Ah, you are awake, the clerk said. What is the meaning of this costume? he asked.
I was separated from my troupe, I said, and set the mask on the counter. A cirque. And then I made a practiced pose, arms up, as if an announcer had called my name.
A woman in pants outside of a theater is a public lewdness, he said. Here, at least. We are not Paris.
Yes, I said. Sell me a ticket for Paris, please, then. And he laughed as I pushed a napoleon onto the counter.
Ma générale, he said. As you wish.
Ten
THE COMTESSE WAS not the kind to receive visitors uninvited to her front door, so I observed our old protocol instead. I posted a note to the address she’d made me memorize, saying I was in Paris again and would wait to be picked up in our old location.
I did not include the list I’d made, as it was the only way I could be sure I was paid for it. And I did not include my address, as I did not yet have it.
I sent the note from the Gare du Nord, just off the train from Compiègne.
I sold the mask, saber, boots, and pants to a junk peddler near the room I took by the Palais-Royal and got more money than I expected. I then bought from him his least ugly dress—gray wool, with decent buttons—a plain black hat with a blue ribbon, and what seemed to be new kid-leather boots. I added a hairbrush and stockings and a slip. The general’s coat I kept, as nothing else the peddler had was as warm, and I still liked the look of it. With what I had left over, I could afford the room and meals for at least a week.
The room in the Palais-Royal was barely big enough for me to swing my arms in, and the curtains were of an ugly brocade that may have been red once, but the curtains were mine to close, and I wouldn’t have to share the bed with anyone.
I’d arrived in Paris once more with almost nothing, but my life was my own in some way it had never been before, and I felt some new contentment despite my prospects. This was my newest treasure, and I wasn’t sure where I could hide it and have it be safe. I wasn’t sure I could live this life anywhere in Paris, but I was determined to try.
The Comtesse’s promise of paying me on my return was my single guarantee of any kind, hardly secure, but better than the last time I’d landed in Paris. I’d made a plan on the train to contact the Comtesse, apologize, give her what details I had of what the Empress had worn, tell her a few stories I was sure were of interest, and then once she’d paid me, I would ask if she might help me find work again. I would go to see the lady professor at the Conservatoire afterward and ask if she might teach me privately. And discreetly, of course. The tenor could never know.
I thought to offer to do some kind of work for the professor in return, perhaps mending, but that seemed unlikely to pay for singing lessons. I would need better work than that.
Ever since my audition, my singing voice felt like something in a box I shouldn’t open until I was in the presence of someone who could teach me how to keep it. If I did not use it, I would need some other way to make my living until I could.
In the spring my new composer friend would be at the piano in the Bal Mabille. I hoped by then to be able to surprise him with a song.
This was my slender bridge to the future, and I stepped onto it as carefully as I could.
On the first day, as I waited at the Bois, I sat and ate a package of hot chestnuts, purchased in confidence, until I grew cold, and then I went to a café to warm up before returning for one more hour. I ignored the many carriages that slowed or paused for me that were not hers.
It is too soon, I told myself. The post may take longer to reach her.
On the second day I did the same again. Too soon again, I said to myself, though I was less sure.
The third day was colder, and there was rain. As the rain began, I accepted first one carriage and then, as it continued, another.
The first was a beery gentleman, visiting from London, excited at all the women about and easy to please. The second, a terrified young Frenchman, perhaps even a boy, if a very rich one. Easy again, and he paid too much. After him, the rain stopped.
I used an old trick Euphrosyne had taught me, to rub them off using your thighs in such a way they thought they were inside you, to make sure the dress from the junk peddler wouldn’t be ruined by their spunk. But then I had to spend money at the baths after, and then it was time to go back to a café. There I found a man who wanted to pay for the meal and gave him the slip while he was in the pissoir. I went home alone to prepare for another day at the Bois.
Not quite too soon, I told myself, and hoped I had not missed the carriage.
I came out even in the end, but it was more trouble than it was worth, it seemed to me. I hoped it wouldn’t be too much longer. I made myself promise no more carriage rides until after the one that mattered.
§
At the end of the third day, I closed the door to this paradise and sat down on the bed; I didn’t feel quite as bold or brave, and doing tricks Euphrosyne had taught me made me think of her again. I knew I’d see her if I was to go back to the Mabille, but I thought I might wait and surprise her then, whenever that was. Despite how she’d betrayed me, I still loved her, and I knew she loved me. I feared she would be angry at the deception and, of course, consorting with her in public also risked my being taken in by the police and registered again—as I well knew—but I had already taken that risk twice today for men I didn’t know.
Without friends, my new life was only an empty room, if a little larger than the one I’d just rented. I missed her too much to wait until spring.
And so I stood and went out again.
§
I found my way back to the Majeurs-Plaisirs easily enough. The downstairs salon windows were lit, and I heard the chatter and laughter that I knew marked the evening’s beginning. I waited in the alley, watching as the door occasionally opened and closed and guests came and went.
I was near giving up when the doors opened and out stepped a woman as richly dressed as any I’d ever seen, even at the balls at Compiègne.
Euphrosyne was a vision. In the light from the door, she glowed as she shrugged a new white fur opera cloak closer to her. An ostrich plume fluttered atop her white velvet hat and nicked the top of the doorway. She laughed and petted it down, and then came down the stairs with the flutter of at least a hundred tiny black ribbon bows on her black silk toile gown’s skirt. Diamonds flashed in her ears and at her throat. A gentleman beside her, with her on his arm, was busy speaking with another coming along behind them. She let go his arm and waited for help from the driver to enter the carriage, and as she did, I stepped forward.
The driver looked at me as he might at a beggar or an assassin and glared, waving me back. She had ignored me, and I was so embarrassed to be snubbed by her, I stayed quiet, but as I stepped back, the general’s coat caught her eye, and then my face came into view.
You little bitch, she whispered, a smile growing on her face as her gentlemen paused at the carriage door and the driver stared. I knew they couldn’t kill you. And then she leapt at me with a cry and pulled me to her.
I prayed to God to bring you back to me, she said, and then looked up at the sky and said, Thank you! And then she kissed me again and again, saying it was the only way to know I wasn’t a ghost. She pulled my arm to her in our old way and began to walk me down the street. When her companions in the carriage protested at her abrupt departure, offering at least a ride, she turned and waved them on before continuing with me.
My dears, she shouted. She is just back from the dead. Please forgive me and return for me at intermission.
I came back to tell you everything, I said, as she waved to hire us another driver.
Of course, she said. Tell me everything.