The First Actress Read online

  “But I—I thought you said you wanted me to recite the passage à la mélopée.”

  “À la mélopée!” He swerved to the other students. “Did I instruct Mademoiselle Bernhardt to recite the lines thus?” When no one answered—no one dared, searching their laps rather than risk falling prey to his monstrous condescension—he turned back to the stage. I had to fight the urge to recoil from his savage glare.

  “Which are the accepted systems at this institution? Which are the acceptable styles developed in 1786 by one of our founders, Mole, who in turn imparted his impeccable expertise to the great Talma, Napoleon’s favorite actor, and which have formed the principal foundation for our subsequent pupils, including your own idol, Rachel?”

  Resisting my exasperation—did he never tire of extolling the Conservatoire’s hallowed history?—and the urge to inform him that if Rachel had had to contend with his constant abuse, she’d never have excelled at anything, I replied, “Chant, emphasizing cadence and rhyme; vérité, concentrating on content and verse. Mélopée, by action, is allied to chant or recitation.”

  “And the differences between these systems are…?”

  “Declamation is the art of speaking verse with precision, tenderness, or fury. Fury and tenderness are opposed to precision, for precision is an attribute of technique, and represents chant, while tenderness and fury, being emotional attributes, belong to vérité.”

  Not even he could accuse me of being remiss in my studies. During the last year, I’d done nothing else but devote myself to my art, every hour of every day, and often long into the night. I’d become a slave to it, learning every role assigned to me, no matter how secondary, scalding my fingertips on stubs of candles as I pored over plays in my room. It wasn’t my fault that I was often tardy, living as I did a distance away, with Julie providing only enough for my transport on the horse-drawn omnibus either to or from the Conservatoire, but never both ways. It wasn’t my fault that I chose to walk here in the morning rather than the evening, unwilling to risk my safety to drunkards and riffraff.

  But Monsieur Provost, acclaimed tragedian and villain extraordinaire of the Comédie, as well as my personal tormenter, had no patience for such trivialities. With a malevolent smile, he said, “Mademoiselle, you have just proven that much like a babe at the teat, you can regurgitate whatever you suckle. Perhaps henceforth you can consider applying this prodigious talent for memorization to applying these systems in your performance.”

  Yanking my voice out of my constricted throat, I ventured, “Surely my goal should be to inhabit the character, regardless of whether I do it à la vérité or mélopée?”

  “Your goal at this time,” he retorted, “is to satisfy me.” He banged his pole. “Again.”

  As I started to clench my hands, I stopped myself, extending my fingers instead. “ ‘Stunned at all I hear, my lord, I almost fear a dream deceives me. Am I indeed awake? Can I believe such generosity? What god has put it into your—’ ”

  Bang!

  “Are you picking a pear from the tree?” snarled Provost. “What is that hand doing? Ismene, your confidante, has just revealed her suspicion about Phaedra’s lust for Hippolyte, whom you adore. This is a moment of horror-struck revelation, not an invitation to pluck ripe fruit.”

  One of the students giggled.

  Tears scalded my eyes. “I did this gesture before and you said—”

  “I said, gesture precedes speech. You failed to do either. Again.”

  I made the attempt, but after four more thwacks of his pole and accompanying tongue-lashings, I couldn’t bear it for another instant. Throwing my hands into the air, I shrieked, “I cannot!”

  “You cannot?” he echoed. Behind him, the entire student body froze. “You just did. This is what I want to see: fury. Those arms, like laundry lines, stretched out as if to beseech the gods. You can do it, Mademoiselle Bernhardt. You will stay here until you do.” Without turning his head, he barked at the others, “Dismissed. I shall see this lesson to its conclusion with Mademoiselle-I-cannot.”

  He stared at me as the students filed out, whispering among themselves. As soon as the door closed, he sat down, leaned against his odious pole, and intoned, “Again.”

  * * *

  —

  It was dark, far past any hour to board the omnibus home, when I emerged from the Conservatoire. I was so fatigued I couldn’t feel my body, my soliloquy running over and over in my head, for I’d not been allowed a break to so much as take a sip of water.

  A shadow in the arcade sidled toward me. I mustered a smile. “You waited.”

  His name was Paul Porel; a chubby boy, not particularly handsome, but with a friendly smile and a thatch of curly brown hair. Almost eighteen, the same age as me, he was one of the only friends I’d made in the Conservatoire. Like me, he was in Provost’s class.

  “Of course I did.” As he hitched his satchel onto his shoulder, I suddenly remembered that in my rush to depart upon Provost’s exasperated leave, I’d left mine in the hall. “And your hat, too,” he said, grinning as he took in my dejected expression. “I hope Monsieur Hateful didn’t give you extra lines to learn.”

  I yanked my shawl about me. Winter was upon us, a bite of frost in the night air. “That man is a devil. How many hours did he keep me there? And just as I was about to faint from exhaustion, do you know what he said to me?”

  Paul’s grin widened. “What?”

  “He looked me up and down, and said, ‘Now, mademoiselle, you will remember that Aricia is a role you should never play.’ ”

  Paul burst out laughing. “He adores you!”

  I gave him a scowl. “He detests me. He thinks I have no talent; he’s always telling me I’m thin as a skeleton and I move like one, too. You’ve seen how he constantly challenges me, and then, when I do precisely as he asks—”

  “He says you’ve done it wrong,” said Paul. “Remember when we performed that scene from Zaïre for him?”

  I shuddered at the memory of the disaster that had been our misguided attempt to bring to life the scene from Voltaire’s celebrated tragedy of the Christian slave captured by Muslims. Paul had played the Sultan and I played the slave Zaïre. We rehearsed it for weeks. When we performed it for Provost, he bellowed us off the stage.

  “See?” I now said. We began walking toward his boardinghouse, our arms linked together to ward off the chill. “He detested me in that role, as well.”

  “He told you that you must have thought the audience had fallen asleep, because you kept turning your back to them. ‘Mademoiselle, do you hear snoring, perhaps?’ ” Paul quoted.

  “ ‘Because if you don’t,’ ” I continued, “ ‘you should listen more closely.’ ” I cuffed his arm. “As I said, he must think I’m the worst student in the Conservatoire.”

  Paul’s expression went solemn. “You are wrong, Sarah.”

  I paused, glancing at him. “Wrong? How so?”

  “He thinks you might be the best. That is why he works you so much harder than the rest of us. He sees something in you that sets you apart.”

  “I doubt that,” I said at once, though his compliment warmed me a little. “Even if it were true, Provost would be the last person to think it.”

  We continued for a block or so before I asked hesitantly, “Do you think I’m…?”

  He nodded. “So does everyone else in our class.”

  “Then why don’t I have any other friends? All the girls and most of the boys shun me. I know they think I was only accepted because Monsieur de Morny arranged it.”

  “Did he arrange it?”

  “He arranged my audition, yes. But I still had to audition, like everyone else. Provost himself told me at the time that I was impressive. He and that ogre Beauvallet—they both wanted me as their pupil. I should have chosen Beauvallet.” I kicked a stray pebble fr
om the cobblestones. “Maybe he wouldn’t berate me every hour of every day. Come to think of it, he said Provost was fond of les jeunes filles. That’s probably what sets me apart.”

  “Again, you are wrong. I happen to know Provost’s taste runs to les jeunes garçons.”

  I gripped his arm tighter. “You never told me that. You never told me you were…”

  He threw back his head, laughing. “Not me, you goose. I’m not his type, nor am I one of them. But that pretty blond boy in our class, Jacques Villette…haven’t you noticed how Provost always casts him as the swain and croons that his limp wrists convey gravitas?”

  “I hadn’t,” I admitted.

  “And there’s your problem. You don’t notice. You rarely listen. You walk around with your mind somewhere else. That is why Provost hounds you. He thinks you have the makings of a great actress, but talent alone does not make a career. Training and focus do.”

  “Now you sound like him,” I grumbled.

  We reached his boardinghouse, a ramshackle building in a cheap district populated by students and drunkards. As I mulled upon his declarations and he searched his satchel for his latchkey, he said, “I suppose you also have no idea that you do have other friends at the Conservatoire? One, in fact, says she knows you very well.”

  I started. “Who?”

  “Marie Colombier.” He jiggled the key in the lock. “She’s in Samson’s class; she was accepted this year. She heard someone mention your name and started telling everyone you used to be best friends at the Convent of Grandchamp and she knew, from the moment you took the stage in a Nativity play, that you’d become an actress. She claims you played the role of Tobias so convincingly, when you opened your eyes and said you could see, everyone in the audience wept.”

  “I didn’t play Tobias. I played the archangel.” I paused. “Are you sure?” We stood in his boardinghouse’s dingy foyer, with peeling plaster from the ceiling floating down around us.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Do you know her?”

  “I did. We were friends at the convent, but I thought she moved to Flanders.” I followed him up the rickety stairs, ignoring the mice scampering between the warped floorboards. “And I didn’t play Tobias,” I said again. He hushed me, for though I’d spent the night here before when it was too late to go home, sharing his narrow cot and curled against him to keep warm, student renters weren’t allowed to invite overnight guests. If we were caught, he’d be charged double and someone might send word to Julie, who believed I stayed with the other girls in their lodgings, if she even deigned to notice my absence.

  As soon as we entered his tiny room with its hard cot, stool, and broken desk, I explained, as if it were of utmost importance, “Marie took my role as the shepherd. Another girl played Tobias. The girl assigned to play the archangel took ill, so I was given her place.”

  He chuckled. “Your friend Marie is a liar, then. And, I daresay, a bit of a slut, as well.”

  “A slut?” Unraveling my shawl, I snuggled into his bed, pulling the moth-eaten covers to my chin. “Why ever would you say that? And, Paul, do you have any cheese or bread? I’m famished.”

  He pulled out his plate from under the cot and lit the tallow light on the desk. With the rancid burning oil smoking up the room, we huddled on the cot and ate his stale bread and hard cheese, the only food I’d had since breakfast.

  “You were saying Marie is a slut?” I prompted.

  “That’s what I hear.” He chewed thoughtfully, mashing the hard bread into a digestible mush. “Some of the boys in Samson’s class fancy themselves rakes. Samson recruits the sons of members of the imperial court, by-blows of minor officials and such. They think they’re better than the rest of us. Not bourgeois. Marie goes out with them after class to that brasserie around the corner.”

  “Going to a brasserie hardly makes her a slut,” I said, wondering how I’d failed to notice Marie in my goings and comings from the Conservatoire, and why, if she was talking about me, she hadn’t yet approached me to renew our friendship.

  “Does going with the boys afterwards down to the riverbank qualify?” said Paul.

  I nearly choked on my bread. “She does that?”

  “According to the boys. I haven’t gone with her, so I can’t vouch for their honesty.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. The Marie I recalled had certainly been worldly; after all, she’d educated me about our mothers, so perhaps this was true. It brought the uncomfortable reminder that girls who surrendered their virtue were disparaged, while boys were expected to sow their oats as proof of manhood. As I thought this, I said aloud, “How ungallant of them to boast of it. If a boy said such things about me, I’d box his ears.”

  Paul chuckled. “I have no doubt. That is why they shun you. They like you very much, Sarah. They also see something different in you, but you scare them. Still, I suspect most, if not all of them, wish you’d go to the riverbank with them instead of Marie.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I reached over to cuff his arm again, but before I made contact, he pulled away. In the slippery shadows, I couldn’t read his expression.

  “No,” he said.

  I peered at him. “What?”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t treat me as if I’m your brother.”

  “But we’re friends. I often think of you as…” My voice faded. When he started to collect the remains of our meal, evading my stare, I said, “Do you think of me like that?”

  He shook his head. “I know you’re not like Marie Colombier. And I’m not the son of an imperial official.”

  “But you think about it?” I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know. My body, much as I neglected its basic needs, had begun to stir; I had felt inexplicable longings that had led me to furtive explorations in my own bed. But that quick probe with my fingers hadn’t held my interest for long. It seemed such a waste of time, when I had so many lines to learn.

  He looked up, into my eyes. “Of course I think about it. You are the most amazing, maddening girl I’ve ever known—and the most beautiful. I think about it all the time.”

  He thought I was beautiful? It wasn’t an adjective anyone had ever used before to describe me.

  “Don’t you think about it?” he went on. “Not with me, but with others? There are many handsome boys at the Conservatoire, I suppose.”

  “Like Jacques Villette?”

  He snorted. “You’re impossible.”

  I couldn’t say what made me do it. It was an impulse, like so much else in my life. I saw him with that bent pewter plate, his plump face downcast, crumbs about his chin and looking anywhere but at me, and I drew the covers aside. “Come here.”

  He froze. “I’ll sleep on the floor tonight.”

  I patted the straw-stuffed mattress, scooting back until my spine was pressed against the damp wall. “You will not. You will put that plate away and get into bed. It’s freezing. I insist. And blow out the tallow before we suffocate on the smoke.”

  He moved jerkily, as if he’d lost control of his limbs. As he squeezed onto the cot, tense as a spring about to snap, fumbling at the blanket to yank it over himself, I rested one of my hands on his chest and I felt it—the rapid thumping of his heart.

  “It’s like a horse racing,” I whispered, and I trailed my fingers farther down, not sure of what I was doing yet hearing in the catch of his breath that I had the right idea.

  His hand took mine before I reached his groin. “No. You…you will regret it. I’m nobody, the son of a shop-keeper. My family has no title. No riches.”

  “Neither does mine.” I leaned over him to set my mouth on his lips.

  He tasted of cheese. It was nice. Cheese and bread, and his quickening ardor, which, much as he tried to resist it, was gaining hold. When he thrust his tongue into my mouth, I drew back.

  “Slowly,” I whispered. “Rememb
er, I’m not like Marie.”

  He said breathlessly. “Sarah, you are a goddess to me.”

  I almost laughed, but I held back because it wouldn’t be appropriate. We groped and kissed, did all the awkward things first-time lovers do; we didn’t remove all our clothes, just enough to feel the chill on our skin as we found those hidden places he’d thought so much about.

  When he entered me tentatively, as if I might break, resting his weight on his arms and with his eyes closed, a look of such bliss washed over his face that it seemed as if he were entering paradise itself. I felt sharp pain. It hurt more than I’d expected. I clenched my teeth, urging him on because—well, it seemed like the only thing to do.

  It was over soon enough. I was astonished, in fact, by how soon. He bucked and groaned, let out a cry, and spurted warmth onto my thigh. Lifting himself off me, he fell face-up, panting, as though he’d just scaled a mountain.

  We lay in silence before I heard him whisper, “Sarah. I…I think I love you.”

  II

  So, this was what all the fuss was about—what kings had sundered realms for, emperors forsook wives to claim, and countless playwrights spilled oceans of ink to exalt.

  How absurd. Not that I’d disliked it. I could think of more unpleasant ways to spend an evening, but it wasn’t at all what I imagined. Certainly, it did not amount to anything near the feverish passion I had for the roles I studied and hoped one day to perform.

  Paul, however, was besotted. He offered to marry me, even as I said I was perfectly content to remain as we were. He did not like it. He believed because I’d surrendered my virginity to him—I had to scrub the stained sheets in the communal water closet down the corridor—we must proceed to the banns and the altar. He was concerned about my reputation, yet also apparently eager to continue sleeping with me whenever I was willing, which was less often than he preferred, as I couldn’t absent myself from home every night.