Excerpt from Prima Donna

Even though it was an early evening in September, Paris was still boiling. The horse waste and filth of the city baked on the cobblestone streets like little patties at the bakery. Leena walked with her skirt slightly raised to keep her hem from touching the putrid ground as she dodged the other pedestrians but even so, the smell infested her clothes, hair, and nose. Anyone who walked on the streets without the luxury of a carriage was subjected to the smell. 

It was the busiest time of day, with craftspeople and wash wenches returning to their homes and the drunkards just starting their day, stumbling aimlessly, usually with bottles in hand. Leena clasped Monsieur Fauré note in her pocket, given to her one hour prior during her singing lesson. 

Earlier that day, after she finished her last aria, her voice still echoing through the high halls of the conservatory, Monsieur Fauré informed her she was expected at the Opera de Oleania, the finest opera house in Paris, for an audition. 

“But what is the role?” Leena felt excitement, but also dread.

“I cannot remember. Just be sure to wash at the foyer lavabo before entering.” Monsieur Fauré said with a sigh and unfolded his hand to Leena, presenting a handwritten note.

Leena, now standing in a cramped alleyway facing the grand square before the Opera de Oleania, waited until she was certain no one was watching her and pulled the note from her pocket. In his flowery and nearly indecipherable handwriting, it said:

“September 21st, 1820, Facing the Opera de Orleana and Louis XVI’s statue, follow the columns on the east side of the building until the door facing the columns is visible.”

Leena quickly returned the note to her pocket. Again she glanced around her to be sure no one was watching her. She thought of a toad she saw in the market last week, cowering in a crack of the stone building behind it, petrified as its large round glassy eyes watched the wheeled carts pass by. It seemed to take a deep breath, exhale, then lept from its hiding place. 

“Arrah Ha!” A toothless man yelled as he caught the toad, mid air, bit its little head off, and swallowed it whole. The toad’s innards oozed onto the man’s dirty lapel. 

Leena held the paper note in her pocket, not breathing. Young performers like herself were often targets for theft, or worse, mob aggression. The commoners projected their hatred of the nobility on to their low-born entertainers. Outside the conservatory, Leena did not dare share her occupation with anyone.  

The Opera de Orleania stood from the pristine square as clean and solid as the moon. Its pristine white marble eclipsed the decomposing plaster structures lining the square. 

“Follow to the east,” she repeated to herself but when she looked east, the same direction from which she came, there were no columns. Figuring that her instructor must have meant “left” of the statue, she hurried to the west side of the grand marble structure, the soles of her shoes so worn she could feel the heat of the cobblestone on her feet. When she turned the corner, there were many doors, facing the many columns. A lapis lazuli blue door, a granite green door, and at least 4 brass doors, each with knobs and handles spaced sporadically on each door. Monsieur Fauré mentioned the colored doors during Leena’s lesson but did not say which one the instructions pertained to. Did that mean that the written instructions could be applied to any door? 

“Move the third knob counterclockwise for three rotations then push the first knob to the sky in sight,” was Monsieur Fauré next instruction.

“To the sky in sight?” Leena looked up from where she stood in front of the lapis lazuli blue door. The sky was visible when she looked up. Did that mean to push the knob up? To retain the security of the building, the nobility of Paris required instruction on how to enter the Opera de Orleania to be delivered verbally from an armed footman to the opera instructors. The instructors were the only ones permitted to write this information down, for fear that if a footman were to be intercepted by commoners, the information could be taken and the security of the opera, compromised. The instructions were written in riddles, for an extra layer of security and changed daily. 

Leena did what the instructions asked; third knob counterclockwise, three rotations, push the first knob up. 

Nothing happened. She looked around her to see if anyone was watching her, then glanced at the note in her pocket but gathered nothing new from the swirly handwriting. The lapis lazuli door was blue, like the sky, could that mean to push towards the door?

 Leena did the same movement with the door but instead of pushing the first knob up, she pushed it into the door. The door did not open. Leena noticed a man watching her from the other side of the square while puffing his pipe. She frantically turned back to the door, moving the knobs in the same order but, again, nothing happened. She let out a huff, feeling her body start to shake, and kicked the door knob in with her right foot.

“Damn you, all seventeen Louises! The sixteenth need not live another year past his 70th birthday for his ridiculous obsession with locks!”

The door remained still as stone. She paced along the wall looking for something resembling a sky but found nothing. When she walked back to the lapis lazuli door she saw a little trail of blood splatters on the white marble tracing her path. Bracing the small dagger she kept in her stocking she turned around expecting to see a violent man with a knife behind her. 

“I’ll be damned if some man thinks he can sell me to Louisiana for one gold piece!”

But no man stood behind her. She noticed a searing pain in her right heel. She raised the heel of her cheap shoe and saw the heal had split in two and one of the cobbler’s nails had pushed itself into the flesh of her heal, with blood flowing from the split heal like a tiny river in a canyon. 

Her eyes welled with tears, partly from the pain and partly from how helpless she felt.

“Why couldn’t Monsieur Fauré give me better direction? That old goat, he did this on purpose to favor his other students!” Leena cursed through the tears now rolling down her face. 

Leena stood on her tippytoes, so as not to push the nail in any further. After wiping her face she looked at Monsieur Fauré’s note one more time. 

“…to the sky in sight.”

To the left of the door was a gas lantern embedded in the white marble. In the back of the soot-dusted lantern, behind the flame, she saw the reflection of the top half of her face, her teary eyes looking back at her. Still on her toes, she stepped back, her eyes on the reflective mirror in the back of the lantern. And there in the angled mirror, was the sky.

“Left!” Leena shrieked.

She leaped on her toes back to the door looking more like a ballerina than an opera singer and repeated the rotation of the knobs as she did before but moved the first knob to the left towards the lantern. She heard something click, weighted gears moving, and the door swung open with a lazy moan.

Leena wasted no time, springing into the Opera de Orleania. She was already running late even before the puzzle of the door. 

“At least,” she reminded herself, “I made it in, alive.”