Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

As I handed the contracts over, he asked, There’s no real curse, is there?

I only smiled.

We will need to hire a troupe for this show that can enact a hippodrama, the agent said, as he signed the contracts. But not one committed to the silent traditions of French pantomime. One that will permit singing.

I may know of one, I said.

I FOUND THEM WHERE the route book said they’d be. At the edge of the rail yard in the outskirts of London. As I approached, it looked as if a group of children held ropes, struggling to hold on to the world’s largest kite. They had the faces of angels and the determination of demons. As I grew closer, it was clear it was an enormous new tent and that some of the strugglers, in fact, were children, but others looked to be the smallest small people I’d ever seen. A few looked me over as I approached.

What is it? one asked.

What does it want? It’s looking at us.

Find out what it wants!

It’s a tart, so it wants what a tart wants! And at this, they laughed and yet did not stop pulling.

It’s pale! It’s the Ice Queen herself, come to take us away!

They were speaking several languages to one another, but they all seemed to understand, and as I listened I felt a pang of homecoming.

You there, the show isn’t till much later. Go on, before we’re strung up on morals charges. This was said in some very odd French with a grin by a very small man. But thanks for coming by.

I took my card from my pocket; but before I’d finished handing it to him, he said, Oh, darling, I can’t read a lick of that, I’d bet. He took the card from me and passed it behind his back, holding it so someone there could read it.

It wants a job!

Ach , darling. Much, much needs doing around here. And he waved at the tent that was still rising.

He likes it! He’s… he’s flirting with it!

At this, he took off his hat, bowed to me, and then, as he stood up, backhanded the young boy who’d just said that, who sneezed in surprise, and shouted, Don’t make me fall!

Darling, he said, you’ll need to speak to la maîtresse. I don’t know if she wants anyone what can read, though. That’s probably more trouble to her than it might be worth.

It can’t have my spot!

Ah, no one’s got their eye on that.

No one’s had their eye or anything else on it in years!

With that, there was again much general laughter.

What does it do? Ask, ask!

Yes, darling, my inquisitor asked. What do you do? That is what we need to find out for you to be useful. It’s better in the circus if you can do many things. So let’s see, simple yeses and nos… can you… can you sew?

I nodded.

There’s not… well… we darn our own costumes here. Or we have at least.

Can it tumble!

I smiled at that and nodded again.

Can it tumble from a horse!

I nodded once more.

It’s a kinker, I knew it!

Nah, it’s a chava josser, isn’t it?

If it is, she’s like none I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t bet on it. She’s a kinker, you can tell. She’s got a talent somewhere.

I’m a kinker, to be sure, I said at last. And I’m here to hire you all. But for now, I would speak with Ernesto.

At this they laughed. Ah, so it’s like that, said one of them. It’s coming home, is what it is.

And then Ernesto appeared from behind a corner of the tent and roared as he ran toward me; sweeping me into his arms, he lifted me to kiss my face, my feet dangling at his hips. Oh, sweet girl, thank God, he said. I’ve missed you so.

§

I sat together with Ernesto for a little while at the hotel tent, over mugs of beer, as we waited for Priscilla, now the new boss. When I asked after Flambeau, he only shook his head. His absence like an omen.

You’re lovelier than ever, he said finally. I can’t get over it. Look at you. Who’d have thought you were ever our little Settler’s Daughter? He reached down and plucked at the dress I wore, which swept out around the edge of the booth. You could fit a team of you in there.

He swept his hands up. I can’t fancy that you’re here to come back.

I am, I said.

But you’re a woman of means now, as we can see.

I explained myself.

A hippodrama? he said.

Yes, I said. And I’m paying.

§

I could not vanish as I had hoped I might. I instead needed to put myself once more at the center of the public’s eye as the cursed soprano. News of the curse would be my letter to the police and my escape from the police both.

I sent a statement to the press through Barnum’s agent, asking them to my rooms at Brown’s and saying I would make an announcement concerning my imminent retirement.

All questions would be answered in writing.

I suppose I did not believe what I would do until the appointed hour, when, under the watchful eye of the agent and his assistants, I opened the door to my suite myself, dressed in my best widow’s weeds and the tenor’s emeralds, and welcomed the crowd I found there inside.

I was inside my love’s opera, I knew, very near the ending. If the curse was true, and it did seem to rise up around me, as if it would become the very ship that would take me back to America, then I would sing for Aristafeo at least once more, somehow, before losing my voice forever — perhaps regaining my soul if it had ever really been lost. His opera and its fate for me even protecting what had been true so far of us, may be true once again: Aristafeo delivered to me, his steps away from me once again leading back to me in some way neither of us could imagine.

If not, I would never see him again. But the only way to know was to go away and see.

And I would accept no other role until he was at my side.

Each answer I wrote to the journalists in my room was like a signature on this contract with Fate.

When did I know of my curse? I first guessed after my debut as Amina, when my only love returned to me after I had lost all hope.

The tenor’s death has left me terribly changed. I loved him dearly. But you see, the news of his death told me this curse, it was coming for me next.

In Un Ballo in Maschera , the husband of the soprano Amelia is murdered, his fate sealed by a fortune-teller. I knew I could not take the stage after it was reported he’d died.

In death, then, one last role for the tenor to play with me. And then a last message for Aristafeo, left here.

You may understand then why it is so important to me to per form this last role, to create the role as written for me. The worst that might happen? That I would lose my voice.

When I returned, I went to the desk to pay for Aristafeo’s rooms with some of the new money from Barnum, but he was gone.

LE CHARME OPÈRE. The spell works.

The crowds begin at the pier the day we arrive, vast and dark, wet from the rain, like a funeral for a head of state.

On seeing the gangplank lower, they say my name as if singing in a discordant round, Lilliet Berne, Miss Berne, Lilliet Berne, Miss Berne, vive La Générale!

The gangplank lands on the dock and even the crew is cheered by the crowd until I emerge. At the foot of it waits one Mr. Frederick March, Mr. Barnum not in sight.

I’d know later the reason Mr. Barnum hadn’t been there — there’d been one more journalist to strong-arm, one more feature story to run. The morning editions of the New York papers waited for me at my hotel, all with stories of the diva who’d fled the stages of Europe for fear of a curse, here now to perform on her final farewell tour, this circus her first official visit to America. As I stood finally in the air and the cheering crowd roared, I raised my hand to keep out the rain and waved to them.