I coughed and stared out the window at the black spinning past me. Hadn’t Aunt Augustine warned me that I didn’t have Camille’s music hall looks? A hunger spasm clenched my belly and I thought about the cold room waiting for me in Montparnasse. Then I imagined my mother and Bernard sitting at the kitchen table on the farm. Aunt Yvette was cooking potatoes in the fire. The light from the flames flickered on the walls and reflected on the glasses of wine on the table. Wouldn’t it be easier to go back?
I shrugged the thought away. It would be easier to go back and be surrounded by people who loved me, to sleep in a warm bed and to have a full stomach. But the girl who had been content with wandering the hills of Pays de Sault and dreaming of the lavender harvest didn’t exist any more. I wanted to be on stage.
By the time I reached Châtelet to change trains, I had exhausted myself with dramatic thoughts and had turned into a paragon of stoicism. I decided that I had to forget the Folies Bergère audition. Hadn’t I failed my audition at Le Chat Espiègle and still got the part in the end? And hadn’t Monsieur Lemarchand, one of the greatest artistic directors in Paris, praised my voice?
The train for Vavin pulled into the station. Besides, I thought, taking a seat in the middle carriage, I do not want to be some feathered bird strutting around the stage, no matter how prestigious Monsieur Etienne thinks that is. I opened my purse and took out the audition schedule. The next one was for the following evening at a nightclub in Pigalle.
There, I said to myself, glancing at the number of singers used in the show. There are only three singers, not sixteen. It is practically a solo part!
NINE
I left for my audition the following night in good spirits. I had spent the morning scrubbing the walls and floor of my room. I had then caught the métro to Ménilmontant to buy some blankets at a market there and a thin cotton mattress over which I would put a second mattress when I had more money. I had rested in the afternoon, preparing myself for the audition and running over the ballads I had chosen from ‘Scheherazade’. I thought a smaller venue would want a more intimate performance.
It was almost ten o’clock when I exited the métro at Pigalle. I was amazed to see how much the village atmosphere of the Right Bank’s entertainment quarter changed in the evening. The tumbledown streets were jumping with music: accordions, violins and guitars; soprano and contralto voices; songs in French and English. The music bellowed out of cafés and throbbed out of clubs. Foreigners crowded the streets—Scandinavians, Germans and British. But more than any of those combined were Americans. One man, too young for the cane he was leaning on, was talking to a group of men and women in evening wear. He began his sentences with ‘Yawl’ while they all ended theirs in ‘schure’.
‘Yawl. Schure,’ I repeated to myself, walking along Boulevard de Clichy. The women of the night were out in force, their skirts girded up despite the cold. I passed a bar with a sign, ‘Café des Americains’, above the door. People were sitting on the windowsills and spilling out the door. Music blurted from the windows. I was struck by the energy and dynamism of it—a piano, drum set, trumpet and trombone. They sounded like a marching band, but less orderly. The singer started up. Boo-boobly-boo-boo. I couldn’t tell if he was singing in a foreign language or simply making sounds. But I liked the way he bent his voice then returned it to pitch.
The nightclub I was looking for was off the main street, down an alley that stank of cat urine. I had trouble finding the door, but when I did I realised there was no handle. I knocked and waited. Nothing happened. I wondered if there was another entrance from the main street. I checked but there wasn’t. I returned and this time pounded my fist against the door. After a minute it opened and I found myself face to face with a woman with her hair coiled into a bun on top of her head and a chin that sagged to her neck.
‘I’m here for the audition,’ I said.
The woman jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Come inside.’
I followed her through a corridor into the club. A cloud of tobacco smoke stung my eyes and it took me a few seconds to register the murky brown walls and the bottles lined up on the counter. The club was full of men, alone or in small groups, huddled over their drinks or card games. One of them glanced over his shoulder and scowled at me. I turned away and found myself looking at what I guessed must be the venue’s stage: some boards propped up on a couple of fragile-looking trestles. The dip in the middle wasn’t reassuring.
‘Hey, René,’ the woman shouted to a man cleaning glasses behind the counter. ‘Your performer’s here.’
The man flipped open the counter and stepped towards us. I did my best not to stare at his stomach which was straining the buttons of his shirt. ‘The cellar,’ he said, hissing his vinegary breath into my face. ‘The audition’s in there.’
He pointed to a flight of stairs that descended into a dimly lit room. If I hadn’t been so desperate for a job, and so disorientated by Paris, I might have had the sense to leave then. Instead, I felt my way down the stairwell, pressing my hands against the damp walls. When I reached the bottom step I saw that the room was lined with barrels. I thought that I must have taken the wrong stairs, then I heard a man’s voice behind me. ‘Ah, you’re here.’
I turned around. Sitting at an upright piano was an old man, as dusty as his surroundings. ‘Deirdre will join us soon,’ he said, smiling through stained teeth. ‘You’re the only one trying out tonight.’
The man’s translucent face and bloodless lips made him seem unreal: a ghost trapped in the cellar with his piano. If it hadn’t been for the sound of a table crashing to the floor upstairs and men’s voices fighting to bring me to my senses, I might not have been able to speak at all.
‘I have music,’ I said, handing him my songs.
He took the sheets from me and flicked through them. He was holding them upside down but that didn’t seem to bother him.
‘Merde!’ I heard the proprietor’s voice shout upstairs.
‘Very nice,’ said the old man, handing the music back to me. ‘But we have our own songs here. I’ll sing you the song and then you sing it after me, all right?’
I nodded.
The man’s fingers hovered over the keys for a minute before he began playing. The piano was out of tune.
My doggie’s tail, it wags
Tra-la-la-la
My landlady’s mouth, it nags
Tra-la-la-la
The Eiffel Tower, it stands
Tra-la-la-la
Ah Paris, isn’t it grand?
The man lifted his hands from the keys. ‘Now, do you think you can sing that?’ he asked, wiping spittle from the corner of his mouth. ‘Let’s try. Sing along with me.’
He played the tune again. I sang along as best I could, twisting my hands behind my back. My bewilderment came through in my wavering voice.
‘Nice. Very nice,’ the old man said, smiling. ‘But how about making it a bit more jolly. Our patrons like their fun.’
A bottle smashed upstairs. Something heavy fell to the floor. Footsteps clumped on the steps. A few seconds later the woman with the bun, who I assumed was Deirdre, stepped into the cellar.
‘Is she ready?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘She’s got a good voice. Sweet.’
Deirdre threw her head back and glared at me. ‘Are you going to wear that outfit?’
My hand fell to the dress Camille had given me. ‘Yes,’ I stuttered, dumbfounded at how my best dress could be met with such disapproval. It was nicer than the smock Deirdre was wearing.
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a card. ‘If you get the job, you’ll need to wear a black gown. Here’s the name of our costume-maker.’
I took the card and nodded, too inexperienced to know about the racket run by disreputable café-concerts. Naive performers with stars in their eyes were made to buy costumes from dressmakers who gave the café manager a cut on the deal.
‘Do you know your song?’ Deirdre asked me.
; The old man let out a spooky laugh. ‘She does. Well enough.’
‘Come on then,’ Deirdre said, gesturing for me to follow her. ‘If you pass the audition you can keep any tips you make tonight. Remember, it’s only when I leave the stage that you or one of the other girls step in. I’m the star.’
‘Other girls?’ I asked, following Deirdre’s enormous girth up the stairs. I had thought that the club only had three singers.
Deirdre turned around when we reached the top of the stairs. ‘If the girls are busy talking with customers, then you get up there and sing. And if not, you let them. They were here first. Got it?’
I nodded although I wasn’t sure if I had ‘got it’ at all. My heart was beating so violently that it was making me sick. It dawned on me that my audition was going to be before an audience.
Deirdre pointed to the four stools that had been set up on the stage and told me to sit on the one on the left. I did as I was told, slipping my bag and coat under it. I looked out at the audience. Amongst the men there were now women watching the card games or sipping drinks. The smell of unwashed bodies and musty clothes was suffocating. A man with a scar down the side of his face bawled at a waiter to bring him a drink. When it was sent to him he turned his attention to me, his gaze moving up from my feet to my breasts. I stared at the picture of the hog on the back wall, trying to avoid his eyes. To my relief, two other girls stepped onto the stage and took their places on the stools and the scar-faced man turned his attention to them. One of the girls was a brunette with pimples on her chin. Her eyes were swollen as if she had been crying. The other was a bleached blonde whose black eyebrows stood out like stripes on her forehead. The ghost man came up from the cellar and sat down at a piano near the stage. He ran his fingers over the keys. To my relief the instrument was in tune.
Deirdre hitched up her skirt and wobbled her massive bosom. My heart sank as soon as she hit the first note. Her voice was a cross between a parrot and a goat and for most of the song she was a couple of bars ahead of the piano. She shook her legs and shimmied her hips. No one paid her any attention, except for the scar-faced man who continued to leer.
An argument broke out at one of the tables. A man with a stain down the front of his shirt turned around and yelled at Deirdre, ‘Shut up, you ugly mutt! I can’t hear the call.’ Another man, sitting by himself at a table near the front, spat an olive stone at her. It missed Deirdre and hit me on the chin. I wiped away the residue, not quite able to hide my disgust. But if Deirdre was concerned at the lack of respect given to her star position, she didn’t show it. She continued for three more songs, including a shrill version of ‘Valencia’ to which she also performed a sort of bobbing dance that reminded me of a pigeon pecking for food, before bowing and stepping off the stage.
I was thankful to see that the other girls were still on their chairs. The brunette stood up and sang ‘Mon Paris’ in a throaty voice that wasn’t too bad except it didn’t carry. That kept the card players happy while the rest of the audience ignored her or called out, ‘Sing up!’ Even the scar-faced man transferred his attention to a broad-shouldered streetwalker. The brunette finished her song and stepped off the stage, sitting down next to the man who had spat the olive stone. He grinned, showing a gap where his front teeth should have been, and threw his arm around her the way a man might do if he were trying to headlock a vicious dog.
I turned back to the stage and noticed that the blonde girl wasn’t there—she was sitting on the lap of a card player—and that the pianist was nodding at me. I slipped off my stool and edged my way to the front of the stage. I smoothed down my dress and cleared my throat. ‘My doggie’s tail, it wags. Tra-la-la-la.’ I was so terrified, my arms and legs stiffened and I sang the entire song frozen to the spot. But this was an audition I didn’t care if I failed; I only wanted to get out of that place alive.
When I reached the end of my number, I made a grab for my stool but the pianist played the tune over again and I had no choice but to sing it again. To my horror, everyone who wasn’t playing cards stopped talking and turned to watch me. ‘The Eiffel Tower, it stands. Tra-la-la-la. Ah Paris, isn’t it grand?’ My voice didn’t sound like my own, it was strained with nerves. But compared to the other girls, there was no arguing that it was good. The scar-faced man clapped. ‘Sing it again,’ he shouted. A table of people sharing a bottle of wine joined in his applause. One of the men stepped forward and tossed a few coins in the jar on the piano. The other men at his table followed suit. René glanced up from the bar and winked. The pianist whispered, ‘They like you. You’re really good.’ For a moment everything seemed fine. I never wanted to set foot in the place again, but tonight at least there might be money for a new dress or a rug for the floor. I sang the ditty again, this time more boldly, and lifted my voice to carry through the room.
A man with a broken nose who was playing cards turned around and shouted, ‘Will someone make that bitch shut up? I can’t think!’
‘Yeah,’ slurred his female companion, lifting her head from her beau’s shoulder. ‘She stinks.’
‘Not like you, ya mongrel,’ the scar-faced man shouted back at her. ‘You stink like a rotting fish.’
A few people in the audience laughed. The broken-nosed man rushed to the bar and seized the scar-faced man by the throat. But his target was too fast—before the broken-nosed man could strangle him, the scar-faced man flattened him with a blow to the stomach. More punches flew. The broken-nosed man’s friends ran to his aid. The proprietor swept the bottles from the counter; he was just in time. The card players picked up the scar-faced man and threw him over the counter into the mirror. His supporters retaliated by picking up chairs and smashing them across the backs of the card players.
The pianist smiled at me and continued playing my tune. I stood at the front of the stage, too scared to move. Something sharp jabbed into my stomach. I glanced down. The olive-spitter had a blade pressed against my ribs. His eyes were bloodshot. I stared at his cavernous mouth, his ruby-red lips. I was sure he was going to kill me for no reason other than it was something to do.
‘Get out, bitch,’ he said. ‘You squawk like a dying bird and nobody likes you.’
I gave a cry and tried to get off the stage, but my feet wouldn’t move. The man made a swiping action with the blade. The gesture spurred me into action. I grabbed my bag and coat, jumped to the floor and ran through the crowd, dodging flying bottles and chairs. I raced through the door and up the boulevard, nearly knocking people over in my panic to get away. It was only when I reached the brightly lit métro station that I stopped to catch my breath.
Back in my freezing apartment in Montparnasse I threw myself onto my bed, covered my head with a pillow and wept.
By the following morning, the events of the previous evening were beginning to seem like a deranged dream. Grotesque faces with scars, broken noses, missing teeth and double chins loomed up before me and I felt the sharpness of a blade pressing into my skin. Had any of that actually happened? I found it hard to believe that a reputable agent would have sent anyone to such a disreputable establishment, and I walked all the way to Rue Saint Dominique with the intention of telling Monsieur Etienne so.
To my surprise it was Monsieur Etienne, and not Mademoiselle Franck, who answered my impatient ring of the buzzer.
‘Now then, what’s wrong?’ he asked, ushering me into the reception room. ‘Something’s the matter—I can tell by your face. And you missed your audition last night.’
‘I did not!’
Monsieur Etienne raised his eyebrows and gestured for me to take a chair. ‘What is going on, Mademoiselle Fleurier?’ he asked, folding his arms. ‘You didn’t go to your audition at the Café des Singes last night after I had talked about you to the manageress. She rang me this morning to ask why you hadn’t showed up.’
‘But I was there,’ I insisted.
I described my audition, including the stools and how we were to be paid only in tips. Monsieur Etienne’s face
blanched when I told him about the blade in my ribs.
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ he said, looking at me as if he were trying to ascertain if I was mad. ‘I would never send a client of mine to a place like that.’
He was cut off by the sound of a key in the door. Mademoiselle Franck sauntered into the room with a stack of mail clutched under her arm. She was even more chic than the first time I had seen her, wearing a georgette dress and crocodile-skin shoes.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, looking from Monsieur Etienne to me.
Monsieur Etienne repeated what I had told him about the previous night’s audition and her mouth dropped open. ‘But, Mademoiselle Fleurier,’ she said, waving her hand and sending the fragrance of orange blossom floating through the air, ‘the place you describe sounds nothing like the Café des Singes. Monsieur Etienne and I have known the manageress for years. She runs a classy bar. That is why we thought, with your voice, you would do well there.’
‘Manageress?’ I repeated. ‘The nightclub I was in last night had a manager and a piano player. Unless of course you are referring to Deirdre?’
‘Deirdre?’ Mademoiselle Franck knotted her brow and turned to Monsieur Etienne. ‘The manageress’s name is Madame Baquet.’
I reached into my bag and pulled out the schedule. ‘Look, this is where I was last night at ten o’clock. The manager there was a man. His name was René.’
Mademoiselle Franck took the paper from me. ‘Number twelve?’ she muttered, hurrying to her desk and flipping through a card file. She found what she was looking for and gave a cry, her cheeks flushing crimson. ‘Mais non!’ she said, holding up the card. ‘The street number of the Café des Singes is twenty-one. The numerals are switched. A typing error!’
‘Number twenty-one is over the other side of Boulevard du Clichy,’ Monsieur Etienne said, running his hand over his forehead. ‘It sounds as if the place you were in was a café-concert.’
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