I sat up.
You can wear them once more to be fitted for new ones, he said. Order at least a dozen. Go to see someone decent, have them present the bill to this address. He slid a card onto my vanity table. Go to your favorite.
He fitted his collar into his shirt, tied his tie, and then sat to put on his stockings and shoes. As he stood and straightened himself, he turned back to me, and said, Welcome back to Paris.
I presented myself at the dressmaker who knew me well, the only place I knew to go, the one the Comtesse had sent me to—Félix. Jou-jou! he said. Welcome back. It has been so long! How was your time in Baden-Baden?
Fantastic, I said. I did not bother to correct him as to my name.
It has agreed with you, he said. The Comtesse said you were very happy there.
I smiled as if I knew this. I look forward to calling on her shortly, I said, though I knew I could not bring myself to do so. I gave him the tenor’s card. He handed it back to me. I looked at him questioningly.
He laughed. My dear, we have his card already—we expected you! He wrote just the other day that we were to see you soon. Follow me, he said. This time I will show you the new fabrics. They have just come in. And it’s just as well, he said. These may be the last dresses made in Paris. He pushed back the curtain to his atelier and withdrew his tape ribbon from his watch pocket. I have not even seen the orders yet for the Empress’s series at Compiègne.
§
After the constant company in Baden-Baden, Paris felt empty. I went to see Euphrosyne’s barman, to leave her a message with him, but when I entered the café, another man stood behind the counter. I left at once.
I returned again another time at a different time of day, and it was still the same stranger. Again, and it was yet another stranger. There was no sign her friend worked there any longer.
I had not written to Euphrosyne during my absence, for I blamed her for what had happened—for her advice that I go to see the Comtesse. But it was the summer again, and I was sure the Bal Mabille would be full. She would be there. As would my fantasy composer.
For I did think of him as a fantasy now. I had imagined him so often, he had become a figure of imagination, almost as remote and mythical to me as my hidden god. That old fantasy, my imagined flight from Baden-Baden, in defiance of my circumstances, had been a hopeless one. It is better, I had told myself, to wait. You would be destroyed. By waiting, I hoped we would be reunited in some future where I was finally a singer and he a composer. The Empress dead, the Emperor also.
Would we recognize each other then? I wondered.
The belief we would be reunited, that the world would organize itself to bring us together, this seemed comic at best set against the very real city around me now. All I risked, if I went to the Mabille that night, was to enter and find another woman beside him, leaning over the piano, pushing his hair back as he played—though that still had the power to keep me away.
This, at least, was what I told myself each time I took out and then put away my cancan shoes, which were too old now and, no doubt, out of style. And besides, it would be August; the city would begin to empty from the heat.
I instead took to returning to the opera house on my own, to sit outside of it, almost as if I were keeping it company; soon it became a regular pilgrimage. I stood on the sidewalk opposite the entrance and imagined my own likeness there, not among the busts of the composers, but along the roof, perhaps in the place of the golden Apollo, or joining him. I’d once thought the Empress to be ridiculous, having herself painted as a goddess, and yet there I sat at a table outside of a bistro sipping a coffee and imagining an image of myself shining down from the top of the Opéra Garnier.
After a month of these visits, I heard a voice behind me say, Can I enlist you to help me knock some of them off the roof?
I turned. My composer sat at the table behind me. He raised his glass and nodded at me.
There’s no room for me up there, he said.
The sight of him, a reproach for all of my doubts. The path to him had indeed led away from him to here.
I did recognize him. His face had thinned instead of thickening, a sign of, perhaps, difficult times for a man. I wondered for just an instant if he recognized me as well, and then he said, I searched for you.
I sat still, shocked, unable even to move.
The other grisettes said you had run off. With that tenor singer. I wondered where you could have run off to, and it would seem you ran here. I hoped it would be.
He was here, he was talking to me, he had looked for me.
I had hoped it would be me. I never had the honor of your name, he said.
If I had to die here in the war to come, at least he was here with me. Though as I looked at him, the old fears—that we were watched or would be discovered—returned the louder. I studied the area around us for signs someone was watching us, but there were none. Perhaps our watchers had abandoned us.
I wanted to imagine my fears were senseless, but I knew better. That seemed to be the mistake I made each time.
Please excuse me, he said, and he came to my table and made a bow. I am Aristafeo, Aristafeo Cadiz. My name means “ugly knob.” My mother invented it, as she felt I’d ruined her looks. But I like it, as I don’t think anyone else has this name. I’ve been watching you come here for several weeks and wanted to be sure it was you before I spoke to you. It is you, yes?
Lilliet Berne, I said. And then I added, Falcon soprano, most recently a student of Pauline Viardot-García’s in Baden-Baden and newly returned to Paris. I am here in case of war, apparently. Should Paris need to be defended by sopranos.
He smiled. I devoutly wish it will not come to that, he said. I congratulate you. You did well to run off; you must be an extraordinary singer to have been her student. I’m honored. This means you have seen her copy of Don Giovanni written in the master Mozart’s own hand?
I said I had.
I look forward to hearing you sing. I must ask you, I thought I knew you another way, he said.
What way is this? I asked.
I used to play in the band at the Cirque d’Hiver, and there was a rider there I fell in love with. She was beautiful and so quiet. The other girls were so crass and loud, but she said nothing, not once. She was let go before I could speak to her. I would see her also at the Bal Mabille, where she seemed more lively. But I was playing in the orchestra there and could not stop playing to ask her to dance.
You should have, I said. You should have asked her to dance.
Then, I suppose, she was let go again, from whatever job she had, he said, for I saw her next as a maid at Compiègne.
I stared at him, uncertain as to whether I should laugh or run.
How many women are you? he asked.
A legion, I said. How many orchestras have you played in?
All of them, perhaps, he said, smiling.
I heard the chiming of the clock behind us and knew I had to return.
Monsieur, I said. If you’ll please excuse me, I must take my leave of you.
Mademoiselle Berne, please, he said, still holding my hand. We were just getting to know each other.
I nodded and could not stop the smile on my face.
I did not dare let him into this life here, not yet. It was too soon. And yet I did not dare let him go. But surely the tenor could not begrudge me an accompanist.
I slid a card from my calling-card case, the one the tenor had given me to give to my dressmaker.
Is it beneath you, I asked, if I ask you to rehearse with me? I must prepare for my debut.
I have looked for you everywhere, he said. Everywhere but here, and he smiled, holding up the card before putting it inside his jacket’s ticket pocket. Consider me your servant.
Call on me there, I said. Tomorrow. Come for tea. I will try to explain everything.
He laughed out of surprise and shock, and then said, a little louder, Until then, and then he bowed until I walked away.