Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

As Eugène said this, he seemed placid in the face of certain death.

Did he know you came here? he asked.

No, I said. I did not go out knowing this was where I would come.

I want you to come here and speak with me again if he should communicate with you. He may leave another message. Out of all of his wrong information will be some that is right, and perhaps we can find it out.

An immense weariness took hold of me as he said this. I was again on a stage of the tenor’s making, always performing as he knew I would, even out of his sight.

I would ask you a favor, I said.

Please, he said.

May I sleep here tonight and leave in the morning? I have nowhere else to go.

Of course. Share my coat, sister, he said.

I agreed and then slept as I once had, next to this stranger.

There is the great love of one’s life, and then there is the first to come after. Eugène taught me to love in a very simple way, without dreams or hope, to simply set something inside my heart and let it be. From the very beginning, it was easy to be with him. In the morning, I woke before he did and slid my cache out from its hiding place. We parted happy, and he again asked me to come see him at the Tuileries if another letter came, or if I was hungry or cold. He seemed content without me, and this was one of his most charming qualities.

§

I returned to my old apartment — there was nowhere to go. I could not return to Aristafeo, not yet.

I sold the furnishings for food until I had just the small table in the kitchen the maids had used, a chair, the piano, and my bed. I took to sleeping there again.

The food was nearly as expensive as the furniture had been.

I returned to something like the silence I’d once enjoyed, speaking to no one sometimes for entire days at a time. This silence was broken only by my regimen at the piano; mine was the only voice I heard most days. For all the training I had done before this, to sing now meant something different to me. I could no longer believe in secret gods, I could no longer believe in love, I could no longer believe even in finding my heroes again. I could no longer believe in fame — I could barely believe in life. Alone with myself and my talent, I chose it in some way I never had before. I chose myself also. The person I was and had been all along, the one who had not belonged to the place where she was born, nor to the places she found along the way, the one always under the mask, here she came out and breathed the air and felt at home. I had always believed that to be this person might destroy me or the world, and so as the world seemed to end, this made the end of the world seem nearly a paradise.

When Pauline would say to me many years later that I finally sang for pleasure, here was where I learned to do so. I took possession of my voice at last, though at the time, it only felt like simple survival. When I sang, I thought of nothing else. Only when I stopped did the world around me rush back in.

April began with a decree from the Commune closing the pawnshops, accusing them of criminal lending practices. I had also suspected this of them, but the decree put an end to what income I had, though with little furniture left to leave with them as it was, I understood it was time, yet again, to find another way to feed myself.

On my return from a final visit to the pawnshop, another letter waited in the apartment.

Dearest,

The agreement I spoke of is now in force — we are releasing French prisoners into the custody of the French government, giving them numbers sufficient for the Versaillais to defeat the Commune and reclaim Paris. The violence I spoke of is at hand — they will kill all of the Commune, taking no prisoners. You must make plans to leave by no later than the twenty-first of May. And tell no one.

Do not fail to take out the ad in the Times, addressed to one André Lavertujon, and with the date on which you will leave, the numbers only. Tie the signal to the ropes of the balloon you choose. To forget this will mean certain death.

I went out to find my new Communard friend.

§

I have an idea, Eugène said. He swatted the tenor’s folded letter against his thigh.

Yes, I said.

We sat in chairs in front of the Hôtel de Ville in the sun. Thousands of National Guard soldiers, paid in bread, sat in rows in front, their loaves stabbed through by their bayonets, smiling grimly as they bit down. It made me hungry to look at.

I am sure he is here, in fact, he said. I do not believe he is running in and out now that the Commune is in charge; it would be too dangerous for him. I believe he is here.

As you like, I said.

No, he said, and sat forward. This is quite serious. Now, did dressing the Empress require any feats of dexterity? Are you at all nimble?

I was an equestrienne before my service, in a cirque, I told him. I sang from the back of a horse.

Truly? Now you will be an aerialist, he said, and sat back with evident delight. I will get you to that balloon, he said. And, in fact, I will train you in how to ride it. Because, make no mistake, we are going to die. But you must live.

We looked at the men seated with their bread.

Listen, I will put you in that balloon myself and slit the throat of the Prussian agent waiting for you. He sat back. I believe that “agent” your friend speaks of is, in fact, your friend himself.

Why would you do this? I asked.

There is a very good chance you will survive if I do, he said. That is enough.

§

Eugène took me on a tour of another Eugène’s work, as he explained it, that of Eugène Godard, the pilot who had masterminded the national hot-air balloon program during the first siege.

In the empty station of the Gare du Nord we found the remaining balloons he’d manufactured sitting empty, like the gowns of giantesses laid out to dry.

They stopped the program, Eugène said, as he walked around the enormous shellacked balloons. It became too expensive, the one-way departures. Each balloon is very costly to make and they never return. It was too much to spend for the one trip. There is no air current to bring you back, he said, and grimaced. You might end up in Bavaria, or Belgium, or anywhere other than where you are to go.

Hell, for example, he said.

Hell is here, I said.

Here is Paris, he said.

He took me next to the Gare d’Orléans, where we found the station hung with empty balloon baskets hanging from the girders, laced by riggings that allowed trainers to simulate for student pilots the conditions in the air. They were dusty and abandoned.

By order of the Commune, he said, as he tugged at one of the lines, I restore to service the balloon program of the Commune. Now then. The pay for the job of balloon pilot, he said, is three hundred francs. To be paid in full once you agree to the conditions of the contract. You are to surrender, he said. And you must go in disguise. You cannot wear the uniform of the Commune. To do so will mean certain death, or worse, rape and then death. On landing, you are to pretend to be a private citizen of Paris with no affiliation.

He handed me a vial and something that looked like a thimble with a thorn.

What is it? I asked.

Prussic acid, he said. If you are captured and it appears they will torture you, this means you will die swiftly instead. Or you dose this, and with one prick of your finger, your foe is dead.

I remembered the poster for the Amazons of the Seine, dressed in black, with their poisoned needles, and laughed, which confused and amused him both. I didn’t explain. I put his gift in a pouch I kept at my waist.

I accept, I said. I am proud to reopen this important program for the security of the workers of the Commune of Paris.