The ballet mistress of the Garnier – Madame Beauvais – had allowed the corps an evening away from rehearsal and a large group of us – ten or fifteen – decided to go to the fete being held in the Tuileries garden. I was attracted by the singers and dancers, so different from those I was growing up with. Their art lacked rules and restrictions. Dance, to them, was no discipline but pure expression. Their freedom reminded me of how my sister and I used to dance with my mother. Until I was eight I had lived in Aix-en-Provence, a long way from the grimy streets of Paris, where she had worked as an artist's model. My memory of that time has grown dim through the years but I could then recall, vividly, the white flash of her smile and the long, lithe movements of her arms and legs as she whirled us in waltzes around the sparsely furnished room we called home. The sound of her laugh mingled with the shouts and laughter of the audience who pressed in on the dancers and almost pinned me against the wooden stage.
The collision of present discomfort with happy but painfully distant memory grew rather too much and I squeezed between seemingly giant men and women until I found myself on the edge of the crowd. It was a relief not to be squashed into a mattress of strangers and I began to wander the outskirts of the fete slowly until a sign that proclaimed the presence of 'The Cave of Wonders!!' caught my attention. I never meant to go into the tent, which stood alone like a brightly coloured ghost looking quietly on at the noise and bustle of the central gardens. I only really had enough money for a paper cone of sweet chestnuts but for some reason - and only God can know if it was good or bad fortune - I paid a centime and entered. I immediately wished I hadn't. As soon as the ragged opening was pushed back, the tent that had seemed so still and isolated became a turgid chaos of noise. There was no friendly laughter or happy cheering but a menacing wall of grim hilarity and jeering shouts. I wanted to leave as soon as I had entered but the mercenary in me knew that it would be wasteful, wrong, not to get my money's worth. There were other children there so I knew it was not a place of ill-repute and so I told myself to stop being silly and at least find out what was going on. Again I found myself in a crowd, but it was less pressing than the other had been and I found my way to an exhibit quickly. A woman, beautiful and glamorous, stood on a wooden platform. The shimmer of her sequins and delicate red of her hair was captivating and I wondered what I had been so worried about. She looked directly at me and smiled…and a long tongue, like a snake's, flickered out from between her red, parted lips. I screamed in shock and backed away, tripping over my own feet. The crowd laughed and shouted with pleasure at my reaction and the lady joined in, although her eyes remained still and cold.