Meg's Last Trouser Role

In the cave under the bowels of the fifth cellar we made ready to travel, and you cut off all my hair. You brought the long sharp shears intimate as love up to my scalp and clipped away until there was little left of the long mass that had wiped your tears. I had steeled myself for you to send me away, to put me out, perhaps even to strangle me, but not for this.

I tried not to cry, but my lip trembled and tears stood in my eyes. When I was little, my aunt had become a nun, and I asked my mother if they really were going to cut off all her hair, and she said yes, Meg, she's a bride of Christ now. Bride of Christ or bride of the devil, why don't we get to keep our hair?

"Why are you doing this?" I said as you coolly clipped away. "I thought we were through with masks and disguises."

"We have to get out of France," you said. "Think of it as your last acting role."

"Where are we going?"

"To America. To New York." You considered for a moment. "Do you speak any English?"

"Some," I said, and you looked surprised and pleased. "Christine and I … I spent many of my summers in Wales with a dance mistress, a friend of my mother's."

"Yes, she did know some English," and then you stopped dead, looking away, embarrassed. "That's excellent," you said briefly, and began packing some old, stained duffel bags.

I held the heavy gold weight of my hair on my lap and stared at it, suffering but not wanting to show it. "My head's cold," I said in a choked voice, and you cupped my bare head momentarily. Your hands were so warm, and my scalp so naked, that a few tears leaked out of my eyes anyway. I wiped them away with the tail of my shirt.

"My head's cold," I repeated, like a child.

"Here," and you handed me a cap, just like the ones workers wear while cutting wood or breaking stone.

My face and lips, thighs and bottom were chafed from yours on mine. As you put the cap on my head you kissed me full and open on the mouth. Your beard scratched me, two days growth at least. It was hard to tell, because down here beneath the lake there was no night or morning.

I broke our kiss. "How can you stand that? I'm so ugly," I sniffed.

You looked at me in astonishment. "How can you stand me?"

"But that's different," I stammered. "You're beautiful."

You said with sharp and sudden bitterness, "Don't toy with me."

"Never. I will never toy with you, or lie to you. You have my life in your hands. And you are beautiful."

"You'll forgive me if I don't believe you."

I swallowed and said, "I thought I showed you with my body that you were."

Even in the candlelight I could tell that your face darkened, either with embarrassment or pleasure, or maybe both. You rested your head on my knee, and I stroked your face on those spots that the world would say were the worst. Your stubbly chin was scratchy, but up there the skin was tender and soft.

"This is beautiful," I said, "because it's yours. Because it's part of you." I rubbed the thick brown of your unshaven beard, and you closed your eyes under the soft circular movements. "You can't cut a man into parts, saying this is nice, this is ugly, or this part's good, or this part's bad. It's you I love. All of you, together."

We sat there quietly for some time as the candle threw our black shadows against the wall, and they moved and danced together, even though we remained still.

"Come on," you said, "we need to get out of here." You were already dressed in shabby and shapeless clothes, and you threw our travelling bags onto the cot, still sunken with the impression of our bodies. I didn't need to ask; as you said, you always had your escape routes ready. This was something you had planned for some time.

"What shall I do?" I asked.

"Put on your trousers and boots, but not the blouse. Here's one of my shirts, yes, it's quite large, but tuck it in and roll it up." Then you looked at me critically, but laced with appreciation. "We'll have to bind you."

You took my blouse from my Don Juan Triumphant costume and cut it into one long strip. Gently you said, "May I?" as you lifted my short chemise. Even the candle stopped its flicker as your hands hovered over my breasts, not touching them, and when the heat of your hands reached my skin, I couldn't help the crinkling, stiffening reaction. I turned my face away in embarrassment.

Then you bound me, tightly, flattening me out as best you could. I throbbed with pain; I would have let you shave me bald as an egg and not said a word about it, anything but this. I swallowed it, however, as your plan came clear. Delicately you buttoned me into your oversize flannel shirt, and there I was, a short but passable youth.

"Keep your overcoat on," you said as a small smile flickered in your eyes, "and keep your arms as well as your fingers crossed."

You tamed your rough, wild hair down into a grey smoothness with salve, and put some flesh-toned makeup on your face. It settled into your skin and left sharp lines. Suddenly you looked like an older man, an old one, even.

"Here's the play, and I'm the director. I want you to listen to me and do exactly as I say, no questions. We're an uncle and nephew en route to England, to look for work in the factories of Liverpool."

"Oh, I've played a boy more than once."

"No, you haven't. You've played a trouser role, which is something entirely different. Girls in breeches strut around the stage, showing off their legs. Everyone knows they're girls; that's why they go to see them. But a boy is different. Girls look at the world with eyes cast down. Boys are insolent; they look the world right in the face. Girls sigh, and heave, and show feelings in their faces. Boys make their faces as blank as possible. You have to be a little arrogant, but not too much.

"Follow my instructions exactly, and unless you absolutely have to, don't speak, because you really don't sound like a boy. Nonetheless, you'll do."

We slipped out of the Opera Populaire unnoticed. By the sun it looked to be mid-morning of a clear day. On the way to the dock, you bought a copy of Le Temps and while we waited for our barge, you scanned it leisurely. My eyes kept darting toward it. I knew what you were looking for.

Under your voice you said, "The key to reading a newspaper when you're out is to do it casually. Never grab it and look directly for something. First scan the horse racing reports, or the gossip columns, then work your way around to what you're looking for."

"You sound like a spy," I remarked. When you spoke, your lips barely moved, or not at all.

"Stealth is my life. But I told you not to talk," and then you turned away and read for a long time before handing the paper to me.

"Watch your face; try not to show so much feeling," you said. "I'm going to show you an article. Read it, but don't react to it. If you don't think you can keep your face still, shake your head 'no,' and I won't give it to you. But I think you'll want to see it."

He off-handedly gave me the broadsheet, and there it was on the second page: "Investigators Search for Mystery Actor in Chandelier Crash." My mind froze. I could barely take it in. "Hundreds of casualties," I read silently, "mostly injuries sustained due to trampling, as opera patrons rushed for the doors." "By an act of God, no mortalities."

A Captain Edouard Paschall was on indefinite suspension from the police force for deliberately disobeying orders, telling his subordinates to unbar the doors that had originally been locked at the request of the Opera Populaire management.

"Madness," I whispered. "Just madness. Barring the doors. It would have killed them all."

"Quiet," you hissed. "Don't speak, and don't react."

I read on. "The search is still underway for the unknown actor who assaulted and took the place of star tenor Ubaldo Piangi, of Florence, Italy. Piangi, recovering from an attempted strangulation by his unseen assailant, told Le Temps that he owed his survival to his 'thick skull and even thicker neck.'"

The barges slid in and out of the harbor, and a few fishing boats unloaded the morning's catch. The scene went grey before my eyes, and I must have swayed, for you squeezed my arm roughly and harshly whispered with unmoving lips, "Pull yourself together, and don't speak."

I nodded, and read further down the page, "Police interviews with soprano Christine Daae were inconclusive, as were those with her rescuer, the Vicomte Raoul deChagny. While it at first appeared that Mlle. Daae was kidnapped from the stage, police concluded that a trap door malfunction plunged both her and the unknown tenor into the crawlspace below the stage.

"The Vicomte claimed that he found Mademoiselle Daae stunned but unharmed, wandering in the lake underneath the Opera Populaire. He told investigators that blood on his shirt was from an old wound of some weeks before, which was corroborated by medical examination. Mlle. Daae, resting at the Vicomte's chateau outside Melun, claimed that she had swooned and could remember nothing of her ordeal, and could offer no explanation as to why she was found wearing a wedding dress."

A wedding dress? Oh, dear God.

"Police had hoped to find some indication of the mysterious assailant's identity in the rooms found on the shore of the Opera Populaire's lake, but most unfortunately, the mob had either burned or removed most of the contents before police arrived. The remaining theater props and some sketches were taken as evidence."

I'll play it your way, I thought. I won't say another word until we're en route to New York. But this isn't going to rest between us. You can throw me in the Atlantic if you like, but before that, you're going to tell me what happened.

We sat silently on the barge as it slowly made its way up the Seine to LeHavre. I asked for some water and you cuffed me roughly, saying loud enough for the sailors nearby to hear, "Don't bother me, boy. Wait till we get to port." My eyes stung, but it was acting, just acting, I hoped.

We hauled our duffels out onto the great port of LeHavre, and there we saw the sea. I breathed, "The Channel is so beautiful," and instead of roughly saying, "Shut up" or shoving me, you came close and said with your unmoving lips, "That's a fish pond compared to the Atlantic." When had you seen the Atlantic? I wondered, but dared not ask.

I stored up all my questions inside my heart as we walked the docks that day. The steamer to Liverpool would leave the next morning. We sat for awhile in a filthy tavern where men spit on the floor and cursed, and where the massively fat bartender dragged two quarrelling men to his chest and smacked their heads together. We ate our supper of lentil and onion stew in silence, and I poked at the pieces of indistinct fatty meat.

"Give them here. You're too damn picky," you said roughly, and ate them yourself.

Later, we walked over the port side of the city until nightfall, and behind an abandoned stable, in a garden overgrown with weeds and full of broken chairs, trash barrels, and smashed clay pots, we nestled against each other for the night, covered by the rough blanket you'd taken from your cot in the cave.

My chest pained me, worse than a corset, and when your hands reached around me to pull me closer, I asked quietly, "Can't I untie at least for the night?"

"No," you said, "I'm not taking any chances. Try to bear it," and then I felt that I could bear anything, as you tenderly rubbed my back and hips and flanks until I slept.

(To be continued)