V.

Papa had a strong bald skull and a brave mustache. Evenings she would come softly into the room, the mysterious place walled in silk where he and her mother slept. And while Madeleine combed the hair of Maman in the other room, Mélanie lay on the wide bed beside him, while he touched her in many places, and she squirmed and fought not to make a sound. It was their game. One night there had been heat lightning outside, and a small night bird had lit on the windowsill and watched them. How long ago it seemed! Late summer, like today.

This had been at Serre Chaude, their estate in Normandy, once the ancestral home of a family whose blood had long since turned to a pale ichor and vaporized away into the frosty skies over Amiens. The house, which dated from the reign of Henri IV, was large but unimpressive, like most architecture of the period. She had always wanted to slide down the great mansard roof: begin at the top and skid down the first gentle slope. Her skirt would fly above her hips, her black-stockinged legs would writhe matte against a wilderness of chimneys, under the Norman sunlight. High over the elms and the hidden carp pools, up where Maman could only be a tiny blotch under a parasol, gazing at her. She imagined the sensation often: the feeling of roof-tiles rapidly sliding beneath the hard curve of her rump, the wind trapped under her blouse teasing the new breasts. And then the break: where the lower, steeper slope of the roof began, the point of no return, where the friction against her body would lessen and she would accelerate, flip over to twist the skirt - perhaps rip it off, be done with it, see it flutter away, like a dark kite! - to let the dovetailed tiles tense her nipple-points to an angry red, see a pigeon clinging to the eaves just before flight, taste the long hair caught against her teeth and tongue, cry out . . .

The taxi stopped in front of a cabaret in the rue Germaine Pilon, near Boulevard Clichy. Mélanie paid the fare and was handed her bag from the top of the cab. She felt something which might be the beginning of the rain against her cheek. The cab drove away, she stood before Le Nerf in an empty street, the flowered bag without gaiety under the clouds.

"You believed us after all." M. Itague stood, half-stooping, holding the handle of the traveling bag. "Come, fétiche , inside. There's news."

On the small stage, which faced a dining room filled only with stacked tables and chairs, and lit by uncertain August daylight, came the confrontation with Satin.

"Mlle. Jarretiere"; using her stage name. He was short and heavily built: the hair stuck out in tufts from each side of his head. He wore tights and a dress shirt, and directed his eyes parallel to a line connecting her hip-points. The skirt was two years old, she was growing. She felt embarrassed.

"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 Porcépic, everything formidable. Rehearsals began tomorrow, she'd saved the day, they would have waited until the last minute because it could only be Mélanie, 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.