This was what they wanted. A house of tolerance with just one girl. The apartment like his own music box, and when he opened it, I was what moved and sang.
This apartment was not my freedom, and it would not have been hers, either. Instead, it was as if I were shut inside one of the theaters and told I was to live in there with him, or for him, or both.
As I examined the sconces on the wall of my new music room, I half expected to see Odile’s eye peering at me through some hollow bottom in one of them, making sure all was as he wanted it.
As the maid unpacked me, she found my little ruby rose and held it out to me, praising it before putting it in a little jewelry box on my dressing table.
The sight of it mocked me—my charm, back with its strange luck. It was a kind of mercy Euphrosyne returned it to me only after the bill of fare had been settled. I did not have to see it discussed, or worse, valued.
I could guess what it was worth now. And while I hated Euphrosyne for stealing it and still felt she had trapped me by doing so, I could never have paid Odile back with what I would have gotten for selling it. Just as I could never have made my way to Lucerne with whatever I might have sold it for.
I was finally worth more than any of my things, in any case. This tenor, I had seen what he had paid Odile for his fantasy of making me a singer.
Let it remind you of that, I told my reflection the next time I pinned the brooch to my lapel.
And, for a while, it did.
Nine
ON A WINTER AFTERNOON in Paris, in a cold wooden room at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, I auditioned for a jury of voice professors and was told afterward, with extreme wariness, that I was a Falcon soprano.
I asked what this was.
The head music professor looked first to his companions. The voice jury, three men and a woman, shrugged as one. He turned back to face me.
At first it seemed you were a mezzo, he said, and then that was not the case. You are studying and have been helped with your audition piece, yes?
I nodded. Our eyes fell together on my own music case, gleaming in the soft light.
And this person did not tell you this?
No, I said.
Well, it would be difficult to know. In a category of fragile singers, you are among the most fragile. An untrained listener would assume the voice was quite strong, for your tone is strong. But the voice is not and could be destroyed quite easily. Especially if trained by someone who cannot tell you you are a Falcon. He frowned, shrugged, and continued. The voice itself is a dark thing, but hooded. But from this comes impossible lights. There is an upper register where the mezzo voice might thin or pause. As you sang up, the surprises became evident.
He looked away for a moment. His colleagues watched him, not me.
It was like a night and then shooting stars, he said, and smiled.
I stared. I was afraid of missing something I needed to know that I might never be told again.
With this sort of voice, he continued, it may be you have a long career. But it may be you have a very short one. It is a very odd, very beautiful, very rare sort of voice. You could sing all the dramatic soprano roles I can think of, but . . . perhaps you should not.
Should not? I asked.
For then you may have a very short career, he said. And this is what I mean. The tone is powerful, but the voice itself, delicate. You might ruin your voice in just the training we could provide. It is even possible you destroyed it here today, singing your Abigaille aria from Nabucco.
I touched the hot skin of my throat, my hands cold, and left them there to warm.
Do not do that, he said. Do not chill your throat like that after singing.
I put my hands down.
This voice has another name, he said.
Tragic soprano is how it is more traditionally known, said the woman at his elbow. None of the four council members spoke as the head professor paused and paged through their notes.
Accept our congratulations on a distinguished audition, he said finally. I can’t think of when I knew Abigaille’s first aria to be sung with appropriate force and it is an extraordinarily difficult aria, not at all what we are used to hearing in auditions. It was very dangerous but very beautiful, he said. Whoever you are studying with should likely be reprimanded. He cleared his throat and continued. You are too young, however, he said, and paused. And here the woman at his elbow looked sternly to him. And while you appear very intelligent, you lack a proper French education, and this is another obstacle, and not a small one, he said. But we have been assured that you will work hard should you be allowed. If you are accepted, you must commit to a very disciplined training to make up for this. Do you understand me? he asked.
I do, I said.
Are you performing now? he asked.
Under my wool skirt I could feel the leather garters I still wore against my thighs. No, I said.
You must not, he said. It is very likely someone would try to exploit your voice and get you to sing too soon, in the dance halls or the cabarets. Everything you learn here, should we admit you, could come to nothing if your voice fails, he said. He paused and a silent council moved between them all, and then he said, We will confer. Please await our letter. And until then, sing nothing.
He was a tender old man, someone who had grown old here, clearly. In my fear and nervousness I stood staring around the room. Then I picked up my music case.
The woman professor, whom I would later know very well, came and took my arm, walking me to the door. She had a matronly air but a maiden’s figure. My dear, she said, it is not a bird, this Falcon. The first Falcon gave it her name: Marie-Cornélie Falcon. She was my teacher. She was an elegant gentlewoman and an inspired singer, but her career lasted just eight years. I wish you many more. She clasped her hands over mine and, with a pat, released them.
She was too late. As I walked the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière afterward, I could feel the wings trailing off my back, the wind in the street beating against them.
§
I left the area quickly and returned home. I did not want to risk arrest for conspiring against the honor of the lady professor.
All over Paris, I saw them, young men and women carrying these handsome leather music cases like the one under my arm, students at the Paris Conservatoire, formerly l’H?tel des Menus-Plaisirs, the place Odile had studied, the state-run school that trained and educated the musicians, singers, and dancers who sang for the pleasure of the Emperor Napoléon III and his Empress Eugénie on the stage of the Paris Opera. I hoped to truly be one of them—and that my past would not prevent this.
There was much Euphrosyne had neglected to tell me of her situation, and so I alternately regretted and rebelled against my entry into the register. In this life, I was forbidden to be on certain streets altogether, forbidden to be on any street during daylight, and my head was always to be covered if I was outside. I could never be in the company of unregistered women, and every two weeks I was to renew the registration in person. The door to my apartment, if I was to live away from the brothel, was to have oversized numerals on it, announcing to all who passed the nature of the woman who lived there, and I was never to be seen at my open window. To disobey any of these rules meant I could be arrested.
While at first I obeyed these laws, I soon went about by day with a bare head, couldn’t remember the forbidden streets until I was on them, and had not renewed my registration in more than a month. To go now, though, was to be jailed for lateness as well. I’d allowed my life with the tenor to take me over. I was sure, without any reason to think so, that our time together would end in my freedom. I could see it in the change in expressions from the professors—at the beginning they had looked on, almost embarrassed to see me. By the end, there was real respect.
I was a Falcon.