The basement of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where the Comédie-Italienne was housed, was a hive of storage chambers and scenery machines. On Sunday mornings before the matinee, or whenever we were both free, Antonia and I would wander from room to room down there, looking for a new place to secrete ourselves. There was one room filled entirely with fire equipment. Fires were so common in theaters, the Hôtel de Bourgogne had its own reservoir under the building, just in case. I have a precious memory of my girl reclining on a coiled sailcloth fire hose. As she arched her back, her small breasts emerged from that torrent of glinting hair like little white rocks in a streaming river. I dove in. She was tiny but fierce, with padded paws, sharp nails, biting teeth. She always fought me when we made love, made me find strength in my slender limbs.
One day I asked Antonia if the count was as good a lover as I. She laughed. “But don’t you know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“Villars is impotent, because of smallpox. Le Jumeau does all that for him.”
“You mean …”
“They are a team,” she said, smiling gaily and pulling me in for a kiss. I stood up, appalled.
“Since I met you, my love, I haven’t allowed it,” she said unconvincingly.
“But why—why can’t he use me?”
“I have thought of that. I can’t ask him, though, he would be suspicious. I promise you, most of the time it is not a matter of … His demands are not typical.”
“I know,” I said.
“I haven’t set eyes on Le Jumeau for ever so long,” she said breezily.
“How can you just sit there and smile at me like this is a normal situation?” I asked, banging my head against the wall. Once she had checked me for blood, she settled back on the bed, stroking my back.
“But why is one thing worse than another?” she asked blandly. “Your prick is part of you, and it works. Lucky you. His doesn’t. I feel sorry for him, in a way.”
I rubbed the growing welt on my forehead, trying to believe that Antonia avoided Le Jumeau entirely. It didn’t work. I became tormented with jealousy, yet it only augmented my lust. I was permanently priapic, moving sluggishly through a thick soup of desire, barely seeing the world around me. The fact that I was betraying the count seemed irrelevant, separate. His relation to her was a convoluted business transaction. Mine was a bond of the flesh. In contrast to his paid evenings with Antonia, and, perhaps, Le Jumeau, I got mine for free; a greluchon was there to give pleasure. It was a courtesan’s right to have her own lover. The fact that Antonia’s greluchon was her patron’s valet—this was problematic, perhaps, but I was past caring. It was her former paramour, Algrant, I worried about. Whenever I walked by his ticket window with the count, he smirked at the two of us so openly that I worried the count would take him to task for his insolence, and get an earful of truth in exchange. Luckily for me, as a rule the count arrived by the side entrance reserved for people with season boxes, so we avoided the ticket collector. The affair went on quite smoothly for several months.
One night during the interval, I was relaxing in Antonia’s dressing room, my feet up by the hearth, having brought the count a bottle of champagne in his box where he was entertaining several friends, when there was a knock on the door. Antonia and I both rose and looked at one another. The count had told me he would not be visiting Mlle Giardina during the interval. Why was he banging on the door? Antonia stalled him, I hid behind a screen, Villars stalked in and said in a voice of terrible, whispery calm, “Mademoiselle, may I trouble you to ask if there is a male person here with you?”
“But monsieur,” Antonia said, “I am about to go onstage!”
“I cannot leave until you answer my question,” said the count.
“You can see there is no one here,” said Antonia haughtily. “I did not realize that my every action was to be monitored by you.”
“Please do not insult my love,” said the count. “You have complete freedom apart from our time together. However, I have reason to believe that a man of mine is in this room, and that is a humiliation I cannot bear.”
Antonia snorted. “That’s a good one,” she retorted. A merciful knock on the door warned Antonia she had a minute to get onstage. “Please go, monsieur! This is the wrong time to twist my wits.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Gebeck!”
Another knock. The door opened. The stage manager hissed that she was about to miss her cue. Antonia panicked and ran to the stage. Like a furious bear, my master ripped away the flimsy screen, revealing me. He was reaching for his pistol when I ducked and fled, following the natural path down the wing onto the stage, where Antonia stood blazing in the footlights, a look of astonishment on her face. I ran toward her. Her leading man stepped aside as I slid past him on the waxed floorboards, coming to a stop center stage. It was hot here, and all was saturated with unearthly light. I squinted into the shadowy, packed house: seats, carpets, walls upholstered in velvet and silk as red as an inflamed vulva, a thousand white faces staring up at me like rows of teeth. Paralyzed by this vision, I stood stock-still as waves of laughter bombarded me: the audience took me in my blue livery for a valet in the play! I became obscurely aware that my deft mistress was attempting to weave me into the plot line. Copping on at last, I was about to improvise a bit when a teapot resting on the table beside me exploded into shards. There were screams from the audience. I turned and saw the furious count reloading, stage left. I ran offstage right, jumping over all sorts of theatrical paraphernalia in my wild bid for life, clattered down the stairs, through the foyer, up another quick flight, and down a hall past the guard room, where members of the French Guard were deep in a game of cards and only noticed me once I had passed them. At last I reached the stage door, held open for my convenience by the grinning, slit-eyed ticket collector—architect, no doubt, of my ruin.