Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

I went to call on him, thinking that if it was not my Euphrosyne it had to be him. Another copy of the novel, for him, wrapped, sat under my arm.

He would be returning shortly, his butler said, as he answered the door. Would I care to wait?

I said I would. I was shown into his library, where I seated myself on his couch.

The butler offered to take the package, but I said I had to hand it to him myself.

Of the men who had come to me at Odile’s, he was the only one who had ever wanted to know me. His loneliness was different. The distinct proportions of it in his mind were like those of a theatrical that needed casting more than anything else.

He sought a playmate, almost a rival.

Almost.

There was a coda to my evening with him at Cora Pearl’s those many years ago, and I remembered it as I waited. We had sat down eventually to her catered supper served on gold-rimmed china. She had caught my expression of pleasure at the gold rim, as the plate for my soup went down in front of me, and raised an eyebrow.

You should take your little doll of me out more, she said to the tenor. Get her used to fine china.

Here at dinner, as everyone ate, this wounded me, but I had been trained not to react or, at least, not to cry out. As the tenor turned toward me, I put a practiced smile on my face and said, Yes. Yes, you should. Teasing him.

The guests at table, quietly waiting for my reaction, erupted in laughter. I hadn’t meant to be funny, and I knew it was dangerous to humiliate him too much, so I pulled his head in close to mine for a kiss on his cheek, at which the laughter increased. As we each sat back, I found Cora Pearl smiling at me.

We would not be friends, as she had said, but I had earned her respect.

When the dinner ended, she ordered the waiters to fill her tub with champagne and asked anyone who wished to join her to come with her into her salle de bain. The tenor looked on as she stood, her bare shoulders gleaming in the candlelight, before leaving silently with me after she had made her exit.

Perhaps a few weeks later, friends of the tenor’s entered his box at the intermission to greet him and recount how the men who’d stayed after our departure had sat round Cora’s champagne bath, filling their glasses from it as they spoke to her until her figure appeared, and the tenor made a face, as if at something disgusting. At this cue, they all began to speak of how badly she’d sung in Orphée aux Enfers.

He smiled a little and interrupted these complaints to present these friends to me.

She is a soprano, he said. My protégée. There were some grins, but all took my hand and kissed it in greeting. I am preparing her for her debut, he added, and they all smiled at this as if they could already hear me sing.

As I answered his friends’ questions on my student repertoire, I noticed how he seemed proud of me, and I knew I was mistaken as to Cora’s and my fortunes.

Cora had been discarded, for she had disappointed. He was not trying to make me over into her — he had failed to make her into what I was to become. If I failed, perhaps there would be another.

My old fear from that time, that he would give up on me, seemed quaint at best as I waited for him. From our first meeting, I had never been able to rid myself of him, and over time, that came to seem like something like or, at least, more reliable than marriage. But then I had never been married and knew as little of it still as I did at this time of what it would mean to be bought.

The tenor returned as the butler had said he would. I heard the entrance door open and the butler’s voice, no doubt telling him he had a visitor and who it was.

I then heard laughter.

The door to the library opened. All this time I have had to chase you, and now you come right to my door? Chérie, it’s too much. He came to where I sat.

I would have thought I would not see you again, unless you have finally come to kill me, he said.

I said nothing to this.

You must want something, he said. It can’t be money. What is it? Is it your curse? He laughed as he said that.

I hear a rumor we are to be married. It wasn’t me, he said. But I like the rumor. Perhaps… perhaps it is our time.

I wanted to be sure, I said, with a smile. And then laughed with him about the rumor even as I saw, at once, he wasn’t probably the source.

Consider this your present in our imaginary engagement, I said, and offered the novel to him.

He unwrapped it and turned it over with real fascination.

You’ve never given me a novel, he said.

He was likewise not my secret tormentor. He’d never been able to rid himself of a certain wounded air since I’d won my eventual freedom from him. If it was him, this air would be gone. Instead, I saw his hopes rise to see me, to page through the novel — I had misled him even by coming — and so I consoled myself with this as I made an excuse and left, saying I hoped we’d sing together soon.

It was a game, to hurt him again even like that, but it was only a part of the game by which I had escaped him. And while it was not the satisfaction I sought, it would do for now.

You will notice I do not use his name. For this story, I never will. He was named by the rules of the Majeurs-Plaisirs — it seemed safer this way. He is always the tenor. If there had been another tenor, that tenor would have been “tenor 2,” or “second tenor.” Something that would have amused me.

If these men met you on the street with their friends, they were as likely to ignore you as recognize you; to introduce you might offend whomever they were with. That was their prudence. This was mine.

If there was some way they could not allow me into their circles, well, it would be the same for them somehow.

In these ways, it seems to me, you kept yourself.

WHEN I SAY he owned me all those years ago, I mean he owned me like he owned his shoes.

After that night with Cora Pearl, he bought me from Odile, bought my contract. He freed me from my unconquerable bill of fare with her but delivered me into his own.

I still remember how I stood by my wardrobe with him, packing as he sat with Odile, who tallied my bill. If he did not pay for something, she would make me leave it behind, so, as I brought each item out, he said either yes or no, and a maid he’d brought to help either set the item into a case or put it on the bed I’d shared with Euphrosyne.

I was the envy of the house. Each girl here wanted to have her contract bought and her client to arrive with cases and a maid to pack them, but the scrutiny of each object humiliated me, especially as the other girls lined the doorway, excited for me, but also arguing already in whispers over who would get what of the things I would leave behind.

Odile turned and hushed them before continuing.

We had come to the cancan shoes, which I was intent on keeping no matter what he said. I took the pair Euphrosyne had bought me and pointed to the case as I handed them to the maid.

These are mine, I said, as Odile raised an eyebrow. I wore them into prison and on my way here. I will wear them out of here as well.

In the doorway, the girls laughed.

My six other pairs, one for each day of the week if I wanted, amused the tenor. I like them, he said, as they were set in one by one. And then it was done; he paid the bill outright. He left to wait downstairs and let me dress and say good-byes. The maid stayed at first to help me, but I shooed her away. As I closed the door, Euphrosyne came and sat down on the bed.

I told them I pick first, she said, and then plucked at the few things the tenor had rejected — mostly lingerie. We will buy all new ones for you, he’d said.