As he’d waited on the Luxembourg Palace balcony amid new friends, he’d found himself next to the tenor, who did not seem to recognize him; his habits of long nights and drink meant he lived in a steady riot of acquaintances, everyone equally familiar and unfamiliar, with friends of longstanding whom he could not call by name and strangers he was sure he loved. The tenor relied constantly on his celebrity to keep up his friendships. That evening he had been busy narrating the evening for the party of men on the balcony that night and never once recognized Aristafeo.
Aristafeo, however, knew him instantly.
As my fame had grown, the tenor’s had as well, as someone who dined out on his stories of me. Earlier, over dinner at a restaurant in Les Halles with these same men, he had begun with the story of how, after attending a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor, I had turned to him and tried to make him laugh by, with no training whatsoever, singing in imitation of the diva in the street outside the Paris Opera and he believed I had surpassed her. To his amazement, the other theatergoers mistook me for her in the dark, thinking perhaps she’d come outside to greet her fans.
A lie told to hide my past at the Majeurs-Plaisirs.
He described the secret lessons inside the unfinished Garnier and the first audition, the discovery that I was a Falcon and the rejection by the first jury, at which they all shook their heads in amazement.
Over the second course, he told a false story of my childhood, one I had not heard: that I was the illegitimate daughter of a former nun, fathered on her by a man of the cloth, the powers of my voice the Lord’s way of being merciful to a girl otherwise innocent of sin—this I attributed to some fantasy of the tenor’s. Because of this unfortunate childhood, it had been his duty, he said, on discovering my voice, to train me, and it had been his pleasure to introduce me to the great Pauline Viardot-García, who had graciously taken me on—and then provided the vindication of bringing me with her to study at the Conservatoire once she had assumed the directorship there after the war.
Alexandre Dumas, fils, had added, for the tenor’s new friend mostly, that he’d known me to move both assassins and those who commanded them, and had watched surprised as his friends wept in the dark boxes of the theater around him like children. They talk through the other singers, but when she sings, the theater is otherwise silent, he said. I like to imagine she could stop an execution.
This was met with both general laughter and agreement.
By the time the wine was nearly gone, there came a friendly argument about recent reviews hailing me as the greatest voice of my era, saying that I was a sign the north of Europe had been civilized at last and that the light of that civilization was alive in my voice, moving now through it to the rest of the continent. The world could only be next.
On the balcony at the palace afterward, as the men smoked, the tenor kept his new friend company with a few glasses of cognac.
You want to know more? he asked Aristafeo as I came into view.
I do, he said.
He told of the men who had seized my carriage the night of my debut and carried it through the streets, whipped by my driver to let go and whose hands still bore the scars.
Others were more impertinent, he added, and so she lives at a carefully guarded secret address as a result, known only to her closest intimates.
The tenor traced for him what he knew of my days: I did not speak between morning and my arrival at the theater, my servants were instructed to attend to my needs by leaving me notes and returning for my written answer. The same acts were performed at the same times of each day as if to a metronome, meals prompt and unvaried, the foods to fit the needs of a performer who could not gain weight or afford the slightest cough. I gave my costume mistresses the tiny weights used in the nets of Brittany fishermen to help give my costumes their slow, wheeling movements as I walked the stage, and my preference was for only the best jewelry for presents when it was not couture.
Is it true her maids have found diamonds in her garbage? Aristafeo had asked.
A bluff. She told them to search for them there afterward, the tenor said. She is pure theater.
What gift do you suppose she’d prefer? Aristafeo asked.
I couldn’t say, the tenor said. Nothing I do seems to please her.
They laughed. The other gentlemen joined them, taking in the view of the guests arriving; each outdoing the other to tell the new friend, this protégé of Verdi’s, something more interesting or sad or scandalous about each person. As the breeze moved the smoke of the cigars along and the view of the crowd was commanding, the group stayed content.
From there, he saw me announced. He watched as the writer made his plea to me and became worried as I left with him for the garden. He waited for me to appear again, even saw me emerge briefly before turning back. He waited for the writer also. When he saw neither of us, he even suspected us of beginning an affair, but he had come this far, and so, having worked up his nerve, he waited.
And then I did reappear.
That is her, indicated the tenor.
His eyes searched the gardens and the crowds of celebrants wandering through. The trees were strung with paper lanterns and lamps burned brightly along the edges, candles lit throughout the garden, but he did not see me until the aisle of raised swords told him I was returning from the palace.
But she was here earlier, Aristafeo observed. Had she left?
Yes, the tenor said, and grinned, slapping his arm. Though in quite a different gown altogether. It would appear she’s had some sport. He then addressed the reputation of the dukes at my side.
That dress is the better one, Simonet said, having rejoined them.
Aristafeo held himself in place, gripping the rail as I was announced a second time and entered to applause, the crowd shouting my name. La Générale! La Générale! The men and women standing on their seats to see in the uproar had the men on the balcony joined by their dinner companions, all anxious to see me as well. They screamed with laughter as the one woman’s dress caught fire and she was rushed to a fountain.
When I began the Jewel Song aria, the voice in the night came with a green flash through the dark, the ring he knew well finally on my hand as I waved my hands to the song’s gestures in the gaslight below.
Always, the tenor said to him, as he took out his handkerchief. Always she is giving the performance of her life.
The tenor then joked to the assembled gentlemen that I had done him the favor of agreeing to become his wife. Some of the group demanded the truth; the rest, who knew better of our history, laughed, and he refused to say more, only grinning.
Here then was the real source of the published rumor that I was to marry him, this joke.
This news from the tenor, for Aristafeo, it was as if he’d been thrown from the balcony.
When the writer reappeared and offhandedly said our meeting had gone well and that he would speak to me again after he had sent his novel, Aristafeo thanked him and then asked if he had obtained my address. When the writer apologized for not having obtained such a thing, he fumed.
The tenor, overhearing this, slid a card into Aristafeo’s hand. My good friend, the tenor said. On seeing it, Aristafeo raced away before the ball was done.
He knew the address too well. He went and waited in the street for me to return, smoking himself sick.
Now he believed the worst. He wanted to be free of the errand that had brought him out that night, but instead, he stayed, helpless, determined to see it through.
How could I be there still? Why would I stay there of all places? He had put me in that balloon, and yet he found me again in my cage.
Somewhere near dawn, my carriage returned.
He had meant to cry out to me as I stepped out, to confront me, but he could not think of what to say; he then thought to go to my door or return in the morning. But in each instance he could not bring himself either to speak or leave, and so instead he stayed there through the night. He followed my progress in the distance, me moving through my rooms by the light of my taper until I blew it out and the shades were drawn.
He had asked the Verdis to say nothing of him to me, and so when I arrived at their house that night for dinner with no apparent knowledge of his return, they then affected ignorance, improvising, believing he’d had a failure of nerve and wishing to protect his wishes.