The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  No, I said. No, it is not lost.

  But you’re never without it, Doro said.

  It’s not in the costume tonight, I said, and they humored me, acting as if of course this was reason I did not wear it even though I wore it always.

  The ring had kept me company for so long there was the faintest print of it by the knuckle from the many years of twisting it around and around, as if it could loosen the sorrow. Sometimes, as I did, I remembered the night he sank down before me and believed in his love for me enough in the face of death to ask me to be his wife. I would remember all of it: all of the nights, even when I had fled from his side into the dark, off to the Tuileries, which set me on that trail that led somehow here.

  Here was the return of what I had lost, the loss of which had driven me mad, and now his return threatened to drive me just as mad as well.

  I think you can never know what you can live without. I think you can never know what you will live through. Only when the disaster arrives and you are there does the depth of your real inner resources reveal itself, and not a moment before.

  The disaster was here.

  I had thought I could not live without him, and then I had lived on, creating the world around me now. A world that had no room for him—and this was perhaps worse than losing him the first time.

  Did I still love him? Yes. Yes, I did. When he had asked me to leave with him, I had wanted to, at once. I always would love him in some way I would never be able to change and that might never die. If only he had come to me directly . . . He was so proud of what he’d done, so sure he knew my fate, he could never have known that nothing on this earth had the capacity to injure what I once felt for him quite like his returning to me this way.

  As much as I had longed to be in his arms again, to see him live again, as I had danced with him and listened to him and his account of his long misunderstanding of me and my life, a sickening sort of pity had grown up in me, much like I had once felt for the tenor. I pitied him, and I also feared him now—yes, I feared him, and feared the immensity of what he’d done. This elaborate plot of his to surprise me with this opera told me he was not so different from the tenor, preparing a rival imaginary landscape for me to inhabit with him, sure all the while that I would join him once all was ready—and unprepared when I did not or could not.

  I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed he loved.

  And so I felt more alone than before his return, and I was no longer sure what I was protecting or why. My earlier piety on his behalf for nothing.

  Were we at last in that garden, then, the tenor, Aristafeo, and I? The one I had fought so hard for us to avoid? But the black knight was on the balcony with his love; the duke was in the garden, raging alone. And Leonora wanted only to leave them both to their duel and be done.

  If this had been funny at all, it would have been opéra bouffe. What was opéra bouffe when it turned tragic? Did such a thing exist? My Leonora was in her own duel, to be fought with Fate instead, which could choose any weapon against her. Even her own life, even the man she loved.

  Cursed indeed.

  It seemed to me I had one other weapon against Fate, if it could be said to be that: This role I had prepared to sing, the Queen of the Night. To sing the aria was to prepare for The Magic Flute. I had prepared the role of the Queen of the Night. I was never going to be asked to perform it again—I was right for neither role, not the Queen nor Pamina, her daughter. But for this reason, it had amused me to prepare it—one solution to my curse, it seemed to me, if it existed, was to sing outside my Fach.

  I had only ever seen the opera performed once, in the company of Pauline and our Haustheater troupe shortly after arriving to begin the Weimar rehearsals for Le Dernier Sorcier. Pauline had arranged for us to see The Magic Flute, the opera ahead of hers in the season’s schedule.

  The Magic Flute begins with a handsome young man journeying at night who meets an evil serpent in the forest and, overcome with the terror, he faints. As the serpent prepares to finish him, three sorceresses arrive and defeat it, and then they debate as to which one of them he shall belong to as a lover. This bargaining is interrupted by a mystical communication from their queen, the Queen of the Night, who arrives and tells them he is to be her daughter’s rescuer and, if successful, be given her hand in marriage. When he awakens, the sorceresses convince him he is the one who killed the monster and then tell him the story of the Queen’s daughter, kidnapped by a demon and now a prisoner of the vile wizard Sarastro, in need of a brave hero to rescue her from his Temple of Reason. The Queen then appears to the young hero and awards him this quest. She shows him a portrait of her daughter, and he falls in love with her. She gives him a magic flute, which, when played, will quiet all hearts and keep him safe, and she then sends him on his way.

  To her daughter she had given a knife for Sarastro—to kill him.

  Pamina tries to escape but is captured again and returned to Sarastro’s Temple of Reason. There she is made to wait until her hero arrives to rescue her. Several times she feels driven mad by waiting for him, but she is always reassured that he will come, that he loves her, and despite never having met him, she allows herself to be reassured. He, meanwhile, is captured by the wizard when he tries to sneak into the palace and is made to become an initiate in order to rescue her. Sarastro tells him he will give her to him if he passes the tests he sets for him. Tests of silence, fire, and water.

  I remember I waited in vain for the hero to use his flute to defeat the wizard. He confused me—he was a handsome incompetent who could not slay monsters or defeat wizards, good only for obeying whomever seized him until his next capture, the Queen first and then Sarastro—and he betrays the Queen and his mission immediately. At the end, when the Queen is plunged into Hell for daring to try to rescue her daughter, we are told the daughter and the hero are now followers of Reason and Wisdom and that they love each other and repudiate her.

  The story seemed cruel to me.

  I could see The Magic Flute was a story of love before first sight—but at least for Pamina, it seemed the sort of story a man might tell about love—a man deluded about love, deluded as to how love comes to be. Love is never governed by Reason.

  The rest of the story is mysterious. There is no reason Tamino is the hero except that he is beautiful—he looks the part. There is no reason for Pamina to wait for him to rescue her—she almost rescues herself—except that she is told that he loves her. She is a captive to that more than she is to the wizard—she had nearly been free. There is no reason for them to believe Sarastro is a figure of Reason, either, beyond what he says, unless Reason is a kidnapper who uses demons to obtain his goals. But the ending is called a victory for love.

  I, however, loved the Queen. The lovers were nothing to me. I loved the power she commanded and the terror others felt at her appearance. I, too, wanted to be feared, even just once—I wanted to be feared especially that night in the Weimar theater, caught as I was in my strange cage made from my own ambitions and mistakes—what a joy it would be, it seemed to me, to summon her spectral power, to appear out of the air before my captors and have the power to force them to cower before me.

  All these years later, what remained in my memory of the opera was the desire to perform a part that I would never be asked to perform because it was not in my Fach. This was perhaps the most dangerous form of envy for a singer on principle. The aria of the Queen of the Night is one of the most difficult in all of opera. To sing it, you must have a tremendously controlled voice capable of moving from its depths to its heights with a capacity for both softness and then enormous power. When sung correctly, it is beautiful, but as Pauline told us that night, it is almost impossible to sing without destroying your voice forever. In all of opera, it is the most like a real test of virtue and sincerity, of the kind gods, sorceresses, and magical creatures set for morta
ls, and unlike the hero’s tests in the opera’s story, it is one that can be won only by ability. No magic could help you here.

  Am I complete? I asked Doro and Lucy, and they answered that I was, but I noticed my mouth was too pale, and I startled Doro by reaching out, the stars shaking as I did, to apply more rouge to my mouth as if it could remove the memory of the kiss. Yes, it needed restoring. I smiled to think of Aristafeo in the ball downstairs, his own mouth faintly made red by mine.

  Had he brought her here? Whoever she was, whoever had paid for his beautiful suit? Whoever she was, he had come prepared to abandon her at once for me if I had left with him. Would she see the red mark or was he even now with his handkerchief by a fountain? The ruby rose pin on his lapel, his smile. Had she watched him demand I leave with him?

  And what of the kiss?

  I touched the ring where it sat at my waist, gently smoothing it with my thumb as I thought of what to do—as if there were any choice in it.

  My reflection made a credible Queen of the Night, it seemed to me. The column of hair, the drape of stars across my face, the comets on my bodice, the paleness of the skin that would not change against the renewed red mouth. What I was about to do would appall Pauline, I knew—Pauline who would be in the audience if Louis and Turgenev were well enough for her to leave.

  Doro’s eyes met mine, and then I saw Lucy’s smiling approval behind her. I stood gently with their help, to the faint tinkling of the crystals, and all at once I felt that paralysis of the heart that could only be fatal, as the sickened pity in me changed to anger and the blackness that had once meant madness came back to me now like my own servant. The Queen of the Night did not wear a cloak of night, she wore the night as a cloak; she swept mightily from within the darkness, it was hers. I heard the music change in the house through the walls then and knew it was time for my entrance even before the footman Euphrosyne sent for me reached my door. Doro and Lucy helped me stand.

  §

  The evening’s performance began with members of the ballet from Faust re-creating the Cave of Queens and Courtesans within the salle de danse, the ballerinos and ballerinas entering as the guests danced and joined them. As dancer after dancer entered, I could hear the gasps and cries of the guests, startled to find them in their midst. As this went on, we, the queens and courtesans, descended from the stairs above in single file. Euphrosyne went first, as Eugénie, then came the mesdames Pompadour and du Barry, Cleopatra, Helen, and Josephine. I knew none of these new beauties Euphrosyne had chosen; I had been away from Paris for too long.

  They were cheered and applauded, and they waved to their friends, ballerinos waiting for each of them to bring them into the dance. I saw mine move to their place in the crowd and stepped forward.

  I was last, and the applause began for me as soon as I appeared at the top of the stairs. There were cheers at the sight of my completed costume, and at first I was pleased, but I didn’t understand until I could see the many stars appearing across the dress and the stairs around me as I descended, the light coming from the chandeliers turned into tiny slivers by the headdress’s many crystals. Worth had not told me of this effect, and the surprise of it brought real joy to my heart. I suppressed a smile as I passed through the crowd to the dais set up for me, the ballerinos making a path for me, applause deepening as I came to a stop.

  I lifted my arms in greeting and heard my name shouted in the way that still pleased me.

  The Queen of the Night aria, you cannot sing it angrily, but instead must muster the complete control that can deliver false anger. Yet I was angry; I was full of rage. It was dangerous for me to sing it this way, but still I had to begin. So I began.

  The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,

  Death and despair flame about me!

  If Sarastro does not meet death at your hand,

  You will be my daughter nevermore.

  Disowned you will be forever,

  Abandoned you will be forever,

  Be forever broken, all bonds of Nature,

  If by your hand Sarastro is not made a ghost!

  Hear me! God of vengeance! Hear this mother’s vow!

  The sound of it coming from my own throat was surprising, terrifying, and difficult to believe; I had warmed the voice earlier in the evening in preparation; I had sung it for days; but only tonight could I hear the nearly inhuman rage the song describes and it thrilled me.

  I was succeeding. Perhaps I could even change my fate.

  At the conclusion, the crowd separated again and the tenor emerged at the side of the stage holding a casket I knew well—the casket of jewels for the Jewel Song. The tenor had borrowed it from the props room—the very one I had used night after night as Marguerite, seduced by the enchanted jewels Mephistopheles has charmed to turn her from a chaste young woman into a vain beauty in love with her appearance.

  I looked to the walls of the room, still searching for a sign of Aristafeo; I saw him at last. He was leaning against the far wall with a row of waiters.

  He tipped his head to me.

  The tenor, now even with the dais, set the casket at my feet to the eventual laughter of the crowd as he saw I could not lean forward to retrieve it. He gallantly raised it up, the lid open, and a flash of green light came from a stunning emerald necklace there beside an emerald ring made to match—the laughing audience gasped, as did I.

  I knew the danger represented by the ring and picked the necklace up from the casket instead, crying out the entrance words much as I had that night at the ball. O Dieu! Que des bijoux! I sought to begin the scene before the tenor could act, but the tenor had gestured at himself, which led to more laughter as he mugged to the audience. As I waited for the laughter to die down in order to continue, he withdrew the ring and, taking my hand, set it on my finger.

  I wished for the Queen’s power of flight; I wished to throw the ring from my hand, to slap his face, to do anything at all other than what I did, which was to look at the ring admiringly and then to smile at him in the manner of the role as the room cheered us on—believing us to be the lovers we were rumored to be and they the witnesses to our engagement. I looked away, to enter the song, and as I did so, I searched for a sign of Aristafeo but could not see to the wall past the blurred garden of dark faces, an occasional costumed figure stepping into the light in violent contrast suddenly and then moving on.

  The tenor reached for my hand and bowed to the audience then retreated, and I continued with the Jewel Song. I remember nothing of singing it. I felt as if I had vanished, returning only when the Jewel Song concluded, and it was time for the final mad scene, the theme for the entire ball.

  Here the ballerinos and ballerinas had been instructed to begin the dancing again, much as they had for my entrance. The whirl rose up once more, and I could feel Aristafeo receding, leaving, breaking his promise to stay, believing the lies, his faith in me gone. If only we could have stayed in our little paradise, if only I could have borne it, but I could not—could not bear the Empress’s shadow, even as I knew that I had come to live inside it; it rose around me even now.

  This dark was not my servant; I was the servant still.

  When the mad scene concluded and I had finished begging the angels to take me, to rescue me from this prison, the crowd applauded again, sounding like the roar of a single beast, and as they finally quieted, the tenor raised my hand once more and announced our joint appearance in Carmen, at which they took up again.

  The figures parted. I could see at last clear to Aristafeo’s place on the wall. He was gone.

  §

  You were magnificent, Euphrosyne said. She sat before me on a divan she had her footmen place near the dais, and she kept eyeing the casket as if it might offer up more jewels. The emeralds had excited her. A glass of champagne glowed in her hand. She patted the seat next to her and I went over dutifully. A waiter brought me a glass of my own.

  Magnificent!

  I was trembling, to my surprise, and so I held the glass
out so as not to spill, and a footman appeared and set the glass down on a side table placed there for this very purpose.

  What’s wrong? Euphrosyne asked. Are you ill?

  I’m sure I’m just tired, I said. I’ve not had supper.

  Euphrosyne had been the one to find me again, long after I had given up on finding her. Backstage at La Sonnambula, flowers had appeared, along with her card, inviting me to dinner after the performance. This just after my debut. The card said only You promised you would not forget me—all my love, E. I had rushed out of my dressing room with it in my hand to find her waiting for me outside. I wept and laughed to see her again until the backstage manager came to fine me for the noise. Always fines with you, I remember she said, pulling out her purse grandly.

  I was still here. The angels had not rescued me. Perhaps Faust was not the opera to come true after all, or perhaps the curse did not work this way or were there angels still ahead of me? But I had tried my foolish bit. I had tried to sing outside my Fach, had tried to add to my Fates—and now they ran at each other like rearing horses. Either way, it was done, and I was right where I had begun. And I knew the worst of what Aristafeo had said to me was that, in his way, he was in the right.

  I smiled somewhat weakly at Euphrosyne as she laced her hand in mine. I felt neither brave nor bold now, but I was determined to try.

  I’d changed into a new dress, a black silk velvet gown. I’d not worn my new emeralds nor had I put back on Aristafeo’s ring. I instead wore my diamonds, diamonds I bought myself, my hair decorated by a few of the strands from my headdress, something Doro had improvised quite beautifully.

  I had decided to belong only to myself.

  You should marry him, I think, she said.