The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  I only laughed, stunned. And then after a pause, during which I said nothing from shock, she said, Ah. I cannot believe I was tricked like this. Of course, you would have written at once.

  At once, I said. I would have run to your side. No letter at all. And I would have asked you to tell me it was madness. Where did you hear this? I asked.

  In the press! She called out for her maid to bring her the day’s paper and then showed me a column by an opera reviewer who said he had heard I was rejecting roles out of the fear that my voice was cursed. His column in Le Figaro was mockingly referred to as Mon Vieux because all of his sources for gossip were simply called mon vieux. I have this on good word from my old friend, who says he believes she may not really be cursed but is, in fact, leaving the stage to marry, and he suspects it is, at last, her longtime costar, a tenor of the Paris Opera.

  Absurd, I said. Even ridiculous. Not a word of this is true.

  And who could marry you? Euphrosyne said. It would be like trying to marry the wind.

  You’ll forgive me if I cannot stay, I said. Of course, I knew exactly what was meant by the rumor, though I couldn’t say so—to do so would be to spread it again even, or perhaps especially, to Euphrosyne.

  You cannot let this rumor of your marriage put you into hiding, Euphrosyne said, grabbing my hand and holding me, laughing. It’s not as if it’s a shameful thing to marry . . . and she became distracted for a moment by her own thoughts. Her eyes lit and she looked around the music room. Come, she said, and she walked me to her garden.

  I cannot stay, love. I must go home and write to him at once, I said.

  I will throw a ball in your honor, she said, and you will sing and publicly denounce the rumor at the evening’s end. Including the curse. Or is the curse real?

  No, it’s too much, I said. I will simply take Mon Vieux up on one of his many offers to dine with him, I said. And correct him in person.

  I will. I will, she said, not listening to me at all. I could never stop her.

  I was thinking the ball should be in honor of your appearance in Faust and your return to Paris—I have missed you! In fact, the Cave of Queens and Courtesans will be our theme, the fifth act ballet, which I adore. I will be Eugénie, you can be the Queen of the Night. And you can perform her song, “The Vengeance of Hell Boils in My Heart,” she said. She looked ecstatic. I was about to explain to her that Astarte in Faust was not the Queen of the Night, but I hesitated—I knew the news would disappoint her. And yet, the Queen of the Night, this was not in my Fach.

  The curse is not real, my dear, yes? This is also a rumor?

  Of course, I said. And, of course, the ball will be perfect. You are too good to me. Thank you. Here, a present for you.

  I had almost forgotten my little mission. I handed her the book wrapped in paper. She giggled as she held it aloft. How wonderful, she said, as she unwrapped it. I do not know it! Her eyes showed real surprise, real delight. She was innocent.

  I kissed her on her cheeks, and then she held my hand as we walked toward the door. I will make excuses for you, she said, gesturing to the room. It will be incredible. Worth will make all of our costumes, she said. Incredible.

  I rushed home.

  I was sure I could still undo what I had done.

  The newspaper column told me a story of the last few days. I was chagrined to think of Verdi and his wife dining with Mon Vieux and telling tales while I had been lost in my fears and memories. I wrote a note to the Verdis.

  Please excuse me a moment’s foolishness at dinner. I am too superstitious. I have found a saint’s bone charm and will defy my curse, and am happy to make room in my schedule for I Masnadieri.

  A moment’s foolishness, but I knew only too well what that foolishness could cost me.

  The opera world pardoned a soprano’s excesses so often that she could imagine all would be pardoned, but once she did, she would find herself lost. Not all could be or would be forgiven, at least not by opera house managers and composers, much less audiences. I feared the news of the curse would render me a pariah, and all my work would vanish.

  All I had wanted was the time to consider this offer, and if I rejected it, a way to find some peace with it, and so I had made my little lie. Perhaps you can imagine the despair I felt then, to find this lie of mine racing on ahead of me, and my arriving just after it had moved on, undoing the latches of my life.

  §

  We had an old oath, Euphrosyne and I. Sworn to each other in the first days of our friendship, solemn as a betrothal. She was the closest thing I’d had to a husband.

  I met her fifteen years previous, as we waited together for the omnibus. I had seen her a few times at this stop but had never found a way to speak to her despite my fascination. I remember this day was like all the other nights and days I’d seen her except it was even darker, and as there was only a little light from a street lamp, I was glad I was not alone.

  She looked spent, her eyes shadowy, sooty, and so still that at first I thought she was asleep, perhaps from too much drink. When she did move her eyes, it startled me, and her glance made me look at whatever drew her attention.

  Her skin was slightly sallow, and she was not pretty, but she exerted a nearly violent need for your attention. Her cloud of hair was like smoke. She was wearing an enormous cancan skirt, the biggest I’d ever seen, filling the seats to either side of her on the bench as she slumped rakishly, her half-lidded eyes watching something directly ahead of her, something only she could see.

  Euphrosyne’s skirts were hiked up over her knees—she was cooling herself in the night air after a night of dancing. I took in her shoes, the dark leather and bright red laces, the toes of the shoes like smirks and the high heels like stems or talons. They were cancan shoes. I’d never seen them before and so I stared at them. I’d never seen anything for women before that looked so beautiful and dangerous and ordinary at the same time, and so I wanted them immediately.

  I tried to think of how to speak with her, how to ask her about her shoes.

  The police are so lazy, she said then, surprising me.

  Are they? I asked.

  Yes, she said. Here they are. They do nothing. I don’t know what they do. The Berlin police, now, they are not so lazy.

  This seemed very sophisticated. Your shoes, I said, now that I had my opening.

  She laughed and extended a leg out, pointing her toe. Yes, I love them.

  They’re so strange, I said. Are they for something?

  She laughed again and shook her head. Child, she said. These are for dancing. You mean to tell me you don’t know about dancing? Cancan?

  She held out her hand to me. Euphrosyne Courrèges, she said. At the Bal Mabille you know me only as La Frénésie. She twirled her other hand in the air as she said it. She let go of my hand and then, smiling, got to her feet and stomped her shoes on the stones, holding up her skirt as she did and looking down on them as if to be sure they did their work. Then she looked at me, a wild grin on her face.

  We will get you some, child. And then I will show you what they are for. And with that, she stomped them again against the stones.

  Are you a registered girl? she asked. She said it fille en carte, drawing each of the words out mockingly. Which house do you work for?

  I did not know what this meant yet and struggled with the idea. No, I said finally. I’m . . . I’m an equestrienne. I ride horses at Cirque Napoléon, a hippodrome rider.

  She struck her forehead theatrically and pressed my hand again. Fantastique! she yelled. That is the only thing better than dancing. I laughed. She exuded the tough confidence of the young soldiers who came to my shows and smoked in the front, yelling compliments that felt like insults.

  I don’t know what this is, I said, fille en carte, though I could guess.

  It means . . . you are in danger! Right now! She laughed. Perhaps I will be arrested for corrupting you. Except for those lazy police. But you, I think it will be worth it.

  Th
e omnibus arrived. We got on together, paid our fare, and sat on the lower level with the other women and the men who could not climb to the roof. I will have my new gentleman take me to your show, she said confidingly, and tapped my arm as she said it. I have a new gentleman. We will call on you there. She clapped her hands at the thought. And then from her bag on her wrist she withdrew her card.

  You may call on me there, she said, and we looked at the address together. And then, after a moment, she asked, No card for you?

  I shook my head, knocking my feet together like a schoolgirl. No, I said. No card for me.

  §

  On the day I did not go to Lucerne, I sat down in the grass of the Bois and stared at the Emperor’s token in my cupped hand, sheltered so no one but me could see it. The coins I’d made thus far surrounded it, minus my most recent pay, left behind in my rush. The feeling of possessing great riches had passed, and now I did not know either how to sell it or how to protect it. Offering it for sale to people on the street seemed a quick way to lose it, but if I did not sell it, it seemed to me I could not go on.

  My feet were tired, and I had taken off my shoe to look for a stone. A carriage pulled up. The man in it looked at me beckoningly. I shook my head and he drove off, shocked.

  Another came by and it was the same.

  Another. I thought of walking up to him to ask him how much he would pay for the pin and then closed my hand over it.

  I put my shoe back on and left, annoyed. I had only wanted to sit and think in the grass, but this did not seem possible.

  I didn’t know how to do anything else, other than try to get my ticket to the town where they lived. Everything since my family’s death had led me to this train ride and what was waiting past the station there.

  Once I was in the station, a hunger like nausea crept over me. I took a cup of tea at a counter and waited by the gate, watching the travelers.

  The cup of tea cost money, of course, and so as I waited I had a little less even than before. Soon I would need to eat. And if I did not get on the train, I would need a place to sleep.

  The policemen of the station eyed me warily. I sat with my tea, opening and closing my hand over the flower as I thought of what to do. How to go to Lucerne and also keep this pin.

  I stayed until I decided to stay, find more work, and return the dress.

  The rose did seem to bring me luck at first. Even my bad luck turned to good.

  When I sneaked back to the clothesline to return the dress, the laundress caught me, and while she was angry at first, she soon ridiculed me in French, saying I was a clown, if a pretty one, and asked me why I had no clothes.

  I could see the tents of the Cajun Maidens still in the distance behind her as she spoke.

  When I didn’t answer right away, she told me I was clearly stupid but that she would take pity on me. If I would work for her to repay her for her trouble, she would not call the police. And with that, she led me from the field. By that afternoon, I had from her the plain smock of a grisette, not so nice but good enough, and a place to hide from my old circus boss, who I was sure was looking for me. By evening, I was helping to deliver clothes to the room of the courtesan whose dress I’d stolen there at the hotel where the laundry was. She did not receive me, but I saw her small slippered foot from the door.

  I did not tell the laundress where I was from. She never mentioned, when the papers the next day announced the disappearance of one of the circus stars, how she had found me. Even if she had connected the girl found near the circus in her mistress’s laundry with the one said to have escaped, she would have been incredulous to think the girl who fumbled mending knew how to jump from a running horse and then back on again. I smiled in the first month when, on errands, I saw the circus poster still advertising me standing on the back of the horse, waving my hat in the air. And then soon the other posters covered it and the little cowgirl was gone.

  The laundress repaired costumes for the Cirque Napoléon. After I had made a delivery for her, the owner caught me riding on one of the horses, having charmed one of the grooms. Again my bad luck turned good when he was, despite his anger, greatly impressed by my way with horses and insisted I come work for him.

  The Cirque Napoléon was like putting a circus in a theater, as if someone had cast a spell on a circus tent and turned it to stone, filling it with gaslight chandeliers and columns. There was a circular track down in the center where we performed, ringed by rows of seats climbing in circles. The audience was larger than any I’d seen at the Cajun Maidens, and we performed with an orchestra, mostly Conservatoire boys, made elegant by their white shirts and frock coats, who played for beer or wine. The patrons came in and out as they pleased with their drinks and cigarettes, down red carpets lining the stairs to the ring.

  I rode a horse bareback, tumbling across its back before leaping through flaming hoops, landing back on the horse as it rode on. The act was my idea, born from my dreams of fire-breathing. The hoops were enormous and the flames ringed the top half. They had paper centers that would shatter with a sound like a drum and catch fire, the burning bits fluttering down into the dirt floor of the ring and winking out.

  I did not sing, not yet. I still worried that my old cirque was still in Paris or nearby and that if I sang they might find me, though I feared this less each week. Most nights the ring exerted a certain magic, and in it, I could feel as if I were powerful, possessed of a grace I never felt when I was off the horse. And never more so than when my new friend Euphrosyne was in the audience. For this felt lucky, too.

  §

  Euphrosyne came to see me the very next day after our meeting, as she said she would, with her new gentleman. He was a handsome young man, and he was new, perhaps just eighteen, barely shaving, a prince with a hero’s name. They sat in the front row and clapped wildly with laughter, cheering as I exploded through the flaming paper hoop and landed again on the horse. I’d never enjoyed it so much as then. Afterward, I sat with them at their table and he poured some champagne for me, my first.

  She came regularly to see me, and I soon would leave a ticket for her if she had no young man, though this was rare. She took me to her cobbler and bought me my first pair of cancan heels one morning after a visit from the princeling, pulling the franc notes from her bag with a smile and laying them on the table as if we were going to play baccarat. The cobbler folded the notes into his register quickly before motioning me to sit, and then he tenderly took my foot in his hand to measure.

  Fille en carte means “prostitute.” When I tried to understand what this meant, I asked Euphrosyne, Where is the card?

  The police station, she said, squinting as if everyone should know.

  In her entry in the Gentleman’s Guide to Paris, a guidebook listing some of the more well-known maisons closes and the women in them, Euphrosyne was noted for her passionate abandon. Of her prix d’amour, it said she was neither the most expensive nor the cheapest, but that the client should prepare to pay extra for champagne. Which made me smile.

  I would first see the guide a few months later when a man I knew held it out to me and laughingly asked if I was inside. He meant this as an insult, but I had the sense not to give myself away by looking. If I was ever in there, I would have been listed after her. By then we were regulars at the Bal Mabille and Euphrosyne had introduced me to everyone with the ridiculous name Jou-jou Courrèges, saying we were sisters. And she did feel like the sister I’d never had.

  I still thrill to think of the Bal Mabille. A city garden at night unlike any other, strung with lanterns and full of music, people laughing and dancing, heading off into the groves for more private entertainments.

  Here Euphrosyne had earned her name, La Frénésie. This was her cirque, her burning ring, and the role of her horse was played by nearly every man there.

  Her princeling, we came to know, had something of a pattern, seeing her every night soon after some monthly sum was deposited with him, vanishing as it was spent, and returnin
g again the next month. We began to call him La Lune for the way he waxed and waned. On our nights without him, we would command a table and she would sit with her second- or third-favorite young man of the evening and whoever was mine, ordering bottles, usually of champagne, and we would dance until morning.

  I knew I was beautiful to men; I had guessed that by now. But because of my own severity toward myself, toward others, I had none of her sultry grace—my appeal was something of a cooler thing, starker. But this was fine; it made us perfect friends. The men who pursued her would be friendly to me, and those who pursued me friendly to her, but we never competed, never fought for the same man except one.

  There was only one she was ever jealous of. And, to be sure, I would have preferred in some ways it had been her he’d chosen, that she’d prevailed. But, unfortunately, I won.

  But it is too soon to speak of that as well. For now, we are still concerned with shoes for dancing.

  §

  Euphrosyne had a quality I felt I also had, but I had feared it was hidden until now. I wanted for her to see me and recognize me as one of her kind, whatever she was. Now that she came and cheered me on in the arena, I became bolder, just as she did at the Bal Mabille with me, I think. In any case, however it came to be, there was a night when, enraged, she cracked an empty bottle on the head of a man who was impatient with her rejection of him.

  Without hesitation, I lunged to my feet and pulled my knife as she stood screaming at his friends. They drew back in terror. The offending gentleman groaned from the floor by the table, and in the dark I could see the wetness that I knew to be blood.

  Euphrosyne giggled and grabbed me, and we ran from the Bal as the man’s friends behind us called for the police.

  I’d never pulled the knife, not like that. In my hand it burned, as if aflame. With one swift motion, I threw up my skirt as we ran, and it was back in its sheath.