Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

Our shoes were black with blood.

Night had fallen but there was still light from the fires. We climbed to the top of the zoo to see where the fires were and if we should leave, and so from the roof, we watched as Paris burned.

§

In the morning we woke to find the neighborhood had been barricaded and occupied by the Commune, but still no one had searched the institutes and the zoo. Periodically, we heard the screams of fighting, and then, after two days, an enormous explosion rocked the palace.

We cannot stay, Aristafeo said to me, as the noise ended.

We stay until there’s no ham, I said. And then we leave.

§

Our monkey neighbors awakened us. Their screams of defiance, I guessed, meant new visitors.

I shook Aristafeo awake, my hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t say a word.

As the soldiers shot at the monkeys, we left, slipping into the nearest of the greenhouses. We made our way through the silent rows of plants under the vast pleated glass-and-metal roof until we were in the street. We went first to the Luxembourg Gardens, thinking to hide there next, but instead we found the fountains and gardens full of thousands of bodies, all Communards, newly dead. The grass was soaked in their blood. So many had died, the Versaillais likely needed more room for the dead, and so this was why they had turned their attention to the zoo.

We did not dare speak and fled silently until we reached the Seine, pausing only when we were down under one of the bridges.

What are we to do here? I asked him, as he waved at me to go no farther.

Aristafeo smiled at me then.

Why are you smiling? I asked.

What can you not escape? he asked.

Paris, I nearly said, and then Fate, and then the tenor —in the end I said none of these for back then I took more seriously the idea I might curse myself. Instead, I said what a lover would say.

I hope it’s you.

It was then I saw it, the most beautiful horse I’d ever seen, up on the quai. It had gotten loose somehow, or the rider had died, it didn’t matter — and no one had shot it yet for steaks and pies. It was most likely the mount of some dead Versaillais — the only well-fed horses in Paris were coming into the city with them.

A handsome stallion, pale gray-white and fierce, it had its bridle but not its saddle.

I snatched some grass by my feet and walked slowly toward him, holding it out. He whinnied and backed up some before coming a little closer, testing me. So I stood stock-still, hand out, waiting.

You, too, I said to Aristafeo, anxious that he help. If we were to ride the horse together, it would need calming from us both. But I could not see him, for he was behind me, slipping his elbow around my throat.

Even you , I thought, before the blackness came over me.

§

I woke with my own bag over my head, in darkness. The smell of the ham thick in my face. We were riding the horse; I was in his arms in front of him, my face against the horse’s neck.

Paris still smelled of burning and worse. The banks of the Seine were littered with the dead, I could tell.

We rode for an uncertain distance, an instant and an eon, and then he had me off of the horse, on his shoulder, climbing stairs and more stairs, until he opened a door and I felt wind.

Are you awake or did I kill you? he asked. I could hear him making some preparations.

Still here, I said faintly.

I must confess something, he said. Of your tenor friend.

I waited.

He paid me to bring you to the roof of the opera that night, he said. I was to be his agent.

It doesn’t matter, I said. Why did you agree?

How could I not want you safe? he said. Who else could it be?

But you would have stayed and died, I said.

He was silent to this.

Nothing can happen to you, I said.

You were never going to belong to me, he said. Except here.

No, I said. No. I don’t want this, I don’t want this.

They are killing the women, he said. I don’t know why, but the Seine was full of women.

Now it was I who could say nothing.

The city has gone mad, he said. When you kill the women, you are murdering even the future.

I was quiet as he worked.

I could as easily die in the balloon, I said.

But you might live, he said, against my face, suddenly, and he kissed me through my hood.

He threw me into the basket then, reached in, and removed the hood. As I struggled to my feet, shouting, he threw the ropes in with me.

The balloon lurched into the air and then stayed a moment. He held the last rope and a knife.

I do this for love of you, he said.

The city had darkened around us, strung with lights again in places — the fabric of the night still broken by fire. Above me, the balloon, glowing in the horrible light of the flame filling it.

It was small, but I knew it would be enough for me. It glowed like something brought up from hell.

He reached in and cut the ties at my wrists quickly, and as I reached for him, he let go.

No, he said.

I fell into the basket as the balloon shot into the air. I struggled to get to my feet again and then stood, grabbing the straps and steadying myself as I remembered.

He stood looking at me, and then I saw a dark figure moving quickly behind him and I screamed, but I was not fast enough. He fell to his knees, gasping, arching his back forward.

The killer’s face turned quickly to the balloon, and I saw Eugène had waited all this time.

His knife hand rose and came down again.

I screamed with all of my might this time, and the balloon shook as if from it, already at a terrifying height, the basket tossing in the winds as it rose, pulling me into the sky. I screamed for Eugène to stop, though I had gone too high for him to hear.

When I woke some weeks later in a hospital in Metz, the nurse asked me who Eugène was.

I CAN’T TELL YOU how astonished I am, the Prince said, that you’re alive. Twice over now.

The Prince’s family is one of the country’s oldest, the tenor had told me as he brought me to this audience by train. They are nearly sacred in Germany. They are one of our sacred families.

My balloon had crashed to earth in Metz. I survived the impact but the straps around my arms broke my arms when I landed. It is traditional to punish mortals who fly with worse than this, the nurse said. You are lucky.

I had spent weeks in the field hospital until I was well enough to be moved. At some point, in and out of my morphine sleep, I knew the tenor had appeared before me. His face red, wet, his coat still on.

Ah, thank God! he shouted, and I turned my face away.

His letter and handkerchief were still in my pocket. The nurses had contacted him at once.

I had not tied his signal to the ropes. I had hoped for certain death.

In my dreams during the week after my escape, I dreamt I was in flight, dressed in the Amazon of the Seine uniform, stepping off the balloon into the cool embrace of the night wind, lifting up into the air and lighting my way by the cold radiance of my moon-white face as I fled into the farthest reaches of the sky. Below me, Paris burned. And then I woke each time to find myself in Germany. Where I truly was.

No dream, this.

The tenor had insisted he bring me to meet a man he called the Prince, who wanted to thank me. But now in his throne room, I saw he had already introduced us.

In front of me was his young officer friend, the one who wanted to be a composer. I remembered him as the one who liked to bring his compositions to the apartment and sit at the piano while I did my best to sing them through. He had told me he was a composer forced to be a soldier; from his compositions, I had never been sure if he was to be a composer, but to see him here suggested he was the better as a soldier.