CHAPTER ONE - Peach Silk

I had just opened the account books of the Giry Academy of Dance when Nabilah brought in the note. I set it to one side, not seeing the return address on the lavender-scented, thick-papered envelope.

You, my love, busied yourself in your studio preparing for a trip to Berlin. Because you were still here, Nabilah remained veiled, her black-lined eyes shining soft and expressive above the thin fabric. Her widowhood still hung on her like the fog of blue gauze that covered her head and narrow shoulders.

You, who had lived so many years behind a mask, thought it ironic that our Egyptian maid should mask herself whenever she was in your presence. You still masked yourself in so many ways - in your reclusiveness, your prickliness around others, your temperamental nature in which darkness mixed with fire and occasionally erupted. But you didn't erupt towards Nabilah or her two little children or myself, although I occasionally cleaned up a thrown ink pot, or rescued a manuscript page or sketch from the coal fire.

One such rescue of a few pages resulted in Giordano Bruno, your latest opera opening in Berlin next week. Paris wouldn't touch it, and the papers screamed "heresy" and "blasphemy" when you tried to get it produced.

In some ways I wished I'd let your story burn. Long before that marvelous English fantasist H.G. Wells, the doomed Bruno conceived of stars with solar systems, and planets with other beings. Like you, Bruno danced close to the edge of the cliff as he travelled between countries, at home nowhere, at risk everywhere. Betrayal in Venice cast him into the hands of first the Inquisition and then into the fire. Like you, the world of his day was too small for his thoughts and for his works. Like you, the powers of his age confused reason and skill with magic. And they killed him for it.

Almost thirty years now. I thought I would get used to it, the wait for the knock on the door, the wait for the arrest, the wait for the newspapers screaming like ravenous dogs for raw meat. But I hadn't.

I browsed quickly through the notes. There were payments from students. Some reviews clipped from New York papers described the "revolutionary new dance techniques coming out of Paris's Giry Studio." That made me laugh, because New York wanted nothing of my art when I lived there. A student requested a reference so she could join a eurythmic dance troupe in Berlin. Last of all, I picked up the scent-soaked letter with its vaguely familiar wax seal. When I turned it over, the blood froze in my body and the sun blurred before my eyes.

The turn of the millenium is supposed to bring the Four Horsemen. Everyone expects the apocalypse this coming winter, when the calendar rolls from Anno Domini 1900 to 1901, in the reign of Napoleon IV of France, God preserve him. But perhaps for my husband and I, the apocalypse has decided to come early.

The Vicomtesse de Chagny, the former Christine Daae, had sent me a note.

We had met briefly in the five years since you and I had returned to Paris from America. It was impossible not to, as we travelled in many of the same circles. We smiled at each other and nodded, she on the arm of her tall and glossy husband, and I alone or with Nabilah, for you, my love, did not show yourself in society or attend premieres.

Christine and I never really spoke. The years had been hard on her. Her thick curly hair had grown thin and straight, and she teased it up into a stiff frothy mass, with wispy curls plastered to her forehead. She wore an enormous bustle poking out from behind, which contrasted absurdly with her bony shoulders and thin arms. Her voice echoed piercing and high at the Dutch ambassador's reception, cutting through the smoke and Mozart.

"I never believed it," she called out, "until I received the invitation in my hand to meet the Empress at court." Several of the younger men turned away from her as they went to refresh their drinks or seek conversation elsewhere. I caught a glimpse of the Vicomte in the smoking room, until the slam of a door cut off the sight of black frock coats and the sound of rough male laughter.

After awhile I stopped fearing her. Of her children I knew little, only tidbits from the mothers and patrons of my students. Devotees of modern dance gossiped just as much as those of the ballet, but no one in the studios seemed terribly interested in the Vicomtesse de Chagny. There was a daughter in a convent, and a boy mentioned only in hushed whispers who lived in Montmartre and who wrote novels that were banned in America.

I turned the envelope over again and again before opening it. Every day we add another little layer onto the shell that protects us from the world, until a hammer comes down to smash our perfectly constructed shield, leaving us naked and squirming like an oyster.

I don't know why I resented her so. Her abdication thirty years ago gave me my heart's greatest joy and delight even in the midst of fear and pain. But thirty years is a long time to think, and at times I wondered if you would have been happier had she simply been kind and loved you.

You never reproached me or gave me any reason to doubt your fidelity, but your eyes never lost the dark, faraway shadow of the sword that hung over us but never fell. Your librettos all ended either in death, or devastation, or lovers ripped out of each other's arms practically at the moment of consummation. I knew too well the dark, deep well from which you drew.

The letter was short and a bit gauche. Manners were never Christine's strong suit, and I wondered how she had survived her first few years as the wife of nobility. She wanted to meet me for tea, and asked that I name the location. She knows I wouldn't enter that overwrought townhouse through the back door like a servant, and a Vicomtesse can't just show herself in some Left Bank cafe. So it's obvious she's fishing for an invitation.

What's also obvious is what's on her mind. You're what's on her mind. She wants to see where you live, to pick over a fragment or two of your life. To see how you've gotten along without her all these years.

I found you in your studio, humming to yourself as you rummaged through stacks of drawings, putting the selections into a long leather portfolio. You sorted through one set design blueprint and rough sketch after another. "What are these for?" I asked.

You appeared to ignore me, but I knew better. Once on a track, your thoughts stayed there. You followed the path until it suited you to stop, and in your own time you acknowledged that tapping at the sealed chamber of your mind. When you chose to open it, you did, and all I had to do was wait long enough.

"They're for a lobby exhibit. The Berlin Opera likes to showcase the stage art, and they want my concept drawings." You ran your hands through your long grey hair, thinking, your mind never quiet, even though your face remained impassive and still.

I waited a little longer, and then, as if the tumblers of a lock had all slowly clicked into place, you swung the door of your attention open to me. I handed you the note. You read it silently and said, "Invite her over."

"Here. You are serious."

"After I've gone to Berlin, of course."

"I'm afraid of her. Are you?"

"Not afraid. Just unsure. Why are you afraid of her?"

Years ago, we told each other that if one of us asked the other, "Why?" we would always answer. "Because I fear her power over us," I said.

"She has no power over us. What you mean is, you fear her power over me."

"I won't deny it. If she had no power over you, why would you want me to have her here when you are away? Don't give me that look. I know you still love her, and I accepted that half a lifetime ago. Are you afraid she still carries something inside for you? That she loves you still?"

"I wouldn't call it love. For a few minutes, perhaps, I thought it was love, and then knew from the aftermath that it wasn't."

"What was it, then?"

"She wanted me, but couldn't admit it."

I laughed. "You are distracted, aren't you? You've mismatched your hose. Who wouldn't want you?"

"Most of the world, judging from my reviews."

"Not in Prussia. Not in America, or Sweden."

"Anywhere without a monarchy."

"Considering how you show them as inbred, incompetent fools, it's not surprising. Anyway, Sweden was a monarchy, last time I looked. And I still have that invitation from the Japanese ambassador. They want you to put on a production of David and Bathsheba in Tokyo."

"Yes, I remember. They sat in the auditorium and wrote down as much of the score and libretto as they could, then re-constructed the orchestration. They put on a private concert of their favorite arias for the Emperor. I don't recall giving them permission. Very clever, actually."

Of all your operas, I liked David and Bathsheba the least. "They like it for the sad ending," I said softly, and I felt like weeping. Always a tragedy with you. You couldn't end your story with Solomon's birth - no, you had to end with David holding the body of his dead son, crying out his anguish to God.

You sensed the tears that didn't fall, for you held me in your long warm arms still roped with fine muscle after all your years. I kissed the soft flesh under your chin, all collapsed now as it fell in a loose curtain past your throat to your slender collarbones.

"Berlin is one thing," I said, after working my way down from your chin to your warm chest, "but Tokyo is quite another. We would be gone three months, at least."

"I want to do it, Meg. And I want you with me."

"Of course. Oh, look," I said in surprise. "You're packing evening dress clothes. Are you actually going to one of your premieres? What changed your mind?" Now I was really frightened, because after the premiere came parties, and interviews, and daguerrotypes in the papers.

You looked away, embarrassed. It wasn't selfishness, just the solo flight of a bird that had never learned to flock. "I didn't even think of going myself until this morning. You know that I lay awake most of the night …"

"You kicked me enough."

"You kicked back. It occurred to me that nothing held me back anymore, that the bars I crouched behind were bars I'd kept propped up myself. Why shouldn't I drink champagne at my own premiere? Some of it had to do with simply getting old - that all those things I tried to hide so long ago simply didn't matter anymore to anyone. All men are equal in death; all men are ugly in old age, and there simply seemed no reason any longer to care."

"Care about what? That people might stare at you? They've been staring at you for thirty years, and you saw that it was nothing, that it meant nothing."

"Nothing at all," you said softly in reply.

"You need to take something back that you said. The one heresy that will definitely get you roasted at the stake, like Giordano."

"Heresy? What heresy did I commit now?"

"That you're an ugly old man. Old man you are, old goat, actually, but ugly, never."

"Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"Not good enough. Show me you mean it."

You pulled me closer to you and the thick mat of grey hair on your bare chest tickled my lips as I ran them through it. "Lecherous old goat," I said.

"Greedy old woman, more like it," you said as you took my face into your hands and kissed down into me as far as you could go, farther with every kiss, with every year, until a vast hollow space opened in me that could only be filled one way.

"I won't get packed, at this rate," you said, pulling back for breath. "My train leaves at seven."

"I'll help you."

"You? It takes you twice as long to pack as me. Twice as long to undress, too."

"Race you."

"That's a cheat. Woman, do you think after thirty years you've mastered the art of unbuttoning a fly?"

"You be the judge of that. Ah, I see I haven't lost my touch."

"No," you said in between gasps, "You haven't. Not at all."

"Umm … but you're not living up to your part of the bargain. Can you still unhook a corset? Oh, obviously you can. You like that slip, eh? It's Japanese silk. Remember the one you bought me, the rose silk one?"

"Peach, as I recall," and your hands went all over and under my silk, stopping at the small of my back, pulling me in closer. You pushed your clothes aside on the bed, and into the soft folds of the comforter we sank. I moved up onto you, tenderly and slowly, trying not to see you wince as I rested a little too heavily on your hips.

"There, is that better?" I whispered.

"It's the hip; it's never been right since this past winter."

"Poor hip," I said, stroking you up and down with my body, with my hands. "I'll be gentle."

"Yes, it was peach, not rose," you breathed. "Beautiful peach silk, like this."

Gently we rocked, and under me you filled my ache with warm living darkness that caressed me tenderly from the inside out. You stirred me like warm soup on the stove, up to the boil, and little flickers of happiness went over me, outside and in. While I feared for you in Berlin, I rejoiced that finally you might come out of the shadows into the sunlight of the world. In your shaking flesh I felt your struggle to emerge into the light, to face the crowds one step and one year at a time, to have it all peak at this moment.

Tenderly you rolled me over onto your side. "Some new delight, always," you breathed softly into my neck. "How can men grow weary of their wives?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "Don't ever tire of me. Every time, I wonder if it will be our last."

"Don't worry so much. You're so full of light and life, and yet you carry around this doom inside of you. It makes no sense. Be happy, Meg." Then you laughed softly, with just a trace of the old bitterness. "If I can be happy, then anyone can."

"Are you happy now?"

"As delighted as a cat in the sun and full of anticipation I can't explain. I'm sixty-three years old, and for the first time I'm going to sit in an opera box that I earned, with a production not won by force, and face the recognition without hiding."

I knew what you meant. Your first stage production had ended rather badly.

"I wish I could be there to see it."

"You didn't know. I promise you, there will be another opening in Paris. I know it's been three years since Attila the Hun opened here, but it won't be the last. Look, if I don't pack, I'm not going anywhere."

I watched you swiftly and deftly pack your few bags. How you made a crease so crisp, or a shirt so flat, I couldn't imagine. It wasn't that you were intrinsically neat; your studio with its piles of books, drawings, papers, notes, folios gave the lie to that. But everything about your person crackled. You travelled so lightly, too. Most men going to Berlin for a week would have taken a trunk, but you had only your leather portfolio and a small bag for a few clothes.

You washed and dressed yourself and I watched your graceful movements unspeaking. I thought my heart would break with tenderness, and as always I drew my bravery from you.

"So you think I should invite Christine de Chagny here?"

"I do. There's something she needs here. Don't you think we can spare some of it?"

Our bedroom surrounded us like a mother's arms, with the deep feather-comforted bed and your drawings lining the wall. When you brought the rose and red papers and fabrics home, and hung the thick folded curtains on the windows, I didn't like them, but now I sunk into their smooth, feminine richness. Once I asked you, "Wouldn't you have liked a more masculine room?" and you said, "In this room, I'm inside of you. This room is you. This is how I see you."

So I lay back in our bed, looking at the pale ceiling and watching the sun creep across the curtains. "What do you think she wants?" I finally asked.

"She wants to know what happened. She wants to know about me."

"Then why doesn't she write you directly?"

"Somehow I don't think Monsieur Le Vicomte would take to that too kindly. He seemed rather resentful of me the last time we saw one another. Nor do I think you would appreciate that much."

"All this fencing. Of course I will see her. Perhaps you, too, want to know what happened, and want to hear about her."

Your back, turned to me, gave a little slump. Face into your shaving kit, you said, "You see through me."

"Like glass."

"You'll tell me?"

"Everything."

(to be continued)