The Queen of the Night

by Alexander Chee

  As it was a costume ball, I was not asked to remove my mask, though I still had the sense to be anxious in case I was engaged in conversation and the guests tried to guess my identity, but I felt safe. My costume, to my mind, encouraged silence. Bears were not known for their conversation, even in formal dress.

  The dance master appeared in front of me, in the guise of a sultan, and raised his hand with a tremendous slowness. The musicians gathered their attention, and the room waited in silence. The hand descended, and they began a waltz.

  The tenor, beside me, had dressed as a shepherdess—the most powerful shepherdess I’ve ever seen, the Emperor declared, as he appeared at our side. He said it with a slightly odd, flirtatious tone, as if perhaps the tenor had attracted his attention in some new way. The Emperor cocked his eyebrow, examining him boldly. The tenor endured it with a coquette’s stoicism. I wanted to laugh.

  Finished with that, the Emperor turned to me.

  I watched his mouth, oddly magical to me, as he peered into the glass eyes of the bear. I wanted to kiss it.

  The Emperor wore just a domino cape and hood, and a plain mask over a plain if elegant dark suit. He was dressed exactly as he had been the day I first saw him. The day he gave me the ruby flower still hidden in the tenor’s coat.

  Who have we here? he asked. Are you the Prussian Bear himself? And he tapped the snout.

  This bear is French, the tenor said, a protesting tone in his voice, and clapped my epaulets. He’s even a general in His Majesty’s army, though I suspect his only allegiance is to the woods.

  With that, the tenor made a surprisingly graceful curtsy.

  May they be French woods then, the Emperor said. And remain that way. Be welcome in my court, general of my woods.

  I bowed stiffly, careful not to tip the mask off onto the floor.

  The theatrical troupe had mixed in with the crowd too well; one of them came over and told the tenor they’d been invited to stay the night and that they’d agreed.

  I experienced this at first with some relief, but then I knew this would not stop him.

  I tried to think of what to do as I struggled through the ball’s formalities. All of the watching of balls that I had done before this had not prepared me to be inside one. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know the dances; the entire costume ball was a ritual, from when we entered until we left, and I had the sense of moving constantly outside its rhythm. I was so concerned with this that I forgot my real purpose until I found we stood in front of the Empress.

  She was in the company of a man in a plain suit and domino cape, but the hood had been pulled back and he wore a red-painted wooden devil mask over his face. The Empress had also dressed as a shepherdess, but by this, I knew from having dressed her in it, she meant to appear as Marie Antoinette.

  The devil I knew; he was my composer. I could tell from his hair and his eyes as they studied me, trying to figure out who was beneath the mask.

  Does the bear army need a shepherdess? the Empress asked, with a laugh.

  Devils appear to, the tenor said, and she blushed or flushed slightly. I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. And then the devil laughed, and she appeared pleased, at least, that he was pleased.

  We do, the devil said. We need a shepherdess who knows the valleys of Hell.

  That is precisely what I am, the Empress said, and as she said it, she fingered the soft cloth of the devil’s cloak and looked out across the floor to the crowd dancing there. The strange truth of it grew as we waited for her to return her attention to us.

  Away with us, she said to the devil, turning to him, and they went on their way.

  I was grateful I was allowed one last meeting.

  A mazurka began, of a more ordinary kind, and the devil led the Empress into it. She tilted her head back, a careful mask of appreciative pleasure, looking, for a moment, just like Marie Antoinette in Hell, at home enough to dance. The other figures moved closer, a siren dancing with what appeared to be Neptune, a courtesan with massive shoulders in the arms of a slight, stern gentleman, a Spanish Gypsy woman with a huge Viking warrior.

  I noticed the tenor busy speaking to one of the Comédie actors, perhaps about me. He looked away from me. I made my way along the wall to the doors, and without looking back, I let myself out onto the balcony, shutting the door with the quiet you can only learn when you are in service.

  This was my chance.

  A group of the goddesses from inside had hiked up their skirts to cool their legs from dancing and were lighting cigars. The Princess Metternich was visible at their center, lit by a huge flame from her match.

  Salut, ma générale, she said, waving at me. She let out a curl of white smoke into the air and beat the skirt of her dress like a cancan dancer, which made the other women laugh.

  How strange to me still that she should have been the first to call me that.

  I bowed to her and they laughed again. And then, with a small shock, I understood that she had seen that I was a woman. The strange confidence I’d had of feeling hidden left me, and I nearly ran for the allée.

  §

  I followed the path as it wound into the garden and headed for the woods behind the palace. It was very cold now, almost too cold to be out of doors. The rich smell of the grapes left on the vine to rot or freeze greeted me under the canopy of vines.

  The tenor had not come outside for me, or if he had, he had not found me yet. He would console himself, I told myself, with his American singer; the Empress with her composer; the Emperor with any of them or all of them.

  I turned to look back to the palace and saw it light the dark, as if something bright and immense paced through the rooms, unable to be still. It was a vast théâtre du désir, on a scale to make Odile weep. All for the pleasures of the Emperor. All of France was, at that time, not an empire but a salon play of an empire, with a Napoléon who was not, in fact, a great general but had only a great general’s name, at the head of an army that could barely take an undefended cottage in the woods, and with an empress who could not control her maids. Here I was, rebellious maid that I was, in her garden.

  I remembered the tenor’s taunt to me, holding his jacket open, the ruby flower there—Come back to Paris, and to me, and it will be yours—and it stung.

  He could keep it, I decided then. He could make his American soprano wear it as he thought of me.

  I was glad to leave with only the money from my bargain with Pepa. That seemed honest. My plan, such as it was, was to make the walk to town and wait for the train dressed in my costume and mask. Some might laugh, some would have questions, but it would be a fine disguise, that of a dissipated guest of the palace. They would laugh at me, but no one would stop me or talk to me.

  It was time.

  I took the mask off to see better in the dark garden, held it at my side like a helmet, and walked down the allée away from the palace. At the bottom, as the garden opened out into a long slope, there was an enormous mound of dirt by the edge of the woods, where some sort of construction was being done. Behind it, from in the woods, I heard footsteps, hard and quick, and singing, and saw flashes of fire. I heard three young male voices singing at the top of their sound, singing a drinking song of some kind in heavily accented English, but trying to sound British.

  Ye sons of Anacreon, then join hand in hand! Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love!

  Two appeared in the air, passing to either side of me like spirits of the forest, burning pitch torches in their hands. They landed partway down the hill, still running, and headed up to the palace at a sprint, laughing. A third, singing in a rich alto, appeared also in the air above me. The light on his torch lit the small horns on his mask, tipped back to reveal his face.

  My devil.

  ’Tis yours to support what’s so happily planned! You’ve the sanction of the gods and the fiat of Jove!

  He landed in front of me, and as our eyes met, he stopped. Behind me, his fellow singers ran to the palace, picki
ng up the song again, and I saw him look at them and then look back at me.

  If I had made my way down even a moment later, I would have only heard them run by, never knowing. The full force of what I felt for him, for this chance, filled me. I had thought I would not see him again, had thought the world perhaps organized to keep us apart. But perhaps, this seemed to say, perhaps not.

  Perhaps not.

  He took in the mask at my side, then my face, and I saw him recognize me with surprise. He smiled, bowed deeply, and stood again, looking at where his friends had gone. He turned back to me and said, Stay here, and then he sprinted after his friends.

  He belonged to her, without question. But it seemed as if he also belonged a little bit to me.

  His request was impossible, however. To linger meant I might be caught. Yet to leave meant to lose the one chance I’d hoped for in my time here, other than to leave.

  I pulled my mask back on in case I was discovered by anyone else and continued up the rise of the hill. I turned back, and in the distance, by a statue of a lion on the terrace, I saw the composer with his friends, the three of them singing their song at the tops of their voices to the assembled group of women I’d passed, who now let their skirts rest near their ankles, but who continued smoking their cigars, the tiny red lights of the embers there sparking in the distance.

  Voice, fiddle, and flute! No longer be mute! I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!

  Raucous applause for this funny little song, and then the gentlemen bowed, and all at once the composer vanished from sight.

  I waited to see if he would return, and at once, there he was, emerging from under the vines, intent, head down, headed back to me, an arrow in the dark, some last gift of the palace.

  As he caught up to me, he took my arm in his hand and walked me farther into the garden. He led me down the stairs into what seemed like a path the gardeners used, hidden unless you knew it was there. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and pulled me to him.

  His face silver in the moonlight. The wind at mine.

  The mask fell on the ground beside me. He kissed me as his hands unstrung the tie in my hair that held it up so that it fell around my shoulders. The hands next slid down to grip the sides of my hips as he pressed me against the wall and crushed my mouth with his. He opened my coat and pulled down the bandage holding down my breasts so that they were in the open, and then pressed his face down into them. When he opened the front of my pants and pushed against and then inside me, I made a low moan against his neck that he then stifled by pressing the bottom of his forearm against my mouth. He continued to lean his hips into me. The newness of him, the urgency of him, made it sharp, and I tilted my head back, almost fainting. Our eyes met while he moved deeper into me, and in response I punched him furiously on his chest and shouted against his arm. He pushed his mouth into my hair as he thrust into me again and I heard the low sound come out of my mouth again. His face on my neck, he pulled me up until my legs crossed on his back and I rocked against the wall. It went like that, sometimes violent and sharp, urgent against the cold air and stone, smoke drifting down from the fires and the distant cigars, distant voices.

  When it was done, he stood panting, still holding me up, our faces wet. He closed his mouth over mine. He pulled back, as if hearing something, looked to both sides and then back at me. He held up a finger and pressed it against my mouth before fastening himself up and slipping down the gardener’s path.

  And then he was back again. I paused, afraid—it was time for me to continue on, past time. I was expecting the tenor at any moment.

  He gently touched my chin with a finger and drew me to him to kiss me once more. I allowed it.

  This kiss, it was not like the others with him, or with anyone before him. It had the feeling of a secret between us. It was like the discovery of a new world, or an agreement that was also a new world, that began and, I would discover, was returned to and built upon each time we kissed again though, for now, there was just this one, a hope in the dark.

  How the world seemed to shake with what had happened. But it was just my heart.

  He drew back, the hint of a smile on his face, and then let go, and he put one finger on my lips as he put another on his own to warn me to be silent again. And with that, he was gone again, sprinting up the hill.

  For the briefest moment it seemed as if I could follow him, go back inside, stay, sleep, wake, and serve the Empress and wait to find him again.

  But I could not. With all I had in me, I ran the other way.

  When love comes this way, the first dream of it feels like a prophecy that has come true. I had never known this feeling until now—he was my first. And so I let myself dream of him again and believe it could be the future.

  The chords of the nocturne I’d heard him play that first day I saw him found me again as I made my way into the woods, and I went as if I could follow it to him, to where he would be next.

  §

  Mon général, I heard someone say, and a hand shook me awake. Pardon.

  I opened my eyes to the darkness of the mask. I remembered I’d arrived to find the station closed and hid here behind the railing when I heard a rider on a horse. I’d only meant to rest for a moment, but instead I had slept.

  For how long? I wondered, as the station clerk tugged at me.

  Wake up and buy a ticket, and I will not call for the police, he said, and laughed.

  I stood shakily and tried to move the mask’s mouth to at least see him, but then I heard his keys in the lock. I muttered a thank–you and steadied myself as he went in and closed the door.

  I took off the mask. My hair was stuck to my throat and ears, waxy and damp. I pulled it out to my shoulders to dry and, anxious to find another spot to hide in until the train came, I walked down the platform. Vapor rose off me like smoke in the new cold.

  A young family arrived, a husband and wife, with two daughters and a son. Their youngest, the son, noticed me and waved as their carriage was unpacked. His mother pulled him away, cutting her eyes from me in disgust. She was, perhaps, a few years older than I was, dressed in a new traveling dress and coat, a fine hat and gloves, new leather shoes. She was my dream of me as I was to have been on the day I headed to Lucerne, but made real, and I watched her as the door closed behind her.

  And, as if mocking me, another like her, and another, and another all arrived to take the next train wherever it was going.

  In the dawn light of the Compiègne station, my dreams of arriving in Lucerne played before me. In them, it was always morning. I drank a rich coffee in the dining car, and the sun beat brightly through the window like a whip. I wore a beautiful dress, my hair braided carefully, and smiled as the train passed over the canals filled with swans, the one thing I knew of Lucerne. The rooftops glowed dark red in the early morning sunlight, and the streets to my aunt’s house were clean and quiet. I would knock on the door to her large respectable town house, a house that looked as if nothing could ever bring it low, and be recognized, embraced, welcomed inside. I would finally meet my mother’s sister and discover if she is like her in any way—in the face, her smile, a gesture, her scent. I would be fed, given a beautiful room, beautiful clothes, a beautiful life with everything I wanted to eat, and I would rest at last in the love of my family. I would find it all had just been waiting for me here to come and pick it up.

  I reached into my pockets to be sure the napoleons Pepa paid me hadn’t been taken from me as I slept. As I did, I took in my boots. My pants, my coat.

  My costume saber.

  In the window by the door, I saw my reflection. The young woman in a general’s coat, as if I were a favorite cantinière he’d left his coat with to keep her warm. The coat suited me, but to go like this meant I would not arrive in a beautiful dress. It would not be morning. There would be no coffee for me in the dining car, not dressed like this. I would arrive like a refugee from some mysterious war—one concluded by a masked ball from which I’d
escaped.

  I tried to judge what I thought a toilette like the young mother’s would cost. The clothes I was accustomed to up until now either cost much less—a grisette’s dress—or so much more. If I needed more than I had, I could go to a junk peddler in town to sell the costume and the mask to him. But it seemed to me he might know these things had come from the palace theater. He might even have sold them to the costumer. And then I might not be able to afford the ticket as well.

  I stepped down to the street as if to go to do this and then did not, waiting instead.

  I needed one last disguise. One last disguise when I did not want even one more.

  I imagined myself then, sitting before this aunt I had never met, dressed in the dress I would have to buy to make my way to her, and giving the news of my mother’s death—and that of my family. And the very next question she would ask me.

  However did you get here?

  And I would look at her and see my mother’s coffin, the dirt shining by her grave. The farmhouse burning in the night, the blood on my skirts, the horses as I sold them. The face of the widower farmer and the graveyard on the hill. The tents of the Cajun Maidens, the cheering crowds, the lights in Flambeau’s hair, Ernesto as he picked me up off the horse and set me down. The Emperor and his ruby gift to me, his hand opening like a magician. The Cirque Napoléon, Euphrosyne, Odile, the Bal Mabille. The nights at the Majeurs-Plaisirs, the tenor, the Garnier, the Conservatoire. La Muette. The Comtesse and the Empress. My composer . . .

  The palace garden at night.

  La poupée a été probablement dérangée pendant le voyage.

  Indeed she was.

  To leave for Lucerne that day was to leave it all, and all of this would have to hide inside me as I told my aunt a story that I’d sold the farm and that a young, unmarried, unaccompanied girl had traveled to her, virtue intact, through the terrors between the farm and Lucerne. She would nod and smile, most likely not believing me, but accepting the story and me. And so I would be able to remain with her until she found me a man willing to marry her foreign-born orphan niece, sitting before her in the dress she likely would have stolen to get there.