“Ah, I know exactly what you mean,” Vivianne answered. She had been in love with a young singer once, long, long ago. Give her two broken ankles, give her fifteen beestings on the tip of her nose, give her a never-ending itch, but, Dear Lord, never give her those days back again! That paradise, those torments, that final, bitter deception.
Thus began Eve’s introduction into the world of the first-class music hall. When the sumptuous Eldorado had been built in 1858, it became the first true theater to replace the café-concert, that uniquely French mixture of singing and drinking that had grown too big to be contained within a mere café. Eve and Vivianne de Biron were soon on first-name terms as the older woman led the way from La Scala to the Variétes, from the Bobino to the Casino de Paris, pouring into the ears of the fascinated girl the lore and experience of twenty years.
“Now for Dranem. There are few singers who can make me laugh the way he does. He can fill a theater all by himself, but he’s not much to look at, is he, with those enormous galoshes and that minuscule, ridiculous hat—a hat in gold, I tell you. He calls it his ‘Poupoute’ and there isn’t enough money in Paris to buy it from him. And notice how he sings, without making the slightest gesture, rouge on his nose and his chin, with his eyes closed—he invented that specialty, and no one has ever done it better, although they have tried for years. Dranem, Polin and Mayol; they’re the great originals, my dear, and imitated by a thousand young singers. Polin, sweet as he is, doesn’t understand anything about publicity. He always used to say, ‘The secret of success is to leave the stage five minutes before the public wants to see you go.’ So he goes home every night, like a postal clerk, and you never read a word about him. I’m convinced that’s why he doesn’t make as much money as some who haven’t half his talent. As for Mayol, that big, rosy creature, he would be more popular too if he loved women instead of men—the women in the audience can tell right away that he doesn’t sing to them.
“Ah, look closely now, that third girl from the left, the one with the purple feathers and red hair. Yesterday someone whispered to me that she was four months pregnant by her impresario, but her stomach’s flat as a board. It just shows you can’t believe a word of the gossip you hear. Ah, I see you appreciate Max Dearly. I adore him—my old Max, I’ve always called him. He was the first comic singer who didn’t paint his face like a clown or wear silly clothes—imagine the sensation he caused, a singing comic with chic, and he dances as well, which the others don’t. The ladiės are all mad about him, and he likes them almost as much as he likes horses. I wish I had the money he’s lost at the track in his day.”
Eve, captivated, followed every word of Vivianne’s commentaries. It was not merely her knowledge that kept Eve riveted, but the new possibilities of human behavior, revealed by the older woman’s words, that were the object of Eve’s closely focused attention. Pregnant by her impresario—a man who loved men—losing money at the track—could anyone in the music hall have endured the colorless life she had led?
“Just look at young Chevalier,” Vivianne said. “He took his inspiration from Dearly, in my opinion, but he’s gone a long way since. Did you ever hear about the number that launched him? He and Mistinguett did a dance called ‘La Valse Renversante’—they knocked over all the stage props and ended up rolled up together in a rug. Naturally, one thing led to another and he became her lover. Just look, Madeleine! There’s Viviane Romance, next on the bill. I still think she took her name from mine. She had guts, I’ll say that for her. She actually dared to get into a catfight with Mistinguett after the Miss had her fined for laughing during a big tableau. She told the Miss that she was nothing but a grandmother and that one day she’d dance on her grave and got a good slap for her nerve. It took two men to separate them—I wish I’d been there to see it!
“Next week we’ll go to see Polaire—you must have heard about her waist. No? It’s so tiny that she can span it with a man’s collar of only forty centimeters. To my taste her nose is too big and her skin too dark, she reminds me of a little Arab boy, but I have to admire her eyes. Enormous they are, almost frightening. Imagine, when she toured America they had the nerve to bill her as ‘The Ugliest Woman in the World’ and those crazy Americans liked her looks so much that they demanded their money back! She’s on the same program as Paulette Darty. Now there’s a true beauty, if you ask me. Big where she should be big and pink where she should be pink. ‘The Queen of the Slow Waltz’ they call her, and not without reason. She found Rodolphe Berger, a real Viennese, to write all her music—not stupid, eh?”
“Vivianne, I was wondering,” Eve interrupted, “perhaps it’s too hard to get tickets, but I’m really dying to go to the Olympia.”
“Don’t you want to see Polaire?”
“Of course I do, but I’ve been reading so much about the Olympia’s new show. The Dolly Sisters and Vernon and Irene Castle and Al Jolson! All the papers say that no show has ever had such a wild success. Don’t you want to see them?”
“Pah! A bunch of Americans. A novelty, that’s all. My old boss, Jacques Charles, went to Broadway and hired everyone he could find. Not stupid either, I’ll grant you, but not very patriotic of him. Personally, I’m boycotting it. No one will notice, but you couldn’t drag me there,” Vivianne sniffed, and the subject was dropped.
However, Eve was determined to go to the Olympia, Vivianne notwithstanding, and by now she felt enough at ease in the huge theaters to go alone. It was late November and the fragrant, mellow days of October had made way for an unusually cold and wet autumn, but she had a heavy new coat and a huge fur “pillow” muff and a head-hugging fur toque in which to venture forth. Alain had made some money at cards and had been more generous than usual with her. She hadn’t dared to ask how much he’d made, for he didn’t encourage questions about his life with his friends, but from the way he insisted on treating everyone he knew to oysters and champagne every night, she imagined that it must have been a great deal.
Indeed, now that rehearsals for the new show were over, Alain’s afternoons, when he wasn’t performing, all seemed to be spent playing cards, she realized, and then pushed the thought out of her mind. He worked so hard at his profession that he earned the right to any diversion, Eve told herself, as she dressed to go to the matinée.
Vivianne should have come, unpatriotic or not, Eve thought, as the curtain rang down on the Castles’ ten curtain calls. To have missed them! To have missed that floating grace, that fresh charm! Her hands hurt from clapping, yet there was still one more number before the intermission, a singer named Fragson.
Vivianne had never mentioned his name in her many discussions of the stars, but nevertheless the audience had settled down into the clenched hush of excitement which Eve now knew preceded the appearance of a reigning favorite, a performer so established, so beloved that he or she had nothing to expect from the public except worship.
The curtain went up on a dark stage and then a powerful spotlight picked out a single figure; a tall, dark-haired man wearing a dark English clubman’s suit, a high, starched collar, the chain of his gold watch just visible under the knot of his somber tie. He inclined his head unsmilingly at the avalanche of applause that greeted him. As soon as he sat down at the piano and began to play the first notes of Folie, the audience interrupted him with thunderous applause and it wasn’t until he began to sing that they finally became silent. Eve heard the familiar words of Alain’s signature song, “I only dream of her, of her, of her,” in a nightmare in which she understood nothing. Did Alain know that someone named Fragson had stolen his song? How could this be allowed? How could the Olympia present this Fragson when only a few streets away, at the Riviera, Alain was singing the very same songs—the new one she loved so much, Adieu Grenade, and the droll song he’d just learned, La Petite Femme du Métro, and now, dear God, now even Reviens, Alain’s most precious piece of music, the one he always sang at the last, just before Je Connais une Blonde.
She looked about the theater fran
tically, as if she expected the police to come in and arrest Fragson at any minute, but she saw only hundreds of faces nodding in delighted recognition as each song was performed, all so well known to them that they needed no announcement. The woman seated next to her knew the words to all the songs by heart, for her lips were moving silently as she sang steadily along with Fragson, Eve realized in cold horror. She forced herself to focus on Fragson as closely as possible, and she realized that he must be many years older than Alain, that he had considerably less hair and considerably more nose and that he sang with an English accent. Otherwise it might have been Alain Marais on the stage of the Olympia.
As soon as the final applause was over and the intermission began, Eve left the theater as quickly as possible, walking home in a trance. Fragson. Fragson, who was a greater attraction than even Polin or Dranem or Chevalier, for she had heard them all now and none of them had aroused the extreme fervor of the audience as he had. Fragson, who sang Alain’s songs. Fragson, who sang in Alain’s style, a style she had never heard anywhere else in the music halls.
Fragson, Fragson—the name filled her mind inescapably, like a drumbeat, until finally Eve had to admit the truth. It was Alain Marais who sang Fragson’s songs, Alain Marais who sang in Fragson’s style, Alain Marais who even dressed like Fragson. She was certain that if she looked in Fragson’s shirts she’d see a Charvet label and if she looked inside his suit jacket she’d see that it had come from Old England.
Fragson’s existence explained everything she had wondered about in silence ever since she and Vivianne had begun to go to the music halls twice a week. It explained why Alain was content to stay in a music hall that she had thought was second-rate, but now realized was no better than third-rate. Fragson’s performance explained why a man with Alain’s splendid voice had never auditioned for one of the great impresarios, for now that Eve’s first shock at the sight of Fragson was lessened, she was forced to admit to herself that he sang with an extraordinary authority. He sang with the powerful presence of a grand seigneur, with a special charm of personality that could never—should never—be imitated. Fragson was the real thing.
Fragson explained everything about Alain’s career except why he had chosen to become an imitation Fragson. Did he even possess the ability to be original? She could never ask him. She could never let him know that she had heard Fragson. Whatever had caused Alain to decide to live as a mere copy of one of the greatest entertainers in France was not for her to question. She could guess; she could imagine that perhaps it had been easier to get his first job that way and that, for some reason, he had never dared to stray from that first success, but she could never, never ask.
Eve’s heart broke for Alain, as she remembered how he had told her how he had invented the Fragson way of singing; her heart broke for herself as she remembered how she had believed him. Was it possible that had happened only five months ago? She felt ten years older. No wonder Vivianne had tried to keep her away from the Olympia. With her encyclopedic knowledge of the music hall, she had known all along.
Automatically, Eve took the elevator upstairs to her landing. Vivianne, hearing her return, poked her head out of her door and asked, “Well, did the walk help your headache, little one?”
“Not really, Vivianne, but I’ll get over it,” Eve said. “A headache can’t last forever.”
The wet month of November began to seem like the tropics as December settled over Paris. Only the displays in shop windows lent a touch of color and cheer to a city where crossing the street had become a polar ordeal. Never, people told each other, had it been so cold, so windy, so dismal, so downright disgusting
Everyone looked forward to Christmas as if it might bring a change in the meteorological factors that made Paris one of the least endurable cities in the world in bad weather. The fabled but always present sky pressed down on its low gray buildings with an almost personal vindictiveness that made wise Parisians keep their curtains drawn and their lamps lit from morning to nightfall.
Two days before Christmas, Alain caught the head cold that had raged throughout the Riviera troupe for several weeks. He went to the theater as usual that day and got through his tour de chant but, after struggling home on foot, he grew much sicker in a frighteningly short space of time. By morning he had such a high fever and was so weak that Eve, who had been up taking care of him all night, went acre the landing in her peignoir to ask Vivianne if she knew a doctor in the neighborhood.
“I swear by old Doctor Jammes. He’ll have him feeling better in no time. I’ll call him right away, little one, don’t worry. And you must telephone the Riviera to tell them that Alain won’t be coming to work for at least a week. These Christmas colds are notorious.”
Doctor Jammes examined Alain thoroughly and shook his head. “Perhaps the rest of the troupe had only head colds, Madame,” he said to Eve, “but I’m afraid that this has all the signs of a case of pneumonia. He must be taken to the hospital at once. You can’t care for him here by yourself.”
At the word pneumonia, Eve was overcome by fear. How often had her father lost patients with mere liver problems to the dreaded pneumonia, for which there was nothing to do but cupping, and then pray that the patient had enough strength to live through the disease?
“Now, now, don’t get upset yourself, that won’t help, you know,” Doctor Jammes said hastily at the sight of her face. “You must be sure to eat properly and keep up your own forces. This young man,” he added, looking at Alain, “has been overdoing it, I’ll wager. He’s too thin by far. Yes, when he’s over this, he must start to take better care of himself. Ah, that’s what I always tell my patients, but do they take my advice? In any case, Madame, I’ll make the necessary arrangements at once.”
Is … is the hospital very expensive, Doctor?” Eve forced herself to ask.
“Everyone complains that it is, Madame, but surely you have savings?”
“Yes, yes, I just asked because, well, any illness …”
“Don’t worry too much, Madame. He’s young and it’s better to be too thin than too fat, I always say. But I must take my leave. I have five more patients to see before lunch … doctors don’t have time to get pneumonia, and a good thing too. Good day, Madame, and call me if you need me for anything else. I’ll see him in the hospital, of course, when I make my rounds.”
“Vivianne, I know this makes me sound like a child, but I have no idea what Alain does with the money he makes. He gives me money for clothes, but he pays the maid himself and we never eat at home except for breakfast. I don’t even know the name of his bank,” Eve confessed to her friend. She had seen Alain settled in the hospital and there was no more for her to do for him.
“You shall just have to ask him, little one. Don’t worry, he’s been making good money for years and he’s no fool,” Vivianne answered, congratulating herself yet again on her own financial arrangements. She didn’t doubt that the wives of her protectors were just as ignorant of their husbands’ finances as Madeleine was of her lover’s
But for the next month Alain was in no condition to be questioned about the location of his savings, or anything else. He came perilously close to dying three times after he was admitted to the hospital. Vivianne kept Eve’s health up with the nourishing meals she cooked, and if it had not been for the money she forced on Eve, Alain would have had to be transferred to one of the hospitals Paris reserves for the indigent.
Finally, in the last days of January he seemed to be on the road to recovery, and Eve, worn out but determined, asked him how she could obtain some money from his bank.
“Bank!” he laughed feebly. “Bank! There speaks a true daughter of the rich.”
“Alain, I only asked a normal question. What makes you say that?”
“Because if you hadn’t been born a rich girl, you would know that I spend every penny I make, I always have and I always will.… That’s the life I chose for myself long ago. Any little bourgeoise would have realized that long ago. Economies!
They’re for the safe little man with a safe little wife and, God help him, a bunch of safe little children. Pah! I’d rather lose it all in a good card game than hoard it in a bank. You can’t complain, can you? When I had it I spent it and I didn’t come complaining to you when I lost it all, either, did I?”
“Lost it all?”
“Just before I got sick. A bad run of cards.” He shrugged his shoulders “There would have been just enough for Christmas, but then I expected to get lucky again or wait till payday, whichever came first. I never worried. I refuse to worry and I’m right, you’ll see. I’ll be back at the Riviera in no time now that this stinking pneumonia is almost over.”
“But, Alain, I asked Doctor Jammes how soon you could come home, and he said maybe in a few weeks but that then it would be … months, months of recovery before you could go back to work!”
“He’s a pompous old fool.” Alain turned away from Eve and looked out the window at the snow which so rarely fell on the city of Paris.
“Pompous, I grant you, but no fool. I think he saved your life,” Eve said indignantly.
“Listen, I have some advice for you,” Alain said bitterly. “Go home. Go back to Dijon.”
“Alain!”
“I mean it. You weren’t meant for this life and you must know it. You’ve had your adventure, but surely you see that it’s over now? Go back to your parents just as fast as the railroad will carry you. You don’t belong here. God knows, I never dreamed of asking you to come with me—that was entirely your idea, remember? My kind of life suits me, but I can’t be responsible for anyone else for long. You invited yourself. Now it’s time to go. Say good-bye, Eve, and get on that train.”
“I’ll leave you alone now. You’re overtired. I’ll be back tomorrow, darling. Try to rest.” Eve fled the hospital ward without looking back, hoping that no one would notice her tears.
Judith Krantz Page 8