The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  An amusement for the young Alexander. He is, the tenor said of it, trying to delight a child who can afford pet tigers.

  The tenor seemed very unhappy that afternoon. I attempted to amuse him by showing him several of my new gowns as if I had not already made my decision, and he was unmoved by all of them. Lucy and Doro gave me guarded looks over my shoulders and I shrugged.

  She is a spy, you know, he said, quite suddenly. A fatal sort of woman and, perhaps, fatal to other women in particular.

  I went into my dressing room and returned in another dress.

  I was a fatal sort of woman, too.

  I had gone at once to Félix’s atelier to say to him, I know the room. I had told him of the invitation and the salon, and he said, A duel, then, not a party at all. With a smile on his mouth, he swore he would help me be ready in time even if he had to bandage his seamstresses’ hands himself.

  And what is this? the tenor asked, pulling himself to his feet and walking to where I stood at the mirror.

  It is the afternoon visiting costume of a diva, I said.

  Félix’s tribute to my time as Carmen was more costume than visiting costume. A black silk velvet gown for evening with very tight short sleeves and a square cut décolletage that pushed my breasts forward somewhat lasciviously. The waist severely corseted, the bodice trimmed in a black Spanish lace. The skirt was likewise silk velvet, but if I liked, it had some of the swift movements of a cancan dress due to panels of dyed muslin hidden at rest in the folds but visible if I danced. A court train began at my waist and went back for five full yards behind, red organza roses fastened to this black organza tail. A red brocade loop hidden there went over my wrist if I chose, in which case the train could move up like a sail if I raised my arm while I danced.

  And it takes so much time to get her into it she appears finally at sunset, the tenor said. Where is your present? I want you to wear it.

  His humor had returned suddenly. He turned from the mirror and drew me to him, put his face to my neck; his lips there barely grazed the skin. He pushed his face against me and his sharp whiskers bit my neck. I winced as I let out a gasp and he held me there, pushing against me as if he were going to take me there before we left. Lucy and Doro backed out of the room. When he released me, he smiled at me in the mirror. Put them on, he said.

  It’s rude to wear jewels of this kind in the afternoon, I said.

  It’s rude to be late, he said. Put them on.

  I put them on.

  He fell to brooding again on the train, and it lasted until we were in the coach on our way from the station. He finally said, I won’t pretend anymore; it’s your little friend we’ll see today. He has found himself a wealthy protector in my old friend.

  He looked out at the window then. Or did you know?

  I said only, I guessed as much. And then, after some time, I added, Remember your promise.

  He gazed at me then with something like a measuring eye and smiled. Do you remember when Cora Pearl put that little emerald on you that I gave her and made you wear it out to greet me?

  I looked away from his eyes as he said this.

  He leaned forward, reached out, and lifted one of the stones at my neck. How she laughed that day at my gift. She wouldn’t laugh at this necklace now, I think.

  He smoothed it back.

  They say she’s dying now, you know, he said. Very ill, very poor. Perhaps we’ll go see her. Pay our respects once more. And tell her of our engagement.

  §

  As late as we were, a fierce rainstorm came and made us even later, though it left as we arrived at the estate.

  The pale golden wet bricks of this baroness’s château were like the scales of a dragon, and her gardens were wreathed in clouds of red roses. It was the home of a beautiful monster from myth.

  In the distance I saw her stables, something else for which the tenor said she was famous, some forty horses it was said were kept in perfect condition, and I could see the deep woods beyond.

  As we entered, the tenor reached with a dagger and cut a rose. He twirled it for me. Your prop, he said.

  I took it. How does she have roses? I asked him. It’s nearly the end of autumn.

  The devil is her gardener, I’m sure, he said. But ask her. I believe the secret is the roses are Chinese. He winked.

  She herself was a handsome apparition that day. She had a delicate color to her cheeks, which she’d set off well with a pale afternoon dress that looked to be a Worth, a green chiffon-and-silk confection. Her dark hair was curled and arranged prettily, an ivory comb completing the effect. She was not a young woman, but she had kept herself very carefully.

  When I entered, Aristafeo stood near her, dressed in a simple dark suit. He smiled at me familiarly and saluted.

  La Générale, he said, and then bowed.

  I mastered my face so as not to laugh—he had seemed briefly comic—but the rose in my hand trembled. His eyes went to it as he stood.

  How kind of you to come all this way, the Baroness said. I offered a grave curtsy to her.

  The tenor apologized and asked as to whom else might be presenting but there was no one else; the hostess had decided it would be a private audience for the famous voice. She explained, as she brought us into the music room, how she was only recently interested in opera despite her family box and was so honored I could attend. My appearance at the ball in the Marquise de Lambert’s home had so impressed her, she had wanted to attempt something like it here in her salon. She hoped the arrangements were appropriate.

  She had seen, then. She had seen it all. Here she was, the woman he had been ready to leave at once for me. The woman who had kept him all this time.

  I tried to remember if I’d seen her, but she was entirely unfamiliar, and in any case, I was more preoccupied with the sense of the tableau we presented, two women in front of a room full of men. Her light toilette beside my dark one.

  We will be in the ballroom, she said. You are acquainted with my guests, yes? Now that you are here, we shall begin.

  We passed through then into the ballroom, the men following the two of us.

  A beautiful piano waited under an enormous crystal chandelier in a ballroom to rival anything I’d seen—delicately painted frescoes and friezes in an Italian style decorated dark gray walls, the windows opening out to a formal garden with a maze. The chandelier was lit with candles and blazed brightly in the light of the late afternoon rain. Around the piano in a perfect half circle were arranged delicate gilt chairs. I did know her guests, all of them, and most of them were the men who mattered most to opera in Paris. I smiled and waved at them as they took their seats. She’d made an impressive display, and it could only be the work of the Baroness he’d told me of so long ago, and this was precisely the sort of support I would have expected her to offer Aristafeo, who I then noticed had seated himself in the back.

  He smiled at me and I to him.

  This was not her Paris ballroom, where he had first met her; we were in Rouen. Here was at least a little of the rest of the story his expensive jacket had told me at my ball, the answer to the question as to where he had hidden all this time. These rooms, these gardens, these forests.

  Since you are late, perhaps you can shorten your program, she said. Her gloved hand executed a wave.

  I went to stand near the piano. I meant to begin with “Casta diva,” from Norma, “Carlo vive?” from I Masnadieri, then move to Aida’s “O patria mia,” and then finish with the Habanera; but after her remark, I was now anxious to leave. I handed the music to just the Habanera to the accompanist there, waiting as he reviewed the pages and set them down.

  In the long moment between when the pages left my hand and the first notes on the piano began, I thought of how unaccustomed I was to seeing the faces of an audience as I sang, or even sunlight. The engagement at La Scala would begin soon, Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera—singing for this group was a little beneath me and another violation of my voice’s need for rest. I had
told myself I was behaving cautiously, that I was making sacrifices for this love of mine, but now I was in the home of his lover, about to sing for him in front of my soon-to-be fiancé, here despite his vow not to speak to me again. His ring in the waist of my gown again.

  As the introit began, I prepared the breath, inhaled. Velvet curtains, the rain, verveine, carefully dried cigar tobacco waiting to be lit later. The scent of the Rhône wine in the glasses around the room. I wanted a glass of wine right then, though the thought was interrupted when I felt with a little surprise how the movements of the music, perfunctory to me, still moved me. Even if I did not care to feel the song’s flirtatious sentiments now, the music assured me that I would be made to care against my will, the care corseted into each note. The first syllable formed in my mouth.

  L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.

  I looked past all of them out to the gardens visible through the windows, where branches of the roses tapped wetly on the glass. I watched the blooms wave as I pressed on, even absent-minded as I anticipated the glass of wine and, perhaps, something to eat later that I might get, and then I concentrated on the piano arrangement, admiring it as it ran under my voice, as well as the tidy playing of the accompanist, and passed out of the sadness into the realm of the music. By the end, as the tenors sing, when she passes, Carmen, sur tes pas nous, nous pressons tous.

  Carmen, we all follow, wherever you go.

  At the last notes, in the silence at the close, I whirled, the dress moving exactly as Félix had planned, and as I came to a stop, I threw the rose.

  It slid over the wood floor to Aristafeo’s feet. There was laughter from the men. As he picked it up, the sun came through the roses behind him, and he stood in their green-red shadows and smiled as the men in the room behind me threw me to their shoulders and ran with me out into the garden, cheering.

  I ducked through the windows, thrown open, and was able to notice with a little pleasure that the train of my dress still reached to the ground behind me. The roses, beaten by the rain, had given their petals to the wind that comes constantly through Rouen and mixed with the leaves falling from the trees to make clouds of them drifting in the air around us. From that height, I could see the entrance and the garden maze that reached back into the property behind, where the forest caught at the setting sun, cutting the gold light as it fell over us.

  They set me down on the ground again only when we were within the maze out of sight of the château. Aristafeo stood there in front of me, the rose I’d thrown in his hand. The men, all smiles, offered laughing apologies, stepped back, and were gone, shouting as they ran through the maze.

  His friends were very loyal, I noted.

  Did you know of her roses when you chose your dress? he asked.

  I did not, I said. As I spoke, he offered the flower to me.

  I watched it and then looked back to him. I did not reach for it.

  How does she have roses so late into the fall? I asked. Is it magic? I smiled as I said this, instantly aware of how childish the question was.

  No, he says. Her gardener cuts them so they never fruit, only flower.

  He held it out once more. The rose always tries again, he said.

  I did not take it.

  Cette fleur, tu l’as gardée, I said. Tu peux la jeter. The line Carmen uses to tell Don José to throw the flower he has kept away.

  I withdrew the ring and held it out to him.

  Le charme opère, he said quietly.

  The spell works.

  It belongs to you, he said.

  I shook my head, and yet as I let it go into his hand, I knew he was right.

  He tried to meet my eyes, and when I would not let him, he went back quickly. I waited and walked slowly enough to let him arrive first.

  The Baroness was standing outside her ballroom windows as the wind blew around us. I carried my dress and train as she waited and watched.

  Do you ride?

  I smiled and nodded.

  I thought we would ride before the storm returns. I’m sorry, it was planned before. Did our friend not tell you? We thought we might discuss it over dinner but you have planned to return by then, yes? And you’ve no costume to ride, she said. And I’ve nothing that would fit you. Perhaps you will entertain yourself until we return?

  Behind her, the forest looked like a legion of black-skirted widows. She their leader.

  I pushed at the silk skirt of my gown suddenly, enlivened, and gestured at it. My riding costume, I said.

  She laughed. You speak after all! Very well, perhaps you are also a horsewoman? I shouldn’t like you, she said. But I do. Thank you for indulging me.

  A horse was brought for me, a mare, as well as my cloak. I walked up to her and looked to the stable hand, who came close and offered me his clasped hands to step into. With his help, I settled the gown into place, the train at my wrist so it wouldn’t catch the horse up, and sat at attention, waiting as the men emerged on their mounts.

  The tenor appeared first, very handsome in a riding costume he appeared to have had ready, sheepish as he caught sight of me. From behind him, Aristafeo appeared, likewise attired. I borrowed his, the tenor said, as if he understood me. But, my God, you’re beautiful this way. I’ll have your wedding portrait painted for you just like this, he said.

  §

  If you love me, you’ll run away with me to the hills, Carmen tells her lover.

  The storm returned more than restored almost as soon as the riding party set out, and the assorted nobles, industrialists, novelists, philosophers, and foreign heads of state lost control of their horses all at once. I was separated from them quickly or, rather, we were all separated from one another.

  I had insisted on riding as it had been so long since I’d ridden in woods like this I couldn’t have cared if I’d ridden naked.

  I slid from my horse and tied its reins to a tree, prepared to wait out the storm. I’d lost patience with the mare well before she calmed, and soaked to my skin in this gown, I hoped the mare, when calm, would know the way home, but I wanted to be sure. I walked to the middle of the field to see if I could find my bearings.

  The lightning’s bright cracks along the sky made it look as if Rouen’s countryside were a painting thrown on a fire and burning from underneath, the hills running with autumn color, gold and red.

  I tipped my head back and drank from the rain. It was cold and sweet.

  During the haying season when I was a girl, I stalked storms, ran to meet them. Rain at the horizon looked like grass burning. The horses weren’t any good then as well, their screams like grass cuts along the thunder, thinning as they rose in the air. As if they felt they could hold it back. My mother would say, You’d let yourself die from it, when I returned wet. To which I always said nothing.

  All thirsts are without explanations, as are all loves.

  I was relieved to be lost in an open field under the retreating storm, far from my troubles. I decided to sing to console myself, as I had when I was young, and began softly with Aida, her lament aria, where she asks for death as her lover and her father face each other in battle, her lover sure to become her mistress’s husband. I sang her part in the scene after she has seen her father dragged back alive in front of her; I sang her begging to be allowed to see her own country again, and I sang it as if it could reach to the country I was sure I’d never see again while I stood there on the grassy roof of the world. I begged to be let back, and when I was done, I sang this part again rather than go on, and then again, and once more, louder and louder, in full voice finally, until the woods rang.

  People told me what my voice did to them but they did not know what I wished it could do. Could I do one thing with this voice more than be made to entertain the world’s kings and their replacements, in the company of their wives, whores, and assassins? What was this gift, as my mother had called it, for? How I wished it could sing open graves, ransack Hell for my dead friends, smooth Aristafeo’s crippled hands, bring my family b
ack to life—a voice that could change the course of Fate, summoning out of my many roles a storm of Fates until they were scattered and I was free, alone with nothing less than the world shining and made whole.

  That was what I wanted; it would have sufficed.

  Were we done? Was it all only for this? The ring was with him, at last; were we were done? I sank to my knees in the rain.

  So then let it play on, this game of ours, I decided, when I stood. Curse or no curse, that was my prayer to whatever it was that ruled me. The Comtesse and her bargains, the tenor and his games, my voice, God, the Fates. Let us play and be done. To the death and beyond.

  I stood and saw he was behind me. His dark eyes still full of love despite it all.

  §

  If you sang a lyric, it traveled farther than if it was shouted. Anything for any of the gods to hear was sung—for this reason the first theater was set to music. So they could hear, too.

  Aristafeo had followed my voice in the distance until he came near the top of the hill behind me and then waited as I sang, unable to come any closer until I was done. This was how he’d always imagined operas, not as stages filled with women and men in wigs, but a storm, woods, a woman lost and in love singing somewhere in the dark.

  He had been weaned practically on horseback and had never had any trouble riding, even in storms.

  He had said nothing, waiting for me to notice him.

  I brought my hand to my mouth as I turned to face him, and he put his arms around me and held me against the cold.

  The rain had plastered his hair to his head, and the silver curls rose in a crown.

  Leave with me, I said. I’m ready now. I’m sorry I wasn’t before. We can leave through the woods and never return.

  He blinked from the rain and surprise. No, he said. Not this way. For now, I cannot.