Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

The spell works, she tells him. Le charme opère . Keep it, she tells him, and he doesn’t hear her, and each night it leads, circumstance by circumstance, to Carmen’s death under Don José’s knife. As the soldiers passed me nightly, I found I held the flower before throwing it. The gesture, as rehearsed, was meant to appear like careless coquetry. My hesitation soon deepened.

REMEMBER FOR NOW Carmen’s rose. See it float in the wind to land at the feet of the young soldier. Her song to him as he turns to her, about the rebel heart, how it obeys no rules.

This flower with the power to turn strangers into lovers, lovers into murderers. He picks it up.

§

Félix wrote to say he had made me a gown, a gift, he said, to thank me for a glorious season. I wasn’t sure I would hear from him after the scene with the Comtesse had so foully exposed me. He seemed to care not at all.

I was, of course, delighted.

At his atelier, as he fitted me for it, he described a dream of Carmen, naked in the river, washing off the blood of her stab wounds, alive again. She turned to him and smiled, and the river filled with roses that left on the current.

Paris was under a siege of dreams.

You must wear it when you celebrate the end of Carmen , he said. Perhaps another ball? And it must be thrown for you by someone in love with you. Who is in love with you? Anyone? There must be at least a few, or have you lost all your skill at these things?

I laughed as I swatted him.

You’re in love, he said then. Or you would have thought of it already. I wouldn’t even be speaking of it.

I gave him as much of a mocking glare as I dared for having struck me to the quick.

Does he love you also? Is he very rich? He should be very rich. The place should be very grand, with a staircase appropriate for your entrance.

He pushed at my waist to smooth a piece of cloth there.

He’s poor, isn’t he? he said, for I had said nothing, stunned into silence.

He drew a deep breath. Is he the one you’re said to be marrying?

No, I said, very quickly. No, no. And I’m not marrying.

He unlaced and unhooked me, the fitting was done, and sent me behind a screen where his femmes stripped me bare. As they did their work, he said, over the screen, Don’t marry poor. But perhaps don’t fear to love poor. Better to be wise than a coward, yes? This was my mother’s advice to my sisters.

I was soon in my own dress again. Are your sisters very happy? I asked.

Yes, I believe so.

When you know the room, he said, we’ll go and see it and prepare accordingly. You must be stunning, a goddess. He must be very handsome, he said.

He was, I said finally.

Well, then it’s better, he said. You won’t love him too much.

I came from behind the screen at last, and he saw my face and everything there.

Except you do, of course, already. You already do, don’t you? It’s what the dress is for, isn’t it?

We had never once exchanged even the slightest affection, and he gave me the very lightest kiss.

Ah, dearest one, there, there, he said. It was going to happen eventually.

I SENT NO OTHER messages, received no more music. Finally, a note.

You will receive an invitation to Rouen.

This will be from a friend, to her salon there. Bring the ring, and if you are still intent on returning it, you can present it to me there.

Several days later a card from the tenor waited in my hall. There was a salon, he wrote. An old friend with a new interest in opera. Would I come sing the Habanera and a few other songs for her and her friends on one of my free evenings? It would be out at her château in Rouen, and he would come for me. She had guests there for the week but we would not stay the night, only sing and return by evening on the train.

She does not normally invite women, the tenor had written underneath the rest and underlined it, and he had included her note to him.

If she has no other appointments that day, you must bring her out to Rouen.

The tenor told me of her as he waited for me to dress that day. She was a widowed baroness who had her fortune and title from a baron killed in a duel he’d fought and lost with her lover. That lover, certain of his claim, had left for South America as quickly as he could once she’d explained she could not take up with her husband’s killer. Her recent interest in opera took the form of a new lover, a young composer who lived at her house in Rouen as he struggled with his commission from the Imperial Court of Russia.

An amusement for the young Alexander. He is, the tenor said of it, trying to delight a child who can afford pet tigers.

The tenor seemed very unhappy that afternoon. I attempted to amuse him by showing him several of my new gowns as if I had not already made my decision, and he was unmoved by all of them. Lucy and Doro gave me guarded looks over my shoulders and I shrugged.

She is a spy, you know, he said, quite suddenly. A fatal sort of woman and, perhaps, fatal to other women in particular.

I went into my dressing room and returned in another dress.

I was a fatal sort of woman, too.

I had gone at once to Félix’s atelier to say to him, I know the room . I had told him of the invitation and the salon, and he said, A duel, then, not a party at all. With a smile on his mouth, he swore he would help me be ready in time even if he had to bandage his seamstresses’ hands himself.

And what is this? the tenor asked, pulling himself to his feet and walking to where I stood at the mirror.

It is the afternoon visiting costume of a diva, I said.

Félix’s tribute to my time as Carmen was more costume than visiting costume. A black silk velvet gown for evening with very tight short sleeves and a square cut décolletage that pushed my breasts forward somewhat lasciviously. The waist severely corseted, the bodice trimmed in a black Spanish lace. The skirt was likewise silk velvet, but if I liked, it had some of the swift movements of a cancan dress due to panels of dyed muslin hidden at rest in the folds but visible if I danced. A court train began at my waist and went back for five full yards behind, red organza roses fastened to this black organza tail. A red brocade loop hidden there went over my wrist if I chose, in which case the train could move up like a sail if I raised my arm while I danced.

And it takes so much time to get her into it she appears finally at sunset, the tenor said. Where is your present? I want you to wear it.

His humor had returned suddenly. He turned from the mirror and drew me to him, put his face to my neck; his lips there barely grazed the skin. He pushed his face against me and his sharp whiskers bit my neck. I winced as I let out a gasp and he held me there, pushing against me as if he were going to take me there before we left. Lucy and Doro backed out of the room. When he released me, he smiled at me in the mirror. Put them on, he said.

It’s rude to wear jewels of this kind in the afternoon, I said.

It’s rude to be late, he said. Put them on.

I put them on.

He fell to brooding again on the train, and it lasted until we were in the coach on our way from the station. He finally said, I won’t pretend anymore; it’s your little friend we’ll see today. He has found himself a wealthy protector in my old friend.

He looked out at the window then. Or did you know?

I said only, I guessed as much. And then, after some time, I added, Remember your promise.

He gazed at me then with something like a measuring eye and smiled. Do you remember when Cora Pearl put that little emerald on you that I gave her and made you wear it out to greet me?