'I have nowhere to stay,' she murmured.
'Here,' announced Itague, 'there's a back room. Here, until we move.'
'Move?' She gazed at the raving flesh of tropical blossoms decorating her bag.
'We have the Theatre de Vincent Castor,' cried Satin. He spun, leaped, landed atop a small stepladder.
Itague grew excited, describing L'Enlevement des Vierges Chinoises - Rape of the Chinese Virgins. It was to be Satin's finest ballet, the greatest music of Vladimir Porcepic, everything formidable. Rehearsals began tomorrow, she'd saved the day, they would have waited until the last minute because it could only be Melanie, La Jarretiere, to play Su Feng, the virgin who is tortured to death defending her purity against the invading Mongolians.
She had wandered away, to the edge of stage right. Itague stood in the center, gesturing, declaiming: while enigmatic on the stepladder, stage left, perched Satin, humming a music-hall song.
A remarkable innovation would be the use of automata, to play Su Feng's handmaidens. 'A German engineer is building them,' said Itague. 'They're lovely creatures: one will even unfasten your robes. Another will play a zither - although the music itself comes from the pit. But they move so gracefully! Not like machines at all.'
Was she listening? Of course: part of her. She stood awkwardly on one leg, reached down and scratched her calf, hot under its black stocking. Satin watched hungrily. She felt the twin curls moving restless against her neck. What was he saying? Automata . . .
She gazed up at the sky, through one of the room's side windows. God, would it ever rain?
Her room was hot and airless. Asprawl in one corner was an artist's lay figure, without a head. Old theater posters were scattered on the floor and bed, tacked to the wall. She thought once she heard thunder rumbling from outside.
'Rehearsals will be here,' Itague told her. 'Two weeks before the performance we move into the Theatre de Vincent Castor, to get the feel of the boards.' He used much theater talk. Not long ago he'd been a bartender near Place Pigalle.
Alone, she lay on the bed, wishing she could pray for rain. She was glad she couldn't see the sky. Perhaps certain of its tentacles already touched the roof of the cabaret. Someone rattled the door. She had thought to lock it. It was Satin, she knew. Soon she heard the Russian and Itague leave together by the back door.
She may not have slept: her eyes opened to the same dim ceiling. A mirror hung on the ceiling directly over the bed. She hadn't noticed it before. Deliberately she moved her legs, leaving her arms limp at her sides, till the hem of the blue skirt had worked high above the tops of the stockings. And lay gazing at the black and tender white. Papa had said 'How pretty your legs are: the legs of a dancer.' She could not wait for the rain.
She rose, in a near-frenzy, removed blouse, skirt and undergarments and moved swiftly to the door, wearing only the black stockings and white buck tennis shoes. Somewhere on the way she managed to let down her hair. In the next room she found the costumes for L'Enlevement des Vierges Chinoises. She felt her hair, heavy and almost viscous along the length of her back and tickling the tops of her buttocks as she knelt beside the large box and searched for the costume of Su Feng.
Back in the hot room she quickly removed shoes and stockings, keeping her eyes closed tight until she had fastened her hair in back with the spangled amber comb. She was not pretty unless she wore something. The sight of her nude body repelled her. Until she had drawn on the blond silk tights, embroidered up each leg with a long, slender dragon; stepped into the slippers with the cut steel buckles, and intricate straps which writhed up halfway to her knees. Nothing to restrain her breasts: she wrapped the underskirt tightly around her hips. It fastened with thirty hooks and eyes from waist to thigh-top, leaving a fur-trimmed slit so that she could dance. And finally, the kimono, translucent and dyed rainbowlike with sunbursts and concentric rings of cerise, amethyst, gold and jungly green.
She lay back once more, hair spread above her on the pillowless mattress, breath taken by her own beauty. If Papa could see her.
The lay figure in the corner was light and carried easily to the bed. She raised her knees high and - interested - saw her calves in the mirror crisscross over the small of its plaster back. Felt the coolness of the figure's flanks against the nudecolored silk, high on her thighs, hugged it tight. The neck top, jagged and flaking off, came to her breasts. She pointed her toes, began to dance horizontal, thinking of how her handmaidens would be.
Tonight there would be a magic-lantern show. Itague sat outside L'Ouganda, drinking absinthe and water. The stuff was supposed to be aphrodisiac but it affected Itague the opposite. He watched a Negro girl, one of the dancers, adjusting her stocking. He thought of francs and centimes.
There weren't many. The scheme might succeed. Porcepic had a name among the avant-garde in French music. Opinion in the city was violently divided: once the composer had been loudly insulted in the street by one of the most venerable of the Post-Romantics. Certainly the man's personal life wasn't one to endear many prospective patrons, either. Itague suspected him of smoking hashish. And there was the Black Mass.
'The poor child,' Satin was saying. The table in front of him was nearly covered with empty wine glasses. The Russian moved them from time to time, blocking out the choreography to l'Enlevement. Satin drank wine like a Frenchman, Itague thought: never outright falling-down drunk. But growing more unstable, more nervous, as his chorus of hollow glass dancers grew. 'Does she know where her father's gone?' Satin wondered aloud, looking off into the street. The night was windless, hot. Darker than Itague could ever remember it. Behind them the small orchestra began to play a tango. The Negro girl arose and went inside. To the south, the lights along the Champs Elysees picked out the underbelly of a nauseous-yellow cloud.
'With the father deserted,' said Itague, 'she's free. The mother doesn't care.'
The Russian looked up, sudden. A glass fell over on his table.
'- or nearly free.'
'Fled to the jungles, I understand,' Satin said. A waiter brought more wine.
'A gift. What had he ever given before? Have you seen the child's furs, her silks, the way she watches her own body? Heard the noblesse in the way she speaks? He gave her all that. Or was he giving it all to himself, by way of her?'
'Itague, she certainly could be the most giving -'
