His face silver in the moonlight. The wind at mine.
The mask fell on the ground beside me. He kissed me as his hands unstrung the tie in my hair that held it up so that it fell around my shoulders. The hands next slid down to grip the sides of my hips as he pressed me against the wall and crushed my mouth with his. He opened my coat and pulled down the bandage holding down my breasts so that they were in the open, and then pressed his face down into them. When he opened the front of my pants and pushed against and then inside me, I made a low moan against his neck that he then stifled by pressing the bottom of his forearm against my mouth. He continued to lean his hips into me. The newness of him, the urgency of him, made it sharp, and I tilted my head back, almost fainting. Our eyes met while he moved deeper into me, and in response I punched him furiously on his chest and shouted against his arm. He pushed his mouth into my hair as he thrust into me again and I heard the low sound come out of my mouth again. His face on my neck, he pulled me up until my legs crossed on his back and I rocked against the wall. It went like that, sometimes violent and sharp, urgent against the cold air and stone, smoke drifting down from the fires and the distant cigars, distant voices.
When it was done, he stood panting, still holding me up, our faces wet. He closed his mouth over mine. He pulled back, as if hearing something, looked to both sides and then back at me. He held up a finger and pressed it against my mouth before fastening himself up and slipping down the gardener’s path.
And then he was back again. I paused, afraid—it was time for me to continue on, past time. I was expecting the tenor at any moment.
He gently touched my chin with a finger and drew me to him to kiss me once more. I allowed it.
This kiss, it was not like the others with him, or with anyone before him. It had the feeling of a secret between us. It was like the discovery of a new world, or an agreement that was also a new world, that began and, I would discover, was returned to and built upon each time we kissed again though, for now, there was just this one, a hope in the dark.
How the world seemed to shake with what had happened. But it was just my heart.
He drew back, the hint of a smile on his face, and then let go, and he put one finger on my lips as he put another on his own to warn me to be silent again. And with that, he was gone again, sprinting up the hill.
For the briefest moment it seemed as if I could follow him, go back inside, stay, sleep, wake, and serve the Empress and wait to find him again.
But I could not. With all I had in me, I ran the other way.
When love comes this way, the first dream of it feels like a prophecy that has come true. I had never known this feeling until now—he was my first. And so I let myself dream of him again and believe it could be the future.
The chords of the nocturne I’d heard him play that first day I saw him found me again as I made my way into the woods, and I went as if I could follow it to him, to where he would be next.
§
Mon général, I heard someone say, and a hand shook me awake. Pardon.
I opened my eyes to the darkness of the mask. I remembered I’d arrived to find the station closed and hid here behind the railing when I heard a rider on a horse. I’d only meant to rest for a moment, but instead I had slept.
For how long? I wondered, as the station clerk tugged at me.
Wake up and buy a ticket, and I will not call for the police, he said, and laughed.
I stood shakily and tried to move the mask’s mouth to at least see him, but then I heard his keys in the lock. I muttered a thank–you and steadied myself as he went in and closed the door.
I took off the mask. My hair was stuck to my throat and ears, waxy and damp. I pulled it out to my shoulders to dry and, anxious to find another spot to hide in until the train came, I walked down the platform. Vapor rose off me like smoke in the new cold.
A young family arrived, a husband and wife, with two daughters and a son. Their youngest, the son, noticed me and waved as their carriage was unpacked. His mother pulled him away, cutting her eyes from me in disgust. She was, perhaps, a few years older than I was, dressed in a new traveling dress and coat, a fine hat and gloves, new leather shoes. She was my dream of me as I was to have been on the day I headed to Lucerne, but made real, and I watched her as the door closed behind her.