. Félix exclaimed and ran to my side. Yes, my dear? he said, placing himself between me and it.

  I think two more, I said to him. A visiting costume and another gown for evening.

  I glanced down at it for the name I knew would be there.

  Nicchia. I had seen this name on some of her correspondence. Only her intimates knew it.

  He saw me see it. Ah, he said. Do you know? How your teacher has fallen? She comes to me in her old clothes and asks me to mend them or take them out. I do it, of course, for love of her and for who she once was, b
ut she has asked that I don’t book appointments alongside her as it shames her, though it is a great problem for me. For her as well.

  He paused. She spends almost no money here now, he admitted.

  I raised my eyebrows pityingly.

  Have you seen her since your return? Or, rather, tried? She refuses all. He turned the book away from me. Ah, but you cannot see any more of what’s here, you naughty child. Do you know the problems you all create? So many of you who cannot be seen near each other. Tell me, are you having any affairs? You must tell me right now. For I must know. I cannot book you alongside the wife of the man you are seducing.

  I shook my head gently.

  Very good. He looked over the book again. But you know, he said, she will be so happy to see you, of course. You were like her daughter, I think. Here, he said, doing what I had not even asked. Allow me to reacquaint you. And he wrote my name into the book beside hers.

  When the day of the appointment came, I entered and heard her quietly greeting the vendeuse, and from the entrance, through a corner mirror, I could observe her. She was dressed in one of her favorite costumes, though it now fit poorly. She still had a commanding presence but seemed lost, like a sleepwalker in a dream.

  As she spoke, I could hear she had lost most of her teeth.

  She was asking for an alteration to one of her gowns, and the vendeuse was examining it. I could see she was impatient not to have the dressmaker pay attention to her himself. She looked around then to see him smiling as he motioned toward me.

  Her eyes blazed as I came into view.

  This was a fatal mistake, I understood at once. The air in the shop went thin with it, and Félix stood frozen in place, humiliated. Though not as humiliated as she.

  So, she said. You. You wanted to see me this much? Call on me tomorrow, then. Come for tea. And with that, she drew herself up to something like the imperious height she had once commanded, and left.

  I went back to the Place Vendôme at the appointed hour. The young woman I remembered took my card and showed me in without any further explanation.

  All was painted black, all was hung with black, and there was almost no light to speak of, only enough to see my way. The Comtesse lived inside a permanent night of her own making.

  I was shown into a salon and seated, and candles were lit. To my shock, as the light came up off the chandelier, the Comtesse was already seated in front of me.

  I did not remember you until I saw you, she said. It was so long ago, and so many things have happened. What is it that brought you to my door, however? I would know.

  I handed her the book. She took the candle nearest her and held it up.

  This? she asked. I know nothing of this. But you can be sure I soon will.

  I believed her, as when she lied, she usually suppressed emotion instead of inventing it. All her rages were sincere.

  Have you kept to our agreement? she then asked.

  I stayed with him as long as he wanted me, I said. And even a little longer than that.

  I wonder if that was the agreement, she said. Perhaps it will suffice. How will you repay me for this humiliation, I wonder. She reached out then and pinched one of the candles out. I will think on it, she said. She pinched out the next, and the darkness around her said our interview was done. There would be no tea.

  Show her out, she said to her girl, and I was shown out.

  She had not been my tormentor then, but now it seemed she would be, one last time.

  Two

  AFTER THE SPECTACLE of my failure with the Comtesse, I did not want to be alone in the apartment with my fears, and so I pushed myself out into the whirl of dinners and balls and midnight drinks and nights ending in breakfasts, supplied as I was with my Dukes’ Bargain of gowns.

  As I did, the press began its chorus—I was a favorite of theirs after the news of my curse, the scandal of the second grand entrance in the new dress, the brother dukes on each arm. The press now made reports of daily fittings with the new dressmaker, Félix, the new silhouette he introduced with me, and where I wore each new dress in its turn, from the Louvre Palace to the Café de Paris to the markets at Les Halles. No detail was too small. Doro cut out the illustrations as they appeared in the papers and pinned them to the mirror, little paper dolls of me running around the edge of my reflection. She glued them to matchsticks and made them run in puppet shows by my makeup table to make me laugh after she and Lucy had strung me in.

  You’re terrible, wicked women, I said to them, cursing them, for it hurt to laugh in a corset, but soon the joke we had, if the dress was awful, was Best get the dukes.

  And just when it was said to be over, the next scandal came: the dukes had their choice of women after all of this, and by the end of that month, the dressmaker Félix was likewise overrun, but a disappointment awaited the women the brothers entertained after me as the dukes’ promise to me included that none of the women to follow me were to be allowed the gift of a dress from that house for one month. The dukes’ new loves could be allowed any other dressmaker except mine.

  With that came a new illustration of me, running down the street again on a horse, but this time the shapes falling from my dress were the shapes of these other women springing up to chase after me in fury.

  While this amused me, it was time for me to protect myself from these follies: I needed to find some way to attach myself to the tenor again—at least in appearance, publicly, and in a way that would appease the Comtesse—and then to prepare for the ball Euphrosyne was to throw for me and, lastly, to repair my relationship with Verdi. The question of who, if not the Comtesse, was behind the novel and the opera was now too much to consider—or too little. There was too much else to do, and so I set myself to the tasks I understood. The plans for the ball were the most pleasant of these and thus the most urgent. And as I’d never sung the Queen of the Night aria Euphrosyne had asked me for, as it was outside my Fach, I would need to prepare it very carefully.

  Euphrosyne wrote to me with her plans for the ball and made an appointment with me to attend my fitting at Worth for our costumes. Worth, who, she said, was contrite at my displeasure with his last offering.

  He really is so very sorry and has said he will make you a magnificent costume, she said. He has vowed it.

  In the meantime, proof arrived daily that I’d been a fool to think the news of the curse meant the end of my career. Doro no longer brought my mail in on my tray as there was too much. I was besieged. Offers arrived as never before.

  I should always be cursed, I joked to Doro, who did not approve.

  Despite failing to find anything more to my mystery opera than what had presented itself, I now only waited. The result was that the season itself became something of a masked ball, the masks, the faces of the people I met everywhere I went. Is it you? I’d wonder each time a stranger pulled out a chair, or offered a light, or refilled a glass, or smiled in greeting as he was introduced. Is it you? It became a light refrain as I passed through crowds potentially as full and as empty of an answer.

  And so I went through the days between that Sénat Bal and the one Euphrosyne threw for me, dress by dress, rehearsal by rehearsal, detail by detail, night by night, holding on at least to the hope of the ball, not quite knowing what was real, what was phantasm, each day still empty of an answer to what had filled it the weeks previous, until one week before the ball when amid the day’s offers one distinguished itself. The solution I’d been waiting for arrived, the answer to all my troubles.

  The offer of the role of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique, with the tenor as Don José.

  This, to be sure, was an unlikely savior. If there was one opera I had never wanted to perform, it was Carmen.

  I had known Bizet a little from my time at the Conservatoire, which had finally admitted me on my return to Paris after the war. Pauline wrote to my old address, searching for me, with the news that she had been asked to return to Paris as director of the Conservatoire. If the letter found me and I liv
ed, she asked me to return and work with her, though an audition was required.

  I did not write back but instead left at once and went to her house as my answer, where she threw her arms around me, and we hugged each other and wept, grateful to be alive and reunited.

  While I had initially feared living in the avenue de l’Opéra apartment again, I knew if I had not returned to the apartment, I might never have been thus blessed. The Prince had spared no expense; beyond the falcon statue, I took note of how the walls had been repainted, the music room now red, the very finest new piano waiting to be played. The walls to the boudoir gleamed curiously to me until I understood they were covered in pressed leather embossed with falcons. As I ran my hands over their wings, I knew I would always keep it.

  The concierge told me Doro and Lucy had asked her to tell them if I returned and to say they would return if I agreed, and I did. Over cards and gin, they told me of their own escapes from the vagaries of the war—Doro had hidden with her family outside Rouen, and Lucy spoke vaguely of a hospital for the wounded—she hid something there, but I did not ask. Instead, I tried to remember how to play bezique and then finally set my cards down, and said, Promise me from this day forward you spy only for me.

  At which they started, then smiled, then swore to on the cards we played with, as if they were our Bible.

  I passed my second Conservatoire audition easily this time, nearly pro forma—the jury would not rule against Pauline. This education was not the same as her private instruction, however, and the work overwhelmed me initially. Music pronunciation, vocal techniques such as bel canto and coloratura, yes, these I’d expected, but not music history or theory. There had been a kindness in that earlier rejection I had not understood, and so there was a tinge of cruelty to my education now, which then proceeded with the difficulties I’m sure that earlier jury had imagined.