Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (6 page)

I stopped in my tracks. “Truly? But that is my dilemma, too.”

“Of course it is. We are who and what society makes us, after all.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “I believe that physical passion is the only force that can truly release us—man or woman—into our authentic selves. Why should woman be denied what man takes for granted?”

Oh my God. I agreed wholeheartedly—but she actually wrote these things down and published them for all the world to read, and debate, and argue over! And to hate her for, perhaps? This was where we truly differed. I could be daring when it came to
doing
things, to acting or reacting: dancing a tarantella, shooting pistols, galloping on horseback or otherwise exerting my body. But radical ideas about womanhood, written down? To be excoriated, or ridiculed, and then published, to go on into perpetuity? How did she dare?—Was it exciting?

“Come along,” she urged, almost tugging me onwards with the passion in her voice, in her vigorous steps. “I’m also more than ever determined that political change must happen. I believe in the common man. There’s a socialist movement arising that I think will result in cataclysmic turmoil before too long, but then open us up to real progress. I’m writing articles for a review, which I’ve co-founded—
L’Éclaireur
—where we discuss such things. Are you interested?”

“Um…”

“Never mind. You must come to Paris. I live in the midst of a charming circle of artists in the lovely Square d’Orléans. I should be there now, except for our mutual friend Franzi; I just had to get away from all my cares and come fling myself under his piano. Chopin is teaching; he’s too moody to compose during the winters, and I’m so bored by his pupils. They grovel at his feet in a truly sickening manner. In Paris, I can introduce you to some of my friends.”

My head was whirling, trying to keep up.

“You should meet Marie—I mean Marie Dorval the actress, not d’Agoult. Too many Maries! No, d’Agoult would rip you to shreds in a moment; you really want to try to avoid an encounter with her, let me warn you. I blame her age; she’s seven years older than Franzi, you know—almost as old as me, and you can see what time has done to this bold edifice. Now, you say you’re a dancer? Won’t you dance for me?”

During one of our nights of love, I asked Franz about George. He was unfailingly polite—I never heard him speak badly of anyone.

“Are you falling for her, Lola? She can make you do so—although I remember when Chopin first saw her, he asked me crossly whether the creature was a man, she went after him so forcefully.” That made me laugh. “She’s hungry for love, for life. She will mother everyone she can. Chopin is like another child to her, I believe. He’s often unwell—a bit like myself—and she pampers him. And yet it’s true, she has the strength of the most virile of men.”

“She’s invited me to visit her in Paris.”

“I think you should go.”

I sat up to look at him.

Hands locked behind his head, he was gazing at the ceiling. “I will write you some letters of introduction. My concerts are finished here, and I must return, myself. But not with you.” I couldn’t restrain a swift intake of breath: that was very abrupt. “Yes,” he continued, as if reading my thoughts. “I received a letter today from Marie, the mother of my little ones. She is incensed. She’s caught wind that I am escorting a young Spanish lady to the theatre and so on. The damnable papers, I suppose.” He sat up as well, reaching for the candle, moving it about over the bedside table. “Ach, it’s come to this… I now need my glasses in order to find my damned glasses,” he muttered, patting around, then spreading the spectacles’ arms and perching them upon his nose. “My daughters, Blandine and Cosima, are at school and Marie wishes them to return to live with her instead. But she is in a period of—vitriol, shall I say—and will not speak well to them of me. Dumdum, my sweet little boy, Daniel, is still too young to be influenced, but my dear girls… I couldn’t bear to lose their love.”

“How old…?”

“Blandine is nine, Cosima eight.”

My heart clenched as I thought of nine-year-old Emma, pictured her trusting face. The only thing she had of me was the pair of peridot earbobs I’d sent her in a moment of terrible guilt.

“Ah well,” he went on. “That is not for you to bear.” I almost told him, but then did not. What would have been the point? He might have hated me for deserting my child, he who did everything for his own. Peering at the letter, he read aloud, “‘Beneath the French veneer you have managed to don, one still finds in you the Hungarian peasant.’ Mm. Her barbs sting more unerringly each time. I blame myself. I tour, I work, I leave her on her own; she has borne me three children in a very short period of time. What else can I expect?” He put the letter down, removed his glasses, and gave me a sad, lingering kiss. “What has happened between us, Lola… I ask you to keep it to yourself, always. Can you do that, I wonder?”

“I can. I will.”

“Sleep well, my dear. Life goes on.” He turned onto his side, and in a few minutes was asleep.

I lay awake, staring into the darkness for quite a long time. Does it? Mostly, while with Franz, I had managed to forget the throbbing heartache of my lost love—except in the depths of night, in the dark. General Diego de Léon… Lithe and compact, a small, cat-like man with brown, hot skin, and a magical mustache… During my year in Spain, I’d begun so well… I’d danced and played Cupid in a musical play, in Madrid. But, with Diego, I’d become entangled in a kidnapping attempt for the
moderados
cause, trying to return the two little Spanish princesses to their waiting
mamá
, the ex-regent María Cristina, in Paris. It had gone badly wrong. Diego and his fellow general, Manuel de la Concha, had been captured and shockingly executed—by firing squad, at dawn!—with unseemly haste and without a trial, by order of the prime minister, Baldomero Espartero, a vengeful former commander during the Carlist War.

Curled up grimly, muffling all sounds with both hands, I began juddering again with grief—shaking the mattress with it. Useless grief. It would never bring Diego back. He’d been silenced forever with six bullets to the heart. His strong and courageous heart. I’d been so young… At twenty-two, I’d no idea that love could be so swiftly extinguished, that fate could go so badly awry. That joy is given in the moment and promised for the future, but the world never stops moving, and before you know it, everything shifts.

My nights with Franz had helped salve the ache, but not entirely, oh, not at all. And soon I was to be cast adrift again, back into a loveless world where evil lurked, ready to tear fierce bites out of you. I lay there, awake for hours, trying not to move, curled into the small of Franz’s back, breathing in the warm scent of his long, sleeping body.

*

And then, two things occurred that turned everything upside down.

The following evening, I went with Franz to a new opera by a cash-strapped young acquaintance of his named Richard Wagner, an ugly, earnest man with a thick, gobbling sort of accent. Franz had kissed me and told me that we would have fun; he didn’t think to warn me that the event, titled
Rienzi
, was five hours in length.
Dios mío
! I was going insane by the second hour, and it was without intermission until almost the third. No one’s writing or composing warrants that interminableness! After the interval, I swear, Franz had to use his sweetest, mildest words to convince me to re-enter the plushy chamber of tedium. During the fourth and fifth hour, I stood in our box and did leg exercises, not caring a fart what anyone thought. Conceited, overblown twit of a composer—I wanted to strangle him. I remember thinking that George would probably love the piece of shite, since it was about a populist figure who defeats the nobles and champions the people, but I chafed and jerked, flinging myself about with boredom, and then I fell asleep. When I woke, I cheered—loudly—when I realized that the populace had turned against Rienzi and was burning the Capitol, because at least it meant the bloody thing would be over.

Backstage, I guessed that Wagner’s eyes had been glued to Liszt’s every reaction from wherever he’d been sitting (like a toad in its hole). He glared at me with a squinched-up face, though Franz told him nice, complimentary things. As we turned away, I could hear the ugly fellow mutter, “Heartless, demonic being.”

I rounded upon him. “Who, me?” (
¡Bastardo! ¡Cabrón!
)

Franz placed a hand on my arm.

“I should think that you are the heartless being,” I snapped, “keeping us entrapped like that for so long!” Having delivered myself of this, I vowed to say no more, though the toad was looking me up and down with undisguised malice.

“Good evening, then, Richard,” Franz said with a bow.

“Her eyes are insolent.”

“Her eyes see more than you and me,” Franz rejoined. He took my arm and urged me away through the departing crowds and then through the streets, back to our hotel.

I was exhausted, it was two o’clock in the morning and Franz was as pale as milk, but I had to ask.

“What did you mean by that, Franz? It sounded lovely, but what did it mean?”

He was lying back upon the bed, without a stitch of clothing, and without desire. “Not tonight, Lola, it’s far too late.”

I lay beside him, also naked. “Your friend, the composer. I’m sorry I said that, I really am. It’s just… It reminded me of—I get testy when…”

“When what, my dear?”

“When I’m treated dismissively. In Paris, another theatre man insulted me, just because he could, and I don’t think men should get away with that.”

“I don’t either,” Franz said mildly, eyes closed.

“It was Alexandre Dumas, a hippopotamus with a swelled head, a—”

“Alexandre is a good fellow, Lola.”

“What? You know him?”

“He’s a large-hearted soul.”

“Pooh! He is not.”

Two years earlier, I’d been introduced to Dumas in Paris by the impresario Juan de Grimaldi, a man who’d seemed so willing to help my theatrical ambitions. Grimaldi turned out to be a government agent—yes, a spy—for exiled Spanish royalty. He was the one who had gotten me into the whole Spanish mess in the first place.

“Alexandre Dumas is finally beginning to enjoy the success he deserves,” Franz was saying. “It’s been a long time coming, and he’s worked very hard.”

“Hmph. What’s the success, yet another woman-belittling play?”

“No, something else. Novels. In serialized form. A new thing, apparently, and it’s caught on. Marie is very interested in this. She’s dabbling, has friends in the business who attend her salons. She tells me that Alexandre is at the edge of a precipice of wild accomplishment.”

I was disgusted: more adulation for that insatiable appetite in the shape of a man. I retorted hotly, “The last time I saw Dumas was at the funeral of a young girl who’d been murdered. He was unutterably rude and in a foul mood, completely absorbed with himself.”

“He’s a writer,” Franz said.

“That’s no excuse! I stood up in the church and in front of everyone, I challenged Alexandre Dumas to a duel!”

Liszt’s eyes opened. He turned his head to look at me, a smile upon his lips. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

His eyes closed again, and the grin spread. “Incorrigible.” And his prick began to rise.

*

I awoke the next morning to find that Franz was not in the bed. I could hear him moving around in the other room. A loud, repeated knocking at the door was probably what had woken me. “I’m coming,” I heard him say, then he turned to look back into the bedroom. “I’ll close you in, sleepy one, and get rid of whoever this is.” Tightening the sash of his smoking jacket, he gently shut the door.

I lay back again, replaying images of passion from the night before. Every muscle in my body felt tired, but elated. I wondered what we’d do later that day, and I yawned voluptuously. Outside the bedroom, a little clatter as Franz opened the door of Number 17, followed by a deep rumble of unknown words as he spoke to whoever was standing there. Then suddenly, a woman’s curt voice.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding. Very luxurious, I’m sure, and very expensive. Will you let me in, or must I stand out here like one of your admirers?”

Lusty images fled—I bolted upright, covering my breasts with the rumpled sheets. The woman spoke in French, with traces of a German accent.

“Marie, my dear, what are you doing in Dresden? I thought you were not well—”

“True, thanks to you I am very unwell, but that doesn’t mean I should never go anywhere.” The woman—Countess Marie d’Agoult, it must be—was walking back and forth around the outer room in an agitated manner. “I decided to visit my people in Frankfurt, if it’s any business of yours—and then, since I’d come so far, to come along and see what you’ve been doing with yourself. Performing your tricks for anyone who’ll pay to listen. Have you been having fun?” Her voice was brittle and angry.

Merde
, and triple
fuck
! What in God’s name was I going to do? My heart had leapt into my throat with a sickening bound. I’d never been the culprit in this dreadful, clichéd situation, and I wished devoutly that I could melt into the mattress, disappear, hear nothing more! Definitely
not
to be a major player in this (no doubt) swiftly approaching scene.

“I hear that George is here,” the woman’s voice continued. “Frédéric has been complaining bitterly that she’s abandoned him. I know the feeling.”

“My dear Marie—”

“I hope you haven’t decided to bed my best friend. I know she’d love it, if only for the experience, and to be able to talk about it to everyone and anyone, then write it down in one of her sordid little novels.”

“Please, stop, don’t say such things—”

“Well, one of these days she’ll laugh out of the wrong side of her face. I’ve put things in motion, I’ve been meeting with de Girardin at
La Presse
and he’s very interested in an idea that I’ve had. Are you? I think not.”

“What idea? Marie? Sit for a moment, you seem rather—”

“I’ve been sitting for hours; I don’t feel like sitting, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Very well. How are the children?”