I went on with my life in the Comédie-Française. As to the boy playing somewhere in the Jewish quarter, my blood in his veins: I tried to think of Ethiop as a dream, fag end of the hallucination that was my life before I became a Frenchman. For the most part, I succeeded. Aside from a persistent cough, nasty reminder of damp nights spent trawling the Tuileries for sodomites, I remained one hundred percent carefree.
I had exchanged several letters with Solange over the years. She knew I had gone onstage. One morning she appeared at my door, her eyes glassy.
“The Comte de Villars has been arrested,” she said. I brought her inside, struck by her solemn beauty. Her face was fuller now, and there were steel-gray streaks in her dark hair. I gave her a cup of tea, and she explained that the count had lost control of his finances. Le Jumeau having disappeared with my portion of the winnings from the bet, Villars seemed at a loss, adrift in his life, and began to gamble compulsively, mounting up huge debts. The countess was furious that he was spending her dowry. She called him a child, a lunatic. She began to work day and night to have him arrested. She wanted him to be judged insane. This was a solution of desperation among aristocratic families, for inveterate profligates: they were simply put into prisons and kept there. The families bypassed the regular judicial system by virtue of something called a lettre de cachet—a sealed letter from the king, demanding the arrest of the person in question. With a lettre de cachet, anyone could be disposed of, and released only at the pleasure of the king. Some noblemen incarcerated in this way were never released at all. Now the grand Comte de Villars was in prison at the Château de Vincennes, the holding pen for aristocrats! As my old nemesis, Inspector Buhot, once said, “Nobody can predict his own fate.”
Solange became my housekeeper that afternoon, having unwrapped my porcelain candelabra, memento from the count, and set it proudly on my dining table. I could not afford to keep her as the count had done, but she was satisfied with the wage I offered. Going to the country to live with her husband did not seem to be an option she favored.
Immediately, my life improved. Solange thought of everything: menus to please my palate and ease my digestion; softer bedding to promote sleep; fragrant potted narcissus to create peace of mind and please the eye. She led the two servants with a firm but gentle hand. It was as if I had a wife, and yet I was completely free. Heaven.
I loved Solange. She swished through my house with her light step, her intent expression. I drew comfort from her orderly mind. I think Solange was really a secret nun. She had the private radiance of a truly spiritual being. She was sister, mother, friend to me; for kicks I had almost any actress in Paris, and a few society ladies besides. I was never short of company. I had become a cold person, filled with sour quips and unkind ironies. I was amusing, though. People feared me and were drawn to me because of it. I trusted only Solange, who knew my original self.
My lungs hadn’t been right for years. One day, after a violent coughing spasm, I drew my handkerchief from my mouth and saw that it was stippled with blood. Instead of taking it easy, as Solange bade me, I took on more work, and stirred myself into a social whirl. I invited groups of people I didn’t particularly like over to my house and entertained them compulsively, never satisfied unless I had them weeping with laughter. The improvisatory skills I had learned at the Spectacle des Grands Danseurs never left me; in fact, I now had a need to speak in paragraphs. I plied my guests with the best drink, sending poor Solange down to the cellar for more and more champagne. Many of the actresses in those days were also courtesans, as Antonia had been; it wasn’t uncommon to see a pair of nipples poking out from the top of a loosened bodice. After each such grotesque evening, when the guests had stayed till dawn and the rouge on the women’s faces was smudged and formless, the false hair on their heads coming apart like old sofa stuffing, the men’s faces gray, I was filled with sadness. Without even saying goodbye to the last of my guests, I would trudge up to my room and lie on my bed. Sometimes I wept without expression, my face a blank. Solange always came in at those times, brought me chamomile tea and some buttered bread. She sat on the chair beside my bed, doing needlepoint or reading a book. She listened if I wanted to talk, but mostly she was just present. Eventually I fell asleep.
The coughing seizures got worse and worse. There were sudden fevers. The theater doctor prescribed all sorts of remedies, including mustard plaster and being bled by leeches. For a time I thought I was getting better. I played Argan in Le Malade imaginaire, of all things, hoping not to expire on the stage like Molière himself. I felt myself growing stronger. Gripped by a sudden lust for extreme enjoyment, I held a dinner every night for a week, inviting all the most entertaining people I knew. Antonia herself made an appearance. It was a small world, ours; we were bound to run into each other. She was over thirty now, and no longer commanded the huge sums as a courtesan that she once had. But she was still a fine singer, spritely and fun, and loved a romp. I didn’t mind that she knew of my origins. Many people did, by now, know I was a Jew. No one much cared in that society. Players were outcasts, in a way, just like Jews. So that made me a double outcast.
The morning of the final party, I had one of my fevers. I played onstage anyway, and came home slick with sweat. I thought half a bottle of champagne would raise my spirits, and it did, for a while, but by the time dinner was served I was shivering violently. I took to my bed, raising my glass to all present and commanding them to stay until dawn if they wished. Solange divided her time between the guests and me. She wished she could ask them all to go home, but I wouldn’t let her.
She placed the count’s candelabrum next to my bed. I stared at it, listening to the aggressive laughter downstairs, and remembered how as a child I had gazed at the Shabbos candles with such wonder. Now my eyes, drained of their credulity, stared, empty as two dry buckets, at the mesmerizing flames that crouched, reared up, and swayed from side to side in the breeze leaking through the loose windowpanes like six charmed snakes.