The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  No, I said. I wasn’t sure, so it was easier to say no. Too easy, and I saw her catch it.

  Never love, she said. Do you understand? Not him, not any of them. That is the secret to all of this around me.

  Outside in her halls, the party in celebration of her debut raged. I waited silently, finally reaching up to touch the little gem at my throat.

  Never love, she said. For if you do, that is all you’ll get, if you’re lucky. And nothing else.

  I returned to the party in my necklace, Cora now behind me. My tenor friend smiled up at me and I knew instantly from his expression as he looked to my throat, while Cora’s laughter caroled against my neck, that he had given it to her.

  §

  He did come to love me, and perhaps it began that night, as our Cupid manqué, the woman he really loved, tossed me down the stairs to him wearing his rejected love gift to her.

  Years later, when I learned she had died a pauper and subscriptions were being sold to pay for her grave, I took this necklace and sold it and sent the sum and two thousand francs toward the cost.

  I did not take her warnings to heart. Such was her vanity, she thought I sought to replace her, and such was mine, I found her warnings of little use. Our mutual friend was already trying to make a singer of me, or to make me into her—it was hard to know which that night. I left suspicious that I was only like a little doll of her to him. It seemed his preferences with me all came from her—Eau de Lubin would not mean the same thing ever. But unlike her, I had a voice, and with it, I knew, a real chance.

  This was my consolation then.

  As for loving him, how could I not at least imagine what I felt for him, which was perhaps more gratitude and fear than anything else, how could I, ignorant as I was, not imagine it was love?

  She wanted only to be feared. I wanted to be feared and loved. I didn’t want everything she had as she stood onstage that night. I wanted more.

  For years after that night, she haunted me. I would be assembling my toilette and see her face over my shoulder, just as I had that night. The confident way she warned me off.

  The word for her in Paris, a courtesan who had made it to the stage, was grue—it happened so often there was a word for it. I never wanted anyone to use this word for me. I even wore my hair dark and close to my head so as to be as unlike her as I could imagine.

  And then I became a singer, and the night of my eventual debut was nothing like hers, and I was sure I had won my way free.

  Seven

  IN ALL THE YEARS I’d known the tenor, I had rarely ever visited him at his apartments; he was more often at mine in the years when I belonged to him. His apartment was where he went to be apart from women—near me, on the rue de Richelieu, close to the Place Vendôme and decorated in a German style; to enter was to feel one might have left Paris. The furniture was mostly Bavarian, very dark and carved with German motifs and animals or trees. A full suit of knight’s armor stood in the foyer with an enormous, two-handed sword for killing something larger than I knew to fear. Hunting rifles and more swords from his family decorated the mantel of the fireplace in his library.

  I went to call on him, thinking that if it was not my Euphrosyne it had to be him. Another copy of the novel, for him, wrapped, sat under my arm.

  He would be returning shortly, his butler said, as he answered the door. Would I care to wait?

  I said I would. I was shown into his library, where I seated myself on his couch.

  The butler offered to take the package, but I said I had to hand it to him myself.

  Of the men who had come to me at Odile’s, he was the only one who had ever wanted to know me. His loneliness was different. The distinct proportions of it in his mind were like those of a theatrical that needed casting more than anything else.

  He sought a playmate, almost a rival.

  Almost.

  There was a coda to my evening with him at Cora Pearl’s those many years ago, and I remembered it as I waited. We had sat down eventually to her catered supper served on gold-rimmed china. She had caught my expression of pleasure at the gold rim, as the plate for my soup went down in front of me, and raised an eyebrow.

  You should take your little doll of me out more, she said to the tenor. Get her used to fine china.

  Here at dinner, as everyone ate, this wounded me, but I had been trained not to react or, at least, not to cry out. As the tenor turned toward me, I put a practiced smile on my face and said, Yes. Yes, you should. Teasing him.

  The guests at table, quietly waiting for my reaction, erupted in laughter. I hadn’t meant to be funny, and I knew it was dangerous to humiliate him too much, so I pulled his head in close to mine for a kiss on his cheek, at which the laughter increased. As we each sat back, I found Cora Pearl smiling at me.

  We would not be friends, as she had said, but I had earned her respect.

  When the dinner ended, she ordered the waiters to fill her tub with champagne and asked anyone who wished to join her to come with her into her salle de bain. The tenor looked on as she stood, her bare shoulders gleaming in the candlelight, before leaving silently with me after she had made her exit.

  Perhaps a few weeks later, friends of the tenor’s entered his box at the intermission to greet him and recount how the men who’d stayed after our departure had sat round Cora’s champagne bath, filling their glasses from it as they spoke to her until her figure appeared, and the tenor made a face, as if at something disgusting. At this cue, they all began to speak of how badly she’d sung in Orphée aux Enfers.

  He smiled a little and interrupted these complaints to present these friends to me.

  She is a soprano, he said. My protégée. There were some grins, but all took my hand and kissed it in greeting. I am preparing her for her debut, he added, and they all smiled at this as if they could already hear me sing.

  As I answered his friends’ questions on my student repertoire, I noticed how he seemed proud of me, and I knew I was mistaken as to Cora’s and my fortunes.

  Cora had been discarded, for she had disappointed. He was not trying to make me over into her—he had failed to make her into what I was to become. If I failed, perhaps there would be another.

  My old fear from that time, that he would give up on me, seemed quaint at best as I waited for him. From our first meeting, I had never been able to rid myself of him, and over time, that came to seem like something like or, at least, more reliable than marriage. But then I had never been married and knew as little of it still as I did at this time of what it would mean to be bought.

  The tenor returned as the butler had said he would. I heard the entrance door open and the butler’s voice, no doubt telling him he had a visitor and who it was.

  I then heard laughter.

  The door to the library opened. All this time I have had to chase you, and now you come right to my door? Chérie, it’s too much. He came to where I sat.

  I would have thought I would not see you again, unless you have finally come to kill me, he said.

  I said nothing to this.

  You must want something, he said. It can’t be money. What is it? Is it your curse? He laughed as he said that.

  I hear a rumor we are to be married. It wasn’t me, he said. But I like the rumor. Perhaps . . . perhaps it is our time.

  I wanted to be sure, I said, with a smile. And then laughed with him about the rumor even as I saw, at once, he wasn’t probably the source.

  Consider this your present in our imaginary engagement, I said, and offered the novel to him.

  He unwrapped it and turned it over with real fascination.

  You’ve never given me a novel, he said.

  He was likewise not my secret tormentor. He’d never been able to rid himself of a certain wounded air since I’d won my eventual freedom from him. If it was him, this air would be gone. Instead, I saw his hopes rise to see me, to page through the novel—I had misled him even by coming—and so I consoled myself with this as I made an excuse a
nd left, saying I hoped we’d sing together soon.

  It was a game, to hurt him again even like that, but it was only a part of the game by which I had escaped him. And while it was not the satisfaction I sought, it would do for now.

  You will notice I do not use his name. For this story, I never will. He was named by the rules of the Majeurs-Plaisirs—it seemed safer this way. He is always the tenor. If there had been another tenor, that tenor would have been “tenor 2,” or “second tenor.” Something that would have amused me.

  If these men met you on the street with their friends, they were as likely to ignore you as recognize you; to introduce you might offend whomever they were with. That was their prudence. This was mine.

  If there was some way they could not allow me into their circles, well, it would be the same for them somehow.

  In these ways, it seems to me, you kept yourself.

  Eight

  WHEN I SAY he owned me all those years ago, I mean he owned me like he owned his shoes.

  After that night with Cora Pearl, he bought me from Odile, bought my contract. He freed me from my unconquerable bill of fare with her but delivered me into his own.

  I still remember how I stood by my wardrobe with him, packing as he sat with Odile, who tallied my bill. If he did not pay for something, she would make me leave it behind, so, as I brought each item out, he said either yes or no, and a maid he’d brought to help either set the item into a case or put it on the bed I’d shared with Euphrosyne.

  I was the envy of the house. Each girl here wanted to have her contract bought and her client to arrive with cases and a maid to pack them, but the scrutiny of each object humiliated me, especially as the other girls lined the doorway, excited for me, but also arguing already in whispers over who would get what of the things I would leave behind.

  Odile turned and hushed them before continuing.

  We had come to the cancan shoes, which I was intent on keeping no matter what he said. I took the pair Euphrosyne had bought me and pointed to the case as I handed them to the maid.

  These are mine, I said, as Odile raised an eyebrow. I wore them into prison and on my way here. I will wear them out of here as well.

  In the doorway, the girls laughed.

  My six other pairs, one for each day of the week if I wanted, amused the tenor. I like them, he said, as they were set in one by one. And then it was done; he paid the bill outright. He left to wait downstairs and let me dress and say good-byes. The maid stayed at first to help me, but I shooed her away. As I closed the door, Euphrosyne came and sat down on the bed.

  I told them I pick first, she said, and then plucked at the few things the tenor had rejected—mostly lingerie. We will buy all new ones for you, he’d said.

  When she saw there was nothing she wanted, she turned her attention to me.

  It’s nothing to me, Jou-jou, she said. It’s a favor you do for me, though, really, she said. You’ll tire of him. You’ll see. Give me a kiss and let it be done. We must stay friends, for we love each other.

  She had slept beside me coldly since that night I first sang for him. This had angered me, as the fantasy act that introduced me to him had been her idea, and so I had been cold in return. But she was right.

  I bent down and gave her a kiss.

  Just be sure to be careful. It will be harder to refuse him now. And if he beats you, promise me you’ll show him that knife.

  I nodded.

  I have a confession, she said. Please forgive me. She withdrew something from her blouse and set it on the bed.

  It was silly of me, she said. And terrible. I was . . . I loved the story, she said. I would take it out and pretend the Emperor had given it to me.

  The rose pin sat there, strangely dark in the light, almost black. She’d had it this whole time.

  I made myself go to the bed and pick it up.

  She kept talking, not quite meeting my eyes. Her voice seemed focused past me, as if on someone listening in.

  I meant to give it back sooner, for it was really childish of me, but then when our tenor friend chose you over me, it was as if you’d stolen from me, and I felt we were even. But we aren’t, are we? Nothing like that will ever happen to me, you see, she said. I don’t have any other talents except this, and she gestured to her figure. And when this is gone, nothing. So forgive me, please. And you! You will finally be the singer you were fated to be. He will help you, I think, yes? And you must come back often and tell me everything.

  With that, she came close and embraced me.

  You must kiss me; we must stay friends, she said.

  I did.

  The tenor’s driver came for my new cases then, and as I followed him downstairs, I passed by the open door to the room where it had begun, the faux opera boxes and the illusion stage. The maid was mopping the floors clean of the previous night’s exertions. I looked back up the stairs, but there was no sign of her. There was only Odile at the foot of the stairs calling for me to come.

  §

  That first time I entered my apartment on the brand-new avenue de l’Opéra, I felt as if I were an interloper visiting someone else’s home.

  The walls were painted carefully, a beautiful dove gray, and furnished in what struck me as the most elegant furnishings I’d ever seen, though I might be less impressed to see them now. Enormous crystal chandeliers hung in nearly every room, even the boudoir. There was even a music room with a piano.

  As I left the maid to set my things out in the new apartment, I knew what I’d been too proud to say in front of Euphrosyne, what she had even tried to tell me.

  There was always at least one client who was reluctant to leave. This is paradise, they’d usually exclaim first. They’d joke with Odile, ask her what she would charge to stay the night; and she forbade it each time. The Plaisirs closes at dawn, she would say to them. It is the only rule. That, and that you must pay.

  This was what they wanted. A house of tolerance with just one girl. The apartment like his own music box, and when he opened it, I was what moved and sang.

  This apartment was not my freedom, and it would not have been hers, either. Instead, it was as if I were shut inside one of the theaters and told I was to live in there with him, or for him, or both.

  As I examined the sconces on the wall of my new music room, I half expected to see Odile’s eye peering at me through some hollow bottom in one of them, making sure all was as he wanted it.

  As the maid unpacked me, she found my little ruby rose and held it out to me, praising it before putting it in a little jewelry box on my dressing table.

  The sight of it mocked me—my charm, back with its strange luck. It was a kind of mercy Euphrosyne returned it to me only after the bill of fare had been settled. I did not have to see it discussed, or worse, valued.

  I could guess what it was worth now. And while I hated Euphrosyne for stealing it and still felt she had trapped me by doing so, I could never have paid Odile back with what I would have gotten for selling it. Just as I could never have made my way to Lucerne with whatever I might have sold it for.

  I was finally worth more than any of my things, in any case. This tenor, I had seen what he had paid Odile for his fantasy of making me a singer.

  Let it remind you of that, I told my reflection the next time I pinned the brooch to my lapel.

  And, for a while, it did.

  Nine

  ON A WINTER AFTERNOON in Paris, in a cold wooden room at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, I auditioned for a jury of voice professors and was told afterward, with extreme wariness, that I was a Falcon soprano.

  I asked what this was.

  The head music professor looked first to his companions. The voice jury, three men and a woman, shrugged as one. He turned back to face me.

  At first it seemed you were a mezzo, he said, and then that was not the case. You are studying and have been helped with your audition piece, yes?

  I nodded. Our eyes fell together on my own musi
c case, gleaming in the soft light.

  And this person did not tell you this?

  No, I said.

  Well, it would be difficult to know. In a category of fragile singers, you are among the most fragile. An untrained listener would assume the voice was quite strong, for your tone is strong. But the voice is not and could be destroyed quite easily. Especially if trained by someone who cannot tell you you are a Falcon. He frowned, shrugged, and continued. The voice itself is a dark thing, but hooded. But from this comes impossible lights. There is an upper register where the mezzo voice might thin or pause. As you sang up, the surprises became evident.

  He looked away for a moment. His colleagues watched him, not me.

  It was like a night and then shooting stars, he said, and smiled.

  I stared. I was afraid of missing something I needed to know that I might never be told again.

  With this sort of voice, he continued, it may be you have a long career. But it may be you have a very short one. It is a very odd, very beautiful, very rare sort of voice. You could sing all the dramatic soprano roles I can think of, but . . . perhaps you should not.

  Should not? I asked.

  For then you may have a very short career, he said. And this is what I mean. The tone is powerful, but the voice itself, delicate. You might ruin your voice in just the training we could provide. It is even possible you destroyed it here today, singing your Abigaille aria from Nabucco.

  I touched the hot skin of my throat, my hands cold, and left them there to warm.

  Do not do that, he said. Do not chill your throat like that after singing.

  I put my hands down.

  This voice has another name, he said.

  Tragic soprano is how it is more traditionally known, said the woman at his elbow. None of the four council members spoke as the head professor paused and paged through their notes.