It was, on reflection, the perfect place to turn a fille en carte into a Falcon soprano.
We shall have to hood you at night to make sure you do not get lost, he said. Very dangerous and very beautiful, the professor said of your voice?
Yes. It is exactly what he said.
It is clear he’s already in love with you. I can’t allow you to go to this school, the tenor said, and drew me into his arms as he laughed at his own joke and I pretended to laugh as well.
§
He introduced me to his friends. I soon discovered it was my duty to entertain them as well, as he pleased.
They were mostly good men: a Japanese painter, an English dramatist, the tenor’s former lieutenant, in Paris on diplomatic missions. An Italian baritone from Trieste who liked to stay the night. This preference enraged the tenor, though he allowed it, and so I had to allow it, though the baritone snored like a dragon.
The painter painted me as a prelude to his affections; the dramatist gave me poems or spoke forever of his desire to introduce me to London, creating eventually a long story of turning me into a star of the Royal Opera; the former commander aspired to be a composer and rarely asked for a single erotic favor, instead asking me to sing his relatively simple compositions.
Euphrosyne’s warning returned to me. You will tire of him. I had. What had first seemed to be a long play was, in fact, more like a repertory in which much of my role was silent and I had to manage the cues as they arrived. It was tiring to always have to please him, to always have to pretend he made me happy, to pleasure him, to pleasure his friends. At the Majeurs-Plaisirs at least there were hours when you could be left alone.
I also missed the company of the girls late at night. The dorm now seemed like a paradise by comparison to the apartment, where I had only the maids he’d provided for company, Doro and Lucy. Doro was a slight Italian woman with a fierce, hard face softened, usually, by an expression of perpetual amusement in her eyes. She seemed of an indeterminate age, her thick dark hair graying slightly. Lucy was young, a plump French girl, pink and blond, who said so little I almost thought her slow, but she was not, or her wit was not, at least. She liked to wink before she burst into the bawdy laughter I soon knew to expect from her.
I was unused to maids and didn’t know how to let them do for me, and so I tried to befriend them instead, and at first they resisted. I sometimes heard them in the kitchen, or the rooms they shared off the kitchen, and tried to catch them, but if they heard me, I was met with silent, blank, expectant faces—faces waiting for requests or commands. Finally, I crept into the kitchen late one night to find them drinking gin and playing bezique. They stared at me as if at a mouse, and then as if at their lady, silent.
Please, I said finally.
They looked at me for another long moment, and then Doro, who it seemed was in charge, relented and gestured with her chin at the chair between them. I sat down as she dealt me in.
§
In the month of waiting for the letter from the Conservatoire, cards and gin were not enough, and so any night I found myself free, I went to the Mabille instead, even taking the risk of going alone when the tenor or his friends wouldn’t take me. I danced until morning, relishing the walk home, my hair wet, steam rising off me in the cold like smoke.
There I was a champion. The clap of my back on the hard wooden tables, my legs in the air, my skirt a wheel, and the cold air on my thighs while I was drunk from the screams in the room and the misery of my dance-floor rivals, whether those of an hour or a week or a year. All of us were trying to kick higher or fall faster, but I had learned to win with a one-legged kick I could hold, one hand in the air, one on my hip, my skirt around my waist as I swiveled my hips. If you did it wrong or hadn’t practiced, you’d fall over backward, very painful, so challengers had to know in order to get it right. A first challenge could undo you, but I could stand there and do at least four in a row.
I missed Euphrosyne even though I was too hurt still to write to her or otherwise invite her. She seemed to feel the same of me. But on the nights her gentlemen brought her, we were tentatively reunited, and soon we were joining our arms again as before, kicking and whirling as groups of men gathered to cheer us on.
Her efforts at forgiving me were aided by the tenor’s never being there. Mine were aided by our both knowing she was right; I had a future unlike hers. I could be more than this, and she could not.
I soon wore my cancan shoes as often as I could, for they were very sturdy, and if I wore them always, I could dance on any evening. I liked the clip-clop they made as I walked across a street, as if I were a mythological creature with hooves instead of feet.
It was better in this life if you weren’t altogether human, I would think, as I heard the sound. It was easier to bear.