Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

I noticed the tenor busy speaking to one of the Comédie actors, perhaps about me. He looked away from me. I made my way along the wall to the doors, and without looking back, I let myself out onto the balcony, shutting the door with the quiet you can only learn when you are in service.

This was my chance.

A group of the goddesses from inside had hiked up their skirts to cool their legs from dancing and were lighting cigars. The Princess Metternich was visible at their center, lit by a huge flame from her match.

Salut, ma générale, she said, waving at me. She let out a curl of white smoke into the air and beat the skirt of her dress like a cancan dancer, which made the other women laugh.

How strange to me still that she should have been the first to call me that.

I bowed to her and they laughed again. And then, with a small shock, I understood that she had seen that I was a woman. The strange confidence I’d had of feeling hidden left me, and I nearly ran for the allée.

§

I followed the path as it wound into the garden and headed for the woods behind the palace. It was very cold now, almost too cold to be out of doors. The rich smell of the grapes left on the vine to rot or freeze greeted me under the canopy of vines.

The tenor had not come outside for me, or if he had, he had not found me yet. He would console himself, I told myself, with his American singer; the Empress with her composer; the Emperor with any of them or all of them.

I turned to look back to the palace and saw it light the dark, as if something bright and immense paced through the rooms, unable to be still. It was a vast théâtre du désir, on a scale to make Odile weep. All for the pleasures of the Emperor. All of France was, at that time, not an empire but a salon play of an empire, with a Napoléon who was not, in fact, a great general but had only a great general’s name, at the head of an army that could barely take an undefended cottage in the woods, and with an empress who could not control her maids. Here I was, rebellious maid that I was, in her garden.

I remembered the tenor’s taunt to me, holding his jacket open, the ruby flower there— Come back to Paris, and to me, and it will be yours —and it stung.

He could keep it, I decided then. He could make his American soprano wear it as he thought of me.

I was glad to leave with only the money from my bargain with Pepa. That seemed honest. My plan, such as it was, was to make the walk to town and wait for the train dressed in my costume and mask. Some might laugh, some would have questions, but it would be a fine disguise, that of a dissipated guest of the palace. They would laugh at me, but no one would stop me or talk to me.

It was time.

I took the mask off to see better in the dark garden, held it at my side like a helmet, and walked down the allée away from the palace. At the bottom, as the garden opened out into a long slope, there was an enormous mound of dirt by the edge of the woods, where some sort of construction was being done. Behind it, from in the woods, I heard footsteps, hard and quick, and singing, and saw flashes of fire. I heard three young male voices singing at the top of their sound, singing a drinking song of some kind in heavily accented English, but trying to sound British.

Ye sons of Anacreon, then join hand in hand! Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love!

Two appeared in the air, passing to either side of me like spirits of the forest, burning pitch torches in their hands. They landed partway down the hill, still running, and headed up to the palace at a sprint, laughing. A third, singing in a rich alto, appeared also in the air above me. The light on his torch lit the small horns on his mask, tipped back to reveal his face.

My devil.

’Tis yours to support what’s so happily planned! You’ve the sanction of the gods and the fiat of Jove!

He landed in front of me, and as our eyes met, he stopped. Behind me, his fellow singers ran to the palace, picking up the song again, and I saw him look at them and then look back at me.

If I had made my way down even a moment later, I would have only heard them run by, never knowing. The full force of what I felt for him, for this chance, filled me. I had thought I would not see him again, had thought the world perhaps organized to keep us apart. But perhaps, this seemed to say, perhaps not.

Perhaps not.

He took in the mask at my side, then my face, and I saw him recognize me with surprise. He smiled, bowed deeply, and stood again, looking at where his friends had gone. He turned back to me and said, Stay here, and then he sprinted after his friends.

He belonged to her, without question. But it seemed as if he also belonged a little bit to me.

His request was impossible, however. To linger meant I might be caught. Yet to leave meant to lose the one chance I’d hoped for in my time here, other than to leave.

I pulled my mask back on in case I was discovered by anyone else and continued up the rise of the hill. I turned back, and in the distance, by a statue of a lion on the terrace, I saw the composer with his friends, the three of them singing their song at the tops of their voices to the assembled group of women I’d passed, who now let their skirts rest near their ankles, but who continued smoking their cigars, the tiny red lights of the embers there sparking in the distance.

Voice, fiddle, and flute! No longer be mute! I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!

Raucous applause for this funny little song, and then the gentlemen bowed, and all at once the composer vanished from sight.

I waited to see if he would return, and at once, there he was, emerging from under the vines, intent, head down, headed back to me, an arrow in the dark, some last gift of the palace.

As he caught up to me, he took my arm in his hand and walked me farther into the garden. He led me down the stairs into what seemed like a path the gardeners used, hidden unless you knew it was there. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and pulled me to him.

His face silver in the moonlight. The wind at mine.

The mask fell on the ground beside me. He kissed me as his hands unstrung the tie in my hair that held it up so that it fell around my shoulders. The hands next slid down to grip the sides of my hips as he pressed me against the wall and crushed my mouth with his. He opened my coat and pulled down the bandage holding down my breasts so that they were in the open, and then pressed his face down into them. When he opened the front of my pants and pushed against and then inside me, I made a low moan against his neck that he then stifled by pressing the bottom of his forearm against my mouth. He continued to lean his hips into me. The newness of him, the urgency of him, made it sharp, and I tilted my head back, almost fainting. Our eyes met while he moved deeper into me, and in response I punched him furiously on his chest and shouted against his arm. He pushed his mouth into my hair as he thrust into me again and I heard the low sound come out of my mouth again. His face on my neck, he pulled me up until my legs crossed on his back and I rocked against the wall. It went like that, sometimes violent and sharp, urgent against the cold air and stone, smoke drifting down from the fires and the distant cigars, distant voices.

When it was done, he stood panting, still holding me up, our faces wet. He closed his mouth over mine. He pulled back, as if hearing something, looked to both sides and then back at me. He held up a finger and pressed it against my mouth before fastening himself up and slipping down the gardener’s path.

And then he was back again. I paused, afraid — it was time for me to continue on, past time. I was expecting the tenor at any moment.