Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

He unlatched the door again, smiling. Forgive them, he said. They are loyal protectors but also quite hungry. I had not expected you, and so they were outside.

I stepped cautiously through the wooden gate, pausing at the sight of the dogs before entering completely. What are their names? I asked.

Gaston and Frédéric. Or, as I call them, the Lords of the Lower Garden.

I took in the courtyard. The dogs, both large black hounds nearly the size of ponies, sat grinning at me, anxious to approach but clearly having just been disciplined.

Come this way.

He walked so that he stood between the dogs and me. Once inside, he closed the door, and they began to whimper. He shouted to them again through the door and then turned to me, and said, I have nothing to feed them, of course. I am worried that soon they will turn on me.

I unfastened the ribbon on my hat and then undid my hair.

Take me upstairs, and then we will speak of food. And everything else.

He stepped close to me, studying my face, curious, amused again. His eyes betrayed nothing of the bitter appraisal I’d seen the day before — if he had not forgiven me for the insult of the day previous in rehearsal, he had upon my arrival. In the carriage over, I had been full of fears, each of them turning over to reveal another one underneath until, by the time I stepped through his door, I had a single mission I could be sure of: I was here to see him this one last time and to ask if he would leave with me. Here in his house I could admit what I hadn’t previously, that I did not know him — I only desired him. Was it only lust, the lust I might feel for any beautiful thing, for he was beautiful, how had I not remembered? Had I somehow reduced his beauty in memory or had it grown? Why did I love him? Did he love me? And what if he would not leave with me? I might not have the strength to leave him behind and go on alone — and I would need to, to live; and yet I could not bear it if he was to die, even if it should be that he did not love me; and thus went my mind even as he reached for me and unlaced my dress at the back with a nimble, practiced hand.

How stupid you are , I told myself, and yet how wise to finally be here.

As he kissed me, I entered again the world that existed only with him. I fought the old habit I still had of retreating from the sensations of my own body as I delivered myself over to the pleasures of others. To be here felt like pulling myself out of my own grave. This impulse to stay hidden in this life that was death, the fear that it was the only safety, this was what I hoped to smash now in myself. To break the lock on the cage I had made of myself.

His hands pulled open my corset and his face pushed into my hair, stopping when his chin touched my neck.

He paused. What is it? I asked, as he brushed his fingers across my back, finishing the unlacing.

You don’t know how long I’ve dreamt of this, he said, touching his brow to my own.

Dream no more, I said, to him as much as to myself, and drew back, leading him along behind me as my dress fell off me in waves.

I stepped from the traveling costume and lay across his bed on my back, making a display of myself before him as he smiled down at me, my smooth belly and breasts, my nipples pinking in the cold.

I enjoyed this no matter the man — the power it gave me over him to simply appear naked before him. But now it was my turn to be in silent wonder. Aristafeo stood over me, and as I watched, he stripped off his waistcoat, his shirt, his pants until his long slim body rose up, a dream of him in the afternoon light, as soft as smoke. He was like a faun, in that way I suppose most men are — it is right to paint them as half beast, I think, especially from the waist down; and his was a trim waist, too, and a long one. In the garden that first night he’d been only a silver violent desire, the night’s hot center, but here in his bedchamber, I could see all of him. He smiled as he came near, reaching out to trace a line from my hip bone to just under my breast so that I cried out softly, surprised by pleasure. I could feel the warmth of him just before he touched me, and as he completed his descent, our skin touched in the cold air of the room and then he burned across me.

I went into my own hunger for him and stayed there under him until it was gone.

He took me three times that afternoon — the first like a race, hard and fast, as if it were just to be done with to make room for the others; the second slower, gentler, tender, if excruciatingly so, the pleasure drawn out until it was almost agony; the third a true descent into another place altogether, where I felt afterward as if we were finally revealed to each other, who we had each been all along and perhaps had never known until then. Each of the first two times, he would rise up, smiling, and I would say, Again. After the third time, I said nothing. For at least an instant, there was nothing of who I’d been before, nothing seemed to remain. I lay quiet instead, wanting to hold only this oblivion, and as it receded, there came the slow rise and fall of his chest as he slept against me in the gathering dark.

I smiled in satisfaction and then fell away until I slept as well.

§

After some time, I opened an eye. The room was nearly the color of the inside of my eyelid. I knew the sun had set and remembered my lie to the driver, who, if he still waited at the church, was no doubt beginning to wonder how many sins I might confess to and was still likely hoping to be paid. I could see him finally going in to search before driving away, the church door opening as he looked in and closing as he left.

When I did not return, I knew the tenor would go through my rooms for signs — and there he would find my clothes still waiting, the shoes all there except the one pair. He would ask Lucy as to my whereabouts, and she would say I’d gone to confession and that she’d told me to take our driver. He would notice I had not. It was then he might go to see if I had taken any money and my jewels.

I had left the money. I wanted him to imagine I was still preparing to leave, not that I had left.

Whether he believed this or not, today was the beginning of all the tenor would never forgive, and if there was the slightest chance he learned I was still alive, it would mean our deaths unless we left now.

Wake up, I said.

He rolled to the side, his beautiful face smiling at me as his eyes blinked open and he kissed me.

Have you finished our plan of escape? I asked. For we should leave, and soon.

He laughed. Ah, he said. Yes. Where are we going?

London, I said. Or if not there, perhaps Leipzig.

I see, he said. And how will we eat?

I reached out to my dress and withdrew one of the little bags, this one with my earrings and the rose pin, which I dropped on his stomach. Bijoux, I said.

He pulled it open and held one of the earrings up to his eye. You have also been a baroness of some kind, it seems, he said.

Gifts from admirers, I said, and shrugged. You may know of this tradition.

I once played with the Conservatoire orchestra for a very rich baroness, he said. She had been trained to sing and wanted to have a concert with a soprano friend of hers. She hired the entire orchestra of the Conservatoire and brought them into her vast ballroom, where we played accompaniment to the two women for more than three hours.

Were they talented? I asked.

The friend had some talent, he said. We laughed.

We were rented for less than the cost of their bracelets. Our director asked the one with talent if she gave concerts, and she said her family would be scandalized if she took to the stage. She laughed at the idea.

He sat up and looked off into the garden, brushing his fingers across his moustache.