Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

Several weeks later, as we packed to depart, Pauline appeared at my door, stricken, a letter from the tenor in her hand. He’s gone mad, she said, holding it out to me.

Thank you for informing me of your plans, and I’m so sorry I won’t be able to join you there except very briefly; for you see I must return to Paris, and Lilliet should come with me — I think she has learned all she can from you for now. I will collect her from Nohant then, as I will already be in Paris when you arrive, so be sure to tell her to pack all and make her good-byes and send what she will not need in Nohant to the avenue de l’Opéra address. I will be making arrangements for her debut there for the spring season, where I know she will be the talk of Paris.

The letter read as if it were from a stranger, almost a forgery, except I knew his hand by now. Pauline had been carefully training me for a year to debut in Weimar, in Bellini’s La Sonnambula , performing the role of Amina. This was an effort she and the tenor had both undertaken, and so I knew she felt variously betrayed, as did I. Pauline was famous for her Amina, and as I could have no better teacher for it, wouldn’t my debut and my safety be assured if we continued as we were? Why this change? He’d discussed with us how, even after the debut, I should remain a student of Pauline’s for at least another year, perhaps two.

How could he do this to us? And to you most of all, Pauline asked, though I knew she knew I did not know the answers. This is just so disappointing. Well, I will send my maid to help you pack everything, then.

None of the agreements we’d made from before this letter were visible except in his insistence I return to Paris, the one only I knew of, the one that required me to be with him. Something had happened out of my sight, a cord pulled tightly where I’d expected it to go slack. I understood then that I knew nothing of what would happen next.

§

My fortnight’s introduction to Madame Sand, then, was also to be the end to my life as a member of my adopted family. We left Baden-Baden first by train back into France in a grim procession — Pauline, her children, Turgenev, and I — while Louis stayed behind. All that we said to one another sounded as if we were calling to one another from very far away, not from the next seat. It had been one thing to mock the Second Empire around Pauline’s table in Baden-Baden, quite another to enter it on the verge of war. But whatever we feared from the French did not appear as we crossed the border; the conductors, the passport officers, the police, all were as cordial and formal as ever. The peculiar spell broke only when we were met by a carriage waiting for us in Châteauroux, sent by Sand and driven by her servant Sylvain. Only after he had greeted us warmly and made sure we were all packed in, only then did Pauline seem to relax, and the desolate worry that accompanied her until then left; her normally confident and bemused expression returned, and it was as if we had passed through enemy territory between her house and Sand’s, and she were somehow home again.

Here was her other kingdom.

If the war should begin, oh, that I could spend it here, Pauline said, as we exited the carriage, and laughed; and we all laughed with her and went in, pleased our queen was happy again.

It was her held breath, you see, on the train there — all of us holding it for her or with her, as if we could help.

§

We found Nohant empty of Sand, but her handsome son, Maurice, received us, having arrived just the day before along with a family friend introduced as Edmond Plauchut, a funny, sly explorer, dashing in the way of a fraud, who immediately began to tease Turgenev as if they were brothers. Sand was still in Paris, detained on business with her publisher, and would arrive the next day. That night we sat down to a cheerful supper, followed by backgammon and charades, at which Plauchut — who they had long ago renamed Plauchemar, a mix of his last name and cauchemar , or “nightmare”—proved quite adept.

The next morning, after breakfast, I explored the château and grounds with Maurice, as the others all knew this place well. We must be sure you do not get lost, he said, half joking. I made sure to be dutifully fascinated by the botanical garden, the billiards room, the park around the house with meadows and woods, the moat, and the river Indre, close enough for bathing or a boat ride, both of which Maurice assured me would happen soon. He then showed me with great pride the elaborate puppet theater he and his mother had created, how he and his mother made the marionettes together — he crafting the bodies and painting the faces, and she designing and sewing the costumes.

I was, I admit, fascinated with him.

The library, where he left me to amuse myself, still seems peerless to me, with her vast collection of books, paintings, and drawings, the Louis XIII furniture and Venetian chandeliers suggesting a life of opulent thought. Here was where I felt I could sense the spirit of our absent hostess, as if the room shook with her when she was not there.

Maurice did not mention a father and I did not ask after one. There was no question of it. Madame Sand was, I could see, Pauline’s match, or more so. Each of them was a formidable artist and a woman who had made her own indelible mark on this world. I had thought to never meet another woman like Pauline, and now I knew I would.

I knew of Sand only by reputation, the writer said to wear men’s pants and affect men’s mannerisms. On the train, Turgenev had mentioned in passing she’d written a novel about Pauline, a little in the way she’d done with all of her lovers, though it wasn’t thought that she’d bedded Pauline, he’d added warily.

This all made her fascinating to me.

In Sand’s library, instead of finding the novel about Pauline, I found a copy of Turgenev’s First Love, inscribed to her, and sat down to read it, to the exclusion of all else — I had not read him before, ever. The conceit of the book took me in from the first — a group of friends, telling stories, ask one another who their first love was. I secretly hoped to discover that it was also about Pauline. When it was soon clear that it was not, I continued reading it and had nearly finished it by the time our hostess returned.

§

Sand, when she finally appeared, was, disappointingly, not dressed as a man but as a genteel woman of her age, stylish but not too stylish. She looked me over graciously, with a smile that suggested she knew at least some of the stories about me. You are the prodigy cocotte, she said, and when I curtsied to her, she laughed. You are a delight, she said. You will sing for us later, yes? I looked to Pauline, and she nodded, smiling.

We had a very late dinner, and afterward, the group became maudlin with drink and talk of the possibility of war.

A drama, Sand said, finally, prepared to put an end to our sad mood. She stood up. She waved her arms up, lit by the candelabra.

Pauline raised an eyebrow. Which one?

Hamlet.

Hamlet, Pauline repeated. This is how you mean to cheer us up? But she was already smiling as she said it and stood up.

No, not that one. Not the whole one, Sand said. In honor of our future rulers, the Prussians, we will do the German traveling version of the play, in which we find Shakespeare’s play like a captive, much abused and much shorter. And hilarious.

Will we do it in German? Turgenev asked, his voice very quiet.

Sand laughed. We should, to practice.

She waved us to the small theater within her beautiful house.

All night long, after we’d tried not to speak of the inevitable coming war, it was easier to acknowledge now with jokes. It would be Hamlet as farce, and we would each have to pay multiple parts. Pauline was to be the Queen, and Sand Hamlet, of course, Turgenev the King’s ghost. Maurice exclaimed with dismay at having to be the King and also Ophelia’s minister father. Is there nothing more interesting for me? he asked.