Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

She came regularly to see me, and I soon would leave a ticket for her if she had no young man, though this was rare. She took me to her cobbler and bought me my first pair of cancan heels one morning after a visit from the princeling, pulling the franc notes from her bag with a smile and laying them on the table as if we were going to play baccarat. The cobbler folded the notes into his register quickly before motioning me to sit, and then he tenderly took my foot in his hand to measure.

Fille en carte means “prostitute.” When I tried to understand what this meant, I asked Euphrosyne, Where is the card?

The police station, she said, squinting as if everyone should know.

In her entry in the Gentleman’s Guide to Paris, a guidebook listing some of the more well-known maisons closes and the women in them, Euphrosyne was noted for her passionate abandon. Of her prix d’amour, it said she was neither the most expensive nor the cheapest, but that the client should prepare to pay extra for champagne. Which made me smile.

I would first see the guide a few months later when a man I knew held it out to me and laughingly asked if I was inside. He meant this as an insult, but I had the sense not to give myself away by looking. If I was ever in there, I would have been listed after her. By then we were regulars at the Bal Mabille and Euphrosyne had introduced me to everyone with the ridiculous name Jou-jou Courrèges, saying we were sisters. And she did feel like the sister I’d never had.

I still thrill to think of the Bal Mabille. A city garden at night unlike any other, strung with lanterns and full of music, people laughing and dancing, heading off into the groves for more private entertainments.

Here Euphrosyne had earned her name, La Frénésie. This was her cirque, her burning ring, and the role of her horse was played by nearly every man there.

Her princeling, we came to know, had something of a pattern, seeing her every night soon after some monthly sum was deposited with him, vanishing as it was spent, and returning again the next month. We began to call him La Lune for the way he waxed and waned. On our nights without him, we would command a table and she would sit with her second- or third-favorite young man of the evening and whoever was mine, ordering bottles, usually of champagne, and we would dance until morning.

I knew I was beautiful to men; I had guessed that by now. But because of my own severity toward myself, toward others, I had none of her sultry grace — my appeal was something of a cooler thing, starker. But this was fine; it made us perfect friends. The men who pursued her would be friendly to me, and those who pursued me friendly to her, but we never competed, never fought for the same man except one.

There was only one she was ever jealous of. And, to be sure, I would have preferred in some ways it had been her he’d chosen, that she’d prevailed. But, unfortunately, I won.

But it is too soon to speak of that as well. For now, we are still concerned with shoes for dancing.

§

Euphrosyne had a quality I felt I also had, but I had feared it was hidden until now. I wanted for her to see me and recognize me as one of her kind, whatever she was. Now that she came and cheered me on in the arena, I became bolder, just as she did at the Bal Mabille with me, I think. In any case, however it came to be, there was a night when, enraged, she cracked an empty bottle on the head of a man who was impatient with her rejection of him.

Without hesitation, I lunged to my feet and pulled my knife as she stood screaming at his friends. They drew back in terror. The offending gentleman groaned from the floor by the table, and in the dark I could see the wetness that I knew to be blood.

Euphrosyne giggled and grabbed me, and we ran from the Bal as the man’s friends behind us called for the police.

I’d never pulled the knife, not like that. In my hand it burned, as if aflame. With one swift motion, I threw up my skirt as we ran, and it was back in its sheath.

Every girl in the hippodrome had one.

I had learned the knife was not just for men. The secret to being a rider in the hippodrome wasn’t that you must be agile, or that you must be good with horses, or that you must be strong and steady as the horse careens to the far end of the arena and back with you riding on its back. It was that you must hide inside your costume a little of a killer’s heart.

The animal will be tender with you, and you with it, but the animal never forgets that when what it wants for survival requires your death, it will become unafraid to kill you. And so you cannot forget this, either.

It is, on reflection, good training to be a courtesan. A woman of any kind.

§

Euphrosyne brought me back her apartment, and we fell through the door into the entrance hall, gasping. Inside, looking very stern in her chaise, was a woman I first assumed was the concierge. At the sight of her, Euphrosyne began laughing, her hand over her mouth at first, which then only made her laugh the harder.

Shit, my friend. That knife. I never saw a man look like that, ever. I could get used to that.

You’ve quite an arm yourself, I said. I began to laugh as well.

The woman by the door was not amused. Who is this? she asked Euphrosyne. You’re not allowed this sort of guest.

It’s only for a few minutes, Odile, I promise, Euphrosyne said.

There’ll be a fine for this, Odile said ominously, as we passed by her.

In her kitchen Euphrosyne held out her hand for my knife, and when I gave it to her, she stabbed it into the cork of a bottle of wine and twisted it out. She drank from the neck thirstily and handed it to me, and I did the same. This calls for a proper smoke, she said, and fumbled in her skirts, extracting two cigars. She cut the tips and struck a match against the stone of her counter, and soon the fragrant smoke lifted between us. She waved me to her balcony and handed me one.

I held it in my hand, happy.

Pull it into your mouth, not your throat, she said, as if I did not know. And she winked. It’s good practice, and then she giggled.

Now I can’t, I said, and made a face as I blew the smoke out in a gust.

She laughed openly now, and I smiled and held it to my mouth again.

So it is that I can, I said.

Under the soft light coming off the city in the dark, we smoked and watched the street below, passing the bottle between us until we grew quiet.

She reached out and took my hand and began to sing, loudly down into the street,

De préférence chaque soir,

L’amateur contemple

Les belles d’nuit qui s’font voir

Au boulevard du Temple!

In the street, a pair of drunken men roared their approval. Again, she said to me, and hit me on the arm, Sing with me!

We sang it again, and as we reached les belles, she sang instead les reines, overemphasizing it, and I laughed at her doing this until I was choking a little on the wine and smoke, and then she laughed at me, also until choking.

Again! she shouted at me. Everyone must hear us!

We sang it again, over and over, until the street complained loudly. At this, Euphrosyne pouted and threw her now-empty bottle into the street, where it made a satisfying crash. The concert is over, she yelled down. We clambered back into her apartment.

Les reines d’nuit, she said, toasting, as she stabbed another bottle open and drank.

Les reines d’nuit, I said, and drank after her.

Do you imagine the police are still searching for us?

I shrugged. I honestly could not say. I was still unused to the world, unused to the idea of police. In my life until then, every time I’d left, I’d left, and no one remembered me, and no one cared. Or, at least, not that I ever knew. As I stood in her kitchen, a glass of wine in my hand, as drunk as I ever had been, it seemed, yes, unlikely that anyone knew me except her.