The Metropolis (15 page)

Over the next few days, when he saw Gérard, they continued to nod at each other, as if they shared a secret understanding, though about exactly what remained unclear. As luck would have it, the next week they were assigned to work together on a new production. They barely had time to talk while the show was going up but after the opening spent an hour each night in proximity waiting for the end of the first act, when they were responsible for rotating a giant turntable, the gears for which were located on a secluded platform directly beneath center stage. It wasn’t long before Gérard alluded to having seen Lucien leave Cathérine Deville’s room, and Lucien saw no point in denying it; he even expressed some of the doubts the experience had raised for him, thinking it might be helpful to get the insight of a married man.

“You’re not in love with her,” Gérard responded, confirming Lucien’s suspicions. “Which is not surprising, even if most men here would line up for the chance to serve Madame Deville. So what’s different about you?”

Lucien did not appreciate the aggressive tone. “Is it wrong to want to combine the emotion of love with the act?”

“No, but is it wrong not to want the emotion? Just to take a few moments of pleasure and leave it at that? To forget about life and all its problems for a minute?”

Lucien felt disarmed. “No—of course it’s not wrong, but—”

“Then what’s the problem with Madame Deville?”

Under siege, Lucien responded with a question of his own. “Would you line up to service her?”

Gérard shook his head and placed one of his hands just above
Lucien’s knee, where it rested heavily. “No, because she offers me neither the possibility of love nor pleasure, so I would respectfully decline.”

Lucien considered this as a stampede of feet pounded overhead. “Have you ever been in love?”

“I have.”

“And did you know it from the start?”

“It’s not something that can be easily hidden. It starts with a glance, but where pleasure is easily satisfied, love devours. You feel sick, you want to cry and shit and puke, you feel like you’re going to die if you’re not attached to the other person, if you can’t touch them and feel their breath on your cheek.”

“Your wife?”

“
Merde.
” Gérard scowled but managed to shift his hand up onto Lucien’s thigh. “We’re happy on most days if we don’t kill each other.”

Lucien felt his throat become parched as he understood that Gérard was making a proposition very much along the lines of the one made to him by Cathérine Deville, except somewhat less explicit, which was only to be expected given that he was married—
un vrai mec
—with thick fingers and a crooked nose that made him look like he had spent a few years as a prizefighter. Not that Lucien was completely shocked, given how often he had wondered what drove men together, and whether he might possess the same impulse. Aware that the time for prevarication was over, he grabbed Gérard’s hand and pulled it up to his crotch. “Is this what you want?”

Gérard leaned close to him, so that Lucien could smell a mix of sweat and grease. His voice was like gravel. “That, my friend, is for you to tell me.”

Lucien could only nod, but he did not flinch as Gérard leaned over and deftly went to work. Though Lucien could barely breathe,
his mind raced with questions: why did the rough nankeen of Gérard’s shirt, which he gripped with one hand, and the stubble of his cheek, which he caressed with the other, please him so much more than Cathérine’s softer cottons and silks? Did this mean that he preferred men in general, or was there another woman with whom he might be better matched? Would he ever get married or have children? Fortunately, before he could dwell for very long on any of this, he remembered Cathérine’s direction and gave himself to the rushing waters and raging fires, which for a few seconds sent him spinning disembodied across the night.

Then it was done, and with no time to spare they both rushed to their spots behind the gears. Lucien glanced at Gérard, who did not meet his eye as he concentrated on the task at hand, and this disappointed him. Perhaps, Lucien reconsidered, Gérard had not been so much better than Cathérine, and he had only been tricked by his desire into thinking so at the time. He wondered if it might be best going forward to push aside his desire if the second he satisfied it, he would be left with an even worse condition of disillusionment.

At the intermission they sat down to bread and cheese. “Cat got your tongue?” Gérard asked as they sat in an uncomfortable silence.

“No,” Lucien lied, for he was in fact at a loss for words. “I just don’t understand—”

Gérard laughed. “You just had your first time with a man.” He shrugged as he broke off a piece of baguette.

“It just seems strange to go from such extreme desire to”—he paused for a second—“well, what are we?”

“You mean us? We’re not Romeo and Juliet, if that’s what you mean, but we can be friends …”

Lucien failed to appreciate the humor in this. “Would you do it again? With me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Gérard shrugged. “Not this second, though.”

Lucien felt a twinge of disappointment, for despite his earlier admonitions, he felt something more for Gérard, which had already been reignited during this short conversation. He continued in a more cavalier tone. “So do you still sleep with women?”

“I am married,” Gérard said, a little harshly, but his expression became more reflective as he turned toward Lucien. “But not really, no.”

“You sound melancholy,” Lucien observed.

“That’s the way life is—it excites you for a little while and then it pulls the rug out from under your feet.”

“But—” Lucien began to ask, then stopped, as it occurred to him that the answers he wanted from Gérard were ones that neither this man nor anyone else could ever provide. He felt more alone than he could remember and, as he considered this, could not prevent a few tears from escaping his eyes.

Gérard put an arm around his shoulder. “You’ll be okay—you just need to live a little. I’ll show you around. Paris is full of hidden surprises.”

“What about love?” Lucien responded, for although he appreciated the gesture, he still wanted to pout.

“Don’t worry—you’ll have your heart broken like the rest of us, and then you’ll wonder why you spent so many years craving it.”

“But how do you find it?”

“It’ll find you. Trust me.”

The agitation he sensed in Gérard pleased Lucien, who felt reassured that, whatever the nature of their relationship, it was at least not marked by ambivalence or boredom. “But not with you?”

“I can love you,” Gérard sighed, “but just a little bit, and only once in a while.”

W
HILE
L
UCIEN AT
twenty-three was still friends with Gérard—and had enjoyed similar encounters with a number of others—he had yet
to fall in love, or at least in the way Gérard had described. Though he tended to justify this defect by reminding himself how busy he remained between work and singing, he sometimes feared his continuing isolation, not only on those nights when his bed seemed vast and lonely but also when he considered his development as an artist. Every music teacher he had trained with inevitably and repeatedly made the point that the greatest opera singers were not necessarily the ones with the strongest, most talented voices but those who could convince an audience that they had been subsumed by the characters they portrayed, a process that required great reserves of both empathy and experience. Like a painter with only two colors at his disposal, Lucien worried that he would never be able to express himself fully if he had not experienced the complete gamut of emotion.

But with nothing to be done at the moment, he buttoned up his shirt and turned his attention to the evening ahead. He had been interested in Wagner since the composer first arrived in Paris with the hope to mount a production of
Tannhäuser
at the Paris Opéra, and had become something closer to obsessed after attending the symphonic concerts at the Théâtre des Italiens; unlike so much French fare these days, this music had nothing quaint, charming, or airy about it, which made him feel young, reckless, and invulnerable, immune to the conventions of polite society, as if he should be scaling mountains, hacking through dense forests, or perhaps writing tomes of scandalous epic poetry.

Along with his black shirt, Lucien opted for black pants, a black cravat, a black overcoat, black shoes, and—to complete the effect—black kohl, which he rubbed around his eyes. “My dear, you look like an opium addict,” Codruta observed a few minutes later when he presented himself in the music salon of the Georges, where she was arranging chairs, or rather dictating the arrangement to a pair of her domestics.

“You don’t approve?” Lucien responded. “I thought we agreed that Wagner’s music was romantic and funereal.”

“At my age, I don’t like to be quite so literal,” she remarked, although as Lucien knew, her interest in Wagner was also relatively unrestrained. She had seen his operas in Vienna and was said to have been instrumental in convincing the emperor to offer the
Tannhäuser
commission. More recently, she had taken the unusual step of publicly allying herself to his cause—by way of a petition of support signed by more than fifty of her noble peers—to counteract the more conservative elements in Paris, who were scandalized by everything from Wagner’s nationalistic tendencies to his penchant for expensive clothes—he reportedly ordered thirty tailored suits from Charles Worth in a single visit—to his refusal to insert a ballet into the second act of his opera, as per the French tradition.

Without waiting for a response, Codruta officiously guided Lucien to a settee positioned at an angle to the back wall and an adjacent bay window, thus offering him a clear sight line to the piano and the view outside. “Do you think your romantic heart can withstand the burden of being extremely quiet for the next few hours?”

Lucien nodded, knowing that only four others—all important musicians—were slated to attend. In recognition of Codruta’s patronage and support, Wagner on this night planned to unveil Act II of his newest opera,
Tristan und Isolde
, a five-hour piece of music rumored to be “unperformable” because of its extreme dissonance and the extraordinary strength and stamina required of any singer undertaking one of the leads. All of this added to the charged atmosphere when a few minutes later the guests began to arrive; from his spot at the window, Lucien recognized Pauline Viardot—still one of the city’s top sopranos—as she emerged from her carriage and tottered through the gates looking rather pale and tense, which Lucien more than understood given that she would be sight-reading in front
of not one but two notoriously temperamental composers, as Hector Berlioz was also on the guest list.

Lucien had met Pauline several times over the years—he continued to train with her brother—and she greeted him warmly. To his delight, she even went so far as to offer to lend him the
Tristan
manuscript after the reading if it proved to his liking.

“What do you think of it?” he asked.

“It’s innovative but difficult,” she said and glanced around, as if to make sure the composer was not within earshot. “To be honest, it makes my head swim a little”—she laughed—“but I don’t want to prejudice you.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” he said truthfully, and she winked at him as Codruta swept back into the room accompanied by the pianist Karl Klindworth, a protégé of Franz Liszt. Next was Berlioz, who with a furrowed brow and an immense, swirling head of hair appeared to be thinking only serious thoughts, and finally Wagner, surprisingly diminutive with eyes like tiny buttons and a stern expression framed by large muttonchops. He marched in wearing a golden velvet cape with red trim and pants to match; under his arm he carried a leather briefcase containing another copy of the score. Codruta briefly introduced the men to Lucien, whose presence as a young singer of high pedigree seemed to cause no consternation; all in turn offered a perfunctory hand for Lucien to shake before returning to their seats, arranged in a semicircle next to the piano. A few minutes passed in conversation before Klindworth began to play, and he was soon joined by Wagner and Viardot singing the parts of Tristan and Isolde.

Lucien leaned forward to listen. The music was slow and dense, yet jarring to the extent that at times it sounded like two works being played at once, with each taking turns pushing to the surface while
the other lurked beneath, giving the piece a constant, shivering sense of anticipation that was almost maddening for its lack of resolution. There was a sense of grandeur but unlike in Wagner’s earlier work, one that evoked not mountaintops or dark forests so much as urban landscapes; or that’s how it seemed to Lucien as he stared past his reflection in the window at the flickering lights of Haussmann’s new boulevards, which stretched out into the blackening horizon, with the music reminding him of a certain delirium and fatigue he sometimes felt wandering the city streets, of looking for something but not quite knowing what, as each creaking door, rolling carriage, and waft of savory heat from the patisseries and bistros washed over him, filling him with longing and possibility.

He thought of the night ahead, and could see himself walking past the syphilitic beggars of Montmartre to meet Gérard at the Pérégrine, where—just as they had done a few weeks earlier—they would be confronted by hundred-foot spires and turrets painted in gold leaf, illuminated by overlapping shafts of limelight. Inside, they would meander through a labyrinth of candlelit tables and gas chandeliers, gawking less at the entertainers who danced or juggled or tumbled through rings of fire than at the merchants—dressed in silk suits with fur-lined collars and gold monocles—discussing stock prices on the bourse, accompanied by slender nymphs who sat silently by under tiaras ringed by variegated gems casting kaleidoscopic halos around their bored, waxen faces. They would watch suave, white-gloved aristocrats who kept live falcons perched on their wrists as they kissed each other for an entire minute, full on the lips.

The more he listened, the more convinced Lucien became that this opera—as if it were a transcription of not only his unfolding fate but that of a new generation—was leading him through the backstage of an expanding, mutating city, where a nocturnal chaos
reigned under the orderly rules of the day. He saw that if he wanted to fall in love—the one thing he missed in his life more than any other—he would have to embrace a similar disorder, to inhabit two or more very different and possibly conflicting roles. There was no point making distinctions between art and love; as with air and water, he needed both.