The letter had taken almost two months to reach me. Pauline had stayed until the third month of the Franco-Prussian War. She’d stayed later than most, remaining even when the fighting came close enough so that the smoke could be seen and the cries and cannon fire heard in the mountains near her house. She left when the Germans she’d loved so much, and who previously had loved her, began picketing her home.
These protesters were unmoved that their side was winning the war and cared not at all that Pauline had moved to Baden-Baden along with her husband in protest of the reign of Napoleon III—they did not know nor did they care that at the war’s start she’d even hoped it might result in the removal of Napoleon III, as that meant she could return home to Paris. She was almost on their side, except for their new belief she was an interloper. Eventually M. Viardot left first, for London, to secure accommodations for waiting out the war safely. Turgenev then took Pauline by train to the coast and put her on a boat with her children before following soon after; and with that, they were in exile. By the time she had returned home to Paris, Paris was her exile from Baden-Baden.
I know that when I see you again, whenever that is, it will be as if we each carry a piece of that vanished place with us against the day it might be reassembled or returned to glory. I hope you are still well and happy and safe, and that you continue with your lessons. Keep your piece of our lost home well. Do not let the voice rest; you have gained too much to let go.
I am, as ever,
Pauline
She was in London, then. I would have to get to London.
I’m delighted to see you take an interest in these things, the tenor said to me that evening as Lucy wheeled in the first course, a potato soup with leeks. I understand you have begun rehearsing here at home.
The rehearsals had been in part a test to see what Doro or Lucy said of my doings to him, and I quietly registered the success even as it disappointed me.
I am glad to hear of your rehearsing for your debut, he said. And how are we paying for our young accompanist?
I shrugged. I am helping him, I said. He is writing something new. An opera, if I understand correctly. With a role for me.
The tenor smiled. So he loves you, he said.
It is not love he feels, I said, joking. He did not laugh.
He set down his knife. A toast, he said. To your original role. An honor rare to the greatest of singers and rare certainly for a singer who has not yet debuted.
I raised my glass and touched it to his, and it did not shake.
I would not have this amant de coeur staying past sunset, he said. I looked away at this to treat it as ridiculousness, but it was generous and surprised me. He raised his glass to his mouth.
Of course, I said to the tenor. And never past sunset. For my accompanist.
Good girl, he said. Thank you. I’m moved by the thoroughness of your preparations for this role. He brushed his hands on his napkin and then lifted the spoon to his soup at last. I will help.
I would never ask—
You’re not asking, my love. I insist. I know the Elvino role quite well. He smiled at me, glittering through the dark. We’ll begin the day after tomorrow. That way you can tell your pianist to prepare.
Amant de coeur—this lover, he pays nothing, he visits only after the others have their fill of you, he must not interfere. You never give him a ride in a carriage provided to you by another lover, you never make a gift to him of anything that was given to you. You never entertain him at any hour the others might prefer. The affair is tolerated entirely on the premise that it exists in the realm of pure love, untainted by the touch of money, and so, this amant is envied, of course, and so it is better if his identity is unknown, but it is good for a courtesan’s reputation if she is thought to have one of these, it shows she has the normal emotions. The fantasy is then alive for her other lovers, that if circumstances were different it might be any of them who held court in her heart instead of him.
Of course, if a man has a courtesan, he does not more than tolerate the fantasy that her love could be freely given.
It was time for me to have something only for me.
You must always leave before sunset, I told Aristafeo as we sat at the piano, and he played for me again.
Is he a vampire, then?
I smiled as I considered this. I saw myself in black, the needle of prussic acid at my fingertip. No, I said. It would be easier if he were.
He kept playing.
He knows that we’ve been rehearsing, I said.
I thought as much.
That he knew—
It does not surprise me.
Several bars passed before we spoke again.
He will join us tomorrow, as well, I said. To sing Elvino.
He nodded without comment.
I returned my attention to the music. You are composing this now? I asked.
Yes, he said. You’re too kind, however. It’s terrible.
No, it’s not, I said. But now you must make an opera with a role for me, for I have said you are.
Is it just music for now, or is there a libretto?
I did not answer; instead, I listened to him play for nearly an hour more like this.
Escape with me, I said. Can it be done? Could we leave now?
The light shadowed his face. He seemed to be thinking of it, but he had not answered immediately, and I instantly doubted myself. You are asking me, he said, but you, I think, are the escape artist.
What will you say to him tomorrow, I asked, when he asks you about the opera I have said you are writing for me?
But I am still planning our escape, he said, his smile like thunder.
§
I found Amina first in the wig room at Pauline’s Baden-Baden Haustheater, one wig among many on the shelves of blank-faced wooden mannequin heads, some with their eyes scrawled in with pen to make hideous glares, jowls, sly winks. Or rather, she had found me. I had not known it was one of Pauline’s most famous roles, that it nearly belonged to her. Under each wig was a card with the name. Madame Viardot walked purposely toward this one, with black curls in a ridiculous pile, almost like shearling. Small pink satin bows glowed here and there among the ringlets.
Amina, the name read. She shook the wig at me.
I took it from her and held it up, examining it from underneath. There were small loops to pull it with. It was a small cap sewn with hair.
Put it on, Madame Viardot commanded. There’s not much trick to it. She walked over as if to help me.
I slid it over my head.
I pushed and pulled at it to settle it into place. When I looked into the mirror, I had the oddest experience when it was in place. I knew exactly how to smile, different from my own smile. As if the wig were a door for this other girl to walk through the moment I wore her hair.
I went home with the libretto and the music, a little afraid of it.
The opera began in a village haunted by the ghost of an angry young woman, her eyes on fire, her hair like smoke as she ran the streets at night. She is not a ghost, though, but a sleepwalker, an orphan girl engaged to be married to the town’s most handsome and suitable bachelor. One night she walks all the way to the hotel room of a visiting gentleman and awakes to find herself in his bed. This sets in motion a plot that unravels her engagement—she is thought to be untrue to her fiancé, Elvino, who breaks their engagement. As he prepares to marry her rival, she tries desperately to prove herself to him, failing until, as he marches to his wedding, he sees her asleep, walking the roof of the town’s mill, singing in her sleep of her love for him. He rushes to her side to rescue her from falling to her death, and she wakes to find herself in his arms.
It was ridiculous, and yet the music was extraordinary, and I loved it—and it was not Il Trovatore. I had found a role to focus me that was neither the role I lived for nor lived inside of.
The tenor had adjusted his disappointment and kept assuring me we would perform this together at the Paris Opera next spring as my debut, a season I doubted would come. And yet I knew there was the slightest chance that I would still be allowed to debut, and so I knew there was nothing else for me to do. Whatever was to happen to Paris, it was time to leave. He would wait for us in the music room; I would be gone. And would try to convince Aristafeo to come with me.