reading

One

When it began, it began as an opera would begin, in a palace, at a ball, in an encounter with a stranger who, you discover, has your fate in his hands. He is perhaps a demon or a god in disguise, offering you a chance at either the fulfillment of a dream or a trap for the soul. A comic element — the soprano arrives in the wrong dress — and it decides her fate.

The year was 1882. The palace was the Luxembourg Palace; the ball, the Sénat Bal, held at the beginning of autumn. It was still warm, and so the garden was used as well. I was the soprano.

I was Lilliet Berne.

The dress was a Worth creation of pink taffeta and gold silk, three pink flounces that belled out from a bodice embroidered in a pattern of gold wings. A net of gold-ribbon bows covered the skirt and held the flounces up at the hem. The fichu seemed to clasp me from behind as if alive — how had I not noticed? At home it had not seemed so garish. I nearly tore it off and threw it to the floor.

I’d paid little attention as I’d dressed that evening, unusual for me, and so I now paused as I entered, for the mirror at the entrance showed to me a woman I knew well, but in a hideous dress. As if it had changed as I’d sat in the carriage, transforming from what I had thought I’d put on into this.

In the light of my apartment I had thought the pink was darker; the gold more bronze; the bows smaller, softer; the effect more Italian. It was not, though, and here in the ancient mirrors of the Luxembourg Palace, under the blazing chandeliers, I saw the truth.

There were a few of us who had our own dressmaker’s forms at Worth’s for fitting us when we were not in Paris, and I was one, but perhaps he had forgotten me, confused me with someone else or her daughter. It would have been a very beautiful dress, say, for a very young girl from the Loire. Golden hair and rosy cheeks, pink lipped and fair. Come to Paris and I will get you a dress, her Parisian uncle might have said. And then we will go to a ball. It was that sort of dress.

Everything not of the dress was correct. The woman in the mirror was youthful but not a girl, dark hair parted and combed close to the head, figure good, posture straight, and waist slim. My skin had become very pale during the Siege of Paris some years before and never changed back, but this had become chic somehow, and I always tried to be grateful for it.

My carriage had already driven off to wait for me, the next guests arriving. If I called for my driver, the wait to leave would be as long as the wait to arrive, perhaps longer, and I would be there at the entrance, compelled to greet everyone arriving, which would be an agony. A footman by the door saw my hesitation at the mirror and tilted his head toward me, as if to ask after my trouble. I decided the better, quicker escape for now was to enter and hide in the garden until I could leave, and so I only smiled at him and made my way into the hall as he nodded proudly and shouted my name to announce me.

Lilliet Berne, La Générale!

Cheers rang out and all across the room heads turned; the music stopped and then began again, the orchestra now performing the refrain from the Jewel Song aria from Faust to honor my recent performances in the role of Marguerite. I looked over to see the director salute to me, bowing deeply before turning back to continue. The crowd began to applaud, and so I paused and curtsied to them even as I hoped to move on out of the circle of their agonizing scrutiny.

At any other time, I would have welcomed this. Instead, I nearly groaned into my awful dress.

The applause deepened, and as they began to cheer again, I stayed a moment longer. For I was their creature, Lilliet Berne, La Générale. Newly returned to Paris after a year spent away, the Falcon soprano whose voice was so delicate it was rumored she endangered it even by speaking, her silences as famous as her performances. This voice was said to turn arias into spells, hymns into love songs, simple requests into commands, my suitors driven to despair in every country I visited, but perhaps especially here.

In the Paris press, they wrote stories of me constantly. I was receiving and rejecting gifts of incomprehensible splendor; men were leaving their wives to follow me; princes were arriving bearing ancient family jewels, keys to secret apartments, secret estates. I was unbearably kind or unbelievably cruel, more beautiful than a woman could be or secretly hideous, supernaturally pale or secretly mulatto, or both, the truth hidden under a plaster of powder. I was innocent or I was the devil unleashed, I had nearly caused wars, I had kept them from happening. I was never in love, I had never loved, I was always in love. Each performance could be my last, each performance had been my last, the voice was true, the voice was a fraud.

The voice, at least, was true.

In my year away, the theaters that had once thrilled me — La Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Mariinsky in Saint Petersburg — no longer excited me as they once did. I stayed always in the apartments given over to the company singers, and soon it seemed as if the rooms were a single place that stretched the length of Europe and opened onto its various capitals.

The details of my roles had become the only details of my life. Onstage, I was the druidic priestess, the Hebrew slave in Egypt, the Parisian courtesan dying of consumption, the beautiful orphan who sang as she walked in her sleep, falling into and out of trouble and never waking up until the end. Offstage, I felt dim, shuttered, a prop, the stick under the puppet. I seemed a stranger to myself, a changeling placed here in my life at some point I couldn’t remember, and the glass of the mirror at the entrance to the palace seemed made from the same amber of the dream that surrounded me, a life that was not life, and which I could not seem to escape no matter where I went or what I sang.

And so their celebration of me that night at the ball, sincere as it was, felt as if it were happening in the life neighboring mine, visible through a glass.

I tell you I was distracted, but it was much more than that. For I was also focused intensely, waiting for one thing and one thing only, my attention turned toward something I couldn’t quite see but was sure was there, coming for me through the days ahead. I’d had a premonition in accepting the role of Marguerite that, in returning to Paris this time, I would be here for a meeting with my destiny. Here I would find what would transform me, what would return me to life and make this life the paradise I was so sure it should be.

I had been back in Paris for a little more than a month now, though, and my hopes for this had not yet come true, and so I waited with an increasingly dull vigilance, still sure my appointed hour was ahead of me, and yet I did not know what it was or where it would be.

It was here, of course.

I rose finally from a third curtsy and was halfway to the doors to the terrace when I noticed a man crossing the floor quickly, dressed in a beautiful new evening suit. He was ruddy against the white of his shirt and tie, if handsomely so. His hair was neatly swept back from his face, his blond moustache and whiskers clean and trim, his eyes clear. I nodded as he came to stand before me. He bowed gravely, even ostentatiously.

Forgive me this intrusion! he said, as he stood upright. The diva who throws her suitors’ diamonds in the trash. The beggars of Paris must salute as you walk by before they carry your garbage shoulder high.

I made to walk past him, though I smiled to think of his greeting. I had, in fact, thrown diamonds in the garbage twice, a feint each time. My maid knew to retrieve them. I did it once to make sure the story would be told in the press, the second time for the story to be believed. I was trying to teach my princes to buy me dresses instead of jewels — jewels had become ostentatious in the new Paris, with many reformed libertines now critical of the Empire’s extravagance, and there was little point to a jewel you couldn’t wear.

I enjoyed your magnificent performance in Faust last night — it was tremendously subtle, very moving, he said.

He waited to see if his flattery would affect me. It did. I also believed that last night’s performance had been my finest night as Marguerite. And as he was very awkward, like someone who had never done what he was about to do, I stopped for him, thinking to be kind.

I made to curtsy to him for the compliment, as I had just previously, and he laughed. No! Please. Let me bend to you, and with that, he knelt as he took my hand. I am Frédéric Simonet, a writer. I’ve longed to meet you, he said, but never more than tonight. I have a proposition for you, if you’ll allow me a moment of your time. There are no loathsome diamonds involved, I promise, unless you insist. Will you hear me out?

I held my hands out and smiled by way of invitation.

Last year I was at a dinner in Rome, recounting a favorite memory, of a girl singer at the Exposition Universelle in 1867. Did you see her? They called her the Settler’s Daughter, and she was said to have been rescued from the savages and able to sing only a single song her mother had taught her — and was entirely unable to speak otherwise. She was performing in a show from the colonies, Canada, I think. Her song moved the Emperor to give her a token of his right there in the hall. A tiny ruby brooch of a rose. Shortly after, the papers reported she’d vanished, escaped into the Paris surroundings. I never saw any sign of her again. In the months after, I wondered what had become of her and eventually even checked with the Conservatoire, as I wanted to see if perhaps she had come to them, perhaps to be made over into one of their mediocre sopranos. They said they had no knowledge of a singer of this kind. Incredible, yes?

I nodded, and he continued.

I then thought nothing of it for years until I bought a property in the Marais, a beautiful hôtel, and as it was prepared for me to occupy, the workers made an extraordinary find. The young singer’s possessions, even the ruby brooch! And what seems to be her diary of her life here in Paris. It is quite plainly hers. She taught herself to speak French — it even contains her practice lessons. She abandoned it and her things, having lived, it would seem, in that hôtel in the Marais. And it was when I saw the brooch that I remembered my search for her. It was all found in what had been the noble family’s chapel, as if she had held some private ceremony there. As if she meant to return for it all and never did — it was there the novel truly came to me. I should think they will fetch a fair price at auction, if I ever sell them. It was such incredible luck. I was completely under her spell that day, and here were her things! Everything but her. It felt like an order from the gods to undertake this work.

Of course, I’m sure she’s some maudlin chimney sweep now, raking out stoves for a living. But a chimney-sweep ending would sell few books, he added. So I wrote my own. The novel is called Le Cirque du Monde Déchu. We follow her into a life of degradation as a fille en carte and her subsequent redemption through love. Like Zola’s Nana, but as an opéra-bouffe-féerie, of sorts. Or it will be.

He paused here dramatically. Which is why I have come to speak with you. Some of the other guests at that now-fateful dinner in Rome recalled her as well, and among them was a composer, recently a winner of the Prix de Rome and something of a protégé of Verdi’s. I believe he is planning to be here tonight. He was likewise moved by her and vowed that evening if I were to write the libretto, he would make an opera of it.

He paused again, summoning his courage.

It is our desire to have you originate the role of the singer. It would be a stupendous coup, we feel, and would ensure the opera’s success. And you, well, who better for the Settler’s Daughter than the singer who does not speak?

Yes, came the thought at last. Who better?

For I had also seen the young singer he spoke of. I had been her.

I knew all about her.

The brooch was an imperial trifle, a tiny thing to an emperor, I think, but for me at the time, so much more. Made of rubies, several to each petal, set in either platinum or white gold — I had it before I knew the difference — the stem inlaid with jade. There was even a thorn. At his mention of it, the flower had glowed in the air between us, a tiny phantom, and then was gone.

Here it was, the source of my premonition, the meeting with my destiny.

My little game of not speaking in public came from when I was her. A circus ruse, theatrics done for the audience. Not one of us in that little act had been as we said we were. “Lilliet Berne” was in every way my greatest performance, but almost no one knew this to be true.

The various shocks of this conversation — that it seemed my life had been the basis for this man’s new novel, that it was to be an opera in which they wanted me to create the role, that he had in all likelihood effects I’d long believed lost — all had the result of casting the life I led now as a disguise, assembled in haste, to cover over the one he described. I struggled to consider a reaction, but I felt as if I were misremembering halfway through a performance the role I was playing — on the verge of singing an aria from Norma, say, but within Don Giovanni.

In an opera this moment would be the signal the story had begun, that the heroine’s past had come for her, intent on a review of her sins decreed by the gods. This writer perhaps a god in disguise, like Athena, or a demon, say, as in Faust. If he were either, though, his disguise as a mortal was impeccable. He was for now the picture of a nervous if handsome man, waiting for me to answer, and still I could not move, I found.

When I did not so much as nod to him, he smiled and said nervously, Perhaps … you can sing me your answer, yes? Would you at least be interested? He leaned in as he said this.

I managed to offer him my arm, for I still meant to enter the garden. I intended to speak to him, and given my reputation, this also required privacy. He accepted, and I made a gesture toward the terrace. He led me that way. We passed through the doors and down the lawn, and then I released his arm and turned so that I would be in shadow and his face, lit by the chandeliers inside, behind me. I wanted to see him clearly as I spoke to him. I needed to see his reaction in his eyes.

If this was a joke, perhaps, or some strange, unforeseen malice.

He looked at me expectantly, even with fear, as I set a finger on his mouth before he could respond or interrupt. Yes, I said. I will speak to you of this.

His eyes were sincere, I noted, as I began.

The faith you have in my abilities is wonderful, I said. And the origination of a role is the one honor that has eluded me thus far. Thank you. I do admit to being intrigued. I am committed for now to Faust this season, and then Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera next, in London, but I will look into my schedule to see what room there could be in the year ahead. Do you know how far the music has come or what schedule you intend?

Forgive me my earlier impudence, he said, gesturing back inside. I … Thank you! You honor me. I do not have these answers. We have neither music nor schedule as yet. Perhaps you will come and meet my new friend? I believe he’s arriving with the Dumas set. When we pass through to dinner, I can bring you to him.

I can see them by the light of their cigars. There, he said. Do you see them, on the balcony above? Come, let’s see if we can find our way.

He gestured to a crowd of gentlemen shadowed by the gaslights of the courtyard, who waved back.

I waved as well.

I return to this moment frequently, for it was when everything that came next in my life was decided. Meeting the composer in this dress was out of the question, though I could not say this. I was eager, also, to leave, or at least be alone, even for a moment, for this offer no longer felt like fate but something disguised as fate, a dangerous ruse meant to draw me into a trap.

The fit of a dress determines the stride of a woman — whether she can bend at the waist, sit, or ride — and so for a woman to change her dress was to change even the way she walked and the speed at which she ran to her fate.

If I had stayed in the terrible dress, or if a better dress had been made and sent over, if I had gone up the stairs, had dinner with the writer and composer, all would have been different.

But I did not stay.

He extended his arm and made to lead me back in through the crowd.

He saw I had not accepted the invitation to walk in and let his arm drop again with a questioning smile.

Yes, I said. How incredible. The gods indeed.

It’s no use, we’ll never make it through the crowd right now, he said, looking at the stairs. We shall wait a moment. But what a pleasure it is to hear you express interest.

Thank you, I said.

I can see it right now, he said. If I can ever find a store willing to stock the book between their piles of Zola and Daudet, I think it will be quite a success. But an opera with you in it, well, Ceci tuera cela, he said.

This will kill that.

I know this, I said of his quote. What is it from?

It’s Hugo, the writer said.

Of course, I said.

I now remembered what I knew of him. I had even heard him at a salon at least once, carrying on about this very quote. He was very mortal after all, then, known for writing novels based almost entirely on the scandals of his friends. While he typically hid their identities, his most recent subjects could be guessed at by whoever dropped him for the season following his most recent book. He knew everyone, though, and was otherwise everywhere.

He nodded, pleased. It’s the complaint from a priest character of his, that the written word would destroy cathedrals. The novel would separate us from God. He smiled as he said this.

I should warn you, he said.

I waited as he tried to think of what he would say. My novels … it would seem they have a way of coming true. He looked away as he said this, as if ashamed.

It came to me this was perhaps how he explained the way he stole from his friends’ lives. Not theft then, but magic.

So if I accept, I said, then … for you have not told me of the ending.

She rejoins her circus. You would become an equestrienne in a circus, in love with an angel. He would give up his wings for you, and you … well, your voice.

So be it, I said.

He laughed, surprised. Very well then, he said. Caveat cantante.

He presented his card, and there, indeed, was the address. I had not seen it in years.

I set his card in the wallet at my wrist and made the excuse of feeling too poorly to stay for dinner, but I promised to read the novel and await the music.

Oh, but you really must at least meet the composer … He gestured at the balcony.

Perhaps we will set an appointment, I said. I would like very much to see the brooch.

His face brightened at this. Yes! You must come; I will show you everything.

I offered my hand to say good night and watched his back vanish into the crowd.

I stayed there until I could move again. It had taken all I had just to stand. I then recalled I’d not asked the composer’s name, but I couldn’t shout to Simonet without a scene. I was to dine with the Verdis the next day, though, and resolved instead to ask after this composer then.

I turned and walked farther into the dark back of the garden, full of fear. Yet once there, my feelings had changed. I was no longer sure I could wait contentedly for my dinner with the Verdis before meeting this composer. I had the impulse to strip this dress off and walk back through the bal in just the corset, for the corset, at least, was beautiful. I’d had one other dress ready at another dressmaker’s, Félix, the man I relied on besides Worth, and thought sadly of having chosen this dress over that.

The bal was full now and wheeled in the night, monstrous, the picture of the fifth act ballet in Faust, in the Cave of Queens and Courtesans. The demon Mephistopheles, having rejuvenated Faust and aided him in the seduction of the virtuous young Marguerite, finds him desperate, preoccupied by her imprisonment, as she awaits execution for the crime of killing the child he fathered on her out of wedlock. He has driven her mad. Mephistopheles convenes a ballet orgy with the most famous beauties in history — Cleopatra, Helen, Astarte, Josephine — all to cheer his sad philosopher, who will not be cheered. The queens and courtesans frolic around him with madcap ballerinos and ballerinas, all while Faust thinks only of his doomed beloved.

My cue to enter is when the dancing ends, when I, as Marguerite, appear before Faust, an apparition only he can see. He demands Mephistopheles help him rescue me, the scenery shifts, and Faust is then magically in my prison cell, exhorting me to leave. I refuse him — I refuse to be saved by devils — and beg for forgiveness instead from God and His angels, who descend finally as I die redeemed.

Standing here now, it was as if I’d escaped from the jail into the fifth act ballet, arriving before my cue, a prisoner to this dress.

I withdrew a cigar to console myself, and as I clipped the end, a man I hadn’t noticed held out a flame for me. I drew carefully, and as the tip glowed, I saw him and his companion more clearly. They smiled and nodded, and I smiled as well and began to turn away.

Mademoiselle, said the man who had offered his light to me.

My madcap ballerinos, then.

They introduced themselves, but I knew very well who they were. Brother dukes, known to most for their handsome profiles, philanthropic works, enormous wealth, and, most important to me on this evening, their reputation for returning women from an evening in their company with their dresses cut to pieces by sabers — and for supplying those women afterward with more dresses in return, presumably to meet the same fate. Their sabers were said to be quite sharp, and the women never harmed. Many had spoken of this preference but none had ever admitted to submitting to it, except to say, And if you were never going to wear the dress again … This was usually punctuated with a laugh.

This perhaps my destiny also, then. My luck changing from bad to good in a single trip through the garden.

Ceci tuera cela.

I drew the first saber myself, holding my first new friend’s gaze as I plunged it into the taffeta flounces and cut all the way to the hem. He uttered a soft cry of happiness and fell to his knees to press the dress to his face before he lay back in ecstasy, groaning.

When he and his brother were done, the taffeta resembled an enormous flower torn to petals in the grass. Only the gold wings of the bodice remained, the skirt now like a very short tutu, as if I’d been transformed into one of Faust’s ballerinas.

I shivered, pleased with the result. I’d learned long ago, for men with pleasures this specific, the rest was of no consequence to them. There was no mark on me as I stood there, free at last of the evening’s first mistake, and they were well satisfied.

Fantastic, said the one.

You are our goddess, said the other.

Whatever you ask of us, whatever we can provide, we are at your disposal, the first said.

As we made our way out through the back of the garden to their carriage, the jacket of one of them on my shoulders, the jacket of the other at my waist, I knew what they could provide and handed them my other dressmaker’s card.

Félix was in his evening suit when I arrived. He was about to set off for the ball himself — he’d been busy dressing clients and was only just now ready. He threw open the door and pulled us in.

My dears, what possible errand could you be on? he asked, smiling in greeting first at me and then at the young dukes.

Yes, it seemed, the dressmakers of Paris would know them quite well. I walked to Félix’s ledger, took his pen from his stand, and wrote:

These good gentlemen have said they will do anything I ask of them tonight. Let us help them keep their word.

I had Félix’s assistants box up the ruined dress and send it back to Worth, including a note that said only Pas comme ça.

I made my second entrance to the ball in a beaded black silk satin gown, the train behind me like the glittering tail of a serpent. The dukes were on each arm. As we were announced together, the crowd turned and, at the sight of us, roared with delight. The dinner had been served, so many stood on their chairs to see us as I descended again to the garden to enter under a roof of crossed swords made for us by officers who had served in the army with the dukes. As we made our way off the terrace again, I looked to the balcony the writer had indicated to see the men there watching me, their faces changing as they took in what had happened, and then I heard the cheers in the garden and the laughing as the men saluted me.

This was the entrance I deserved. This was what I wanted this composer to see. I had returned for this.

I took a breath. O Dieu! Que de bijoux! The opening words to the Jewel Song aria from Faust rang out across the garden. There was a shocked silence, and then the orchestra quickly joined in.

This was the song Marguerite sang after being presented with the demon’s gift of jewels meant to seduce her into a life of sin. The chaste girl is transformed at once into a woman in love with her beauty, a beauty the jewels reveal to her. It begins and ends in classic soprano entrance style, on long, clear, high notes, as if Gounod knew it should be sung in a palace garden at a Paris ball at night.

I sang it as a gift to the audience, to the composer, to me. I sang it as a taunt to the Fates, too. I was weary of my fears as well as my desires, and so I sang it in simple defiance of all of it, even defying myself. I covered the night and its secrets and regrets in coloratura cavatina, until all that could be remembered was me.

La Générale! the crowd shouted as I finished and came down the stairs, and I lifted both my hands into the air to the crowd, smiling. I could feel the applause beat against my skin as it echoed and grew. A woman screamed as her dress swept the candles on her table and caught fire as she stood on her chair to see me. She was rushed to the fountain, where it was put out, and even this was cheered. The group of officers who had roofed my entrance with their swords then knelt, offering them to me, and the crowd changed from shouting my name to laughter as I took one and mock-knighted them all. La Générale! La Générale!

The fear, the feeling of the mad scene, the sense of a trap in wait, even the feeling of destiny, all faded into the applause. I looked afterward for the writer to see if I might finally meet the composer, but as in a fairy tale, he was gone.

My maid Doro waited until the afternoon and then came and pulled the shutters in my bedroom open.

I had lain awake in my bed for some time, which was unlike me. I had not slept well. The strange amber twilight I’d lived with was gone, and in its place was some terrible new brightness. I’d gone from feeling lost in a dream to lost in wakefulness, as if I might never sleep again.

No more gaslights as I dress, candles only, I said to Doro.

Of course, she said, and tied back my drapes.

Gaslight is a liar, I said. She smiled as she stepped back. On second thought, gaslight and then a last check by candlelight, I said. My dresses must look good in both. Last night’s dress was a foul betrayer. Candles would have caught it out.

Perhaps it only gave its life to make room for the ones to come, she said, and hung the new gown away with a faint smile.

As she walked past, I saw the morning’s papers on my tray with my coffee. Between them and the new dress she had not put on me, she likely knew the story. She asked no questions, though, as ever.

I stood; she put on my dressing robe and left me to my coffee by my window. The alley was unchanged. But here, within the robe, I felt myself to be an imposter in my own life.

I was unnerved after I’d been unable to find my new friend and his composer, and had even withdrawn his card again to prove to myself the conversation had been real. I went again to my wallet and withdrew it once more. Frédéric Simonet, it read, and with that address, the letters like a fracture, the faintest of cracks along this life of mine.

He had not lied. The Marais house was indeed his.

Of all the accolades heaped at my feet, the one I lacked for was the honor of originating a role, a part written precisely for my voice. This was the opportunity with the power still to entrance me. I could not turn away lightly. For a singer, this was your only immortality. All the rest would pass.

But this story was somehow of my life — and to immortalize it, this was not in me to do.

I went to my closet and touched the new dress, hung there just now.

A singer learned her roles for life — your repertoire was a library of fates held close, like the gowns in this closet, yours until your voice failed. Though when you put them on, it was then you were the something worn — these old tragedies took you over.

Here was my old tragedy, then. Waiting, held open, as if the writer had come to me with my old costume, asking me to put it on.

Had there been even one poster left somewhere, still on the side of a wall, peeling away? The Settler’s Daughter had been my first role. I did not know how to be her again, the girl who sang her way over the sea with a single hope in her heart, abandoned here — abandoned, in fact, the morning after she took the Emperor’s favor from his hand. To be her again or, really, perform as this odd shadow of her? This was too much.

The life I led now I’d made so I would never be her again. I’d never wanted to be reminded of her and her struggles again. And yet I knew I had always been her; I still was her. I had come back to Paris once again with one hope in my heart, sure of my moment of destiny, and had been given this, the past I’d hoped to forget, asking to be my future.

An earlier suspicion returned then, renewed, something odd in Simonet’s story I could not forget. He had mentioned a chapel, and there was no chapel that I remembered. The other details he’d mentioned were so close to my life, this alone of all of it seemed a lie, even a clue. Less like the work of Fate, then, and more like an imitation of Fate. A plot.

That little ruby flower, I knew the reason I had left that flower behind. I knew just where I had left it, the exact room of the house. It was no chapel. To be recognized from my song that day at the Exposition Universelle, this alone did not bother me. The one secret that mattered to me could be said to be there in the Marais with Simonet.

Whatever this was, it had come from that room.

Two

The next evening, after my performance, I washed the maquillage from my face, exchanged my Marguerite prisoner cap for the wig I wore as a disguise, and easily passed by the men waiting outside the theater, fogging the streets with their hundred kinds of tobacco smoke. I arrived to my dinner with the Verdis that night determined to get an answer on the question of the protégé.

Verdi’s verdict on his talent, character, and prospects would make my decision final, I had decided.

Verdi had cooked, as was his custom when circumstances allowed, and Giuseppina usually made sure this was so. The maestro insisted on eating only his favorite foods, even when working abroad, and always only in the ways he could make them. He was as proud of his risotto as he was of Aida, perhaps the more so. Whatever problems he encountered as he worked, with publishers, theater owners, or sopranos, his wife knew the recipes to these various foods were the recipe to him. To eat something else would literally unmake him. So he traveled crated down with dry risotto, maccheroni, and tagliatelle; anything that could not be brought would be arranged for by Giuseppina at whatever the cost. To dine with him was to dine on food prepared either by him personally or by his chef, who usually came with him, nearly as dear to him as his wife. We did not go much to restaurants.

When I entered their hotel suite, I was greeted by Giuseppina, who took my hand in hers, and led me to the dining room while poking at my wig and laughing.

Who is this woman of mystery? And where is our Lilliet? she said, her voice deepening as if she were onstage. From somewhere out of sight, Verdi laughed in answer as he finished some final preparation.

Giuseppe and Giuseppina were slim, gray in the same ways, oddly twinned, her profile more Roman than his. Her eyes were darker and intent, his filmed over, as if by ghosts; they were like sentinels of a kind, one who watched for the living, the other, the dead.

Verdi had lost his first wife and children when he was a young man, and was rumored to have fathered a secret daughter on Giuseppina, born to them from before their marriage. Giuseppina herself was said to have two other children, back from when she was the imperious soprano lover of Donizetti, but I had never met any of them. When I came to see them, I liked to pretend I was the secret daughter, abandoned and then found again. I wanted to belong to them forever. No one could fit easily between them, though a few had tried.

I sat with them at the small elegant table laid out in their suite, relieved by the familiar smell of his maccheroni. Giuseppina asked me about the ball of the night previous — had I really returned in a new gown? And why?

For the Jewel Song, of course, I said. A costume change. And I winked. I was inspired by the way the ball resembled the fifth act ballet.

Verdi looked to her gently before he poured champagne for us all and made a toast.

To Gounod, Faust, and … and the fifth act ballet, he said.

We laughed, raised our glasses, and drank.

A ballet is nothing to add lightly, he said. Un Ballo in Maschera, did you know it was not always set in America? I was forced to set it in America so as not to offend a prince. An American masked ball! I’d never heard of such a thing.

I did not, I said, amused. I was to perform this next for him in Milan, to open the season at La Scala in December with it. Where was it set previously? I asked.

Sweden! But the offended parties were Napolitanos! And Napoléon III, also, strangely. He usually only minded if an opera was overlong.

We laughed.

A few courses were served and then he asked me if I might agree to another opera altogether. This as he set the plates full of risotto in front of us.

I Masnadieri, he said.

I smiled and looked down to my risotto. This offer surprised me. When he’d asked me to dinner that night, I’d thought it was to discuss some further detail of the Milan production. I knew this other opera a little — I would be killed by bandits instead of dying in my cell this time — and I was about to say yes, as I usually would to such an offer, and then did not.

Speak freely, my dear, he said. Something bothers you.

How to say it? I was tired of dying this season, tired of playing so long at death and madness. My initial hesitation began there and was joined by the irony of his granting an old wish — acting as if I did belong to him — even as a new one had appeared. The idea of originating a role written by a protégé of his had taken root in me over the course of the day and had even grown into a romantic fable, the more plausible to me as I sat here. Giuseppina had met Verdi when he was a struggling young composer beginning his career with Nabucco. She had created both the lead soprano role and her life with him, leaving behind the more famous Donizetti for the handsome young composer. Composers often courted singers with original roles in operas, as they both knew well.

I thought of myself as a Giuseppina then, waiting for my own Giuseppe to appear and hoping, perhaps, that he had.

But I had not yet met this new Giuseppe. They, it seemed, had; they knew who he was. I couldn’t say no to Verdi, though, especially for an opera without a score, written by the protégé I had meant to ask after next. He would eventually find out, and this would insult him. And so I could not say yes, and I could not say no, and I could not ask my question, not right then. I could lie, the thought came, but as quickly came the thought that to lie to him was a grave sin against our friendship. For he would know.

What’s more, I had no lie prepared.

This is a surprise. We were so sure you’d be pleased, Giuseppina said. She raised an eyebrow, and they sat back in their chairs again. Verdi held his glass to the side near the candle flame, and along the tablecloth a deep red shadow pooled.

My novels, I heard the writer say, in my memory of the night before. They all come true. And I knew what I would say.

As you can tell, I said, I am afraid to consent.

The lie was still forming on my tongue when a feeling came, like that premonitory trill of the string section in an opera, the warning of danger.

I feel it brings a curse, I said.

Verdi squinted and looked up. The red light from his glass flashed along the pressed white linen tablecloth.

I fear the roles I take come true, I said. Condemn me to repeat the fates of my characters in life. This I worded as a suspicion, for I already regretted this lie, which had seemed small and ridiculous just a moment before, but still useful somehow, and now was an explosion, the words still in the air around me like smoke, a smoke that could grow to cover my entire life. And Verdi’s face was now so grave, so solemn, I was about to contradict myself, or laugh, or agree to take the role if only to please him when Giuseppina reached for my hand. She glanced at her husband, who did not meet her eyes, and then she leaned very close to me.

Of course they do, my dear, she said. This is why I have sung nothing since marrying.

Verdi put his glass down. Cursed? I wonder. What have you dared? He stroked his beard as he met my eyes, a faint smile on his face.

The great tragedies are told of the families who’d caught the attention of the gods with their hubris, struck down but known forever to us. The House of Atreus, for example, he said. But perhaps you are cursed. Perhaps when we do as we do, he said, the gods learn something. Certainly we do not. He pulled my free hand to him and kissed it, as if I had bid him good night. Take very good care, he said. Our prayers are with you. I do understand. And if this means you must withdraw from the other production, please, tell me.

I sat silent before them, humiliated, unable to answer until I remembered the matter of my other mission and decided to proceed as plainly as possible.

What is this I hear of a protégé? I asked. A young composer, a recent winner of the Prix de Rome?

Verdi said nothing but stood and removed our plates and then returned to the table with grappa, which I took.

It’s nothing to speak of, he said. I’m sure I just made the mistake of doing someone a favor, and now he is telling people he is my protégé.

He exchanged the briefest look with Giuseppina before turning back to me.

If I had as many protégés as I am said to have, I would command an army, he said.

There was no avoiding any longer that the evening, and perhaps more, was spoilt, and the only rescue for it began with my exit.

I excused myself, they brought my cape, we exchanged muted kisses good night, and I hired a driver home.

As the little calèche made its way to my home through the dark, past the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal, on its way to the avenue de l’Opèra, I pushed back into the seat, and the wood and hide creaked. In the wind, I could smell the mushroom whiff of dead leaves and earth.

He had lied to me, you see. That was clear from the look he’d exchanged with Giuseppina — he had lied to me and was warning her not to contradict him. But this had the effect of telling me the protégé was real. The new mystery as I left was as to why he’d lied.

And as to what I had dared that might offend the gods, well, I had lied to Verdi. And he knew.

The Paris I’d met when I first arrived during the last days of the Second Empire and Napoléon III was a series of ascents that looked at first like descents; going down brought you up — succès de scandale. The women I met then dressed as if choosing weapons; their balls, parties, and dinners were a series of duels and mêlées, and the salons and ateliers of the city, outfitters for a vast assassins’ guild too decorated by half. A girl could enter this world as a grisette, taking in laundry, and in a week or two, be at Worth for a gown; two weeks more, leave at dawn in the carriage of an Austrian industrialist, having been stolen from the bed of the Emperor just to be protected from the Empress. She’d be returned within the month if the industrialist were either assassinated for presumptuousness or titled for his rescue of the Emperor’s happiness. Everyone I met had the look of seeing a story repeated in front of them, actors in a rehearsal on a marked stage: the laundress, the couturier, the industrialist, the Emperor, the Empress. As I passed each, I soon saw that this world was new only to me; and when I was done with my turn, I had found my place and learned to listen for the wooden shoes of the next girl as she came through.

Napoléon III was now dead, in his mausoleum in England, the Second Empire replaced by the Third Republic, but I could still make out the shapes of the new grisettes in the dark, walking and waiting for their lovers, careful of the police, studying me and my calèche carefully as they shifted from foot to foot, as I once had, and wondering how to become one such as me. I nearly saluted from where I sat.

By one unhappy thought, the chorus sings in Lucia di Lammermoor, a thousand joys are lost. Perhaps, I told myself, I could write to Verdi in the morning and accept. I could tell him it was foolishness and beg his forgiveness. But each time I thought it, there stood Madame Verdi, with her blithe assurance that my lie was the truth, greeting me at what I did not know would be this next station in my journey.

Her quick acknowledgment of my little lie as some long-standing secret truth among singers did not reassure me, though. Instead, it made the lie seem like a spell I’d been tricked into casting on myself, one that made it so. As if I had cursed myself.

The music for Un Ballo in Maschera as well as I Masnadieri waited on my tray at home, no doubt sent over before or during our dinner — he had been so certain! There was a note, a short Brava! And his looping signature below.

I prepared to send the one back and then could not — not just yet.

In Un Ballo in Maschera, my character, Amelia, was dishonored but would live. The orphan Amalia in I Masnadieri was murdered. They were like so many of the roles I’d played, roles close to my life, a procession of orphans, grisettes, courtesans, wronged lovers, the disgraced ones. But Amelia, the American, Amalia, the orphan, they were very close, like some strange duo that was really the same girl leading the way. The letter e in Amelia changing to an a, like a tiny mask just for me, all of them, perhaps, leading to this next role, if I agreed to it, as the Settler’s Daughter in Le Cirque du Monde Déchu.

Me, as I once had been.

What was her fate? Was her ending happy or sad? The writer had said something about an angel and love, and Hell, of course.

Why was there never an opera that ended with a soprano who was free?

The first thing determined in the career of a singer is her Fach. The word is German and sounded like Fate to me the first time I heard it. It is a singer’s fate, for it describes the singer’s range and the type of roles the singer will sing. Some soprano tones are associated with virtue, others with seduction, others with grief. If your voice is a collection of the highest notes, you are to play the good girl. If your voice reaches only to the near heights, you are the spurned one or the dishonored. A bit lower and you are the rival or the seductress, and still lower, the maid or matron. To move from the confines of your Fach was to risk sounding suddenly as if there had been no education in singing at all. The voice loses all its qualities.

Mine was a voice that sounded at first as if it did not have the capacity for high notes, until they emerged, surprising, with great force. A voice for expressing sorrow, fear, and despair. The tragic soprano is what I was called, also known as a Falcon.

Nothing to fear from a fate that was already yours, then, except, perhaps, that it would never leave you.

Alexander Chee

THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Contents

THE BEGINNING

Act I

THE CURSE

One

Two