When I entered the antechamber where the Empress sat, her hair waiting for the imperial hairdresser, I hoped I again resembled her mute grisette.
I was late, but as I had never been late before, the Empress was generous if stern, merely raising an eyebrow as I had arrived just in time to help with the removal of the afternoon’s tea gown. Service had not been disturbed. From the face of my former rival, I could see a story of me had been told, but it couldn’t have been too incriminating or it would likewise ruin her fun, and it would have to avoid describing her as the loser—the mute girl was an unconvincing victor, and this would humiliate her.
The Duchesse de Bassano came to complain of the councils again—even to scold. The Empress was neglecting her guests with these long meetings, and guests were offended. All through the palace, these women sat dressed, waiting to be invited, and were not invited, and came to dinner as a group, feeling snubbed. To have tea with the Empress in the afternoon was a great honor, and she was not extending it.
White tulle again for the bodice, I thought, as I set the tea gown gently over my arm. The wrapper came off, and a skirt like sea foam spread out down her crinolines, and I clasped a long white velvet train over the skirt behind her. She added a diamond brooch to her waist, a bracelet of pearls over her sea-foam gloves, and then the Regent again at her neck.
She did not reply to the Duchesse, and instead pulled at her jewel box. She set her fingers on the emerald brooch from the Emperor and turned it where it sat. She held it up, as if to put it on, then set it down again, repeating this quietly as she waited for the hairdresser, her eyes watching the door through her mirror’s reflection.
§
For the recital, I found a hiding place better than the one previous, able to view the piano in part, though not the tenor.
The Princess Metternich welcomed the assembled gathering. This was my first glimpse of her. She looked to me at first like a youth in a gown, her face more the face of a charming boy. The Princess’s eyes were deep set and large so she always appeared intent and serious, but also always a little amused. Her nickname was Cocoa Monkey, I knew from the ladies-in-waiting, and the rumor among the servants was that she was half-caste. To me, she exuded a different kind of chic from the other women of the court for the way her features were already original. She wore a particularly sleek gown of a pale green silk, which made her look even more exotic, her thin shoulders bare and a collar of pearls at her throat. Her hair was worn slicked close to her head and parted severely like a man’s. She appeared distinctly beautiful, while the others appeared only to decorate the room around her. The Princess had none of the seriousness of the Empress and wore her rank the more lightly, as I think she believed in it in a way the Empress did not believe in her own. The Empress seemed as if she could not believe she was Empress until you did. The Empress looked like an actress beside her.
This evening the Princess was full of a barely contained excitement. I arrived as she declared to the gathered crowd that the composer she was introducing was her discovery, found on a night she and the Prince attended the Bal Mabille in secret. They were so taken by the pianist, they sat at a table near the musicians and left more impressed by him than by the dancers. They at once had become his patrons and introduced him to the Empress’s Monday salons.
I was so stunned to think I had danced to his music and never knew that I barely heard her as she gestured to him and then welcomed the tenor to the stage as well, praising him as the greatest living Prussian heldentenor.
She went and stood by the Empress, and they spoke to each other.
I never surrender, the Empress said.
They were rivals for him, or so it seemed—this was all I heard of what she said. I was so full of my new confidence, so certain I belonged right where I was, that I was shocked to see the Princess had noticed me.
Her expression was a steady one; she was not going to interrupt the performance to reprimand me. Instead, she looked at me as if a horse had wandered into the hall, and in commanding it with her eyes, she could get it to return to its stable.
I stepped back three quick steps without turning around; and, content, she returned her attention forward. I quickly made my way into the service hall, walking until I was back in the Empress’s rooms.
§
There I sat and looked at the Empress’s gowns, waiting for her to wear them. In the darkened room, each of them looked as if it were the ghost of the Emperor’s next mistress. I listened to the music, which I could hear faintly. I imagined myself in a gown, black and fantastic, meters of silk and glittering jewels, and the composer leading me across the floor to dance. We were at a ball at least as grand as any the Empress might have here, glowing in the candlelight.
Then the tenor began to sing, to great applause.
And then I began to see myself putting the dresses away, and then the tenor putting them on me for his strange game.
In my bed later, as I tried to sleep, I heard it again, in memory, the slow, meandering footsteps of the piano, of the mazurka that was not quite a mazurka—to me more like a lover’s search of the rooms of a party after it has ended. He wanders, watching for the object of his pursuit. The wildness has spent itself, and now there’s just caution in the step and the insistence of what is felt, almost the sound of footsteps, something in search of what it loves. I wished it were the composer and that he would find me as well, and I heard it until I slept.
Eight
THE WOMAN THE tenor had brought to the spare apartment was an American soprano singer married to a French nobleman and an intimate of the Emperor and Empress.
He had gone from trying to turn his lovers into singers to turning singers into his lovers, I noted.
He told me this as he described the mission that he insisted was the price of his goodwill.
The soprano was to appear in a tableau vivant that evening, to sing onstage in a little salon play written that week by the Prince Metternich. In that tableau, I would take her place as the American Doll, shipped from America. The theme of the play was “exposition,” in honor of the Paris Exposition; it was a charade. The audience of guests and the Emperor and Empress were to try to guess the theme.
I was her height; I was her size. I lacked her fair hair, but mine would be under a wig, my face under a doll-face mask and powdered. She would be with the tenor, enjoying at last the consummation of their affair.
I have not sung all these months, I said to him.
It’s fine, he said. You’re to sing badly. You’re the American Doll, but you’ve been broken in transit.
Now I stood backstage in my wig, mask, and powder, dressed in a traditional Tyrolean peasant costume with a black bodice and a red skirt, both beautifully embroidered, and a Tyrolean hat, a long pheasant feather jauntily rising above me. A large turnkey sat on my back like a metallic single wing. The Princess Metternich was dressed in a coachman’s costume, with a cape, pants, and riding boots, a pipe resting in her mouth. She was busy winding a very wide silk ribbon around me, as if I were a package, tying it finally in a bow. The ribbon parted at my mouth and eyes to allow me to see and breathe.
The Prince and Princess Metternich knew the tenor and the singer well, and were in on the conspiracy.
The first part of the word, Ex, had been performed as a skit between invalids at Aix-les-Bains competing with descriptions of their elaborate diseases and miseries. Then the Princess had performed a song the Prince had written for her, “That Was Paris, and Now It Is Gone.” She had cracked a riding whip over her head with great authority, causing the audience to shriek, and smoked the pipe through the song. The audience laughed at it all, though I did not understand why. Following her had been a young man insistent on learning to fence in order to defend himself against the hordes of foreigners who had invaded Paris for the exposition. When he finished, the curtain came down to much applause, and then I was set on the stage to await my decoration.
I should have liked for the Princess and I to b
e friends, I had decided, watching her song. I tried to think of how to speak to her as she decorated me, but she treated me as if I were only another piece of her costume. That afternoon we had rehearsed my song and the various trills and pieces of songs I was to sing in the skit.
Your voice is very like hers was all the Princess had said at the rehearsal. You should do quite well. If she recognized me as the girl she had caught outside the ballroom, she did not let on.
The Empress had been at the councils all afternoon, something that the Princess found puzzling, and she said as much on my delivery to her by the tenor. So they are having her sit in, she said to the Prince and the tenor, as if I would not understand. She shook her head. She cannot even organize the paintings at the Tuileries, and yet here she is sitting in on the imperial council. It’s too much to believe! She will easily make a mess of things.
She cannot even keep her maids in line, she added.
I flinched under my mask.
§
The curtain opened again to tremendous applause. The Prince Metternich and the Comte de Vogüé played the showmen in this final act. The curtain went up on a stage with clockwork pairs. Antony and Cleopatra, with an enormous pearl; a Chinese couple, who, when wound up, clicked their chopsticks wildly, flinging the food in front of them across the stage; a Bavarian shepherd and shepherdess who wandered lost among their sheep.
I was last, unwrapped by the Prince, who had dressed himself as a caricature of a butler, with thick black brows, a wild beard, and a false hooked nose. The audience laughed wildly at his every expression. He introduced me as a Tyrolean doll singer sent from America for the Exposition, the latest in mechanics. He was to wind me up, and the idea was that the clockwork mechanism had gone wrong and I would sing brokenly from a series of pieces of songs interspersed with trills and shouts.
He turned the false key at my back. I looked at the candles lighting the theater, seemingly thousands of them. The audience, the candles, the theater, it was all so beautiful, the crowd so elegant, I nearly forgot myself until the Prince arched his eyebrow and I began.
It was a pleasure to see them laugh at me.
Eh, it’s quite terrible, the Comte said. Can we stop her? He then made a pun in French about screws and vice. Est-ce qu’il n’y a pas de vis?
To which the Prince said, Il n’y a pas le moindre vice.
We must send her back, the Prince said. It would seem the doll was deranged by the voyage. La poupée a été probablement dérangée pendant le voyage.
There was vigorous laughter at this all. They wound my key again.
I think she needs oil! the Prince said to the Comte, in a mock whisper to the side. She won’t sing! Perhaps we are missing a nail somewhere?
But this is terrible! She’s the main attraction! There must be a button we’ve missed. Look well!
And with that, they began searching around my figure, looking for the “button.” More laughter.
Not one sign of a button, the Prince said sadly. Perhaps the button should be gold! he then said with a shout, and there was more laughter at this.
Ah, I think we must give her a shake, said the Comte, and then they stood on either side of me and shook me. There were still silk ribbons around my neck from the wrapping, and the Prince made as if he had accidentally caught one end in his arm as he announced, And now, she will sing “Beware!”
I did this jokingly, halted in places by his playful yanks on the ribbon at my neck, which belied a viciousness. Soon I was choking, and the line I was to sing was a refrain I had sung a few times already, “Trust her not, she’s fooling you,” and instead, for I had become frightened, I sang, “Trust him not, he’s choking me,” and the audience laughed, howling as the Prince reddened and relaxed his grip on the ribbon.
The curtain came down again to much applause. The Prince and Princess, in their costumes, went out to take bows as I rubbed my throat.
I was sure the Prince had been cruel with his ribbons to show me the value of my silence in this matter.
All at once, the Empress was before me, thinking I was her friend in my disguise. Thank heavens, I thought the Prince was really to strangle you! I was so frightened, the Empress said. And then I think she sensed the disguise, but before she could say more, I gestured at my throat and ran to the back, where the American I had replaced waited. I washed my face of the powder, and when I ascended the back stairs to return to the Empress’s chambers, she walked out dressed in the costume I had removed, as if she had just cleaned herself to receive her fans.
§
The bench in the darkness was again welcome. I had not expected to be overcome, but I was, and I wept there, miserable, as I waited for the ring of the bell that would not come for hours.
As I had looked out on the audience, I’d remembered the last time I’d sung for the Emperor’s pleasure, over a year previous. His gift to me pinned now to the tenor’s coat.
I saw myself sneaking the rose back from the tenor, walking out into the crowd here in the Emperor’s little theater to where he sat, to see if the Emperor remembered me.
It’s me, I would say. Or sing—perhaps I would sing the round again, return the token to him. And thus revealed, beg for his protection.
But I would never sing for him again.
Pepa appeared, surprising me, asking me to admire one of her newest dresses.
This time I clapped, and when I was done, she gave me a calculating look and offered to buy the tea-gown gift from the Empress right there. She flashed the coins at me. Did she know a maid’s weakness for the sight of gold? I think she did.
She was surprised when I nodded yes and laughed after she paid me. She even thanked me, perhaps the one time she ever had, and I knew I had struck a poor bargain—I’d not even haggled. But no matter; her first offer was more than enough for Lucerne. I brought her the dress, and as I handed it to her, I smiled at her, my first smile of real affection for her. She eyed me suspiciously, as if it made the dress suspect, and I left her to her imaginations.
§
When the Empress had gone once again into another council, I made my way to the apartment where the tenor, sure enough, waited.
He hadn’t even needed to tell me.
Afterward, as I lay on the floor of the apartment, dressed in another of the Empress’s gowns, the tenor stroked my hair in the aftermath of his passion and described his plan to steal me away.
Tonight there is to be a costume ball, he said. The company of the Comédie-Française is here, and they will present a salon play, Madame Girardin’s La Joie Fait Peur, then they will leave before dinner. You will be mixed in among them in costume, as will I. I will beg off, saying I must return to Paris on urgent business. You will follow the actors, and then we will depart.
He reached up and traced my cheek with his left thumb, and he closed his eyes, his head turning slightly.
You will come as my guest to the ball, so I can look after you, he said, and there you will join the actors. You must come to the ball prepared to leave.
What of my things? I asked.
What things? What things do you speak of?
He saw me look across to the trunk. Ah! Your gift! Perhaps we will put you in one of those, he said. When her empire is scattered to the winds, I will enjoy it as a souvenir. Or perhaps you meant this one?
He opened his coat. The rubies on the little rose glittered. He let the coat fall shut again.
Come back to Paris—and to me—and it is yours again, he said, and smiled at me. But only then.
The Empress would be hurt, I knew, even alarmed, afraid something terrible had come to pass. But the Comtesse also seemed dangerous to disappoint, as dangerous as the tenor. Then I remembered that I would be disappearing again once I was in Lucerne, and this world and its problems would be gone.
I had not told any of them I meant to go there. Once I was there, I would be free. I meant to escape him as we escaped and, in doing so, escape them all.
But whatever esca
pe I could make began by pretending to agree to his plan.
I nodded to the tenor in assent.
Say you will, he said.
I will, I said.
My single regret was the one too dangerous to admit. I had hoped to at least hear the composer, as I now called him, once more.
For more than that, but at least for that.
§
We went to the theater for costumes, down past the stage to the costume closet. I needed a mask of some kind that would cover my face, not just my eyes.
Here, he said, and chose a bear’s-head mask for me. He stood behind me and pressed his hands over my breasts, pressing them against my chest. Perfect, he said, and bound my breasts flat until, when he was done, I was the picture of a young soldier in a French general’s coat. Thick gloves hid my hands and riding boots gave me the height of a soldier. A cutlass swung off my waist, though it was a stage cutlass and could cut nothing.
And then he came from behind me and settled the bear’s head over mine.
Nine
AT THE ENTRANCE to the ballroom one of the guards smiled at us and asked respectfully to check my weapon.
He drew it, pushed the dull point into his palm, and then passed it back to me. He saluted as I sheathed it.
I could only see out of the bear’s mouth, everything framed by the bear’s teeth. Even so, it was the most beautiful, glittering moment I’d ever seen. The ball was a gathering of gods and goddesses, figures from myth, monsters. I wasn’t the only member of the palace to have raided the theater wardrobe for a costume, and the sight before me suggested it was perhaps what the costumes were used for most.
The Queen of the Night Page 20