by Donna Leon
At the door, she paused and looked back into the room: was this the reality that came to replace the dream of success? she wondered. A small, impersonal room, used for a time by one person, the next month by another; a single wardrobe; a mirror surrounded – just as in the movies – by light bulbs; no carpet on the floor; a small bathroom with shower and sink. And that was it: if you had this, you were a star, she supposed. She had it, so she must be a star. But she didn’t feel like one, only like a woman in her forties – she forced herself to say – who had just worked like a dog for more than two hours and now had to go and smile at nameless people who wanted a part of her, wanted to be her friend, her confidant; for all she knew, her lover.
And all she wanted to do was go to a restaurant and eat and drink something and then go home, call both of her children to see how they were and to say goodnight to them, and when the rush of performance began to dissipate and normal life started slipping back, go to bed and see if she could sleep. During productions where she knew or liked her colleagues, she looked forward to the conviviality of dinner after the show, of jokes and stories about agents and managers and theatre directors, of being in the company of those with whom she had just experienced the miracle of making music. But here, in Venice, a city where she had spent a great deal of time and where she should know a lot of people, she had no desire to mingle with her colleagues: a baritone who spoke only of his success, a conductor who disliked her and found the feeling hard to disguise, and a tenor who seemed to have fallen in love with her – and she looked herself in the eye when she maintained this silently – with certainly no encouragement from her. Not only was he little more than a decade older than her son; he was far too innocent to interest her as a person.
As she stood there, it occurred to her that she had effectively blocked out the flowers. And the vases. Should the man who had sent them be at the exit, she should at least be seen leaving the theatre with one of the bouquets. ‘To hell with him,’ she said to the woman in the mirror, who nodded back at her in sage agreement.
It had happened first in London, two months before, after the last performance of Nozze, when the single yellow roses had rained down on her at the first curtain call, and during each successive one. Then at a solo recital in St Petersburg, they had fallen amidst quite a number of more traditional bouquets. She had been charmed by the way some of the Russians, most of them women, had walked to the front of the theatre after the performance and handed the bouquets up to her on stage. Flavia liked seeing the eyes of the person who gave her flowers or said something nice to her: it was more human, somehow.
Then it happened here, the opening night, scores of them falling like yellow rain, but she had found none in the dressing room after that performance. Yet they had appeared again tonight. No name, no information, no note to explain such an excessive gesture.
She was stalling: she didn’t want to have to decide about the flowers, and she didn’t want to have to go and sign programmes and exchange small talk with strangers or, sometimes worse, with those fans who came to many performances and believed that frequency earned familiarity.
She slipped the cotton bag over her shoulder and ran her hand through her hair again; it was dry. Outside, she saw the dresser at the end of the corridor. ‘Marina,’ she called.
‘Sì, Signora,’ the woman answered, approaching her.
‘If you’d like, take the roses home with you: you and the other dressers. Anyone who wants them.’
She didn’t answer at once, which surprised Flavia. How often were women given dozens of roses? But then Marina’s face brightened in obvious delight. ‘That’s very kind of you, Signora, but don’t you want to take some of them?’ She waved her arm towards the room, where the flowers glowed like artificial daylight.
Flavia shook the idea away. ‘No, you can take them all.’
‘But your vases?’ Marina asked. ‘Will they be safe if we leave them here?’
‘They aren’t mine. You can have them, as well, if you like,’ Flavia said, patting her arm. In a softer voice, she added, ‘You take the Venini, all right?’ She turned away towards the elevator that would take her to her waiting fans.
3
Flavia was aware of how long it had taken her to change and hoped that the long delay would have discouraged some of the people waiting for her. She was tired and hungry: after five hours in a crowded theatre, surrounded by people behind, on, and in front of the stage, she wanted only to find a quiet place to eat in peace and solitude.
She stepped from the elevator and started down the long corridor that led to the porter’s office and the space in front of it where guests could wait. The applause started while she was still ten metres from them, and she flashed her most delighted smile, the one she kept for her fans. Seeing them, she was glad that she had made the attempt to disguise how very tired she was. She quickened her step, the singer eager to see and hear her fans, sign their programmes, thank them for having waited all this time for her.
At the beginning of her career, these meetings had been a source of triumphant joy to her: they cared enough to wait to see her, wanted her acknowledgement, her attention, some sign that their praise was important to her. It was then, and it was now: she was honest enough to admit that she still needed their praise. If only, if only they could be faster about it: say they enjoyed the opera, or her performance, and then shake her hand and leave.
She saw the first two, a married couple – elderly now, both of them shorter than when she had first seen them, years ago. They lived in Milano and came to many of her performances, then came backstage only to thank her and shake her hand. She had seen them all these years but still she didn’t know their names. Behind them stood another couple, younger and less willing to thank her and leave. Bernardo, the one with the beard – she remembered because both words began with ‘B’ – always started with praise for a single phrase or, occasionally, a single note, clearly meant as evidence that he knew as much about music as she did. The other, Gilberto, stood to one side and took their picture as she signed their programme, then shook her hand and gave her generic thanks, Bernardo having taken care of the details.
When they left, their place was taken by a tall man with a light overcoat draped over his shoulders. Flavia noticed that the collar was velvet and tried to recall the last time she had seen that: probably after an opening night or gala concert. His white hair contrasted with his deeply tanned face. He bent to kiss the hand she offered him, said he had seen the role sung by Callas at Covent Garden half a century ago, and thanked her without causing the embarrassment any comparison would make, a delicacy she appreciated.
Next was a soft-faced young woman with brown hair and badly chosen lipstick. In fact, Flavia suspected she had put it on especially to meet her, so strongly did it clash with her pale skin. Flavia took her outstretched hand and started to look behind her to see how many people were still there. When the young woman – she wasn’t much more than twenty – said how much she had enjoyed the opera, she said these simple words in the most beautiful speaking voice Flavia could remember hearing. It was a deep, luscious contralto, its depth and richness in wild contrast to the girl’s evident youth. The thrill it caused Flavia was almost sensual, like having her face stroked by a cashmere scarf. Or a human hand.
‘Are you a singer?’ Flavia asked automatically.
‘A student, Signora,’ she answered, and the simple response struck Flavia like a cello’s lowest note.
‘Where?’
‘The Conservatory of Paris, Signora. I’m in my final year.’ She could see that the girl was sweating with nervousness, but her voice was as steady as a battleship in a tranquil sea. As they continued to speak, Flavia sensed the growing restlessness of the people standing behind the girl.
‘Good luck to you, then,’ she said, and shook the girl’s hand again. If she sang with that same voice – something that was often not the case – in a couple of years she’d be on the other side of this crowd, meas
uring out pleasantries and thanks to grateful fans, going out to dinner with other singers, not standing awkwardly in front of them.
Valiantly, Flavia shook hands, smiled, spoke to people and thanked them for their compliments and good will, said how happy she was that they had stayed behind to say hello. She signed programmes and CDs, careful always to ask the name or names of the people to whom to write the dedication. Never once did she show impatience or reluctance to listen to fans’ stories. She might as well have had a sign saying ‘Talk to Me’ printed on her forehead, so much did the people believe she wanted to hear what they had to say. All that made her worthy of their trust and affection, she kept telling herself, was her ability to sing. And, she thought, her ability to act. Her eyes closed, and she raised one hand to wipe at them, as if something had flown into one of them. Then she blinked a few times, and beamed at the crowd.
She noticed, in the midst of the remaining people, a middle-aged man at the back of the group: brown-haired, head lowered to listen to something the woman next to him was saying. The woman was more interesting: natural blonde, powerful nose, light eyes, probably older than she looked. She smiled at whatever the man had said and batted her head a few times against his shoulder, then stood back and looked up at him. The man wrapped an arm around her and pulled her towards him before turning to look at what was happening at the head of the queue.
She recognized him then, though it had been years since she’d last seen him. There was more grey in his hair; his face was thinner, and there was a crease running from the left corner of his mouth down to his chin that she didn’t remember from before.
‘Signora Petrelli,’ a young man who had somehow got hold of her hand said, ‘I can only tell you it was wonderful. It’s my first time at the opera.’ Did he blush at saying that? Surely, admitting it seemed difficult for him.
She returned the pressure of his hand. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘Tosca’s a wonderful way to begin.’ He nodded, eyes wide with the magic of it. ‘I hope it made you want to see another,’ Flavia added.
‘Oh, yes. I had no idea it could be so . . .’ He shrugged at his inability to express his meaning, grabbed at her hand again, and for a moment she feared he was going to pull it to his mouth and kiss it. But he let it go and said, ‘Thank you’, and was gone.
There were four more, and then the man and the blonde woman were in front of her. He put out his hand and said, ‘Signora, I told you my wife and I would like to hear you sing.’ With a smile that deepened the wrinkles in his face, he added, ‘It was worth the wait.’
‘And I told you,’ she said, ignoring the compliment and extending her hand to the woman, ‘that I wanted to invite you both to a performance.’ After the two women shook hands, Flavia said, ‘You should have got in touch with me. I would have left tickets. I promised you.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ the blonde woman said. ‘But my father has an abbonamento, and he gave us the tickets.’ As if to ward off the suspicion that they might have come only because her parents didn’t want to, she added, ‘We would have come anyway, but my parents are busy tonight.’
Flavia nodded, then looked over their shoulders to see if there were more people, but there were none. Suddenly she didn’t know how this meeting was meant to conclude. She had reason to be grateful to this man, who had saved her from awful . . . she didn’t know what, exactly, because his help had been so quick and so complete. He had saved her twice, not once, and the second time he had also saved the person most dear to her at the time. After that, she had met him once for coffee, and then he had disappeared; or she had, swept up by a career in the ascendant, singing in other cities, other theatres, leaving behind this provincial city and this very provincial theatre. Life, horizons, talent had all expanded, and she had not thought about him for years.
‘It was thrilling,’ the woman said. ‘It’s not an opera I usually like, but tonight it was real, and moving. I understand why so many people love it.’ Turning to her husband, she added, ‘Though it’s not a very complimentary picture of a policeman, is it?’
‘Just another day at the office, my dear, doing those things we do so well,’ he said amiably. ‘Sexual blackmail, attempted rape, murder, abuse of office.’ Then, to Flavia, ‘It made me feel right at home.’
She laughed outright and remembered then that he was a man who took himself with a certain lack of seriousness. Should she invite them to dinner? They would be easy, amusing company, but she didn’t know if she wanted company at all, not after the performance and not after the sight of those flowers.
He saw her hesitation and made the decision for them. ‘That’s where we have to go now,’ he said. ‘Home.’ He didn’t make an excuse or offer an explanation, and she appreciated that.
Awkwardness fell upon them, and all Flavia could think to say was, ‘I’m here for another week or so. Perhaps you’d like’ – she used the plural – ‘to have a drink.’
The woman surprised her by asking, ‘Are you free for dinner Sunday evening?’
Over the years, Flavia had developed, and often used, the tactic of delay and would speak of another pending invitation when she was unsure about whether she wanted to accept an offer or needed time to consider it. But then she thought of the roses and that she might tell him about them and said, ‘Yes, I am.’ Not wanting them to think she was lonely and abandoned in the city, she added, ‘I’m busy tomorrow night – so Sunday would be perfect.’
‘Would you mind coming to my parents’?’ In quick explanation, the woman added, ‘They leave for London next week, so it’s our only chance to see them before they go.’
‘But can you just invite . . .’ Flavia began, careful to use the formal ‘Lei’ with her, though she had used the familiar ‘tu’ with her husband.
‘Of course,’ the woman answered even before Flavia had a chance to ask the question. ‘In fact, both of them would be delighted if you could come. My father’s been a fan for years, and my mother still talks about your Violetta.’
‘In that case,’ Flavia said, ‘I’d be delighted.’
‘If you’d like to bring someone,’ the man said but left the sentence unfinished.
‘That’s very kind,’ she said blandly, ‘but I’ll come alone.’
‘Ah,’ he answered, and she registered his response.
‘It’s in Dorsoduro, just off Campo San Barnaba,’ his wife said, then slipped into the familiar ‘tu’. ‘You go down the calle to the left of the church, on the other side of the canal. It’s the last door on the left. Falier.’
‘What time?’ asked Flavia, who had already visualized the location.
‘Eight-thirty,’ she answered, whereupon her husband pulled out his telefonino and initiated the business of exchanging numbers.
‘Fine,’ Flavia said after entering both their numbers, ‘and thank you for the invitation.’ Still curious about the flowers, she said, ‘I have to have a word with the porter.’
When they had shaken hands again, Flavia Petrelli went towards the porter’s window, and Paola Falier and Guido Brunetti left the theatre.
4
When Flavia reached the window of the porter’s office, he was gone, perhaps to make a round of the theatre or more likely to go home. She wanted him to tell her in more detail how the roses had arrived and about the men who brought them. Which florist had they used? Her favourite, Biancat, had closed: she had found that out the day after she arrived, when she had gone to get some flowers for the apartment and had discovered that the bright abundance of the florist had been replaced by two shops selling shoddy made-in-China purses and wallets. The colours of the handbags in the window reminded Flavia of the cheap sweets her children had loved to eat when they were very young: vicious reds, violent greens, vulgar everything else. The bags were made from some sort of material that failed, no matter how hard its attempt or garish its colours, to look like anything but plastic.
Talking to the porter could wait a day, she decided, and left the theatre. She star
ted towards the apartment, half of a secondo piano nobile in Dorsoduro, not far from the Accademia Bridge. Since she had arrived, a month ago, her Venetian colleagues had talked of little but the decline of the city and its gradual transformation into Disneyland on the Adriatic. To walk anywhere in the centre at midday was to push through shoals of people; to ride a vaporetto was sometimes impossible, often unpleasant. Biancat was gone: but why should she care? Though she was a northerner, she wasn’t Venetian, and so why, or to whom, the Venetians chose to sell their patrimony was none of her business. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about a man who sold his birthright for – a phrase that had fascinated her when she’d first heard it in catechism class decades ago – ‘a mess of pottage’? The words reminded her how hungry she was.
She stopped in Campo Santo Stefano and had a pasta at Beccafico, though she paid little attention to what she ate, and drank only half of the glass of Teroldego. Less, and she would not sleep; more, and she would not sleep. Then across the bridge, to the left, over the bridge at San Vio, down to the first left, key in the door, and into the cavernous entrance hall of the palazzo.
Flavia paused at the bottom of the stairs, not from tiredness so much as from habit. After every performance, unless the time difference was disruptive, she tried to call both of her children, but to do that she had to come to peace with the performance she had just given. She played her memory of the first act, found nothing much to criticize. Same with the second. Third, and the young tenor did go a bit wobbly, but he’d had little enough support from the conductor, who made no attempt to disguise his low opinion of anything except his high notes. Her performance had been good. Undistinguished, but good. It wasn’t much of an opera, truth to tell, only a few bits where her voice could shine, but she had worked with the stage director enough times for him to give her free rein, so the dramatic scenes had worked to her advantage.