The First Actress

by C. W. Gortner

  I did not receive any. By dawn, it was too late. Returning to my dormitory, shivering and with my teeth chattering, I donned the white robe for the ceremony, already dressed and waiting by the time the nuns and Mère Sophie came to fetch me.

  In the chapel, I found my family assembled. I hadn’t given any thought that they might attend, but even if I had, I would have forgotten because only days before, Monseigneur had been assassinated by a madman in Paris. The murder of such an important prelate of the Church convulsed the convent, compelling us to spend hours at the rosary, praying for the repose of his soul, though I secretly lamented his death more because he’d promised to baptize me, a privilege no other girl here had enjoyed.

  Julie and Rosine stood by the font, draped in lace shawls. As I moved toward the officiating priest, I suddenly saw a small figure clutching Rosine’s hand. As I lifted my eyes in bewilderment to Julie, I discovered a swaddled babe in her arms, whom I’d first mistaken for a muff of some sort. I went still. Mère Sophie whispered, “Your mother wishes to have both your sisters baptized with you.”

  I couldn’t draw a breath for a moment. “Both?” I finally managed to utter, as stunned by the confirmation that I had siblings I’d known nothing about as by the unbelievable fact that my mother, who’d mounted such initial resistance, could have changed her mind so completely.

  “Yes,” said Mère Sophie. “Isn’t it marvelous? You and your sisters shall be welcomed into our Holy Church together. God must indeed look over your family, my child.”

  I scarcely heard the ceremony, did not feel myself incline my head over the font to be sprinkled with holy water. I stood aside, dripping, as Julie brought her baby to the font, followed by Rosine with the struggling little girl, who couldn’t have been more than two, and behaved as I had when I’d been dragged from the flat, kicking up a fuss.

  Then it was over. I was now baptized as a Catholic. So were my two sisters.

  By the time we departed the chapel, I was swaying with fatigue and a persistent chill. In the garden, Rosine urged the little girl forth. “Jeanne, give your sister Sarah a kiss.”

  The child stomped her foot. “She’s not my sister. Régine is.”

  Julie clucked her tongue. “Now, Jeanne. We mustn’t be rude. Sarah is your elder sister. Régine is your younger one.” To emphasize her point, she leaned down to show Jeanne the babe, who’d not made a sound. I glimpsed a scrunched face, wisps of dark hair (not a Bernhardt trait, I thought), then looked up to Julie’s terse smile. “Well,” my mother said. “We are all saved now, yes?”

  Only I detected the malice in her voice. “Sarah,” she went on, “you’re looking frail. Are you not eating again?” Her question was indifferent, as if she asked if I brushed my hair enough. “You mustn’t let this newfound devotion of yours become an obsession. A communion wafer, however nourishing for the soul, cannot sustain the flesh.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. With her babe cradled in her arms and her eyes indulgent, while little Jeanne glared at me as if I were an imposter, Julie said, “Alas, we must return to Paris.”

  She walked away. Past the courtyard archway, I saw two gentlemen by the waiting carriage, the same ones I’d seen with her and my aunt at the play. At least my mother had had the foresight this time to leave her suitors outside.

  Rosine gave me an uncomfortable embrace. “Sarah, dearest, please do take care. You’re skin and bones. I’m so worried for you.” But she hustled off as soon as she spoke, leaving me standing there.

  Mère Sophie said, “That was…precipitous. But you must be so pleased. Not only did your mother agree to let you receive Holy Communion, but you shall also remain with us for several more terms, just as you wished. Isn’t it wonderful, Sarah? Sarah…?”

  I opened my mouth to agree, but her voice came at me in fragments, echoing like a distant bell. Icy waves swept over me. As I reached out to her, everything darkened. I couldn’t reassure her as Mère Sophie cried out, for I’d crumpled in delirium at her feet.

  VII

  I was sequestered in the infirmary with a high fever and severe congestion in my lungs that the nuns feared might be consumption. When I coughed up blood, Mère Sophie summoned a physician from Versailles, who pronounced me “not long for this earth,” plunging the nuns into a frenzy. They tended to me day and night—and held me upright in their arms so I could receive my First Communion, for they were nothing if not diligent about the afterlife. I barely recalled any of it, drifting in and out of a dreamlike haze that I’d brought upon myself. All my deprivations, coupled with the night spent in the chapel, had done their work. In my brief moments of consciousness, I thought I was destined for an early grave.

  One morning, I woke to find that while so weak I could barely sit up, I was no longer in the grip of fever. My shift under the sheets and blankets was dry; when Mère Sophie arrived to set her palm to my forehead, she let out a sigh of relief.

  “The fever has broken at last.” She regarded me, her face more weathered now, as if she’d aged years. “You gave us such a fright, my child.”

  “Am…am I going to die?” I said, in a thread of a voice.

  “One day, yes, as all living things must. But not today. Nor, I should think, any time soon, despite your best efforts.” She wagged her finger at me. “You go too far, Sarah. You must practice moderation henceforth. Your enthusiasm gets the better of you and you must learn to restrain it. You could have a magnificent future, if you choose to pursue it wisely.”

  I took her advice as a verdict; no one, much less the Reverend Mother, would ever say an aspiring nun had a magnificent future. Sagging against my pillows, I whispered, “I have failed.”

  She tilted her head. “Failed? To kill yourself, perhaps, which is a mortal sin no amount of devotion can absolve. Otherwise, I would say you’ve succeeded admirably.” When I didn’t speak, she went on, “You’ve proven that when you set your mind to something, nothing can dissuade you. Quand même should be your motto: ‘Despite the odds.’ It’s the sign of a remarkable character, though you may not believe it now.”

  “But not the sign of a nun,” I said, close to tears.

  She shook her head. “But a sign of something, nevertheless.” She leaned down to kiss my brow. “You must regain your strength. You are excused for the rest of the term.” She drew back. “Your mother was here.”

  I stared at her.

  “I sent word,” she said. “Your condition was so grave, we feared last rites might be required. She was abroad, but your aunt Rosine sent her a telegram, at considerable expense, and she came at once. It was two weeks ago. You were in no state to remember her visit. She sat by your bedside for hours; I saw how concerned she was for you. She told me she would return again to see you.”

  As I remained dumbfounded, she went on, “When she does return, I suggest you find compassion in your heart and mend this rift between you. She’s your mother. We only have one in this life.”

  I lowered my eyes. Julie had been here. She had interrupted her travels to visit me.

  I didn’t know whether to rejoice or to dread her next appearance.

  * * *

  I was able to walk and spend time outside by the time Julie arrived again. When she suddenly walked into the garden, dressed in a pink satin gown and matching capelet, a feathered bonnet atop her head, I braced myself for her avalanche of recriminations, aware I must look like a specter. Although the nuns had plied me with pottages—and I’d downed every one like a starving lioness—I was still severely underweight, my veins visible under my colorless skin.

  I sat on a chair, wrapped in a shawl despite the balmy day. César, devoted as ever, slumbered at my feet. The summer term was almost over and the girls were impatient for the upcoming August reprieve, when they’d go home to spend a month with their families. I’d always welcomed the silence that settled over the convent during the summer holiday, fo
r I never went home. Neither did Marie and a few others, so we enjoyed a much less demanding routine, allowed to tarry in art class and romp about the convent grounds.

  Nervously watching my mother’s approach, I was struck by the change in her. She appeared different somehow, though it took me a few moments to decipher it. When I did, I felt even more uneasy. Julie was still beautiful and overdressed as ever, but for the first time in as long as I could recall, she appeared entirely content.

  “Sarah.” She sat near me, on the very bench where Marie had first told me what our mothers did for a living. As Julie removed her gloves, I wondered how many smelly old men those well-tended fingers of hers had caressed.

  Quand même, I found myself thinking. It could be my mother’s motto, as well.

  “Mère Sophie tells me you’re feeling much better,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “You do know everyone thought you were ready for your winding sheet? You terrified everyone. Mère Sophie, in particular, was beside herself.”

  “But not you.” I wanted to shatter her impervious façade, though I wasn’t sure what I hoped to hear. She had come to see me twice now. Surely that must mean she too was worried?

  Her lips parted into the faintest hint of a smile. “You forget that I know you—more than you know yourself. You did it all for attention.”

  “Attention!” I cried out, rousing old César, who whined. “I nearly died!”

  “Indeed.” She did not raise her voice. “You thought to defy me, first by that distasteful scene with the archbishop, then by flinging yourself about like Saint Thérèse of Lisieux until I couldn’t bear to read another missive from Mère Sophie extolling your piety. And when you realized you were no longer my only child, you mounted a tragedy worthy of the actress Rachel herself. It was obvious to me. But then, as I said, I know you well.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t comprehend how she could sit there in her fashionable dress and silly bonnet and utter such cruel, such vicious, things to me.

  “It isn’t my fault.” My voice trembled. “You lied to me about everything: about what you are, and most of all,” I gasped, breathless now with the need to wound, to inflict the same pain on her that she’d caused me, “you lied about my father.”

  She sat very still. “Is that what you think?” she said, after a long moment.

  “Rosine told me everything. She said my papa sent you money for my care and insisted I be educated here, but not once did you ever mention him to me.”

  “Your papa now, is it?” Her smile turned cruel. “Shall I tell you about him? I did not spare you the truth to keep him from you. I hid it to spare you—”

  “Rosine said it was complicated. Is that why you let me think I had no father at all?”

  She let out an impatient sigh. “You are as unreasonable as ever.” She came to her feet, tugging on her gloves. “As you apparently know everything, I see no reason to dissuade you. You are out of harm’s way, so now is as appropriate a time as any for me to depart.”

  As she turned to walk away, I realized that if I let her go, I might never learn the truth, or at least what she deemed the truth. I might never know who my father was. Yanking my voice out of my throat, I said, “Maman.”

  She paused, glancing in annoyance over her shoulder. Then, seeing my expression, she returned to the bench, though this time closer to me. I might have reached out and touched her. “I…I want you to tell me about him,” I said.

  Without any further attempt to prepare me, she said, “His name was Édouard Therard. He was a law student at the Université de Paris; he kept a room in the Latin Quarter, not far from where I lodged at the time. I was nineteen, newly arrived in the city, and he was very handsome. He had thick dark hair and a wild temperament—” She paused, with a startling laugh. “Much like yours. You resemble my family in your appearance, but otherwise you are entirely his. He was so thin, he disappeared in the night when he wore black. He drank too much and lived under the burden of his family’s obligations, which included a betrothal to a local merchant’s daughter. Then he met me.”

  Hearing her describe my father made me want to plunge inside her, probe the depths of her untouchable heart and experience him as she had, when she still nursed illusions like any other girl.

  “Did you love him?” I asked, for it was vital to me to hear that she had, that no matter what she felt about me, I’d been conceived in love, not by callous negotiation.

  She understood. Immobilizing me with a glance, she said, “I wasn’t yet a demimondaine, if that’s what you imply. I rented a pit of a room. I was Youle van Hard, a Dutch Jew without a sou to my name. I worked as an assistant to a seamstress, like thousands of other girls. He met me in the shop when he brought in a pair of trousers that required mending.”

  “But did you love him?” I repeated, evading this revelation of her penurious past because it might weaken my resentment toward her.

  She shrugged. “What did I know of love or young men who declare it? Nothing. Oh, I’d had one or two before him, but none I cared for. He was different. So alive. So full of anger and yearning to change the world. He wanted to see the Republic restored; he talked incessantly of politics, as if I had any concept of such things. He believed all men must be free to seek their destiny, regardless of rank or birth. You might say he was a revolutionary.”

  I had to hold back my torrent of questions, passion coursing through me until I longed to throw aside my shawl and dance about the garden. My father was exceptional, a man of ideals! Julie had confirmed I was like him, that I’d inherited his temperament.

  Her next words brought me tumbling back to reality. “A revolutionary in speech, perhaps, but not in deed. When I discovered I was with child, I told him at once. What else could I do? I needed his support,” she said, and I found myself holding my breath. “His behavior was commendable, that much I will say in his defense. He did not shirk his responsibility as far as your upkeep was concerned.”

  “Rosine said he wanted me raised as a Catholic.” I clung to this paltry certainty, even as I sensed the world starting to shift, about to crumble in shards.

  “What he insisted was that you not be raised Jewish. He acknowledged his paternity on your birth certificate, but he refused to allow me to publicly claim his name for you, which is why you were given my father’s surname, Bernhardt, instead. I was never to mention his identity to anyone: that was our agreement, in exchange for his support. Then he went back to Le Havre and his respectable merchant’s daughter. And there he remained.” She glanced down at her folded hands in her lap. “He never asked to see you. He sent me a sum every month, but I never set eyes on him again.”

  It couldn’t be. I refused to believe it. Only, I felt her words worm inside me and I knew that for once, she wasn’t lying.

  “As Rosine told you, it was indeed complicated, because I was a Jewess who’d borne a bastard. For all his grand speeches about men being free, women, it seems, were a different matter. He wasn’t prepared to risk his future. It’s a tiresome tale, all too familiar. I consider myself fortunate; he was honorable enough to admit his mistake and pay for it. Others cast such mistakes aside and pretend they never occurred. And his money helped me to depart that horrible seamstress’s establishment and start my own life.”

  She went silent for a moment. “He is dead,” she said flatly. “He died last year of a fever.”

  I sat there, sundered, longing to wail, to rend my breast like the agonized saints in the convent books. But in that devastating moment, I couldn’t mourn what I’d never known. For the first time in my life, I felt entirely, horribly, grown up.

  “He left you a sum in his will,” Julie went on, “but like everything with him, it, too, is complicated. I managed to secure your board and tuition from his estate, seeing as he himself had insisted you be sent here. As for the rest…”

  She gestured imp
atiently, as if to dismiss my pain at the news that the man who’d sired me, whom I had never met yet imagined so many times, was no more. Standing up and smoothing out her skirts, she said, “I shall return for you in August. We will go with Rosine and your sisters on holiday. The physician recommends a respite in the mountains to help heal your lungs. I know a lovely spa in the Pyrenees, at Cauterets.”

  I gazed up at her, dumbfounded. “And afterwards…?”

  “You’ll finish your education here. After all, he did pay for it. Then we shall see.”

  Without another word, she left me, slumped on my chair.

  Only then did I realize that much like my mother had, becoming someone else might be my only choice in life.

  VIII

  While I didn’t look forward to spending time in the mountains with my family, given my relationship with my mother, I was eager to know my sisters. And once we arrived in Cauterets, I found that Jeanne was clearly my mother’s favorite, arrayed in miniature versions of Julie’s attire and giving herself too many airs for her age, making me suspect she was indeed Morny’s child. But she could forget her hauteur when out of Julie’s sight, reverting to being just a little girl as she joined Rosine and me on day trips to the local farms, where I found myself besotted by lambs and baby goats.

  Régine, on the other hand, became my favorite. Nearly a year old, she was boisterous, wailing up a storm and grasping at my hair, my sleeves, anything she could take hold of to stake her claim. Perhaps because she didn’t resemble any of us, with her olive skin and huge dark eyes, I saw her as someone apart, whom it was safe for me to love.