Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
El Staplador (elstaplador)
Summary:
If Louise can't sing, and Eugénie won't sing, the future looks bleak for the two runaways.
For the ladiesbingo prompt "The Theatre"
Eugénie pulled the flimsy curtain
back from the window, and Louise, blinking, saw the dust motes toiling
in the sunbeams. She was conscious of a vague sense of shame connected
with the state of the room, though she supposed that the doctor had seen
worse in his time. He was a tall, wavering figure, dark against the
sunlight, looming over her bed. He seemed somewhat nonplussed; perhaps
Eugenie's lordly tones had deceived him into thinking that he was
summoned to some grand house.
'This is the patient?' he was saying. 'Very good, very good. Let me see. Tell me, when did this begin?'
Louise tried to say, ten years ago, but her throat was raw and her lungs empty. Had she been able to speak this morning, she would have stopped Eugénie going for the doctor. She thought of the ever-dwindling pile of coins in Eugénie's trunk. How many would the doctor carry away with him? How few could they give Madame Fournier before she threw them out into the street? And if she could not sing, and Eugénie would not, then the pile would never be replenished.
For Eugénie would not sing – at least, not on any terms except her own, and those were such that it was unlikely that any impresario would accept them. She demanded parts to match her vocal ability, wilfully uncomprehending of the fact that she had not the theatrical experience that would justify her so doing, and that, perhaps most damningly of all, she had no patron to persuade the management of her assets on her behalf.
Louise, who had feared that this might be the case, produced the Count of Monte Cristo's letter of recommendation and took the modest part offered her, a temple priestess who stepped out from a trio for a few bars of solo recitative. In vain did she attempt to persuade Eugénie that it was better to sing 'Third Lady' and live than to starve to death because she could not be prima donna. In vain did she show her the calculations of their meagre income and inevitable outgoings.
Eugénie announced her intention of turning to literature. 'Words,' she said, 'can be had for nothing.' But, for all that, there seemed to be precious few of them coaxed from Eugénie's pen, and those words could hardly pay for bread without assuming a more solid form. Louise sought occupation during the hours of daylight as a piano teacher, but found that the respectable mamas, those who would have paid a rate that was not an insult, were chary of a woman from the stage. She sighed, and went off every evening to sing, and tried not to notice that every performance left her more and more weary, her lungs aching, her throat raw.
And Eugénie sulked and wept and cursed, writing ten or twelve words in a day, and declining to leave the house. Their cramped little room seemed to shrink; Louise was grateful to leave it each night as twilight fell, to escape Eugénie's directionless, sullen disappointment. She could feel the weight of Eugénie's envy on her shoulders, knew that Eugénie envied her being on the stage even in such a lowly part, never forgot herself so far as to reproach her, either for turning down the opportunity in the first place, or for regretting it now. Louise kept silence at home, and sang for their bread in the theatre, and prayed for some resolution to the impasse to manifest itself swiftly, before -
The day came sooner than she had expected. She remembered little of it. A cracked G sharp. A coughing fit that would not stop. Blood. The footlights flaring and whirling in front of her dizzy eyes. An interminable journey home, jolting, jolting, wrapped in Simone's cloak, propped between Madame Leclos and little Jean-Marc. And then flying – no, she was carried in Eugénie's arms – and some hoarse, angry sobbing, and then nothing.
And now this.
The doctor poked and prodded, and had Louise open her mouth and blow against a feather. 'She sings, you say?' he asked, and looked grave when Eugénie nodded. 'I will prescribe a mixture that will help, and I will return in three days. In the meantime, she must use her voice as little as possible.'
Eugénie insisted that Louise must not overtax herself, and Louise felt guiltily grateful for the extended period of rest. Had it not been for the prospect of a penniless future glowering over them, she would almost have welcomed her enforced unemployment. 'Don't worry, dear heart,' Eugénie said, and indeed it was true that Madame Fournier had not yet evicted them. Louise supposed that Eugénie had sold some of the few treasures she had brought away with her.
Louise's voice returned, whisper by whisper, murmur by murmur. Eugénie was comically strict, insisting that she take the treacly concoction regularly and insisting that she communicate by writing in a little memorandum book.
The doctor returned. He was unequivocal. 'She must not sing again, particularly not on the stage. Another attack might well be fatal. It would be as well to avoid all forms of vocal strain.'
'Well,' said Eugénie, when she had paid the doctor and sent him on his way. 'What have you to say to that?'
Louise laughed grimly. 'I am forbidden to say anything,' she muttered. 'I know what Eugénie Danglars would say.'
'She would say that she would be lost without her Louise; that a song is precious but lasts but a breath, and that none will hear you in the grave: therefore heed what you have been told.'
'That,' said Louise, 'was not quite what I meant. Had the doctor said to Eugénie Danglars, that she must cease to sing or she must die, I do not think that he would have heard that same answer – would he?'
'No -' Eugénie exclaimed, and fell silent.
'She would say,' Louise pressed on, ruthlessly, 'ars longa, vita brevis, that a single day in the courts of the muse were better than a thousand years among mortals, and that, must she keep silence or die, she would gladly die and sing.' Louise smiled in spite of herself.
'Oh! beloved, don't tease me so! Yes, it's true, but I've never come to that pass. It's you we speak of.'
'And my art is worth sacrificing, where yours is not?'
Eugénie buried her head in her hands. 'How can you bear to laugh about this?'
'Because,' said Louise, 'I am so very afraid that I cannot find it in myself to speak soberly. My voice is, if not precisely my life, then at least my living; I know not if I can afford to pay our rent on what I could make from pianoforte lessons alone; and -'
'Yes?' Eugénie was glowering.
'Could I live with you, and not sing with you? Would you not tire of me, did we not share that?'
'So! You doubt my fidelity; and you tire of supporting the pair of us.'
'There will come a time,' Louise said steadily, 'when I will no longer be capable of doing so; and the more I sing, the faster it must come.'
'I will never leave you,' Eugénie promised grandly. 'You might do me the same courtesy.'
'Very well,' said Louise. 'I prefer living, myself.' And, she did not say, she had spent enough years making her living by her art not to feel sentimental. Moreover, she knew that Eugénie's was the greater talent.
Even without the doctor's dire verdict, Louise would have known that she was gravely unwell. She found herself faint and dizzy after crossing from one side of the room to the other, and she slept longer and more frequently than she had ever believed permissible or possible, at any hour of the night or day.
She was woken by the click of the doorknob at about noon the next day. Eugénie was unwinding a shawl from about her head.
'You've been out?' Louise croaked.
Eugénie sat down on the edge of the bed. 'I went to your theatre. I demanded to see the chorus master. I explained to him that you were still unwell and that I was prepared to sing in your place.'
'Goodness,' Louise said faintly; M. Lebrun was a Tatar. 'What did he say to that?'
'That I am too tall to replace you in his formations; but that if he can see a way to persuading M. Pinault that Zélie Ferrand is up to singing your part permanently, then he can use me in the chorus of peasants.'
'And what did you say to that?' For the peasants had less to do even than the priestesses, and the pay was proportionately diminished.
Eugénie assumed an expression of martyred pride. 'If the muse wishes me to be a peasant, then a peasant I shall be. Besides, if there is any justice I shan't remain one long.'
The next night, when Eugénie had departed for the theatre, Louise crept out of bed and, wrapping a shawl about her shoulders, scrabbled in the trunk to find pen and paper. She found to her dismay that she had underestimated the effort it required, and had to retreat, breathing fast, between the sheets, but she put the writing materials just under the bed, where she could reach them.
Weeks passed. Eugénie was promoted from the chorus of peasants to Second Lady, and also understudied the High Priestess, which meant less singing and better pay. The run ended, and M. Pinault cast her as Emilia in Otello. She complained occasionally to Louise that Lebrun had no musical sensitivity, or that Signor Andretti's voice put her in mind of a cup of cold coffee, but she was, Simone reported, as good as gold in rehearsals. The muse was smiling upon her at last, and Eugénie returned the compliment.
And Louise wrote. Every night, when the door had shut behind Eugénie, she brought out her own work. At first she was able to write only for a few minutes at a time, but as she grew stronger those minutes stretched to half an hour, then an hour, then two. Louise was careful, but all the same, it was inevitable that Eugénie would catch her eventually. Knowing this, she became careless, and let herself write for as long as the candle burned and her strength allowed and inspiration flowed. And, one night, all were generous, and Otello was over and Eugénie home while Louise was yet sitting up in bed with paper strewn across the blankets and an aria half-written.
'Louise! What are you doing? You mustn't tire yourself!' Her face was streaked with greasepaint, her expression indignant; it was an oddly endearing combination.
'When I'm tired,' Louise said defiantly, 'I sleep. At the moment I'm perfectly awake.' It was true: though her eyelids had been drooping, Eugénie's sudden entrance had roused her to a feverish alertness. 'See what I've been doing, all these evenings.' Though she affected calmness, her fingers trembled as she handed the stack of manuscript to Eugénie.
'The Death of Sappho: an opera in four acts by L. d'Armilly.' Eugénie turned over the pages, politely at first, and then with what seemed to be genuine and urgent interest. 'Louise: this is good.'
'You mean that.' There was no need to pretend disbelief, not for Eugénie, who would never pretend admiration. 'I thought I might write to the Count of Monte Cristo, to see if he might use his influence in our favour again.'
'He must, if he sees this. Fame will be mine, but you shall have immortality.' Her eyes glowed.
'You too,' said Louise, 'for much of the libretto is yours – your poems, which you wrote in Paris.'
'Oh,' Eugénie said, pleased, 'but they won't remember the librettist. Only the name of d'Armilly will go down in history.'
'Perhaps not on account of this opera,' Louise said, 'for the more I write, the more conscious am I of my deficiencies. Besides, Pinault wouldn't look at it twice if he knew that I was the composer.'
'Your useful brother Leon might make another appearance,' Eugénie suggested. 'I believe you had that idea in mind all along.'
Louise laughed and did not deny it. 'All the same, the name of Eugénie Danglars shall appear on the playbill in larger letters, for she shall sing Sappho.'
'M. le directeur won't have that, not while Célestine's in his bed.'
'I've written an aria for Cleïs that she won't be able to resist. And if he makes me rewrite that for Sappho then you shall be Phaon.'
'You know my fondness for the trouser roles. But, my heart, if it will only make them produce your opera, I'll gladly be the call boy. All the same,' switching suddenly from the artist to the nurse, 'you're working too hard, and you ought to be in bed.'
Louise smiled. 'I am in bed, and so should you be.' She took her manuscript back and laid the stack of paper on the floor: there was no need to hide it any more.
Eugénie took her shawl off and spread it over the bed. She unbuttoned her dress deftly and let it fall to the floor, and clambered into bed in her chemise. 'You're quite right. I admit the superiority of your argument.' Her face flickered into a sudden grin, and at last Louise knew the certain hope that their own story was not, after all, to be a tragedy. She blew out the candle.
'This is the patient?' he was saying. 'Very good, very good. Let me see. Tell me, when did this begin?'
Louise tried to say, ten years ago, but her throat was raw and her lungs empty. Had she been able to speak this morning, she would have stopped Eugénie going for the doctor. She thought of the ever-dwindling pile of coins in Eugénie's trunk. How many would the doctor carry away with him? How few could they give Madame Fournier before she threw them out into the street? And if she could not sing, and Eugénie would not, then the pile would never be replenished.
For Eugénie would not sing – at least, not on any terms except her own, and those were such that it was unlikely that any impresario would accept them. She demanded parts to match her vocal ability, wilfully uncomprehending of the fact that she had not the theatrical experience that would justify her so doing, and that, perhaps most damningly of all, she had no patron to persuade the management of her assets on her behalf.
Louise, who had feared that this might be the case, produced the Count of Monte Cristo's letter of recommendation and took the modest part offered her, a temple priestess who stepped out from a trio for a few bars of solo recitative. In vain did she attempt to persuade Eugénie that it was better to sing 'Third Lady' and live than to starve to death because she could not be prima donna. In vain did she show her the calculations of their meagre income and inevitable outgoings.
Eugénie announced her intention of turning to literature. 'Words,' she said, 'can be had for nothing.' But, for all that, there seemed to be precious few of them coaxed from Eugénie's pen, and those words could hardly pay for bread without assuming a more solid form. Louise sought occupation during the hours of daylight as a piano teacher, but found that the respectable mamas, those who would have paid a rate that was not an insult, were chary of a woman from the stage. She sighed, and went off every evening to sing, and tried not to notice that every performance left her more and more weary, her lungs aching, her throat raw.
And Eugénie sulked and wept and cursed, writing ten or twelve words in a day, and declining to leave the house. Their cramped little room seemed to shrink; Louise was grateful to leave it each night as twilight fell, to escape Eugénie's directionless, sullen disappointment. She could feel the weight of Eugénie's envy on her shoulders, knew that Eugénie envied her being on the stage even in such a lowly part, never forgot herself so far as to reproach her, either for turning down the opportunity in the first place, or for regretting it now. Louise kept silence at home, and sang for their bread in the theatre, and prayed for some resolution to the impasse to manifest itself swiftly, before -
The day came sooner than she had expected. She remembered little of it. A cracked G sharp. A coughing fit that would not stop. Blood. The footlights flaring and whirling in front of her dizzy eyes. An interminable journey home, jolting, jolting, wrapped in Simone's cloak, propped between Madame Leclos and little Jean-Marc. And then flying – no, she was carried in Eugénie's arms – and some hoarse, angry sobbing, and then nothing.
And now this.
The doctor poked and prodded, and had Louise open her mouth and blow against a feather. 'She sings, you say?' he asked, and looked grave when Eugénie nodded. 'I will prescribe a mixture that will help, and I will return in three days. In the meantime, she must use her voice as little as possible.'
Eugénie insisted that Louise must not overtax herself, and Louise felt guiltily grateful for the extended period of rest. Had it not been for the prospect of a penniless future glowering over them, she would almost have welcomed her enforced unemployment. 'Don't worry, dear heart,' Eugénie said, and indeed it was true that Madame Fournier had not yet evicted them. Louise supposed that Eugénie had sold some of the few treasures she had brought away with her.
Louise's voice returned, whisper by whisper, murmur by murmur. Eugénie was comically strict, insisting that she take the treacly concoction regularly and insisting that she communicate by writing in a little memorandum book.
The doctor returned. He was unequivocal. 'She must not sing again, particularly not on the stage. Another attack might well be fatal. It would be as well to avoid all forms of vocal strain.'
'Well,' said Eugénie, when she had paid the doctor and sent him on his way. 'What have you to say to that?'
Louise laughed grimly. 'I am forbidden to say anything,' she muttered. 'I know what Eugénie Danglars would say.'
'She would say that she would be lost without her Louise; that a song is precious but lasts but a breath, and that none will hear you in the grave: therefore heed what you have been told.'
'That,' said Louise, 'was not quite what I meant. Had the doctor said to Eugénie Danglars, that she must cease to sing or she must die, I do not think that he would have heard that same answer – would he?'
'No -' Eugénie exclaimed, and fell silent.
'She would say,' Louise pressed on, ruthlessly, 'ars longa, vita brevis, that a single day in the courts of the muse were better than a thousand years among mortals, and that, must she keep silence or die, she would gladly die and sing.' Louise smiled in spite of herself.
'Oh! beloved, don't tease me so! Yes, it's true, but I've never come to that pass. It's you we speak of.'
'And my art is worth sacrificing, where yours is not?'
Eugénie buried her head in her hands. 'How can you bear to laugh about this?'
'Because,' said Louise, 'I am so very afraid that I cannot find it in myself to speak soberly. My voice is, if not precisely my life, then at least my living; I know not if I can afford to pay our rent on what I could make from pianoforte lessons alone; and -'
'Yes?' Eugénie was glowering.
'Could I live with you, and not sing with you? Would you not tire of me, did we not share that?'
'So! You doubt my fidelity; and you tire of supporting the pair of us.'
'There will come a time,' Louise said steadily, 'when I will no longer be capable of doing so; and the more I sing, the faster it must come.'
'I will never leave you,' Eugénie promised grandly. 'You might do me the same courtesy.'
'Very well,' said Louise. 'I prefer living, myself.' And, she did not say, she had spent enough years making her living by her art not to feel sentimental. Moreover, she knew that Eugénie's was the greater talent.
Even without the doctor's dire verdict, Louise would have known that she was gravely unwell. She found herself faint and dizzy after crossing from one side of the room to the other, and she slept longer and more frequently than she had ever believed permissible or possible, at any hour of the night or day.
She was woken by the click of the doorknob at about noon the next day. Eugénie was unwinding a shawl from about her head.
'You've been out?' Louise croaked.
Eugénie sat down on the edge of the bed. 'I went to your theatre. I demanded to see the chorus master. I explained to him that you were still unwell and that I was prepared to sing in your place.'
'Goodness,' Louise said faintly; M. Lebrun was a Tatar. 'What did he say to that?'
'That I am too tall to replace you in his formations; but that if he can see a way to persuading M. Pinault that Zélie Ferrand is up to singing your part permanently, then he can use me in the chorus of peasants.'
'And what did you say to that?' For the peasants had less to do even than the priestesses, and the pay was proportionately diminished.
Eugénie assumed an expression of martyred pride. 'If the muse wishes me to be a peasant, then a peasant I shall be. Besides, if there is any justice I shan't remain one long.'
The next night, when Eugénie had departed for the theatre, Louise crept out of bed and, wrapping a shawl about her shoulders, scrabbled in the trunk to find pen and paper. She found to her dismay that she had underestimated the effort it required, and had to retreat, breathing fast, between the sheets, but she put the writing materials just under the bed, where she could reach them.
Weeks passed. Eugénie was promoted from the chorus of peasants to Second Lady, and also understudied the High Priestess, which meant less singing and better pay. The run ended, and M. Pinault cast her as Emilia in Otello. She complained occasionally to Louise that Lebrun had no musical sensitivity, or that Signor Andretti's voice put her in mind of a cup of cold coffee, but she was, Simone reported, as good as gold in rehearsals. The muse was smiling upon her at last, and Eugénie returned the compliment.
And Louise wrote. Every night, when the door had shut behind Eugénie, she brought out her own work. At first she was able to write only for a few minutes at a time, but as she grew stronger those minutes stretched to half an hour, then an hour, then two. Louise was careful, but all the same, it was inevitable that Eugénie would catch her eventually. Knowing this, she became careless, and let herself write for as long as the candle burned and her strength allowed and inspiration flowed. And, one night, all were generous, and Otello was over and Eugénie home while Louise was yet sitting up in bed with paper strewn across the blankets and an aria half-written.
'Louise! What are you doing? You mustn't tire yourself!' Her face was streaked with greasepaint, her expression indignant; it was an oddly endearing combination.
'When I'm tired,' Louise said defiantly, 'I sleep. At the moment I'm perfectly awake.' It was true: though her eyelids had been drooping, Eugénie's sudden entrance had roused her to a feverish alertness. 'See what I've been doing, all these evenings.' Though she affected calmness, her fingers trembled as she handed the stack of manuscript to Eugénie.
'The Death of Sappho: an opera in four acts by L. d'Armilly.' Eugénie turned over the pages, politely at first, and then with what seemed to be genuine and urgent interest. 'Louise: this is good.'
'You mean that.' There was no need to pretend disbelief, not for Eugénie, who would never pretend admiration. 'I thought I might write to the Count of Monte Cristo, to see if he might use his influence in our favour again.'
'He must, if he sees this. Fame will be mine, but you shall have immortality.' Her eyes glowed.
'You too,' said Louise, 'for much of the libretto is yours – your poems, which you wrote in Paris.'
'Oh,' Eugénie said, pleased, 'but they won't remember the librettist. Only the name of d'Armilly will go down in history.'
'Perhaps not on account of this opera,' Louise said, 'for the more I write, the more conscious am I of my deficiencies. Besides, Pinault wouldn't look at it twice if he knew that I was the composer.'
'Your useful brother Leon might make another appearance,' Eugénie suggested. 'I believe you had that idea in mind all along.'
Louise laughed and did not deny it. 'All the same, the name of Eugénie Danglars shall appear on the playbill in larger letters, for she shall sing Sappho.'
'M. le directeur won't have that, not while Célestine's in his bed.'
'I've written an aria for Cleïs that she won't be able to resist. And if he makes me rewrite that for Sappho then you shall be Phaon.'
'You know my fondness for the trouser roles. But, my heart, if it will only make them produce your opera, I'll gladly be the call boy. All the same,' switching suddenly from the artist to the nurse, 'you're working too hard, and you ought to be in bed.'
Louise smiled. 'I am in bed, and so should you be.' She took her manuscript back and laid the stack of paper on the floor: there was no need to hide it any more.
Eugénie took her shawl off and spread it over the bed. She unbuttoned her dress deftly and let it fall to the floor, and clambered into bed in her chemise. 'You're quite right. I admit the superiority of your argument.' Her face flickered into a sudden grin, and at last Louise knew the certain hope that their own story was not, after all, to be a tragedy. She blew out the candle.
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