Goddess Read Online Free Page A

1, Scene 3
Recitative
    F ROM THAT MOMENT ON , it was all I wanted. Not much. Grandeur. Passion. Immortality. Music.
    I didn’t seek fame as such, you understand. Adoration. Wealth. I was never ambitious in that way—not me. But to some people greatness comes naturally, just as inevitable as autumn after a brilliant summer. We must accept it. It’s our burden.
    I didn’t know all that then, of course. I knew only that those sounds, the thousand tallow candles, the gold feathers and long white stockings, the rapture, were to be mine. They had to be.
    So from that night I prepared. I had no idea of the path that lay before me, of the things I would have to do to get onto that stage—to be like her, like Le Rochois. To re-create myself in divine form. To sing. But everything I did, everything I learned, some of the men I fucked—oh please, it happens—it all led me to that first moment on stage, many years later, that blast of heat and applause I carry in my heart to this moment.
    Did I know what would come of it, then, standing in the stables, holding my breath? Not really. Did I plot my course to glory? Obviously not. If I’d been sensible, I’d have apprenticed myself to the Académie in my early years, instead of—well, instead of everything I am about to tell you.
    We’ll get to it, by and by. There is still time.
    I sift my memories, my pleasures, my agonies, for you, winnowing them all—sometimes I remember everything, sometimes very little. I will keep nothing back—not on purpose, anyway. Not now.
    But then. Then. I stuck to what I knew. The palace. The stables. The sword. I sang only for myself. But my body, my brain, my heart, composed themselves for greatness in whatever form it should come. The life. The role. The performance.
    You think it’s about fame? About admiration? You’re wrong. In one sense. I prefer to be alone. No. That’s not true. There are a few people—five, at most—with whom I could happily spend days at a time. Otherwise I’ve always been a creature of solitude. Not an outcast—not always. But I am not at home as part of a throng, the way some people are.
    The crowds, the audience—that’s different. I am their mistress, I reach out to touch their sweating hands. I can bend them to my will. On a good night. I learned that from Le Rochois, by watching her gestures, listening—really listening—to her breath, to the silences between the notes. She was a woman alone, too. Alone, on a stage, in the midst of thousands.
    That’s how it has always been. When I was little, Versailles was like a carnival. Every day. People everywhere. Dogs. Tiny ducs and duchesses on ponies. Footmen and guards and pages. Peasants, tradesmen, Princes of the Blood, pickpockets. Thousands. All of them shoving one another out of the way, clamouring, desperate.
    There’s so much need in the world. It turns my heart to granite. They are beggars out there, every one of them—from the crippled soldier crying on the corner to the street sellers and crooks and landlords. The bewigged crowd is no different. Better dressed, but desperate nevertheless. Especially at the palace. It’s pathetic, really.
    I am one of them, I admit it, but also I’m not. I perform for them, but they don’t touch me, not the way I touch them.
    It’s all a show, isn’t it? Life. Faith. Music. Pulling on your boots and your sword every morning. Walking down the centre of a street, picking your supper from between your teeth. Smiling at a serving-girl. Bowing to the audience in the parterre . It’s like Easter Sunday—like the changing of the guard at the palace gates—like a fête at Versailles or a holy day Mass in Notre-Dame, with a great choir of a hundred voices. A sermon, a song, which both chills and warms the soul at once.
    Have you ever actually given a sermon, Father? Do they trust you to do that?
    Then you’ll know what I mean. Candlelit, expectant faces, eyes wide in wonder, the hush, the gasps, the sighs. The