Yvonne
Maison Ladurée doesn’t have the flavor Madeleine likes for her macarons, but they say the new batch will be ready in fifteen minutes. They don’t even promise me anything, they just throw the information at me as if I was her housekeeper. A well-dressed housekeeper, but no one to fawn over. I want to tell them I’m her understudy, and I’m fetching macarons to get into her good graces, so she’ll recommend me for principal roles, and don’t they know to prepare orange blossoms and pistachio macarons for when the great Madeleine Moreau rehearses Tosca? But there’s no point to argue. I just have fifteen minutes to wait. I wander outside the store on Rue Royale to pass the time. I could go to the right, toward the Church of Saint-Marie-Madeleine that a king (Louis XV maybe? I was never good in school) wanted to be a memorable end bracket to the street, the other bracket being the Place de la Concorde with its Egyptian obelisk. The thing is, the church’s name reminds me of Madeleine, and I’m already thinking about her too much, running errands for her when I’m supposed to go and meet my professor from the Conservatory of Music. He’s going to ask me why my career hasn’t taken off after I graduated. He’s going to tell me I’m a disappointment, and clearly my hope that Madeleine would give me advice hasn’t panned out. So I turn left, toward the Place de la Concorde and the Seine River.
It’s a wealthy part of Paris, a far cry from the neighborhood I share with my son in the tenth arrondissement near the Canal Saint-Martin. That neighborhood is where people like me get when they like the water but can’t afford a view of the Seine. I like to think that one day I’ll be famous enough to afford an apartment on the quays by the Seine but that won’t happen tomorrow. I like my neighborhood, though. In magazines that Madeleine leaves around the opera house and that I pick up like a stray dog hungry for crumbs, I’ve seen pictures of Paris by Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson and—my favorite—Brassaï and in those photographs I see the magic of my world, a world tourists never see.
https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/henri-cartier-bresson/
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/robert-doisneau?all/all/all/all/0
https://www.robert-doisneau.com/en/portfolios/
https://lensmagazine.net/deep-nights-by-brassai/
https://magazine.artland.com/brassai-the-eye-of-paris/
Near the Place de la Concorde, there’s a billboard for the Three Centuries of American Art exhibition at the Musée du Jeu de Paume this summer. This is the sort of exhibition Madeleine would go to, especially if she meets the U.S. ambassador there, and remind him she’d love to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the sooner the better. She keeps talking about how she should’ve been invited by then—she’s been famous for twenty years—and I can’t decide if I feel sorry for her or if I’m glad some people out there don’t think Madeleine is as exceptional as she believes she is. I sang Tosca better than her, back at the Conservatory of Music, even if it was only one aria. The fact that I didn’t win the voice competition doesn’t change that. It’d be fun if the Met invited me instead, but of course the Met doesn’t know I exist.
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3597
https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3597_300061928.pdf
Someone has their windows open, up high in a building. They’re listening to Edith Piaf. Paris-Mediterranée. I like it enough, but I prefer Java en mineur. And of course, nothing beats Je suis d’Paris by Mistinguett. She has the same attitude as me after I had my son at seventeen and divorced his father not too long ago. There’s a grit in her and Piaf and me that Madeleine will never understand.
I look at the green waters of the Seine flowing by the Place de la Concorde and think: Madeleine doesn’t ever need to understand. She’s too rich to bother. But I haven’t lost hope that I can shine on stage too someday. Who could’ve predicted a little hick from the provinces like me would have the voice I have? Piaf and Mistinguett have their voices amplified by microphones. Madeleine and I sing without aid. Of course I only sing to empty rehearsal rooms, but I’m really good at it.
I’m standing on the Right Bank. On the other side of the river is the Left Bank, the artistic and creative half of Paris, whether it is in the Luxembourg Gardens or Montparnasse. I know so little of that part of Paris. I used to go there every so often when I was still married to Paul and he had a job as a clerk at the Tschann Bookstore—the bookstore with the biggest assortment of poetry books in Paris, apparently, and for a time the bookstore even sold Paul’s poetry collection. The first one, I mean. The one that was well reviewed by the critics. He was still working there when his second book came out, but the book disappeared from inventory very fast, like a stone thrown into a ripple and not even making a ripple.
https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/27189/in-the-luxembourg-gardens
https://www.librarything.com/venue/7412/Tschann-Librairie
I go back to the Maison Ladurée and pick up the macarons, warm from the oven. I’m going to be late for my meeting with my former professor, Charles-Antoine, but at least I’ll stay in Madeleine’s good graces. After the rehearsal, maybe I’ll stop at the Galeries Lafayette for a new dress—the ones I have are all frayed at the hem and it’s becoming noticeable I don’t have any money—and then I’ll check if there’s any new recordings by Alfred Cortot at the music store near the Folies Bergère. I shouldn’t spend money on extras like that, but it’s not for me, it’s for my son Jules. I want Jules to listen to Cortot, since he wants to become a pianist and Cortot is the best one around. I’ll just skip a meal or two next week, or just eat veggies without meat. Eating isn’t that important, art is, and Jules has so much talent. He could become the Cortot of his generation, I’m sure. I read in the paper that Cortot is in Berlin this summer to play Chopin. It’s an interesting choice to say the least. Maybe that means the tensions between France and Germany will ease off.
THE PARIS UNDERSTUDY by Aurélie Thiele
This powerful debut novel brings to life the hard choices Parisians made–or failed to make–under Nazi occupation, in the tradition of Pam Jenoff and Fiona Davis.
1938. Paris Opera legend Madeleine Moreau must keep newcomer Yvonne Chevallier, whose talent she fears, off the stage. As the long-standing star of the opera, she is nowhere near ready to give up her spotlight. The perfect solution: enlist Yvonne as her understudy so she can never be upstaged. When Madeleine is invited to headline at Germany’s preeminent opera festival, she is sure this will cement her legacy. But war is looming, and when she learns that Adolf Hitler himself will be in attendance, she knows she’s made a grave error. As Madeleine makes a hurried escape back to France, Yvonne finds herself unexpectedly thrown into the limelight on the German stage.
When a newspaper photograph shows Hitler seemingly enraptured by Yvonne, Yvonne’s life is upended. While she is trying frantically to repair her reputation at home, Yvonne’s son is captured and held as a prisoner of war. Desperate to free her son, she makes an impossible choice: turn to the enemy.
As the Nazis invade Paris, both women must decide what they are willing to do in pursuit of their art. They form an unlikely alliance, using their fame to protect themselves and the people they love from the maelstrom of history.
Painting an enrapturing portrait of resilient wartime women, The Paris Understudy is a love letter to the arts and a stark depiction of the choices we make to survive, for fans of Kate Quinn and Kristen Harmel.
Women’s Fiction Historical [Alcove Press, On Sale: September 10, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781639108619 / ]
Buy THE PARIS UNDERSTUDY: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Target.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Aurélie Thiele
Aurélie is French and American and lives in Dallas, TX. She holds a certificate in writing, with distinction, from the UCLA Writers’ Program and is a MFA candidate at the Bennington Writing Seminars in Bennington, VT. At the UCLA Writers’ Program, her writing was nominated twice for the James Kirkwood Award and once for the Allegra Johnson Award. Her novel THE PARIS UNDERSTUDY was selected by the Washington Post as one of ten noteworthy books for September 2024.
Aurélie is also an associate professor in the engineering management and information and systems department at the Lyle School of Engineering of Southern Methodist University.
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