Soldier Girl
(based on a drabble written for mydaroga)
If the Baron de Castelot-Barbezac had been a religious man, he would have put off going to confession for the year until the early morning hours of Ash Wednesday. The churches of Paris, great and small, would bring on this night priests from all corners, from the remotest refectories, to fill the dusty and mostly-unused confessionals in the last remaining Shrovetide hours. But the Baron had no interest in matters of religion, and so he spent that solitary hour of the last night of carnival waiting at the bottom of the grand stairs of the Paris Opera.
Here she would be, Erik had said. How will I know her? the Baron had asked. Earlier that evening, the two men had crowded into a dark corner of the empty opera box where they had agreed to meet. The box's gaslights were set to their highest point, and the Baron had never been that close to Erik before. With a kind of sickening fascination, he noticed that Erik wore some kind of half-mask of skin-like material over most of his face, and that his prominent nose and moustache were artificial.
Whatever strange prosthetic covered him, it didn't obstruct his eyes. Erik had opened a small compact mirror and added some lampblack to the deep dark rings surrounding his eyes, squinting at his companion over the enameled lid. You will know her when you see her, Erik had replied. The dark rings circling around his golden eyes made those pinpoints of light radiate as brightly as damned souls about to be swallowed forever in the blackness of hell. Then Erik had adjusted his deep red cape, not maroon like a trail of blood, but instead bright like flame, and had swept out of Box Five. The Baron had trailed him like a seneschal, trying not to step on that radiant train, but Erik was the faster one, and had quickly vanished.
An hour later, tired of circulating through the grand foyer, the Baron yawned with weariness and leaned up against a marble column. Erik had told the Baron that he, the Baron, would some time this night meet the ballerina Margaret Giry. The Baron vaguely remembered having seen her from far away, but none of the women who passed him by with curious, or appreciating, or deprecating looks resembled ballerinas. Nor did they appeal to him in any fashion. Their big bosoms spilled out of corsets or gypsy peasant dresses. They laughed like jackdaws when men stuck their faces into those tumultuous mounds.
Ah, here was one who was different. A slender woman, her face covered with both a black domino and a Spanish mantilla, stood alone, with her arms crossed over her small breasts. She twisted nervously back and forth, as if looking for someone. Was that she? But almost at once she grasped the arm of a white Pierrot, and pulled on him as if desperate for his attention. The two moved into an alcove and whispered, the girl still darting glances all around.
No doubt she hides from her lover, the Baron thought, and resumed his own weary search of the crowd.
There weren't even any boys worth noticing, only drunken louts from the cafés of Montmartre. He would have turned his attention to that one over there, whose motley tights shaped his long graceful thighs, but a woman clung to him. A pity, all that beauty wasted. The Baron turned away, suddenly overcome with a sick exhaustion which penetrated his soul. He had not thought that Erik would make him the punch-line of a practical joke, yet it seemed that had happened.
Over in the corner, the Spanish-clad girl covered her face with her long slender hands, while her friend in white appeared to be shouting at her. It was impossible to hear him over the din. The Baron reflected bitterly that he was not the only one playing the fool this night.
Over his simple evening black, his only extravagance was a silver cape. No domino concealed him. It had been Erik's demand. The Baron thought it a cruel one, to require that he appear naked-faced at this saturnalia. Everyone else hid behind scraps of silk, or cowls as anonymous as the executioner's hood. Then there floated past the elaborately carved faces of papier-mâché , painted with gilt, strewn with feathers. An ape grinned at him from a corner. Another figure wore two masks, one delicate as a woman's on one side, a thickly-moustached man's on the other, and for a moment the Baron felt a strange dislocation, as if he could not tell which was the front, and which was the back of the hermaphroditic creature.
It was time to leave, he decided.
An angry hum of voices rose like bees, and he turned to see what was going on. A tall figure draped in blood-red descended the stairs with slow deliberate steps. The man turned to the right, then left, then right again, his glance sweeping the crowd as if looking for someone. His deep-socketed glance played over the Baron without any acknowledgment, but the Baron himself choked back a cry. He and Erik were the only two who glared out bare-faced at the shuttered crowd.
He watched Erik descend the stairs, the same Erik he had met weekly in the dark little restaurant in the Pigalle, where they drank excellent Côtes du Rhône and talked. At first the man's unnatural appearance had sickened him with its waxy skin, the clay-like nose, the black-ringed eyes. But Erik had played chess well, knew wine, and like the Baron had a taste for Swinburne. The Baron's defenses dropped, and he told Erik about the inheritance.
His family had lost most of their ancestral holdings during the war of ten years past, as the Prussian invasion had left their eastern estates in ruins. Now in his early sixties, he endured the changes of life grudgingly. Only two servants left, and those he could scarcely pay. His brothers had fled to England on the deposed emperor's heels. A few years' of house arrest had padded their paunches and their coffers as they invested in arms and ship-building.
His brothers had died of gout and overindulgence, leaving a consortium to him of great value, with one condition. He was to marry.
Curse the English inheritance laws, he railed to himself. But the hand of Napoleon never did reach across the channel, and so the choice was stark. Take a wife, or slowly starve. Well, he was here tonight. That must be a sign that he wasn't willing to starve.
The red-clad one passed by, and just before he turned out of sight into a side corridor, he raised his hand and gave the Baron a salute. The Baron nodded his head, trying not to tremble at the sight of that naked jagged visage.
Out of breath, still shaking, he clutched at his ascot and attempted to loosen it. The crowd came back to life again, sputtering and then roaring noise. Somewhere someone gave a quickly choked-off scream, and a few others shouted, but the Baron paid no attention.
For there she was.
Emerging out of the shadow as smoothly and neatly as chaste Athena came from the mind of Zeus, the girl walked around the bottom of the staircase, and sat down on an ottoman. The Baron adjusted his pince-nez and squinted over at her small dark figure posed poised and solitary. The great staircase horned as a womb sheltered her. He wanted to see how many men talked to her, or if she was a flirt. Against the pillar he leaned, and the party roared around them.
She stretched her long dancer's arms, blue-clad in the tight soldier-boy jacket. The snug red trousers hugged her slender hips and muscular legs. He knew her hair was black, because little strands escaped the cocky martial cap. She was either bound, or flat as could be. No men approached her, while a few women smiled or blew kisses. She ignored them all.
He suddenly felt naked, revealed. At their last meeting, the ugly man who called himself only Erik had sat silent while the Baron talked with wine-loosed tongue. Of course he would not marry, how could he? It had been many long years since he had given into temptation, but there was always the threat of arrest and disgrace. It's not that he hadn't loved a few women; he had. But to marry one of those creatures called "ladies," all hats and hair and hypocrisy, he could not. He would jump into the Seine first. And there it had stood, until Erik said quietly in his low bell-like voice, I think I can help you.
She sat now, crossing her legs at the hip like a man, and stared at her shiny black boot. She is a line dancer, Erik had said, the daughter of one of the box-keepers. I think you will like her. But if I hear you have been in the least way cruel to her, I will find you and kill you slowly.
Is she pure? the Baron had asked.
Her mother assures me that she is, Erik had said, and his manner implied, Question me no further.
The Baron's reverie broke when she looked at him full in the face and pulled down the scarf that covered hers. Her chin was delicate but her eyes shone out black and strong. Her gaze held him all the way across the marble floor, perched on his hands as he took two glasses from a passing waiter's tray, and only let him go when he stood before her, trembling a little and wishing his hair were not so gray, his chest not so sunken. She smiled. He bowed.
"Champagne?" he offered.