The spring made everyone in Montreal, no matter what neighborhood, want to go out at night. Sadie and George crammed into the crowded music hall together. They sat at a table and ordered drinks. They shared a cigar together and laughed. They exhaled smoke as though the fires in their hearts had just been put out. George knew Sadie liked the attention they got when they were out together. Because Sadie was a natural provocateur. It gave her a thrill to be shocking and on the arm of another woman dressed like a man. And from the first moment Sadie Arnett had set foot in the music hall, she was in love with the spectacles presented there.
The crowd drank and yelled over one another through the musical acts, the magician, the lion tamer, and even the sword swallower. The music hall was different from the theater. The audience was rowdy. The theaters Sadie had visited as a child were places of culture and taste, where sophisticated people came. But the music hall let in those who were flamboyant and deviant. They used their cleverness for shocking observations and absurd conclusions. They carried on very public commentary on the acts taking place onstage.
Sadie listened to the snippets of conversation that reached her ears.
“Look at that magician. If that magician could really pull coins out of people’s ears, why on earth would he be working at this ridiculous joint?”
“Why does that juggler have such a look of concentration on his face? I’d rather not see performers look as though they are about to take a crap. It’s positively disconcerting.”
“I think I saw a politician in the private booth. He lectures about morality and closing the theaters all the time. Give me a pervert who lives openly any day of the week.”
“He’s my ticket out of here. I’m not a virgin, but he doesn’t have to know that. I’ve always been of the opinion the less your husband knows about you, the better.”
A knife thrower came out onstage. He had long hair, a handlebar mustache, and a pointed beard. When his assistant came out, the crowd went wild, whistling and banging their glasses on the table. She was wearing an extraordinarily provocative white corset and a tiny skirt. She had on white boots that laced up to her knees and an enormous feather on her head. No woman would be allowed to wear such an outfit in real life. But in art and spectacle you were allowed so many more liberties. She walked assuredly, lifting up her knees as though she were a pony. The knife thrower sharpened his knives as she pranced about the stage.
Sadie looked at his expression. She could not, for the life of her, come up with any conclusive notion of how he felt about the woman he was about to throw knives at. Was he looking at her as though she were a piece of meat he was about to carve up? Or was he looking at her with affection? It seemed a combination of the two. She wondered whether they were lovers in real life. She concluded that they had to be.
How could two people go through this intense relationship that involved trust and humiliation and not become lovers? How could he allow any other man to make love to her when he had such ownership over her body in these moments?
The assistant twirled and trotted about to give the audience a look at her body. Sadie witnessed a flicker of irritation in the knife thrower’s face, as the girl was stealing the show when it was his act. He was the one with talent. The girl was replaceable. He could have chosen any down-and-out pretty girl from the street who could hold still. But he was wrong. He didn’t know it was her absolute subjugation that caused the act to be a success.
She disappeared backstage and returned with a large wooden wheel adorned with black-and-white stripes. She allowed the knife thrower to tie her to the wheel. He spun her, and her body blurred like the wings of a magical hummingbird for a moment before slowing slightly. The knives flew at her spinning body. Each time, the knife came so close to hitting her, it sliced a lock of hair off. Everyone in the audience was quiet so they could hear the sound of the knife through the air, the thud of it hitting the wood, and the ecstatic yelp that came from the mouth of the girl.
When the woman stepped off the wheel, with a giant smile on her face, Sadie felt so inspired. Here was a woman who was not afraid of the violence of men. A beautiful body was always in peril, but this woman openly enjoyed that threat. It made her feel alive. She was not afraid to face it.
As she was taking a bow, Sadie noticed a trickle of bright-red blood going down her stocking.
Sadie saw the woman behind the theater as she and George left to walk back to the brothel. She was wearing a large coat and was smoking a cigarette standing next to a portmanteau. Sadie abandoned George to go speak to her.
* * *
Sadie had a sexual penchant for performers. Once she had seen someone on the stage, they held an attraction no one else could.
On the days Sadie brought someone home from the music hall, George was barred from her bedroom, of course. Sometimes George knew who Sadie was in her room with, and other times it was a mystery. It was always noisy, as performers are quite talented at projecting their voices.
George went to the bathroom one night and a clown she had seen onstage earlier in the evening was sitting on the toilet. He had white pancake makeup on his dark face and black diamonds around his eyes. Earlier he’d had a red circle for lips, but that had been kissed off.
There was a strongman she had seen at the variety hall in the kitchen one morning. He was wearing the same striped suit from the night before except it was untucked and had been put back on without any care. He was holding the three-year-old daughter of a prostitute on his hand up over his head. The little girl rocked like the top of a pine tree and looked frightened. But the women were all amused.
Although some of the performers clung to Sadie afterward looking for love, Sadie always tossed them aside in the morning. She didn’t even seem to know them or recognize them. It was as though she were making love to the fictional character and not them.
George tried not to be upset with Sadie’s affairs. She could ignore the men. But the worst was when she saw the tightrope walker slipping out the door in the early morning. She was wearing a large red velvet cloak, but you could see the silver of her shoes with large red stars painted on the sides.
* * *
Sadie squatted over the basin at the brothel. She was douching herself with a poisonous concoction George had made for her. A piano player had ejaculated inside her. She had asked him not to. But then his orgasm had detonated like a landmine he had touched with his toe.
Sadie found that when she wrote after a sexual adventure, she was so charged creatively. She sat down and wrote real and imaginary sexual escapades. She wasn’t exactly sure why she included Marie in all the stories. When she picked up the pieces of her clothes and put them back on, she always found herself wondering what Marie would think of all this. The reason Marie would be the perfect audience for these stories was they came from the same place. She would understand the hilarity of all the moments. The lower classes were not aware of just how amusing they actually were.
CHAPTER 31
The Selfishness of Mermaids