Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

From the street there was no sign of looting, just closed shutters, and there was no sound when I slid the key in the door and turned it. I was greeted by the sight of muslin covers again on all of the furniture. Dust and soot feathered the floors. A man’s footprints made a path.

I followed them. They led me into the music room, where, on the shrouded piano, sat a handkerchief tied over a letter. I opened it and read the letter.

Comprimaria,

I write knowing there is every chance you are dead and will never see this. Or that if you are alive, you are with your accompanist, and that either way you will never return. I write on the chance that you miss me and have come here, hoping to be forgiven for whatever has befallen you. We have been separated and returned to each other too many times before this for me to believe you are truly gone.

If you do read this, and you would be reunited with me again, you must make arrangements to leave at once. The Commune will not last. I was, of course, called off to war and returned with the armistice, hoping to find some sign you had survived, but found nothing. I returned once more through enemy lines to find you again, and as I have not found you, I will leave you with an escape plan: There are mail balloons released from the roof of the Paris Opera. You must hide in one and leave by no later than the first week in April if you can. Do not warn the accompanist or anyone else — I will be unable to protect you then.

The Versaillaise government has struck a deal with our side to retake Paris, and when this happens, all of the Communards will be killed. There can be no mercy. I had hoped to take you myself; this was my single chance to return once the Commune began.

When you decide on the date you will leave, take an advertisement in the London Times, addressed to one André Lavertujon, and with the date on which you will leave, the numbers only, in a row. Underneath this letter are some francs for you to pay for it. In this way I will know to expect you. Show this handkerchief with my family crest to the mail agent, who is an agent of ours and knows to watch for you — that will admit you to the balloon. Tie it then to the riggings.

I love you, my Falcon. Come to me if you are alive; I will protect you.

I remain,

Your comprimario

His footprints led throughout the rest of apartment, and I followed them — to the closets, where my clothes still hung; the empty larder; the empty servants’ rooms. He had searched for me in case I hid here. As I went, I looked for any food I could find and found nothing. There was at least the gin I’d missed, and I took it, with two of the most sensible dresses.

Before this, when he said he loved me, it meant nothing to me. Now I knew love. Had he never? His belief that he loved me, this was the belief of a madman. How could he? I wondered. How could he still want me? I thought of Euphrosyne’s assurance the day he bought my contract, that he would tire of me. If I ever saw her again, I told myself I would have to tell her, no, he never tired of me, not once. All those days we thought we wanted a constant lover. What I would give for him to be a lover who would tire of me.

I had been a fool to stay, and now we would die.

§

As I returned to Aristafeo’s house, I passed a doorway I had only ever seen closed. Today the doors were open.

The courtyard was empty and the wings to either side seemed abandoned. A bronze plaque still sat atop the center of the door. MAISON EUGÈNE NAPOLéON, FONDéE EN 1856, PAR SA MAJESTé L’IMPéRATRICE.

A charity, apparently, named in honor of her son, the Prince.

I walked to the door and then did not go in.

Instead, I walked back to the street, to where I’d turned the wrong way, and went to Aristafeo’s house.

The back wall was shared, it was clear.

She was never here, he’d said.

All of the ways I’d imagined the Empress kept him — in that secret dungeon below Compiègne, in some gilded cage, on a leash — I had not imagined anything like this, an office that she would visit regularly so as to look like a woman of good works and then to pass through the back wall into his house. Or he, through the wall to her.

Aristafeo hidden just under the surface of her life.

This house, it was an Empress’s théâtre du désir. As clearly as if Odile herself had set it up for Eugénie.

I found Aristafeo in a remarkably good mood, at his piano. I showed him first the letter from the tenor and then the handkerchief.

He read the letter through and grimaced at the end.

Do you think he is having you watched?

Perhaps he was always having me watched, I said, as I walked to the back wall where it adjoined the building behind. It would not be a servant’s door, it seemed to me. Or would it? Perhaps it would be disguised as one. Or it would require some secret switch, some ordinary item, which, when moved, would unlatch it.

How to feel, then? I wondered. It seemed he had lied to me about her being there, this was clear; but the reason was not, not entirely, except I knew well you only lied to keep a secret if it mattered.

Was this why we could never leave? Was there some vigil she had required of him, or someone else had required for her, some invisible hand that kept him here, like my own? Or was the vigil all his own?

§

That night I woke from my sleep and left his bed. I went downstairs.

Along the back wall were his study, a butler’s kitchen, and a dusty, empty butler’s quarters. I traced out the butler’s room then the kitchen to no avail. His study seemed likely to be also possibly protected in some way; he had by no means confided in me despite our time together.

It was a handsome study, fit for a gentleman, I thought with some pride.

After some reluctance, I lifted books from shelves, picked up lamps and candelabra. I was as quiet as I could be.

I stood at last before the musket and the sword in the middle of the wall. I had never seen him take either down or clean them, not once in the time I’d been there.

I reached out and lifted the musket up.

The mechanisms of the door opened smoothly with almost no noise at all. So quiet, in fact, the loudest noise was my gasp.

Her scent, which I remembered, was still in these rooms. The door opened into a windowless suite with a bedchamber, a salle de bain, and a sitting room. In the bedroom was a handsomely appointed bed done in her red and gold, gold candlesticks, an armoire, no doubt where she could hang her dress. On opening it, I saw one of her dressing gowns. I wondered how many times I had sent a dress up for her before she had come here to visit her charity for the afternoon.

I saw him undressing her, dressing her again, and remembered how well he undressed me; he had practice. As many times as I had tied her corset, his hands had often undone my work.

I sat down on the bed.

The rubies and diamonds in the two bracelets on the side table glowed softly in the light of my taper. They lay one on top of the other. Two of the stones in the one had been pried out. I remembered them from Compiègne when they were whole. They were gifts from the Princess Metternich. The Empress had often held her arm out, admiring them before setting off to dinner.

They looked to be a last gift, the Empress no doubt guessing she was unlikely to see the Princess again. And unhappy, perhaps, to have gifts from her German friends, no matter how beloved.

Did he still come here, take down her dressing gown, and press it against his face? He had not washed it. The room was unchanged since her last visit, it seemed, except for the stones he’d removed from the bracelet to sell. I had grown so accustomed to the myth that I was the one who’d stolen him away from the Empress, it had not occurred to me it might not be true.