I thought about this a moment. “Do you know the painting by Courbet known as The Painter’s Studio?” Mademoiselle Édmonde replied that she had been taken to see it at the Palais du Louvre as a girl, and that many of the figures in it had been friends of her parents. “I’ll tell you something about that painting you may not know: I was once in it. I, Jeanne Duval, a mere slave girl who can barely read or write, was portrayed standing among France’s most brilliant men—Champfleury, Proudhon, and the others. Charles is also in it, seated at the right of the painting, reading a book. When Courbet first painted it, I was depicted standing by Charles’s side. What had I done to deserve this great honor? I had been his muse—his grande taciturne, his Black Venus.” I sighed as memories I had long fought to smother began to resurface. “And yet, when Charles told me about the painting, I fell into such a fury that the very next day he went to Courbet and told him that I was to be removed from it, erased, painted over. Courbet did what Charles asked, but if you look hard enough, you can still see the trace of my image, hovering like a phantom over Charles’s right shoulder as he reads his book.” I looked directly at the two women. “That is how I wish to be remembered. As a ghost.”

“Don’t you desire what you deserve?” asked Mademoiselle Édmonde from behind her veil.

“What is that?”

“Immortality.”

“Immortality is a curse.”

My two interlocutors were silent for a moment before Mademoiselle Adélaïde asked, in as sweet and imploring a tone as I have heard, “Please, madame, tell us your story.”

I had never breathed a word of my life story to anyone other than you, Koahu, but now that I was living in the shadow of death I yielded to the temptation of finally unburdening myself. “Very well,” I said. “But I warn you, the telling will take all day. It is a tale full of wonders, many of which you will not believe. You will consider me mad, but your opinion is, I assure you, of no consequence to me. If I say anything to which you wish to object, I pray you keep your outrage to yourself. And you must make me a solemn promise that you will never repeat what I tell you, nor commit it to writing.” The women agreed to my terms. After they’d sent their coachman out to bring us cakes and coffee, I began to tell them the tale of the albatross.