The Unsafe Heart
A/N: In French, the formal 'you' ("vous") is used between people who don't know each other well, or by someone of lower station to one in the higher. The informal 'you' ("tu") is used between intimates.
The Cotillion is a quiet hotel with rooms obscenely pink and white and gilt. My bed has a canopy of pale rosy gauze more suited to a girl of ten, and the precious delicacy of the imitation Régence furniture overwhelms me. Nonetheless it's safe, quiet, and full of widows or English spinsters on holiday. They stay in their rooms in the evening, or bring their needlework to the salon downstairs, to chat and drink cordial.
I've glimpsed a few matrons from the provinces, too, with their willowy coming-of-age daughters, for whom the dressmakers at home will not do. They must have fittings in Paris, and search the grand department stores for their gloves and shawls and veils. Their mothers either beam at their juvenile marriageable prettiness, or look bleakly downward when their daughters are not looking, as the mothers add up the cost and the aggravation.
Martine insisted that she be presented at a grand ball held by one of the minor duchesses associated with our parish. When I asked her, What for? she turned on me, furious with fresh sixteen-year old indignation. Because I won't be a shopgirl, she railed. If I am to meet a man of quality, I must be presented properly. So we prepared, although a Brussels dressmaker was good enough, and Martine got her long white dress with the slim white leather gloves, and a kiss on her hand from the Archbishop besides. No Flemish was spoken at that party. Martine piled her long blonde hair up underneath a laden tiara, and danced, and for an evening was happy.
Since it is August, even the chatter of middle-aged women is interrupted by long stretches of silence. The windows are open to the evening breeze, surprising for this season. A vast wind from the sea so many kilometers away has swept over all of Île-de-France, bringing with it relief from the heat and smell and turbid atmosphere. Today I took a step towards the edge of the cliff, and came back whole. It is a heady feeling.
When I had almost finished dressing and was about to ring for a cab to visit Martynière, the note came by way of her personal servant. She had strained her back and was obliged to rest in bed, and she couldn't think of imposing upon me to visit her in such a state. I sighed, folding the letter. To visit a sick aunt by marriage to me seemed a normal and natural thing, but Martynière must keep up appearances. It would make her feel weak, and embarrassed, and me too much like a hired nursemaid.
I was hardly looking forward to seeing Martynière. Her self-effacing behavior annoyed me, not because of her neglect of Raoul and me and the children (a neglect I had come to expect from the de Chagnys), but because she seemed so conflicted about it. It was clear that she wanted the rapprochement her own late husband vigorously opposed, but timidly refused to bring one about.
At the same time, her letter annoyed me because it left me free for lunch, a lunch that I had been obliged to refuse the foxy-red M. Peillard. It occurred to me to write him, but I stopped myself. He's made other plans. It would look forward, perhaps even a little desperate. His secretary would read it, and a thousand other objections rose up as well. Best to let him rest until tomorrow.
So here I was with a day in Paris, and no idea what to do with it. Philippe was no doubt at the medical school and would lunch with his colleagues. I could find some other woman at the hotel without a companion, and ask her to join me for part of the day. But that seemed repugnant. As always, when in Paris, my mind returned to the beating pulse of the city, the pulse that would always throb inside of me, the throbbing beat which originated from that tomb I could never visit, the sight I looked away from whenever Raoul and I happened to pass it in the carriage.
The National Opera. I didn't have to see it to feel it like a body in the room with me, a body in the dark. Then a fierce desire rose up to see it again, and not just in passing from a carriage window. To go directly up to it (even if I could not go inside), to gaze upon its granite face. To no longer fear it, even if it was a tomb, even if inside it resided one body, now two that I knew of, and merciful God, perhaps even more.
I finished dressing, left the Cotillion in its quiet neighborhood on the western edge of the Marais, and walked up the Rue-aux-Ours towards the Avenue-de-l'Opera. The shops and kiosks went by in a blur. As I turned onto the Avenue itself and saw the great structure looming at the end, it took all my resolve not to turn back. I felt peculiarly vulnerable walking along, without the protection of leather and metal. Too, the street seemed wilder and more chaotic as the few horse-drawn carriages were outnumbered by the horseless variety, with their smells and noises, instead of the sweet low clopping.
Crowds filled the Plaza, men with drapes over their heads peering into tripod-mounted cameras, groups of women with elaborate hats walking arm in arm, chatting animatedly, governesses with children not on holiday, men from Asia in long robes, whose turbans gleamed white. I felt faint, although the day was not uncomfortably warm. As I walked I had toyed with the idea of going inside, perhaps even purchasing a ticket for a matinee performance, although I wondered if I could stay in the auditorium. All the statuary, the gilt, the bronze, the glowing colors of frescoes, all seemed like a mere covering for the deep stagnant darkness beneath, and I knew that if I went into that vast corpselike edifice, it would be to descend once again as deeply and darkly as I could.
But here I was, and my legs shook. There was a cafe table open at the restaurant directly opposite the Plaza, and I dived for it as if it were a life raft thrown to me in the middle of a maelstrom. Trembling, I barely noticed how long it took the waiter to approach me, so grateful was I to simply sit. People walked up the steps of the National Opera like suppliants entering a temple. The same bright god presided over the rooftop, golden against the copper roof now so shockingly green. Apollo on the roof, with the flayed Marsyas in the basement, I thought, and the sadness pierced me.
No waiter came, but I continued to sit. The building seemed to mock me, taunting me with my own fear. Is it him dead you fear, it said, or him alive? But I know better than that, I answered the building back. I felt his last breath in my ear. Yet why does it feel as if he still lives, when I look at you, you stone and metal gargoyle spewing a flood of water and blood from the past?
Because he's in my bones, the building laughed. His bones are my bones. He raised my bones from the muck beneath. His hand is on me, yes, diluted by the impression of so many other hands, but still those unique hands rest on my flanks, and my flanks still tremble at the memory of how he set girder to girder and block upon block. He left a little of his blood, even. You didn't know that? Every man does, even if the stone scratches him only slightly. As long as I stand here so will he, because he and I are bone of the same bone, blood of the same body.
"Madame? Excuse me, Madame?"
Shocked, I turned away from that grinning stone face, to see a young one with pert nose and sweet curved mouth set in a small pout. His gingery curls ruffled a little in the breeze that had sprung up. "I assume Madame would like to order?" Barely polite, he stared at the woman clad in widow-black, as if annoyed that I took up an entire table.
I met his stare, thinking of Erik's blood lying at the bottom of a pit dug out of the earth, a little water seeping in, seeing the rasp across his arm, or hand, or cheek, where perhaps he showed a worker how it was to be done, the slip of a tool that followed, or the ill-timed action of a hand. Something must have shone out of my eyes, for the young waiter looked away. When he brought me something cold and chocolate, with a splash of crème de menthe, he didn't look at me at all. I spooned at the brown foam and sat there until the lunch hour began.
Motorcars circled the Plaza, and I dodged them. There was no one in line at the ticket window, and I pulled out some franc notes for the early performance of Richard Strauss's Salome. No one stopped me as I slipped in a side door on the Rue Auber. The corridor was dim and smelled of floor-wax. I went down the stairs and headed as if mesmerized towards my old dressing room, but the corridor that led to it had been blocked off, covered by a smooth expanse of wall. Confused, I looked around, and when a rough old stagehand demanded to know what I wanted there, I apologized quickly and went back out to the street.
Around the building going clockwise was the Rue Scribe. Where was it, the archway under which I'd sheltered, the secret passage into the stone body through which I crept, and where I emerged one last time a newborn creature blinking in the sun, newborn into life because Erik was dead, and had died bringing me into being? The entrance was bricked up, and I stood transfixed with sorrow, as if the building didn't want me anymore, as if it had spat me out of its granite mouth for being neither hot nor cold. I put my hand on the mortar, thinking, it's still relatively fresh. They've put this up within the past few years, perhaps even a year.
A rustle next to me, a slight male cough. One of the opera's security men stood by me, quietly. "Is there anything you need, Madame?" and his voice was kind.
"Don't chase me away," I said, almost crying now with sorrow. It would have been so much easier had he been rough, ordered me to wait in the lobby.
"They said a woman was in the costume wing, who looked lost. Said you were in black, with a veil on your hat, and asked me to see what was up."
It's nothing, I started to say, but decided not to. He was about Philippe's age, and the brass buttons on his vest were shiny. "Someone I knew died here. A long time ago. I've been away from Paris, and now I've come back for a visit. I just wanted to see it."
"Died here?" he asked, a little alarmed.
"You were just a small boy, or perhaps not even born. It was that long ago."
"During a performance? There are a lot of uncanny stories about this place."
"During his last performance, on a stage of his own making."
"An actor, then? I've heard stories, but not that one."
"There are many," I murmured. "You would have to work here far longer to hear them all."
He shrugged, probably hoping whatever afflicted me wouldn't rub off on him. "You have to understand, Madame, why it's been newly bricked up. You know about the skeleton, I take it. The newspapers couldn't leave it alone, about that skeleton. You'd be amazed how many come here, want to see where it was buried, always looking for a way in. Upstairs, they're not in too good a humor about it. There are a lot of curiosity seekers who buy a ticket and then want to roam around."
"I imagine so," I said. "But I'm not here for curiosity."
"If you have a ticket, Madame, I think I'll ask you to wait in the lobby, rather than out here."
"Are you married?" I asked.
"What?" and he looked surprised. "Not even a year yet," and he blushed, his eyes suddenly very blue against the pink. "Does it show?"
"I wondered if your wife would like to see the performance," I said, and handed him my ticket. "Perhaps she would enjoy it."
"That she might. I talk about what I hear at work off and on, and she sighs, wanting to go. But I still can't let you in," he said, his eyes warm but his lips thin.
"I wouldn't think to ask. Please, take it. I've found what I've come here for, anyway."
I left him standing on the Rue Scribe, holding the ticket in his hand. He put it in his pocket and patted the front of his uniform jacket like it was the hand of his wife, and he wanted to cement her affection.
Tired, I headed for the Boulevard Hausmann, hoping to catch a tram or motor-driven bus. As I waited on the corner, I looked back at the Garnier Opera. Janus-faced, it seemed to stare at me as penetratingly from behind as from the front. You thought you could come in, it mocked. Foolish woman, thinking you could enter through the same door all the time, as if it would open to you whenever you asked. Go, its cold blank windows said. You'll have to find another way in, but not through me. You carry his grave inside yourself. Find it there.
Two tombs. One lies in a Brussels churchyard, where the climbing rose I planted this spring twines around its trellis like arms. Its white blossoms hung heavy and fragrant until the sun beat them down, and I took some of them to make into a sachet. The other stands before me. One tomb is small, one is vast, one is known to the world, one held in my heart, a dusky secret. I know which one I will lie beside, some day.
The breeze blows through my wedding-cake of a hotel room, scattering my papers, riding in on the wings of the sea.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
The next day when I arrived late to my loge, Raoul was already pacing the hallway. There were no windows in the corridor that tunnelled through the very center of the theater building. As it was mid-morning and most of the company were not yet up and about, the gaslights sputtered low. Little glittering speckles of dust flew up from the carpet where he walked. He was so preoccupied he didn't even notice me almost upon him.
"Come in, quickly. Don't linger about in the corridor like that."
He fought to control his face, composing it patiently into the bland look a father gives a fanciful child when he is tired of her lies, but somehow has not the heart to make her stop. "If you say so. I thought you weren't coming." He removed his hat, but didn't take my hand. I didn't need to touch him to feel the warmth of his body, the cold struggle of his reserve.
"I apologize, Monsieur le Vicomte. M. Richard wanted to see me, to make sure I was ready to get back to work. Then I had to go visit the costumer, to get measured and fitted for the upcoming productions." She had fussed and grumbled, pulling in darts and sticking me with pins, complaining, I'll have to cut everything down as Carlotta was twice your size, how can I fit this on you, it hangs like a feedbag, you have no shoulders to work with, an ironing board has more shape, and so on. "Please, sit," I said, and I brushed off the worn seat of my settee. It was dusty, and that embarrassed me. I took a small overstuffed chair opposite, as far from him as I could manage.
"No 'Monsieur,' no titles, please. You will forgive me for dispensing with the customary greeting." Raoul smiled faintly, ignoring the puffs of dust that rose when he sat.
"You will have to excuse the plainness of the setting," I apologized. "While the Opera Garnier is only six years old, the furnishings are ancient. A large variety theater went bankrupt, the Metropolitan, did you know it? They bought the furniture at a discount."
"Philippe used to go there often," and then he hesitated, turned a little pink. "One of the owners went to Dutch Guyana with most of the earnings, as I recall."
"That's the one. More chorus-line singers and dancers out of work than anyone could count." I rubbed the threadbare fabric of my own chair. "Everything's beautiful here in the Garnier on the surface, in the lobbies, but behind the scenes it's just everyday stuff. Not what you're used to, I'm sure."
"How do you know what I'm used to? Try sleeping in a hammock, in a hold with twenty other men for months at a time. It makes you appreciate the peace of a room like this, and anything with a little upholstery." He stretched a little as some of the tension left his shoulders. "What came of your meeting with M. Richard, then?"
"La Carlotta has left Paris. M. Richard told me she has gone to some kind of spa on the Mediterranean for her health. The shock of the chandelier, and that spasm in her throat. Singers do get it, he said."
"Will she be back?" Raoul asked.
"I don't know. I signed a short-term contract for two productions, La Juive and Faust. They said they would see after that, when they counted the receipts. They're not happy about La Carlotta's leave; she was very popular. The doctors have found nothing wrong with her throat. She can sing perfectly well in rehearsal, yet when she even thinks of going on stage, it seizes shut. They wanted her to see a special doctor at the Salpêtrière, someone named Charcot, who treats women for what they call 'hysteria.' She won't go because, as she says, the Salpêtrière is for abandoned women and lunatics, she isn't either one, and won't set foot in the place. They're trying to persuade Dr. Charcot to visit her in her home. To make it worse, there's some kind of argument going on between M. Richard and M. Moncharmin as well. M. Moncharmin says that if it's hysteria, it's not a health condition and isn't covered under the terms of her contract, which means she's breaking it. M. Richard, on the other hand, said that if her throat didn't work and thus she was unable to sing, then that involved her health, regardless of the cause. Meanwhile, Carlotta stays at home and is said to be in a very bad temper."
Raoul's eyes glazed a little. Unlike Erik, he didn't seem to relish theater gossip. "Were you hoping for more than two productions?"
"I don't think they would even consider it. M. Richard was friendly enough, but when he asked me to give him a small audition, his eyes were cold. He couldn't complain about my voice, however. He complimented me, but almost resentfully. Later, I saw the girl who was my understudy leave his office, and it looked like she had been crying. I think he had just told her that the parts were no longer hers."
"Perhaps," he said softly, "you have an inkling of what it is like to be in Carlotta's place, having a lesser singer looking up at you, wondering if she will ever get her chance."
"What do you mean by that?" I cried, affronted. Was he saying that I was like Carlotta in any way?
Smoothing his hair, he said, "It's nothing. I'm glad you got the parts." He looked at his hands and squirmed a little on the settee, not finding a comfortable spot. "There's something else I wanted to say to you as well. It was out of turn for me to speak to you as I did yesterday, when I came to your home. But I can't help it, for you infuriate me, then I apologize, and you inflame me again." Silent, I twisted the ring loose on my finger, and he tried not to look at it. "You have to tell me, Christine. Are you going to marry?" He was like a farmer digging a well, if no water comes up the first time, he just keeps cranking deeper and deeper, until something springs out. "I have to know."
"I will not marry, Raoul," and invoking mental reservation said silently, because I already am. "I cannot marry anyone now."
"So you say," he said, fighting to keep the despair out of his voice. "Yet you sit here with me, privately, with no chaperone."
"We need no chaperone."
"Your reputation..." he began.
"I recall you saying, 'I thought you were a woman of honor,' with the clear implication that I was not.'"
"Christine, I didn't mean that... Stop throwing things back into my face."
"Yes," I said calmly, "You did mean it. I know I have no reputation. What I have is my art," and Erik, but I wouldn't speak that thought. "As far as what other people think, I can't concern myself. You are right, I have no honor, and so without my art, I'm nothing."
"That isn't true!" he protested.
"Tell me. What does your brother, the Comte de Chagny, really think of me?"
He looked down at his cuffs, and I saw the white flash of tiny diamonds. "He thinks you are a remarkable singer, one of the best in years."
"That's not all." I sat, waiting. When we didn't touch each other, everything was so clear. Mountain lake water ran through me instead of blood. "You know there's more."
Embarrassed, he didn't want to answer. "I believe he used the term 'opera wench.' And 'bagatelle.'"
"And you agreed."
"Of course I did not!"
"But you didn't contradict him." This was so easy. All it took was being calm, implacable.
"One doesn't contradict Philippe. He has a habit of getting his way."
Not always, I thought, recalling Erik's mocking comments about the tragedy Sorelli had in store for him. "I think you've made your brother's opinions your own."
He sat up, hot. "What does it matter? Philippe should be the happiest man in Paris right now, because of that ring you wear."
"What? Don't tell me you plan to discuss what is purely my business with Philippe?"
"Of course not. Why should I? As you've said repeatedly, you are not free to marry. You won't admit to being engaged, but what other condition for a maiden could there be?" He saw my stiffening backbone, and feared I might bolt upright, so instead he tried to reassure me with soothing words. "Look, I can understand the vow not to marry. When she was Mademoiselle Martynière de Chagny, my sister believed the Holy Virgin called her to take vows as a Third Order Carmelite."
"To join a convent, then?" I asked.
"Surely you know what the third orders are," he said, and I shook my head. "That's true, you grew up in a schismatic country, even if you have lived in Paris for years. My sister would have lived at home, not in a convent, but she would have never married. Because she was not of age, she needed Father's permission, and he refused. Then two years later she agreed to the marriage Father and Uncle Auguste had arranged for her, and the whole subject became moot. But anyway, the point was to let you know that I do understand such a promise, even though it be not sanctioned officially by the Church, and do respect it. In that event, though, I don't understand why you would agree to meet me here alone."
"Because I wanted to see you. Because I want you to believe me. Anyway, he gave his permission. It's safe ... I think."
Suddenly Raoul's eyes grew wet, as if some enormous emotion surged up behind them, and could force itself out in only one way. "No, Christine, you are wrong. Hearts are never safe. Don't ever believe that. When you toss a man's heart about as if it were a toy and then it falls to the ground and shatters, be careful, because the shards can pierce you, and you will bleed."
Astonished, I stammered, "I'm not playing with anyone's heart. Anyway, why do we always have to turn back to this point?"
"Because it is the pivot on which the world turns. Is your heart that cold? What sliver of ice penetrated it?"
"Sliver of ice?" I said, confused.
"You've forgotten, then, haven't you? Do you remember when we were in Brittany that golden summer, and a storm blew in from the sea right in mid-afternoon? The women went to the old church there to pray, because the fishing boats had not yet come in. You wanted to stay at the church and listen to them, because they didn't pray the rosary quietly, the way we were taught. They wailed it out like wild women, tore at their clothes with their nails. As interesting as that was, I wouldn't let you risk getting chilled by that storm. Instead, I made you run back to the Valerius's cottage, and just as we opened the garden gate, the rain and hail poured down upon us.
"The sky was black and the thunder fierce. Professor Valerius insisted that I not try to walk back to the pension where my aunt would be waiting. I feared my aunt's anger, but your father, God rest him, explained. His French was so hesitant, yet in that lyric accent which sounded almost like singing itself, he said that she would be angrier if I got burnt up by lightning, or if a tree limb struck me. I remember your father's words clearly, to this day. 'She is afraid, yes. She can have her fear with a happy ending, or her fear with a tragic one. Either way, she will be afraid, so there is nothing for you to do but stay here until the storm blows over.' So there I remained with you for the long hours until it abated, and that was one of the happiest afternoons of my life.
"Your father lit a lamp, and to amuse us read to us the story of Gerda and her friend Kay, how one of the broken fragments of the goblin's mirror worked its way through Kay's eye, and then downwards into his heart, where it turned that soft organ, so warm with love of Gerda and all of the rest of life, into a lump of ice. Then, because his heart was so cold, Kay became the prey of the Snow Queen, that great fairy from the icy north who came and took him away in her sledge. Gerda, who loved him, resolved to set out and find him, until it took her to the northernmost end of the world, the 'ultima thule,' as the ancients called it."
His words took me back, as if to a half-remembered dream. "Of course. I remember it now. How could I have forgotten that afternoon? How could I forget that story? She found him, didn't she?"
"She did, but by that time they had grown up." He sat quietly, waiting for me to say something.
I didn't know how to show him how he had touched me. "I've had some tea sent up, which I hope is still warm. Then there's this half of a cake Margot sent."
"Of course," he sighed, as if he'd shot an arrow that had missed its mark. "Tea would be welcome. But who is Margot?" he asked, as I laid out tea things on the table and sliced the cake. It was moist and heavy, rich with almonds sprinkled on top, filled with almond paste.
"She's Mama Valerius's nursemaid, but she's been running our household since..." and there I stopped, confused, not wanting to mention my absence. "Never mind. She's become a sort of housekeeper."
"So she cares for Madame Valerius when you are ... gone," and he mouthed the words carefully.
The tea was still warm under its knit cover. "She does." Handing him the cup, I smiled. "Perhaps you'll drink this today."
"I don't know," he answered. "When I see you, I don't think of food or drink. There's too much to say, too much I want to tell you, and I can't get it all out. It's been so long, and I feel there's so little time. I leave in only a few weeks."
I swallowed, hard. Not many days. "No doubt you will be glad to have a peaceful life at sea, and not have to worry about me then."
"It's not exactly a peaceful life. Even though we embark in a few weeks, we spend some time up by Norway, provisioning. The glaciers are supposed to be enormous, great mountains of ice that glow blue from the sky behind them, and overshadow your ship. The moustache can freeze to a man's lip, or the eyelids freeze shut. Every maneuver has to be carefully planned, or men will die." He said it calmly, as if everyone knew this.
"Are you afraid?"
"When I think about it, yes. It's one reason I've wanted to see you for so long. I should have left a month ago, but then this delay came, something stupid and political. As if the men we are to go and find can wait while we argue about how many gold louis for this, how many for that, and what business is going to get what contract for blankets, for tinned food. It makes me sick to think of those men, lost, counting on help to arrive, but none comes, while the men who make these decisions go home at night to warm fireplaces and beds." He got up and started to pace, stretching his long legs, and the settled dust flew again. "I don't know what we'll find up there. We could be lost too, for all I know. So in some ways, yes, I saw these past few months as perhaps not only my last in Paris, but perhaps my last on this earth. I wanted to spend them with you, but it didn't work. It never worked."
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "You can't know..."
"I think about dying now, and I never used to. Forgive me, that sounds so craven. But to think that we have at best only a few weeks, and that I might die ..."
"I might, too."
"What?" he said, incredulous. "Don't madden me, Christine. If I thought even one of your fingernails would be harmed..."
Again to my mind sprang that memory embedded in the flesh, the man inside the woman, and the usual consequence that followed. Motherless children, gravesites with stones where two or three "beloved wives" were laid to rest. Mama Valerius had had no children, and had told me nothing, but it was a knowledge that every woman shared, that sometimes women died.
When Raoul would leave, there would be a ceremony at the dock. Ribbons would fly, banners would wave, a naval band would play. Women would throw flowers and some bold ones would kiss the sailors as they strode on board. Everyone knew men could die, that ships were lost or went down, that men could drift in rafts for weeks and then be found frozen, the small boat stuffed with rigid corpses that still clung together for warmth long since vanished. But no band played for the wives whose bodies served as a stage for the age-old drama. Then, as the fear began to climb, I pushed it down as I had before. It won't happen, I told myself. Look at Mama, she went for almost thirty years of marriage without ever conceiving once. It doesn't happen to everyone. As I told myself this comforting fiction, I felt the tension in my spine ease a little.
"It's nothing," I told Raoul after a silence. "Simply a case of 'the vapors.' I'm overtired, that's all."
Sympathy blossomed in his eyes, but he kept his face still. "If you are fatigued, I can leave." Then he crumbled a little. "But this grim talk wearies you, perhaps. I will tell you honestly, I am at a loss – to go, to stay, to love you, not to love you."
He spoke of love. It wrenched my heart. "Don't love me," I whispered. "You don't want to love me, believe me."
"What can I do, then? I sit here like a block of wood, and I don't know what to do."
Casting about wildly, I blurted, "Be my friend?"
"Your friend," he answered, his voice echoing hollow and dry off the walls.
An idea occurred to me. "Raoul," I began, not sure what he would say, "You know how, when two people are engaged, they ... they talk? They get to know each other, before they're married?" Encouraged by his calm silence, I went on. "The girl doesn't have to play the coquette. The man doesn't have to worry about whether he will be accepted or not by the girl. They just ... talk. Are more free with each other than when they're courting." I stopped, feeling like an idiot. "We could do that. We could be like that, in this short time before you have to leave."
"I don't understand." He got up and began to pace. "From what you've said, we'll never be engaged."
"I know. That's not what I mean. Not to be really engaged, but to act like we're engaged. In the sense of being able to confide in one another, to tell each other stories and things. To have it like it used to be, when you'd run down to the docks with me to buy the day's fish."
His eyes warmed. "You used to argue with the fisherman's wives. 'This one's slimy, this one's eyes are cloudy.' They snapped right back at you, what does a little chit of thirteen like you know about fish? 'Enough not to buy these,' you'd toss right back. Those days were beautiful, that summer in Perros-Guirec."
"I never bought a bad fish, did I?"
"No, you didn't. Madame Valerius used to praise you to the skies. The fishermen liked you, and I think by the end of the summer they told their wives to give you only the soundest ones."
"So you understand ... I knew you would. Can't it be like that again? Can't we lay aside all these responsibilities, all these complications ..."
"We can't ever lay aside responsibilities," he interrupted. "But we can agree that between us, it is as if we are engaged. Purely for the sake of our friendship. Because there is so little time."
"So little," I echoed.
"It's an interesting idea, to share our thoughts, without the cares of marriage or the need to plan a wedding."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"So I may address you as 'tu.'"
"Yes, you may," I answered at once, using the familiar address with him for the first time since we were young. "In my dressing room."
He withdrew a little. "Of course. Not in public. That wouldn't be seemly, would it?" and he cast a hard look at my left hand.
I sighed. "If we are to share this intimacy between us, you have to pretend that ring isn't there, and not refer to it. I won't be able to bear it if you do."
"How can I forget it? Do you think I'm one of those marble statues in the Louvre, who can stand there implacable and unfeeling?"
"You have to try! Or I can't treat you as a fiancé."
Heavily he strode back over to where I sat, as if I'd piled bricks atop his shoulders. "What you ask is almost impossible, but I'll try. Look, I'll show you my sincerity," and then, as if he still wore his Pierrot outfit from the Masked Ball, he clownishly bowed. "Mademoiselle, I am your swain, for you to command."
I stood up to curtsy, but didn't take his hand. "Monsieur, I accept your offer." Then we both laughed a little, suddenly self-conscious. "This is foolishness, isn't it?"
"Perhaps," he answered, his voice soft. "It doesn't matter. I'll do anything you wish. Just let me come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that besides, until the span of our days runs out. I won't ask you any more questions about that which you prefer to keep inside your heart. Just let me sit with you."
I wished I had never rested my hands on his chest, because under my palms I could still feel the warmth even across the emptiness that separated us. "Every day," I said. "Every day that we can. I will write you in the morning, and you'll come in the afternoon."
"Nothing will stand in the way. But I have to ask you one last time, because I will not go behind the back of another man. Do these meetings occur with ... his ... consent, or not? Tell me the truth, because it is essential."
With Raoul every crooked path had to be made straight, every corner dusted, every term clearly laid out. "Rest your conscience. They do. I would not meet with you otherwise."
Something fought its way out of him. "I know I said I would not burden you with questions of this type. But this I must know, because it torments me. If we are to speak together 'as if' we are engaged," and he stressed the conditional not with sarcasm but sorrow, "then you must tell me why. Why does he permit this? For I would not, I can tell you that right now."
"I can't tell you."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Won't," I whispered. "It would inflame you."
"I will try to keep myself composed," he said, crossing his arms across his chest.
"Because he wants you to be unhappy," I muttered, abashed.
He gaped for a second, then laughed. "That is a most peculiar punishment. In a month, assuming every delay possible, I will have met with you for sixty hours, sixty hours of happiness I would not have envisioned two nights ago, when you showed me your back and I thought I would never find you again. Every hour is a gift. Make me unhappy, indeed."
He had to strain a little forward to hear my response. "We shall see, Raoul. We shall see."
o o o o o o o o o o o o o
The days followed one after another, as if in a dream. Margot followed Erik's instructions strictly to the letter. Milk delivery started at our apartment. Every morning she mixed half a cup of the rich top milk into my coffee. Margot could cook, too, as well as marketing. While I sipped my café au crème, she made a breakfast worthy of a farm laborer, and when I balked at finishing it, she squinted her eyes and said, "Strict instructions, Madame. Do you remember?"
Adèle complained about the dishes, so many more now that Margot had taken over in the kitchen, but Margot simply laughed her short barks, and the young housemaid withdrew, affronted. I made peace with her, telling her that while the kitchen had become Margot's domain, she had many duties throughout the rest of the apartment, and reassured her that she was in no danger of losing her position. If Margot was to cook, she would do the dishes as well. That mollified both of them a little, and then there was peace. Freed of kitchen work, Adèle made the rest of the apartment sparkle, and I even set Adèle to polishing Mama and the Professor's old silver, not strictly a kitchen task as it was stored in the walnut buffet in the dining room.
The spats between the women resolved, I could attend to Erik's orders, which were simple. I was to rest, and especially to sleep in as long as I liked, and I did, deeply, luxuriously. Never again, as I recall, have I ever slept as I did in those days. It may have been that Margot had dosed me with one or more of those powders that Erik had mentioned, or it simply may have been that sleep produces more sleep. After breakfast I would work a little on my acorned oak-leaf lace, or sit with Mama while she knitted a scarf or crocheted.
Margot or Adèle were to wake me only to go to rehearsal. One foggy, rainy mid-morning I stretched out in Mama's big bed right alongside her, and the two of us shared an impromptu nap. No one interrupted me for lunch, because I had at first protested that I would eat none, as it would interfere with singing during rehearsal. Margot nodded amiably, "That's just what he said, too." So on those days Adèle would shake me gently, saying, "It's time, so sorry to disturb you, but it's time to get ready to go to the Opera," and I would roll off Mama's bed or the couch, stretching and blinking.
It felt strange to ride in a cab the short distance to the Opera, to alight as if I were a grand lady getting out of her carriage. Doormen who had never noticed me before when I crept in the side entrance, now greeted me when I pulled up to the front. The charwomen nodded their heads when I passed. I hung outside the rehearsal hall door on the first day back, afraid to go in for fear that someone would see, someone would know. I anticipated their raised eyebrows, their sarcastic and knowing questions, "Where have you been, Mademoiselle Daaé? What have you been up to?" Again the fancy returned that there was some kind of mark on my forehead to point me out to the scorn of the world. In Carlotta's absence, however, her claque seemed to have lost its force. After a few rehearsals, one or two of her hangers-on even nodded politely to me, remarking that my rest must have done me good, as I looked remarkably healthy and pink of cheek.
No one remarked upon or even looked at my ring.
After rehearsal, I practically flew from the hall or auditorium, ignoring the singers and dancers who milled about, chatting. Raoul will be waiting, I thought, and he did not disappoint me. Tea was forbidden to me now as it interfered with sleep and caused vocal cord spasms, so Erik said, and instead I had sent to my loge some port or sauternes to enjoy with the fruit or little cakes Raoul and I shared in the early evening.
My refusal to eat lunch daunted Margot not one whit. She made up for it by cooking a substantial supper and sat over me until I ate it, as if I were a child. Then, before bed, she brought me a tall glass of the last of the day's milk, warmed and spiced with a splash of brandy. Full as a tick, drifting into drowsiness from the drink, I boarded the little boat that bore me away to another night rocking in the arms of Morpheus. Darkness fell around me before the clock even struck the hour of ten, lifting only when I rolled out tender and sleep-swollen twelve or so hours later.
Through those drowsy weeks I moved like one of the slow lorises at the Paris Zoo. Raoul revelled in my calm. My racing thoughts slackened, my pounding heart relaxed, and my hands no longer jerked when I took off my hat or smoothed out the tablecloth on the little pedestal table. I presided like a queen over that little table, and laughed rich and low at our lazy conversations.
Sometimes I caught him staring at me, and an indolent flame grew up from my center, flowing outward. "What is it?" I breathed one day.
"You're looking remarkably well," he murmured, a little embarrassed at having been caught allowing his eyes to rove. "Not to offend, Christine, but the night of the Masque I feared for you, so pale and wan. Now you're pink as a berry, and your face is like a ripening apple. You seem fresh and rested."
"I am," I remarked. "All I do when I am not rehearsing, it seems, is sleep. And meet with you."
"It seems to have done your constitution a world of good," and beneath the kind words there was an undercurrent of languorous sensual appreciation. I could feel the war in him, as the desire to take me in his arms fought with his need to keep our agreement, that we would be as those engaged, but only to a certain degree. "So no late nights, then," and his voice quavered a little as he said it.
"None," I reassured him. "It's what I imagine it would be like to be a little girl again, but I was never so indulged a girl. From when I was old enough to walk, there were tasks I was given to do. Card the wool, sweep the floor, gather eggs. Papa even showed me how to milk the cow, although I never could get very much out of her. By the time I was big enough, Mama, my real one, I mean, Mama was too weak. Were my parents here, they would think me shamefully indulgent now."
"You need to care for yourself," he remarked. "Just as a farmer has to keep his tools sharp and look after his crops in the field, you have to mind your health. Because without it, you can't sing. It's not indulgence, no more than is sharpening an axe or a hoe. Your voice is your instrument, and an instrument must be maintained."
Astonished, I nodded my head. "You understand that. Not many people do..." I was about to say, except for Erik, but fortunately stoppered my mouth in time. If he noticed that I'd almost made a gaffe, he gave no sign.
"How has your voice been?"
"If you would come to a rehearsal, you'd know," I said, lowering my lashes at him. He looked surprised, as if not expecting that from me.
"You know I'm at the naval yard most of the day," he said. "If I could come I would, but I cannot break free. I would like to, so much," and under his tone came that longing once again.
"You'll have to hear Friday's performance of La Juive and decide for yourself how my voice sounds," I smiled. "In rehearsal, it's been golden. I had no idea how it had deteriorated until I heard myself over the past few days. I don't mean to brag, but today, there was a crowd around me when I'd finished. No one applauded, they wouldn't do that, but they were listening raptly. M. Gabriel said he had never heard me in such fine form, that whatever rest cure I had submitted myself to, he wanted to know the secret."
He slid from his chair over to where I sat on the settee, which we had pulled up to the table. It made me breathless, for he had not been so close to me since the day I'd first come back, the day our hands played over each other. I smelled the bright winter air on him and something underneath, too, something warm and impatient that he had fought so long, and was now winning the struggle inside his heart, inside his body. Leaning over me, he took my hand in his, the ringless one. His palms were almost wet.
I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it firmly, resting my hand on his thigh, where a large muscle started to twitch. Then he did let my hand go, only to run his fingers down gently over my cheek. "Christine," he breathed, "You are so beautiful. I have never seen you like this, like a bud ready to blossom. If you were a bouquet, I would bury my face in you and drown in your perfume. Every day I come to visit you. Every day we drink wine, and laugh, and when I leave, my heart soars over Paris like one of Montgolfier's balloons, but when I reach my home, I am almost in tears. Every day I return, only to find you more beautiful, more composed, more placid and tender than the day before, sitting here as if this loge were your own throne room. No, don't pull away like that. I'm sorry, I cannot keep still any longer."
His voice shook with emotion, and licking his lips, he went on and I knew something was coming, something important. "I spoke to my superior officer today." He hesitated, hoping I would guess what he was to say, figure it out for myself so that he wouldn't have to hear his words fall like little stones out of the sky, to crush the gentle little world we had made for ourselves. "I asked him about my commission. He said it was possible for me to arrange for a six-month's leave."
These lotus-laden days had slowed my brain, and I struggled to think of what he meant. "That means you won't embark with your expedition."
"That's exactly what it means." He slid his arm around me and I looked down but didn't pull away this time. He drew me into his arms' circle just short of an embrace, and the heat rising off his skin made me think of another's skin and another's heat. He put his face down next to mine, the cinnamon-scented breath wafting my cheek. Oh, don't, I thought, please don't come so close, because I want you to so badly, and this cannot be. "Christine," he breathed low, and a long shiver of delight went through me at the warm feel of his breath, so mingled with mine now, "I can't leave. Not at present. Please understand ... I'm so glad that you sleep, but I think you must have stolen all of mine, because I have so little left. Then, when I do sleep, I see you before me," and then he stopped, face flushed red, and looked away. "I am not going. I can't."
"But," I stammered, "but, you promised."
"Promised whom? The President of the Third Republic? The Navy? I already told you, I can be released from my commission."
"Me," I whispered. "You promised me."
"Promised you?" he cried, and the full heat of his passion poured over me. "Oh, cruel woman, to be so beautiful, and to have so little heart. Why would I promise you that I would leave? From when you first returned, this voyage was a burden to me. It did not occur to me that these arrangements were possible."
Don't take me in your arms, I prayed. Don't do it, please, because if you do, I will never crawl out of them, and someone must have heard that prayer, because he pulled himself away, and I felt the warmth of his body go with him. "But what will that mean for you?"
"What will it mean? It was one of two obstacles that stand between us. I have removed one. Now it is up to you to remove the other."
"I don't understand," I lied.
"What kind of bond lies upon you, that you cannot set it aside? I have freed myself, Christine. I want you to free yourself, to free your heart for me."
"Don't ask me that. Please."
He struggled to stand up, then changed his mind and sat down, and if the heat of his skin could have reached around and embraced me, it would have. Something massive and dark moved through him, and before my new knowledge, my new flesh had come upon me, I would not have recognized it. Now I did, and a hot fierce truth pierced me. Raoul wanted me, as a man wanted a woman. He struggled against that wildness, beating it down as it rose up rebellious once more. He must have won over his heart, for finally he stood and turned away from me rapidly, fumbling for his hat and his jacket like a man blinded. Out the door he stumbled, leaving me alone in that small room with dusty furniture and an oversize mirror which glared at me like a giant's single unblinking eye.
I ignored Erik's demands that I take cabs, and with head and throat thoroughly muffled, walked back to the long narrow apartment on the Rue-de-Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. A little breathless, I panted at the top of the stairs just as Margot came up herself, carrying the evening mail. Silently she handed me a letter, written in a large sprawling hand.
"You were out in the cold, weren't you?" she remarked.
"How did you know?"
"You're panting like a bellows, and your hat's about knocked off. Trying to get me in trouble?"
"No, not at all," I mused. "Do you mind? I'd like to read my mail."
Grinning, she went into the kitchen and began slicing onions.
I read the short note, one sentence, and felt the blood leave my face. "No supper for me tonight," I murmured.
"Madame," she said, stamping her foot a little, "I won't have this ..."
"Oh, be quiet, Margot," I retorted. "I'm leaving this evening."
She peered out with interest. "I thought so, soon as I saw the handwriting. Distinctive, isn't it? Let me see that," and before I could protest, she had snatched it out of my hand. "I don't see a time written on it. Just like a man, to expect you to jump whenever they call. Well, I know he won't give you supper, and it's my job to build up your blood." Then she looked at me slyly. "In that much hurry to go, are you?"
Flustered, I put the letter in the rack with the others on my desk. Something had occurred to me. "Let me help you in the kitchen," I said, afraid she'd refuse me outright, as she'd chased Adèle out. "I'll bone and fillet the chicken."
"Sure you know how to do that without cutting your fingers to shreds?" she asked, dubious, but she stepped aside and let me into her sacred preserve.
The meat slid apart under the razor-sharp back-and-forth slices. We're like that underneath too, I thought. It's all flesh, under the skin. I cleared my throat, not knowing how to start. "Margot? I want to ask you something," and she managed a small grunt as she pressed garlic. "Have you ever been married?"
She laughed. "Never bothered with it."
"Oh," I said in a small voice. "I won't trouble you, then."
Hand on hip, she set aside her onion and smirked. "I know what you're asking, missy, as mealy-mouthed as you are."
How did Erik stand her insolence, or did she save up all her cheek just for me? "I don't think so."
"You think that since old Margot hasn't had a piece of paper from the bureaucrats in her dresser drawer, since no one sprinkled incense over her, that she doesn't know anything about the marriage bed. Such a little naïf you are."
I flushed hard, not knowing how to start.
"The missus hasn't told you a damn thing, has she? And I bet you went to one of those convent schools."
It felt good to catch her out at something. "You're wrong. I never went to a convent school. My father and Professor Valerius taught me themselves."
"Oh, that's such an improvement. At least in the girls' schools they talk about something at night when the lights are out, even if most of it's wrong."
"You don't have to tell me anything," I said, suddenly angry. "I won't bother you."
"Now hold on," she said, suppressed laughter shaking her round shoulders. "I never said nothing like that. I had her full attention as she wiped her hands on her apron, looking shrewdly at me with black-button eyes. "What is it you want to ask?"
This was so difficult. "When a man is ... when he is, uh, with a woman, you know... the first time a woman is with a man ... "
"Oh, don't waste time," she shot back. "What do you need to know? Just spit it out."
Little pink mounds of chicken sat in a row in front of me. If I tapped them, they'd quiver. Like flesh. They were flesh. Like me. Like Erik. "Is it supposed to hurt?" I choked out as fast as I could.
"Oh, you clumsy fool," she said under her breath, but not to me. "It can. Even if he takes his time and doesn't go too fast. How bad?" and her tone wasn't rough any more, but sympathetic.
"Like fire," I said, hot with shame. "But it was over quickly. Then it burned a little the next day. I'm sorry, it seems so unfitting to talk about this."
"You walk through the streets after a rain, you're going to get muck on your skirts, missy. What makes you think you're above other folks, above life? I haven't just nursed sick old ones. Did some work for the midwives, too, after the mothers had their babies. You poor young girls, don't know a single thing, and too proud or too shamed to ask. Wish we'd had this little chat earlier. I just assumed, you a singer and all, that someone had widened that crack a long time ago. That's what I say, once the door to the barn's been opened, the goats go in and out at will. Listen, young miss. What you said doesn't sound too bad to me. Was there blood?"
"A little," I admitted.
"But not enough to scare you."
"Not at all. I was surprised, I thought there would be more. Like the monthlies."
She laughed, her hips shaking. "Now that would be a sight."
I thought of Erik's letter, and going to him tonight. "Does it ... does it ever get better? Because I don't know how women have more than one child."
Again she laughed, harder this time. "You look like such a prissy little thing, but I can look at you and tell something, my young woman. You have the heat in your veins, the fire in your blood. I had it too, as a young one. You roll your eyes up, as if between you and the likes of me there was no comparison. Well, I'll tell you something. Between the Comtesse and the chambermaid who empties the pot there's precious little difference under the petticoats, except one pops those babies out a lot easier than the other, and it's not the Comtesse, who's too refined to squat down over a pan like the chambermaid does.
"I've had three men in my life that lasted, and the others aren't worth mentioning. The first time, with the first one it was in the barn, in the hay byre, and no one but he and the cows heard me cry out. A month later I was screaming again, but not the same sort, if you take my meaning. He was big and he was rough but he could turn hell into heaven, once I got used to him, that is."
"Why?" I whispered. "Why does it have to hurt like that?"
"Don't know," she mused. "Maybe it's all part of the curse of Eve. Maybe if it didn't hurt so much at first, we'd open our legs to just any Pierre that came along, and the world'd be knee-deep in bastards. But it isn't always like that," and she looked at me with such pity that the tears rose and stung my eyes. "It gets better, until it gets so good you can't imagine living without it." She drifted away in thought for a moment, recollecting, before turning back to her onions once more. "Then you learn to live without it all over again."
My head swam. I couldn't match her words with my memory of that long sharp sword-thrust in the dark. Still confused, my mind a turmoil, I sat in the kitchen and watched her prepare supper. She seemed kinder than usual, softer, and after Adèle set out the plates, I praised her cooking, and she smiled.
(continued...)