Some number of the orchestra still sported bruises; I could, even from my box seat, count the ones that I had laid upon them. Their instruments seemed particularly out of tune to my wincing ear, though the damage to them had of course been repaired, or the instruments replaced, by now. Only the first violin still held what was certainly his original instrument, and, as if he knew both that I was there and that I had taken some special care to ensure the instrument's survival, his gaze sought mine across the distance, and he smiled.
His eyes were blue; I looked away regardless.
Inevitably, perhaps, I looked to the box across from mine. It was more than empty: it was blackened, crepe laid over the seats, the doors sealed. They called it la boîte du fantôme now, the phantom's box, and until superstition passed or greed prevailed, I imagined that it would remain unused. Still, I could not help but search its depths as if I half believed a dead man might somehow be hidden in its shadows.
"You're early, Amelia." My friend Khan's deep voice filled the whole of my own box, and I turned my profile to him with a smile.
"Oui. I wanted to watch everyone come in. You are looking very well, mon ami." And he was: his fur gleamed and the nails of his enormous hands, always well manicured, had an especially careful sheen. He wore a kilt as always, but tonight's was made of heavy raw silk dyed a forest green, and sported a thick silken belt so deftly twisted and pinned in place with a huge gold brooch that the entire ensemble could only be called formal wear. I stood to embrace him and kiss his cheeks, awed as always by the careful return of affection from a being whose unattended strength could crush my bones without thought.
"Merci, although I fear I am somewhat lacking in comparison to yourself, dear lady. Amelia, you are very nearly...Josephine, tonight."
The corner of my lip curled and I turned in rueful amusement to display my gown, which was the color of, and littered with, rubies. "She dressed me, I'm afraid. She has been, for the evenings. What do you think?"
"That she understands that neither of you are shadows of the other," Khan said with unexpected acumen. "Tonight you are made in her image, though I've seen you together in the city during the days this past week, and she's often chosen to dress as though she's been made in yours."
"Oui." I sat again, gathering the splendid and ridiculous skirt in my fingers, then smoothing the shimmering fabric between them, though my gaze was for the yet-empty stage. "Rather more glamorous, but oui. The jodhpurs...suit her."
"Amelia," Khan said dryly as he sat beside me in a chair that creaked and protested at his great weight, "I am an ape, and disinclined to find human women, no matter how remarkable, to be enticing. However, I believe I would not be sentient if I could not see, and say, that any article of clothing that encases Madame Baker's backside so splendidly is barely done justice by the phrase suits her."
To my relief, I laughed: I had not known if laughter was in me tonight, the final night of Josephine's performance as Cleopatra. "I strove for discretion there, Khan. I will take your response as meaning that I succeeded."
"You have been," he said with great gentleness, "very discreet, Amelia. Tonight is her last performance."
For the third time, I said, "Oui," but because we both knew that a question lay within his statement, Khan waited on what more I had to say. "You said it very well, mon ami. We are not shadows of one another. We each cast too much light, and might illuminate each other, but...she cannot be Amelia by day and myself Josephine by night. Our lives are too different, and neither of us will give up that which we thrive upon. For Josie, it is the stage, for me..." I opened my hands, releasing the fabric and displaying the old bruises and faint scars upon my knuckles. My nails were not as elegant as Khan's: even polished, they showed the nicks and chips that came from my way of life.
Khan covered my hands with his own, warmth pouring from his skin to mine. I met his solemn gaze, then smiled in gratitude as he murmured, "I am sorry, Amelia."
"La belle et la bête," said another familiar, friendly voice, and Khan and I both stood to greet my mother as she stepped, smiling, into our box. "Khan, Amelia. You are a fairy tale together."
"Pas du tout, madame," Khan disagreed. "Fairy tales are built of the dangers in the night and the fear of power, especially powerful women. I should say that together Amelia and I are what fights the fairy tales."
Maman pressed a hand against her chest and smiled through a shine of tears in her eyes. "A much better story. Besides, as the old lady I would no doubt be cast as the crone or wicked queen, and prefer to be only the brave heroine's mother. Thank you for inviting me tonight, Amelia. I've wanted to hear Josephine sing on stage."
"Bien sûr, Maman. I'm glad you could join us. That dress," I added in admiration, and, just as I had done, Maman spun in pleased delight, showing the flare of a kick-pleated skirt and the swing of a low-cut back that showed her figure to great effect.
Khan caught her hand to steady her when she wobbled too far, and her "Merci" was for both of us as she sat on my far side. "And where is our fourth?"
"Here, signora." Bernardo Viccini, stupendously handsome in a short-waisted, long-tailed tuxedo, his over-long hair tucked into a tidy curl at his nape, stepped into the box as well. "Madame Stone," he said to me, nervously, "I'm afraid I'll embarrass you here. I've never been to the Opéra. What if I fall asleep?"
"Then I shall kick you," Maman replied serenely. "You won't fall asleep, Bernardo. No one could sleep through a Baker performance."
"Signora," Viccini said ruefully as he took his seat beside Maman, "the truth is I don't think anyone could sleep though any adventure your daughter is present at."
"I am not dressed for adventure," I told them in a tone that could not be dismissed. "There will be no adventures tonight. There have been quite enough of those for one brief performance run."
"Speaking of performance," Viccini said, leaning forward that he might see Khan clearly, "your suggestions to improve the engine's performance were just what I was looking for. The new metallic compound has always been superior to the heavy steel of older bikes, but..." He carried on, and though on nearly any other night I would eagerly attend to the design and development of a new, faster, lighter motorcycle, tonight my gaze drifted again to the filling audience.
A dead man did not sit in the box across from ours; nor did his youthful doppelgänger enter the theatre, though I looked again and again for those familiar features. L'homme had indeed delivered Signor Panterello to the authorities; the thieving fascist was now imprisoned for endangering the public with his races and soon would see charges of fraud, for the race's investors had all demanded their money back, only to find it had disappeared. Panterello would not see the light of day as a free man for a long time, if ever; l'homme had fulfilled his task well. I prayed he would also do as charged and live a good man's life—and en vérité, that he was not at this, Josephine's final performance in La Reine du Nil, boded well on that account. I could not say why I had, even so, hoped to see him.
Attuned as I was to the slightest motion on stage, my gaze was first to the curtains amongst those in my box seats; the curtains shivered and rose, and for the next hours we were captives of Josephine's voice, myself most of all. I watched her, memorized her, burned each motion and vocal triumph to memory, and if I wept at times, I was not the only one. Even Khan was not immune to her talents, and Viccini most certainly did not sleep. From time to time, Maman clutched my hand, and I held hers just as strongly, understanding the envy and admiration that had to consume her.
But it was all nothing to the final aria; as that song began, it was as if Josephine had not even been present until then. For all of her strength, all of her power, all of her presence up until the last piece, she might have been a child singing rhymes on a street corner, compared to the raw emotion, stripped free of any pretense, that came into her final song.
This, the last performance of her dying aria, was not sung for her voice master, nor for le Monstre, the creature her voice master had truly been. It was not sung for the people of Paris; it was not even sung for herself, when it might well have been, a triumphant finale in which her own glory was paramount.
No, it was sung for me, to me, a farewell, and she made no pretense of it being otherwise. The aria was not presented fully to the theatre, but instead she turned toward me, made each dying gesture to me, for me, and for all the people in the opera house, the song was for my ears alone.
I did not know that I had come to my feet until my fingertips brushed the box seat's railing; I did not know at all that hundreds of eyes were on me, enraptured by a song of love and loss even as they wondered at the story Josephine truly told with her voice. I did not even know that a quick-thinking stagehand had directed a spotlight onto myself and dimmed the rest of the lights, so that we were in truth alone in pools of light in the darkness; to me it was that way anyway, Josephine Baker the singular light in my world, her song all the sustenance I might need.
Its ending was a shock, the reverberations of her voice leaving a most perfect silence: no sound from a stunned patronage, no music from the awed orchestra, no song from Baker's lips. She waited; oh, she waited, knowing with flawless certainty how long she could hold them in the silence, and in the moment before it broke, she spoke a single clear word—and spoke it in French, to be certain her audience would understand: "Adieu."
Then I knew I stood in a pool of light, because the stagehand killed it, leaving me in darkness, leaving Josephine the sun for all the patrons, and as she turned back to them, her hands raised in glory, such sound burst through the theatre as to shake its very walls.
I fell a step back, a marionette with my strings sliced, and even so, a breath of laughter escaped me at the perfection of her performance. No one could ask for a more magnificent farewell; no farewell, so staged, could be taken as anything other than final. Nor could any ordinary mortal hope to overcome the depths of emotion displayed by such a goodbye; it had been a gift, a terrible gift, for it had confirmed where her strongest affections would always lie. I had known, bien sûr, but I was left now with no pretense to survive upon.
I pressed my hand against Khan's shoulder as I left the box, assuring him that I was well; then, alone in the theatre halls, hurrying through opulence to leave this place before the audience swept out to find the woman to whom Josephine Baker had sung, I took from my bodice a vial. Rose pink, sweet smelling liquid sloshed within; the very vial I had taken from Josephine in the catacombs, knowing it then for what it was and seeing greater use for it in the future than in the fight at hand.
I did not breathe it in, but drank it, so that its powers might imbue my very being, and upon the curving steps of the Paris Opera House, like a glittering glass slipper, I left love behind, transformed forever to an abiding fondness. Fondness softened the edges of regret, and if I dashed tears away, so too did I smile at the memories of the past two weeks, and smiled more broadly yet as I struck out into the Parisian night with one certainty in mind:
Adventure awaited!