Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

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The garden was dark now, the night too dark to see anything more from the window. A knock came at the door, and so I set down my brush and opened it.

I was not the first cocotte to arrive. There were at least three others, my classmates, and all beautiful, if differently, and more beautiful than I, or so it seemed to me that first day. They appeared in my doorway, haughty like cats and arranged by color, from dark to light, brunette, lighter brunette, and blond, and introduced themselves. They were Natalya, Firéne, and Maxine, Russian, Hungarian, and French, respectively. They resembled one another, dressed alike in simple dark jackets, skirts of wool tweed, and plain white blouses. No visible crinolines. Sensible dark leather shoes peeped from under their hems.

I was a flare of color in front of them while they were like a tidy squadron.

We openly stared at one another at first. I had supposed there would be other students, but I didn’t yet expect them.

Mademoiselle, Natalya, the brunette, said, Madame Viardot sent us to introduce ourselves and to see if you needed any assistance. She saw you came without a maid, and her own is quite busy with preparations for tonight. At this, they half curtsied together, and I half curtsied back. Natalya, I noticed, held a tray with the tea.

Thank you, I said. Please, call me Lilliet. Come in.

Natalya and Firéne entered but Maxine lingered in the door. You look as if you came for the casinos, Maxine said. What an exquisite toilette. May I ask where it is from?

Félix, I said.

Your father sends you to Félix? He must be very rich. Are you from Paris, then?

I suppose I am, I said, cautious. For I could tell I was entirely unprepared for this interview. The tenor was so incurious, he had never asked me questions of this kind, had never sought to know me because he felt he knew me at once — I was for him that love with the power of a prophecy. And he was so sure, he’d never bothered to see who he had captured under the cloak of his fantasy.

But then, I could be said to be incurious, too, as to my captor. Perhaps they would be incurious also, I hoped. They then proved they were not.

I am from Paris, Maxine said. And I’ve never been to Félix; my family refused me when I asked. Are these all Félix? She gestured to the trunks as we made our way back to the dressing room. Your father sent you from Paris and to Félix for clothes first? What family are you from?

I am an orphan, I said, attempting to begin here by telling at least one truth.

Ah. An heiress, then. What is your Fach ? Natalya is a mezzo, Firéne, a spinto. I am a coloratura. What of you?

A Falcon.

Falcon?

Tragic, I said. But with more strength in the top notes, I’m told.

Of course, Maxine said. Our orphan. You were born to it. Tragedy belongs to you.

She said this watching my eyes as if she were testing the edge of a blade on me. And so I made sure not to flinch.

We were conducting our conversation in French — the Viardots were quite German in many ways after their time here, I would soon see, but this colony of theirs was a French colony, if a tiny one — and so I had used the word orpheline just now. I’d never described myself this way to anyone and found I liked the word— orpheline sounded to me like something mystical and small, like an enchanted cat.

In the years that would follow this day, when asked questions of this kind about my family, I would tell the story I began to tell that day of a family in Lucerne struck down by misfortune. My being sent to Paris to be raised there by an aunt. I tried to make it sound as terrible and vague as possible, as I did that day, and to use this word I liked, orpheline, almost a new name.

Behind me, Natalya and Firéne had already begun examining the contents of my trunks so I went and joined them to see if I could prevent them from discovering something unwelcome. Natalya was holding a pair of my cancan shoes up with a smile.

Have you made your debut? Natalya asked. And in what role?

Not yet, I said, though I have been in Paris, training privately. Perhaps to debut as Lucia.

I glimpsed what could only be my perfume bottle’s case and brought it up, setting it on my dressing table.

Eau du Lubin? Maxine said, and came closer.

I opened the leather enclosure and took out the bottle, quickly brushing my neck and ears with it and then my throat before I replaced it as if I hadn’t noticed her interest.

This? I then said to her. Yes.

I’d not mixed much with her kind previously. She was the first I was to meet of a kind of Frenchwoman of the haute bourgeoisie, constantly aware of her social class and yours. She was quite the opposite of incurious, and her interest was not the beginning of a friendship but more of a measuring. She was the sort of woman whose husband would go to the Majeurs-Plaisirs to be away from her before and after marriage. She and I would not usually meet, and so we did not know how to speak to each other when we did.

Who performs tonight? I asked.

We do, they said, in unison.

They began to speak to me of who would be there, and why, who knew whom, who could provide what for you vis-à-vis an entrée into this or that salon and so on; the salon gossip of Baden-Baden, but also of Berlin, and of Paris, and even of Saint Petersburg. Giulia Grisi was coming, I was told, a famous soprano in retirement on her way to Berlin from her home in Florence. Brahms was to be there, he was working on a song Pauline was to debut. Royal titles were mentioned, meaningless to me. Through the talk, I noticed that they were not so very alike in appearance, not at all, but rather the similarity came from an attitude inside, the faintest sense of some indomitable will; each was animated by the belief that they mattered and that their futures would matter as well.

They were all like little Paulines in this way, as I hoped to be soon.

We must choose your dress tonight, Natalya said, eyeing the trunks.

As various toilettes were held up and considered and taken from their papers, Maxine continued her patter of observant and condescending resentments, somewhat confusing, for she was still quite actively helping me all the same, a task I knew she saw as beneath her. She seemed both scornful and jealous, handing items to Firéne and Natalya as if they worked for her, and I didn’t know why she was leading the unpacking until I understood she did it for what she hoped to find. I was most likely about to be exposed. All that would be required was for her to find something I’d forgotten about, some incontrovertible proof — much as I knew her kind, I was sure she knew mine.

The door across the hall opened then, and the tenor emerged to see who had come to visit, knocking on my door and calling my name. My trio abandoned me to go meet the famous tenor, and I finished dressing alone. I chose the opera dress I’d once scorned, one of my first, the dark blue with the machine-embroidered bodice, fine but not too fine for a night in a private home. I called for Natalya — I’d liked her right away — and she helped me fasten the back. She returned, and as I entered, I saw how they tried to test themselves on him. His celebrity, his previous relationship to Pauline, his good looks, any of these would have made him desirable, and I could see they envied and even resented me a little for whatever fortune it was that had brought him to me.

Please, I nearly said to them. Do your best.

I wondered, if I were to meet him now, if I would flirt with him and then remembered the night I’d first met him when I nearly had. That was the smile I used as I walked to his side, and he took my hand, smiling back, and kissed it, his eyes only for me. Which I did all while not looking once at Maxine, so she would know; I had my edges, too.