The First Actress Read online

  “Yes, of course. Sarah, my dear: I’m your Tante Rosine. Your mother is my older sister.” My aunt smiled. As she set her warm hand in mine, guiding me toward the building, I bit back another rush of tears. Kindness was the last thing I’d expected.

  “Welcome to Paris,” she said, and I leaned into her.

  Perhaps living here wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

  II

  The next year was one of lessons.

  Rosine assumed charge of me; through her, I learned of my family’s provenance.

  Born in the Netherlands to Jewish parents, my mother and her two sisters had left their country as soon as they were of suitable age. The eldest of the three, Henriette, wed a cloth merchant in Ariège and had a family of her own, while Rosine and my mother traveled for a time before settling in Paris. What they did to earn a living was a mystery, however, as was our heritage. Julie didn’t follow any of the strictures of our faith; there wasn’t a mezuzah nailed to our doorway or a single item of Hebrew worship in the flat. As Nana had raised me Catholic, I assumed my mother’s faith was of no particular importance.

  Rosine soon set me to studying, tutoring me every day with a set of primers. I learned how to spell my name and recite the alphabet; I labored over basic letters until my fingers cramped and my eyes swam. But I proved an avid student, for I found words fascinating—a portal into a new world, where stories of swan princesses and frog princes, of witches in hovels and flying carriages made of pumpkins, helped relieve the strict schedule dictated by Julie that everyone in the flat had to adhere to.

  The day when everything in my new life changed began like any other. The evening before had been tedious, with Julie entertaining her assortment of friends in her salon until all but one of the men departed. Since my arrival, I’d grown accustomed to seeing strange gentlemen come and go from the flat. All of Julie’s friends were male; it was another mystery to me. Sometimes she had me serve these “suitors,” as she called them, summoning me at the appointed hour with my tray of canapés, my unruly mass of red-gold hair plaited in a braid and an ingratiating smile on my lips. The men ignored me after a cursory glance; now and then, one reached out to pat my bottom and remark, “Such a bony child. Julie, do you not feed her?” to which my mother would reply with her falsetto laugh, “She eats without restraint and never gains an ounce. She was raised in Brittany, too; all that fresh country air…why, you’d think she’d be plump as a partridge, like me.”

  Despite the men’s chuckles, I heard the petulant undertone in her voice. Julie clearly didn’t like that I was thin as a whisper, my collarbones so incised that raindrops could collect in their hollows, as I once heard her say with disdain. Yet to my bewilderment, she never failed to chastise me if I dared to ask for a second helping at breakfast or dinner, remarking I hadn’t yet learned that in Paris, food didn’t just pop up out of the ground or fall ripe from the trees.

  Yet her suitors always found her amusing, another baffling mystery to me. How could they not see she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t? In the afternoons before her salon gatherings, she spent hours at her mirror, her maid helping her into her ornate dress as if she lacked the strength to do it on her own. But her angry reproofs if her stays weren’t laced tightly enough or if her maid fetched her the wrong bracelet betrayed that she wasn’t quite as helpless as she feigned, that everything she did was designed to an end.

  Once her suitors arrived, however, she put on a constant smile, attentive to their every request, even as I felt her eyes boring into me as I served the canapés. The moment one of her guests paid me the slightest mind, she waved me back to my room, where I fell asleep to her laughter and the men’s conversation.

  She invariably slept until noon. Rosine saw to my breakfast and my lessons before sending me out to play in the building courtyard, so I wouldn’t disturb.

  “Your maman’s sleep is very important,” said Rosine. “She needs to rest as much as possible”—yet another mystery, for it seemed to me that she did little else, languishing in either her bedroom or the salon, with only the occasional burst of activity when she pinned on a hat to go shopping or laded on jewels for an evening at the Opéra.

  On this particular morning, I woke before Rosine. We shared a bedroom, the flat being cramped, but my aunt slept like a stone, exhausted from her oversight of the household’s daily affairs. Through the crack of our door, I watched an elderly gentleman tiptoe from Julie’s chamber. He was balding on top, but had very long mustachios that drooped about his mouth. In his gray frock coat with its shiny lapels, his black top hat and silver-tipped cane, to me, he resembled an overdressed grandfather.

  I didn’t think anything of his furtive departure. I’d seen him before. He’d been attending the salon ever since I arrived in Paris, favored above the others, for he often stayed overnight. He’d never given me more than a passing glance, either. Yet as he now paused to adjust his coat, he happened to glance up to catch me staring at him. I wasn’t yet dressed. I stood in my shift in the open doorway, my braid unraveled in frizzy disarray that my aunt had sought in vain to subdue with hot irons and elderflower rinses.

  His mild brown eyes took on an odd gleam. He crooked his finger at me. I felt heat creep into my cheeks when he whispered, “Come here, ma petite. Let me get a look at you.”

  Although I didn’t know why these men filled our house almost every night except on Sunday, Rosine had drummed into my head that I must never ask. I must never question. They were my mother’s “special friends” and I must show them proper respect.

  “Children should be seen and never heard,” admonished my aunt. “Sarah, do you understand? Julie would not wish to have her suitors subjected to inanities.”

  I had done my utmost to obey. I didn’t even know this particular suitor’s name, and as I grappled with the potential consequences of refusing what I sensed was not a proper request, he took a step toward me.

  “Ma petite,” he said again. “Why do you hide from me? I only wish to see you.”

  He might tell Julie. He might mention that I’d been rude. Moving cautiously from behind the door, hearing my aunt snoring behind me in the narrow bed, I gave him a weak smile, bobbing a curtsy as I tugged at my rumpled shift, trying to cover my knobby knees.

  A smile parted his mustachios, revealing yellowed teeth. “Ah, yes. Very pretty. Très belle like your maman. Come closer, child. Let old Morny give you a kiss.”

  I came to a halt. He said he’d wanted to see me, and now he wanted to give me a kiss? As his hand reached out between us—a knotted, liver-spotted hand, like a troll’s in a fairy tale—I slapped his fingers aside before he could touch me.

  He recoiled, his eyes flaring. “Do you know who I am?” he rumbled, and I heard Rosine gasp from behind me, her yanking aside the bedsheets as she came to her feet.

  I glared at him. “Yes. You are Julie’s special friend. Go kiss her instead.”

  Rosine rushed to me, her hands on my shoulders as she said haltingly, “Please forgive her, Monsieur. She’s only a child, and—”

  “A child?” He frowned at his hand, which of course had no visible mark. “She’s an alley cat. Julie should do something about those claws.”

  A dreadful silence ensued. Then, from the opposite end of the painting-hung corridor, my mother lilted, “And so I shall, my dearest Morny. Please accept my apologies for her inexcusable behavior.” Swathed in patterned blue chinois silk, her hair floating like an aureole about her shoulders, Julie glided forth to lead him to the front door, whispering and caressing as he shook his head and departed in a huff.

  As soon as the door closed on him, she whirled around to me. I pressed against Rosine, who stammered, “You mustn’t fault Sarah. Monsieur le duc was most inopportune. He wanted to give her a kiss and she—why, look at her. In her shift. It’s not done.”

  “Not done?” echoed Julie. I’d never se
en her like this; she’d gone rigid, one of her astonishingly milk-white hands clutching at her robe, strangling the embroidered storks. “She insulted him. He might forsake me, tell the others. How shall we exist then, eh? How will we survive when they hear I keep this feral creature, this inconvenience, in my house?”

  Creature. She thought I was an animal. In a rush of rage I hadn’t realized I still harbored, I tore myself from Tante Rosine and shouted, “If you don’t want me, I will kill myself. Then you won’t be inconvenienced anymore!”

  Julie fixed her stare on me. Rosine let out a cry as I met my mother’s cold blue eyes, marking their indifference, like a blade scraping down my spine. She did not care. She did not love me. She never had. I could die and it would mean nothing to her.

  Reeling about, I fled into the salon. Rosine followed after me, catching me about my waist as I flailed, knocking over the little table with its clutter of porcelain figurines and vase of flowers. Shrieking like the wild animal my mother had called me, I threw myself at the window to grapple with the latch. I fully intended to throw myself onto the cobblestone avenue below. I could see it in my mind: my sliver of a body in my shift spiraling down to splatter before the early morning hansoms and servants going about their morning rounds.

  Julie’s voice slashed into the chaos. “Sarah Henriette Bernhardt. That is enough.”

  Half-caught in Rosine’s grasp, my fingers clutching the windowsill, I watched my mother approach through the curtained archway and onto the Oriental-style carpet until she stood in the center of the salon—nearly overwhelmed by its excess, the fake Roman busts and overwrought landscape paintings, the stuffed horsehair couches and her upholstered settee, festooned with herb-scented cushions and lace shawls. So small. She was no bigger than I was. How could I be so afraid of her?

  But in that instant, she seemed to loom over my entire world, her robe draping open to reveal the mound of her stomach under her nightdress. As she saw my eyes lower to this unexpected sight—she looked fat but only in an oddly specific place—she said, “You disgrace yourself. What is more, you disgrace me. I will not tolerate these outbursts another moment.”

  My fear congealed in my veins. The orphanage. It was always there, the threat behind every reprimand, behind every moment that I failed to please her. From behind me, I heard Rosine say, “Julie, she’s but a child. How can she possibly understand?”

  “Oh, I think she understands much more than she lets on,” replied my mother.

  “Maman,” I whispered. The term I never used with her came out of me in desperation. “Forgive me. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  She sniffed. “It most certainly will not. Go to your room and see that I do not hear a sound from you until you are called for.”

  I inched past her, treading over the shards of her broken vase. As I made my way to my room, Rosine began to murmur. Julie cut her off. “I’ll not hear another word in her defense. This house is no place for a child; it never was. The time has come to seek other arrangements.”

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t want to go. No! You cannot make me!” My shrieks resounded into the avenue, startling passersby as Rosine hauled me toward the waiting carriage. The team of horses snorted, jangling their harness as the coachman watched in wry amusement and I dug my heels against the pavement.

  Ever since Julie had informed me that rather than slap her suitors, I must attend a proper establishment where I could learn much-needed manners, I’d mounted a series of ferocious protests. I refused to eat for an entire day. I refused to bathe or brush my hair, until Julie snapped her fingers as she departed in a cloud of perfume and organza for one of her evening soirées, and her maidservant thrust me into the bathroom with orders to strip and wash, or else. I refused to speak, biting my tongue when Julie arrived late the following morning, pausing to take one look at me, without saying a word, her fan tapping at her waist—which I noticed was so tightly cinched, I wondered how she could breathe—before she shrugged and went into her chamber to sleep away the afternoon. I refused to concede that I might be sent away again, bundled off to a remote place where I’d have to do whatever it was girls were supposed to do—all of it to no avail.

  On the appointed morning, Rosine forced me into an uncomfortable dress with a matching black capelet, raked my hair into a knot with a ribbon, and told me we were going to the Tuileries to visit the menagerie, which she knew I loved, as I missed having animals about me since leaving Brittany. The moment I saw the waiting carriage—a fine equipage, which we never would have hired for the short trip to the Tuileries—I knew she was lying and I began to wail.

  Rosine was near despair herself. “Sarah, please. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a boarding school. Don’t you want to share lessons with other girls of your own age?”

  “No!” I yanked against her, not caring that several ladies paused to frown at me from under their parasols. “I don’t believe you. She’s sending me away like she did before. You and she will abandon me, just as you did in Brittany.”

  “That’s not true.” Rosine paused, breathless from our struggle. “Sarah, it was never my choice to send you away.” She tried to cup my chin, even as I turned my face from her. “Sarah, listen to me. It’s for your own good, until you’re older. I swear it to you on my life.”

  My anguish waned at her anxious avowal. I loved my aunt, more so, in fact, than I’d believed I could, and certainly more than anything I felt for my mother. Rosine had been so kind, taking charge of me, crooning lullabies as we cuddled together in bed, taking me out on excursions to visit the city, and ensuring I never strayed too far into Julie’s path.

  “Then help me now.” My voice cracked. “You’ve already taught me how to read and write. Can’t you teach me whatever else I need to learn?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot, my child. We must both do as we are told.”

  Another helpless wail clawed at my throat. I forced myself to swallow it. There was no escape, not unless I jumped before the horses and let them stomp over me—an idea that appealed, if only for the attention it would attract. But continuing to resist would just make Rosine more miserable and it would never dissuade Julie. She had made her decision. She hadn’t even come outside with us to bid me goodbye.

  “I’ll visit as often as I can,” Rosine went on, sensing my capitulation. “And on holidays, you can come visit us. You’ll like your new school. You’ll like it very much. It’s a very fine establishment. Your mother has chosen the best for you.”

  “I doubt it,” I retorted, boarding the carriage and sitting on the upholstered leather seat facing backward, scowling as my aunt arranged herself opposite me, my valise at her feet. The carriage lurched forward at a crack of the driver’s whip.

  As we entered the thoroughfare that would take me to my uncertain future, I stared out the window at the receding flat, up to the salon window with its lace curtains, where, it seemed a lifetime ago, I’d tried to throw myself out.

  I thought I glimpsed a shadow there—the figure of my mother watching me depart.

  Then I blinked and she was gone.

  * * *

  —

  During the two-hour-long carriage ride, Rosine tried to reassure me again. “The Sacré Cœur at Grandchamp is one of the most esteemed boarding institutions for young ladies in France. It’s in Versailles, not far from Paris. You’ll be so happy there, taking your lessons with other privileged girls.”

  She kept repeating this refrain as the city melted away behind us, the vista opening onto fields of wheat and chestnut forests. I sat without speaking, my fists clenched in my lap. I imagined pulling open the door and leaping out. I’d run away and disappear, find refuge in a hamlet and beg in the streets until a kindly couple without children took me in. I’d grow up and herd goats; I’d get fat and rosy so no one would recognize me. Julie would search and search, over
come by guilt, Rosine would waste away in sorrow, but they’d never find me. I would become somebody else. Not the unwanted child anymore.

  “We’re here,” said my aunt, surprising me as the carriage came to a stop. I’d expected a much longer journey, and as I stepped warily onto the unpaved country road, I saw nothing but high stone walls, lichen-stained, broken by a single, stout wooden gate.

  My knees started to buckle. Though the day was warm, I felt cold as a tomb.

  Rosine took my hand. “There’s nothing to fear. You’ll be safe here, Sarah. This is a convent of the highest order. And very expensive,” she added, as if that made everything better. “Your mother has gone to considerable effort to secure you a place here.”

  I doubted this, too. I recalled the sour gentleman with the drooping mustachios, the Duc de Morny, whose hand I’d slapped. This was his fault. He must have suggested this prison for me. Hadn’t Julie assured him that something would be done?

  I stood clutching my suitcase as Rosine rang the bell rope by the gate. Only then did I whisper, “Please. I’ll be good. I’ll attend Maman’s suitors in the salon. I’ll learn to sing and recite poetry. To amuse them like she does. You can teach me how.”

  My aunt let out a sigh. “My child, you don’t understand. That is not what Julie wants for you. She has struggled so much, sacrificed so many things to achieve what she has. She doesn’t want you in her salon, enticing her suitors to kiss you. You may think her heartless, but she cares for you in her own way. She wants you to have a better life than she has.”

  I did not understand. All I saw was a flat in Paris on a fashionable boulevard, a well-appointed home; my mother in silk, glamorous and sought after, with suitors at her beck and call. What could possibly be wrong with her life? Why must her sacrifice require forsaking me? Then I remembered the bulge of her stomach, her shadowy figure at the window as she watched me leave, and whatever pleas I had left went unspoken.