The Book of the Courtesans (4 page)

CORA PEARL

Chapter One

Timing

Ripeness is all.
—WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE

I
T IS ALWAYS
wise to begin with a
mystery. Translucent, invisible, continually in motion, timing is difficult to
discern and just as hard to describe. Nevertheless, the appeal of anyone who
possesses this virtue is certainly palpable. Let us suppose, for example, that
in the bare beginnings of the twentieth century, in say
1906
, you chance to attend a party given at the country
estate of Etienne Balsan. You may find yourself smiling at a woman who passes
you on the stairs. And though you have not met her yet, you realize you are
wishing that you will soon. Later, when you see her talking with a small group
across the room, you are almost embarrassed at how often your eyes wander in
her direction. What is it about her? She is good-looking but not
extraordinarily so. No, it is something else that draws you. An air of
indefinable excitement that seems to radiate out in waves around her.

You see that her presence affects those who are standing near her. The
atmosphere in that part of the room is distinctly electric. The way she is
dressed gives you a clue. She is wearing what looks like a man’s riding
jacket, only cut to follow the lines of her small body. Though the look is
eccentric, the style seems to place her at the very edge of the present moment.
And the look in her eyes, almost mocking, gives you the intriguing impression
that she is seeing just past the precipice of what is happening now, that she
is, in fact, fully aware of (and more than ready for) the moment which has not
quite arrived yet. Still, she has not given herself to the future. Fully here,
her movements and gestures are perfectly syncopated with the soundless rhythm
to which you suddenly realize the whole room is moving. As the air fairly
crackles around her, you begin to believe that she is helping to bring new
possibilities into being, including the new worlds that seem to have emerged in
your own imagination since the first moment you laid eyes on her. Only at the
end of the day do you learn that she is your host’s lover, a young woman
named Gabrielle. When, later, you hear her name spoken all over Paris, you are
not so surprised. What was it about her that was so extraordinary? Her timing
was brilliant.

Still, as compelling as a woman with good timing is, the question remains: Why
should this virtue be placed first in our catalogue? Asked what could make a
woman so attractive that a man would be willing to spend a small fortune to
keep her, one might in all likelihood think of beauty first, to be followed
quickly by wit, or that talent indispensable to the art of seduction known as
charm. As appealing as it is, timing may not even be on the list.

Yet, of all the virtues a great courtesan had to possess, good timing was
perhaps the most crucial. Indeed, her very existence depended on it. Had she
not been able to move in perfect synchrony with history, no woman would ever
have been able to enter the profession. Whether it was poverty or scandal that
she faced, her genius was to turn difficult circumstances to immense profit and
pleasure. She did the right thing at the right time.

Regarding survival, the best choice to be made at one moment will, in another
period, not even be a good choice. All things considered, it would not be a
wise choice for most women to become courtesans today. Indeed, the ingredients
required to become one no longer exist. A courtesan occupied a precise place in
society; as independent as she was, circumstance defined her. If, in the middle
of the twentieth century,

Helen Gurley Brown, future editor in chief of
Cosmopolitan
magazine,
was kept by a wealthy movie producer, she was not called a courtesan. Like the
atmosphere that created the tradition, the word had already become an
anachronism.

Just as Venus arose from the sea instead of a lake or a river, the courtesan
emerged from a very particular medium. The waters of her birth, salted by the
bitter tears of women who were condemned to penury and by those of wealthy and
poor women alike who lamented the rules that limited and constrained their
erotic lives, were made up of a perfect blend of injustice and prudery. The
genius of the courtesan was in how she turned the same ingredients to her
advantage. Considering the distribution of power between men and women in the
times during which she lived, to say that she turned the tables would be an
understatement. If we ponder very long the fact, for instance, that La Belle
Otero, the famous courtesan of the Second Empire, successfully demanded from
one of her lovers the priceless long diamond necklace that had once belonged to
the former queen, Marie-Antoinette, we may begin to appreciate the dimensions
of the reversal. Yet exactly how this stunning victory was achieved remains a
mystery.

Some clues are given to us in a story that Colette tells about a conversation
she had while she was still performing in music halls with La Belle Otero.
Thinking the young woman somewhat green, Otero offered her some advice. “
There comes a time,” she said, “with every man when he will open up
his hand to you.”

“But when is that?” Colette asked.

“When you twist his wrist,” Otero replied.

Like many courtesans, Otero was known for her wit. Doubtless, that is why
Colette remembered the dialogue. Indeed, the key we are seeking to the mystery
is less in the content of Otero’s answer than in the way it was given. She
delivered her last line with consummate timing. And looking further at what she
told her young protégée, it becomes quickly evident that the crucial
phrase in her advice is not in the last line but in the first phrase, “
There comes a time.” The secret of her success was that she chose exactly
the right moment to twist her lover’s wrist.

We cannot know, but only surmise, that Otero would have been glad to tell
Colette exactly how to recognize the right moment for doing anything. But those
who have this talent rarely understand themselves how they know what they know.
Rather than a technique that can be analyzed, the ability for good timing must
be the product of a particularly intense relationship with the present. To
speak of having an awareness of the present moment may seem strange, as if such
an awareness should be commonplace. But in fact, since most of us, much of the
time, are focused more on the past or the future than on what is here now, the
ability is unusual.

This uniqueness may explain why courtesans were so often found at the cutting
edge of new sensibilities. While she used time to her own advantage, the
courtesan expanded the terrain of the imagination. Indeed, the fact that so
often whenever culture made a daring turn, breaking old boundaries, flying in
the face of convention, courtesans have been part of that history illustrates
how time moves forward. In contrast to the conventional view, it is less by
aiming yourself in the direction of the future that you will affect the tenor
of your times than by immersing yourself in the present.

How did she develop her unique presence? At this point, we can only guess. But
our guesses are educated. Early deprivation and fear for survival would have
played major roles in the unfolding drama. Traumatic events, losses, and
miseries can make every moment of life seem like a precious substance, not a
drop of which should be missed. At the same time, narrow escapes and fortunate
breaks can loosen the hold that well-laid plans have on the mind, serving to
free events from any narrative plot that is too constricting.

And from this perhaps we can also begin to grasp why, aside from any efficacy,
good timing is so attractive. Though you would not have been able to name the
seemingly ephemeral effect she had of enlarging your consciousness, a
courtesan’s awareness of time might make you long for her in the same way
that a mystic longs for God. Or, if you are devoutly secular, for what is still
nascent in yourself.

Yet, as ephemeral as it may seem, this virtue means far less in the abstract
than it does in the concrete example. So let us proceed, if not methodically,
bit by bit, through many of the simpler expressions of good timing that are
more plainly manifested in the lives of courtesans. This is, after all, hardly
a dreary task. Known as a “good-time girl,” the courtesan had to be
able to make men laugh, which called on comic timing. To dress well, she had to
know what to wear—and when. And for flirtation, of course, essential to
all her other accomplishments, she had to have exquisite timing. There is
almost nothing she did that did not require this virtue. But we begin with the
activity most often associated with courtesans, perhaps because it is the one
with which so many began their careers: dance.

The Way She Danced

Then I started to dance, the way I have always danced.—
Josephine Baker, describing her debut at the Johann Strauss Theatre

The moment was legendary. Before the music began, no one had heard of her.
But as she circled about the floor, her body moving up and down with a vitality
memorable even today, every eye in the dance hall was on her. As the polka beat
out its inexorable rhythms, the heat of attention only increased. When she and
her partner stopped dancing, the inevitable crowd of men surrounded her.
Because of the way she danced that night, her life would never be the same
again.

Why was her dance so powerful? Philosophy pauses here. Though time is a
fascinating concept, it pales when you think of this scene. Even to begin to
answer the question, we will have to expand our vocabulary. Timing may serve to
describe the ability to coordinate desire and circumstance, yet it fails to
illuminate the mysterious bodily process by which these effects are achieved.
For this purpose, we must explore the concept of rhythm, too.

Yet even this word needs some resuscitation. Perhaps because of the clock and
metronome, in contemporary thought we have come to mistake rhythm for a simple
mechanical activity. Even the dictionary makes this error, calling rhythm
“a procedure with the patterned occurrence of a beat.” But buried
deeply within the entries, you can find the word “cadence,” an
older term, with an appealing gloss and a far more sensual patina. And listed
third or fourth in the definitions of cadence there is an entry that serves
this exploration well: “the pattern in which something is experienced.
”

Just think of the beat that underlies all that we do. Breathing, of course, is
almost too obvious. As is lovemaking, abundantly clear. But there are also
walking, eating, and even seeing, as the eyes dart about the room, or speaking,
as impulses and desires swim past and through consciousness, surface, and slide
away again. Whether by the subtle starts and stops of a conversation or the
inescapably loud punctuation provided by a pair of cymbals, rhythm shapes and
inspires every moment.

The rhythm at the heart of dance is the same as the one that informs all
experience. The only way to move with a piece of music is to feel the rhythm as
it expands into your hips, your legs, your arms, your feet. Think for instance
of a line of Rockettes, or better yet, since many dancers from the Folies-
Bergère became courtesans, a circle of chorus girls from that show. If one
of them were to be off step, we would quickly sense her failure to feel the
music. Her performance would lack more than tempo. The spirit of both the music
and the dance would be missing, too. Her dance would be lackluster.

The great French actress known as Rosay, who studied music as a child, referred
to rhythm as a form of energy. She used the word to describe the way actors go
beyond merely pretending to feel what the characters in a play are supposed to
feel. Instead, she said, an actor must actually experience the feeling. If the
courtesan was, to some degree, always acting, her success depended on how well
she could act, that is, on whether or not she actually experienced the feelings
she radiated. But this must have been what Rosay meant. When you find the right
tempo for any activity, whether it is eating or walking, talking, or making
love, you have also found the capacity to feel.

In her
Mémoirs
, Céleste Vénard, the dancer known as
Mogador, claimed that she never wanted to be a courtesan. Even so, she must
have played the role with feeling. The way she danced was so inspiring that
when she performed the polka in the crowded dance hall called the Bal Mabille,
she made her reputation in a single night. Though we can only imagine this
famous dance now, several clues to the charm it must have had remain for us.
There is, for instance, the series of etchings and paintings that Toulouse-
Lautrec did of dance-hall life. He often depicted a dancer and courtesan known
then as
La Goulue
,
*
¹
who was famous for dancing the cancan. At public
dance halls, women would compete with each other over who could kick her legs
higher and thus reveal more of what was underneath her skirts. La Goulue became
famous as the undisputed winner. The thrill was, of course, to be able to see
so far beneath the skirts of the dancers, who were not always wearing
pantaloons. The ardor of the revelation was only increased with the
progressively rapid, excited beat of the music to which each kick was timed.