Sea Lovers

by Valerie Martin

  AT THE OPERA

  Though it was not in his nature, to preserve his life Nikos became a nocturnal creature. In the daylight hours Mathilde provided various refuges where he sheltered from the eyes of men: the cool shadows of a pine forest, posted round with placards warning trespassers they would be shot; a lean-to at the edge of a rice field; and a run-down barn used for grain storage, which served him both for rest and for food. In the evenings he made his way carefully along the lanes and across the lawn that ended in the French doors of Mathilde’s drawing room.

  Nikos was wild and defiant, but like many unruly children, he was tamed by an exciting story. Mathilde had these in good supply, tales of romance, revenge, and treachery from the operas she adored. Whenever a new score arrived from Paris or Milan, she read the libretto to him first, then sat down at the piano and played the various arias, singing along in her clear, high voice. During these concerts Nikos positioned himself near the soundboard, his head bowed, his eyes closed, like a man communing with divinity.

  He was enchanted by the idea of the opera, a story set to music and acted out before an audience. Mathilde described the instruments of the orchestra, the costumes, the elaborate sets, the transformation on the stage of day into night, forest into castle, sunlight into thunderous storms threatening a group of hunters gathered around a fire or startling a beautiful woman as she rushed along a moonlit shore to the arms of her waiting lover.

  The opera that most particularly affected Nikos was Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Often he asked Mathilde to play the music from the great sextet in the second act, when Lucia is tricked into marriage and her lover, Edgardo, returns to find himself betrayed. Nikos’s voice was untrained, but he taught himself to sing Edgardo’s stunned accusations as Mathilde, taking Lucia’s part, melodiously protested the cruelty of her fate.

  One evening in the fall, Mathilde greeted her companion with the news that a company traveling from Milan would offer four performances of Donizetti’s sublime music at the French Opera House in New Orleans. Nikos declared that he would risk all to see this spectacle. Mathilde considered the problem. “I can hide you in my box before the audience comes in,” she said. “No one need be the wiser. You’ll have to wear an evening coat. And a cloak.”

  They laid their plans in Mathilde’s drawing room, where they met with the curtains drawn, the door bolted, and the servants forbidden to knock on the door. She stood on a chair and measured her friend’s chest, arms, and neck; she would use her father’s measurements for the unnecessary pants. “I can’t very well order half a suit,” she explained. “We’ll need a long cloak, enormously long. I’ll order two and sew them together.”

  They agreed to travel separately to the city; Nikos was to go by night on the river road. He knew the route, as it was on this road that he had escaped the terrors of the town, the bustling wharves and the drunken sailors who, as he rushed past them, swore that he was the apparition of the drink they had just had or the one they needed. Mathilde would take her carriage and one trusted servant and meet him at her townhouse, where she would let him in at the courtyard gate. There he would dress for his first public appearance. Then he would follow her at a little distance so that she could make sure the way was clear. Her generous financial support of the opera house gave her access to keys, back staircases, and the largest box, draped inside and out with velvet curtains which could be opened and closed at the discretion of the box holder. In the past Mathilde had appeared in the company of a suitor or a relative; there would be talk about the tall stranger who stood in the shadows behind her gilt-edged chair, but gossip about Mathilde Benoit was nothing new. When the opera was over, Nikos and Mathilde would stay in the box until the crowd was gone and then disappear into the night.

  Their careful preparations were successful, and at the appointed hour Mathilde took her seat at the front of her box, where she was observed in conversation with an elegant stranger who stood in the shadows behind her. Was it her cousin Gaston? The several pairs of opera glasses trained and focused upon the heiress never satisfactorily answered that question. The orchestra struck up the overture, the bustle in the audience subsided, the lights dimmed, and the golden curtains opened upon a misty Scottish moor. Mathilde heard Nikos draw in his breath. A squadron of men dressed in cloaks, embroidered doublets, puffy velvet breeches, and tall boots invaded the scene, responding raucously to their leader, who adjured them to search the ruins near the tower. Mathilde gave in at once, absorbed by the familiar story though acutely conscious of her companion, who stood utterly still in the darkness behind her. He was silent through the lovers’ tryst and the brother’s vow, but toward the end of the sextet he muttered ingrata along with the tenor. When the act was over and the lights flared up amid the applause of the audience, Mathilde turned to Nikos. He was blotting his streaming eyes with his handkerchief, his lips trembling with suppressed emotion.

  “So you like it?” Mathilde said.

  “Like it!” he exclaimed. “It’s magnificent. This is the most sublime experience of my life.”

  Mathilde laughed. The audience had begun to move about. She drew the curtain half across and motioned Nikos to back in behind it.

  During the intermission Mathilde did not leave her box. She opened the door to the hall and ordered a bottle of champagne and two glasses from the boy stationed there. When the wine was handed in, she poured out a glass for Nikos, who quaffed it in one gulp. “Are you miserable in this close space?” she asked.

  “No, no,” he said. “The air is very bad, but I don’t mind.” He held out his glass. “I could drink a bucket of this.”

  “I’m afraid it only comes in bottles,” she said, refilling his glass. The gaslights flickered, dimming one by one, and the audience filtered in below them, the women fanning themselves, exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors. Mathilde looked down upon the crowd; she had no wish to be among them and sent a grateful thought to her father, whose industry and financial acumen had set her apart, above the reach of wagging tongues and petty gossip. The orchestra tuned up plaintively; it was dark in the house.

  “You can come out now,” Mathilde said, and Nikos, appearing from behind the drape, took his place as before. Mathilde leaned back to speak to him, but as she did so there was a searing flash of light and a clap of thunder, followed by gasps and nervous laughter in the audience. Nikos was so startled he backed into the door, threw up his hands, and cried, “Oh, gods.” The stage curtain parted upon a lavishly furnished tower room; a fierce storm lashed the windows with rain, lightning flashed, and thunder cracked. “Wonderful,” Nikos murmured, and Mathilde turned back to the stage, where Edgardo was proclaiming that the weather was no more fearful than his destiny.

  After Lucia’s mad scene, after Edgardo’s dramatic suicide, after the applause and the several curtain calls, the curtain closed and the lights came up. Mathilde sat quietly in the box waiting for the audience to exit. Their timing was precise: They would make their escape between the moment when the house was empty and the arrival of the ushers, who would come in to pick up the glasses, the wadded programs, the forgotten scarf or jeweled reticule. Nikos was ecstatic, his pale eyes still moist from emotion. “It was just as you promised,” he whispered. “But I hadn’t pictured how it would feel. I thought it would be very pretty, very charming, though the story is sad, but I didn’t expect it to be so overpowering.”

  While he chattered on, Mathilde arranged the cape over his back. “The singing was very fine,” she observed.

  “The singing,” he said, “yes, and the acting!”

  “Pull the hood up,” Mathilde instructed, and Nikos complied, drawing the heavy velvet cowl low over his forehead. Mathilde stepped back to take in the effect. “You look like a man pulling a piano on hooves,” she said.

  All she could see of his face was his toothy smile. “Very funny,” he said.

  Mathilde opened the door a crack and peered into the hall. Then she slipped out and made a quick foray to the
staircase and back again. She pulled the door open wide and motioned to Nikos, who held the hood up over his eyes with both hands, nervous now and frowning. “Follow me,” Mathilde said.

  “Don’t go too fast,” he said. “That staircase will be worse going down than it was coming up.” In truth it was a difficult descent. The wide marble stairs curved perilously, the rail was low. He had to feel his way, step by step, his upper body bent over his knees. Mathilde stood at the landing, watching his awkward progress. “You’re almost there,” she assured him. He swished his tail and, pushing off with his back legs, took the last few steps in a hop. Mathilde dashed out in front of him, leading him to the stage door. This was a heavy cypress plank that rolled on casters. Cautiously she pulled it aside and peered out into the dark alley. Two men stood beneath the streetlamp on the corner, their voices raised in animated conversation.

  “What’s going on?” Nikos asked, pressing close behind her. Mathilde glanced in the opposite direction; no one was in sight.

  A shout of laughter issued from the stair landing, followed by the rap of leather soles on marble; the ushers were descending.

  “We’ll have to leave the door open and make a run for it,” Mathilde said. She approached her companion, pulling the cloak back from his flank.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Bend down,” she said. “I’ll get on your back and guide you. Once we’re outside, go left, to the cross street, and go quickly.”

  “I don’t know,” Nikos said. “I don’t think this is a good idea.” Mathilde slid the door along the track. The two men beneath the lamp were still talking volubly, interrupting each other, their voices rising with an edge of hysteria.

  “Trust me,” Mathilde said. “Bend down.” Nikos obeyed and in a moment she was on his back, arranging her skirt and pulling the cape over her shoulders, wrapping her fingers in his mane. “Go,” she said, unconsciously digging her evening slipper into his side. Nikos surged into the alley, startling a shout from the arguing men, but before they could even be sure what it was they saw—a man surely, riding a horse covered in a long cape—Nikos reached the corner, and at Mathilde’s cry, “Go right,” he was out of sight. This street was mercifully empty but lined with tall, deep-balconied houses lit by gas lamps. “Straight on,” Mathilde ordered, bringing her lips close to her mount’s shoulder, “two blocks, then left into the alley.”

  “Hold on,” Nikos said, breaking into a gallop. The clatter of hooves against paving bricks startled a night watchman, who rushed out from a side street shouting a warning, for racing in the Carré was strictly forbidden. Nikos veered away, his cape streaming out from his shoulders like a flapping black wing, leaving his pursuer rubbing his eyes in wonder, uncertain exactly what he had seen. Nikos swerved into the narrow alley, which was dark and quiet, both sides lined with stucco walls covered in vines. “Slow down,” Mathilde said. “No one will see us here.” He slowed to a trot, looking back anxiously over his shoulder. “Is he following us?” he asked.

  “No,” Mathilde said. “Walk now so you don’t make so much noise.” He slowed, bringing each hoof down carefully. His breath was labored and harsh, and beneath her knees Mathilde could feel the nervous quivering of his muscles. “We can go four blocks here, then we’ll have to cross Rue Royale, and then it’s just one more block to my house.”

  “I’d rather run,” Nikos said.

  “We’ll be there soon,” Mathilde assured him. She patted his back and found the evening coat soaked through with sweat. “Calm down,” she said.

  They had one more fright at the end of the alley, a lamplighter on a ladder replacing a globe, but he was so absorbed in his task that Nikos slipped by unseen on the opposite sidewalk. At Mathilde’s house, she alighted from his back and opened the gate. Nikos, glancing about as if he expected to be apprehended at any moment, bolted to safety. He had his tie and coat off before Mathilde had closed the bar. “What a night,” he murmured, “what a night.” He followed her, shedding his sodden shirt, across the courtyard and in at the wide French doors. A servant had left a fire and a chilled bottle of champagne for the mistress’s return, then gone off to bed.

  Nikos made straight for the refreshment, skillfully popping the cork and filling two glasses. Mathilde was occupied with drawing the drapes. They didn’t speak for several moments, during which snatches of romantic melodies and dramatic encounters lingered in Mathilde’s imagination. When she turned to her companion, who held out a glass to her, his eyes golden in the lamplight, she had the sensation that she was on a stage; that an audience, poised between engagement and disbelief, hung upon her words. “An enchanting evening,” she said.

  “Nothing like it in my memory,” Nikos agreed. “So many new sensations.” He set his glass down upon the tray. “I’m trembling from the excitement and the strangeness of it all.” Tears stood in his eyes; he sniffed, lifting his chin and running his palm across his cheek, down his throat. “No one has ever been on my back before,” he said. He took up a napkin, dabbed at his nose, then shuddered and burst into sobs. “It was so unexpected,” he moaned. “So wonderful and strange. I felt we were one.”

  Mathilde sipped her wine, at a loss for words. It hadn’t occurred to her that no one would ever have ridden Nikos; he was, after all…Now he drew in his breath, swabbing his eyes with the napkin as he maneuvered between a chaise and a plant stand on which an enormous fern trembled in the humid air. “Mathilde,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She took a step back. “These feelings are new to me,” he explained. Then, clumsily, bending over his front legs as he folded them beneath him on the carpet, he came down upon his knees. “Mathilde,” he said again. “May the gods forgive me. I am completely yours.”

  A VISIT FROM THE PRIEST

  In the spring Mathilde received a card from Monsieur Delery, her favorite importer, who kept a shop on Rue Royale. He wrote to announce the arrival of a new shipment from Paris: fine brocade, carpets, tapestries, furniture, paintings, and statuary. She wanted an étagère for her dining room in the townhouse and an armoire for the farmhouse. On her next visit to town she made a point of stopping in at Monsieur Delery’s emporium. As she browsed among the luxurious displays, the importer pointed out those items he thought might particularly attract her interest: a painting of the racetrack at Deauville, a carpet with a design of red roses on a pale green ground, which he was certain would look well in her dining room, a bolt of lavender voile embroidered with a gold thread that would make festive curtains for the summer season. At the back of the shop she paused to examine a grouping of statuary: a marble woman carrying a vessel on one shoulder, the folds of her gown disarrayed to reveal a taut white nipple on a veined white breast; a bronze greyhound, life-size, his legs gathered for a burst of speed; a marble bust of a garlanded emperor gazing stupidly across the table at an ebony panther with eyes of glittering green stone, crouched to pounce upon him. Mathilde was turning away when she spied, beyond the emperor’s nose, partially obscured by the raised arm of a porcelain girl leaning on an arbor, the shapely legs of a horse. She leaned across the table for a closer look. Monsieur Delery feared she had grazed her hip against the table edge, for she let out a startled “Oh!”

  Angling past the porcelain girl, Mathilde cast the proprietor the confident smile of a gratified customer. The statue, bronze on a black marble base, was not large. It was designed to grace a mantel or an entry table. “Where did you get this?” she asked as he came up behind her, worriedly stroking his chin. “Ah,” he said, “that’s old Chiron. A fanciful thing. It was in a box with Saint Jude and the Archangel Michael, inappropriately enough. I think it was the dealer’s idea of a joke, but it’s a fine piece of work.”

  “I’ll take it,” Mathilde announced.

  Monsieur Delery gave her an anxious smile. “I wouldn’t think this quite a suitable piece for the home of a single lady. I’d rather expect to find it in a gentlemen’s club, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I do mind
,” Mathilde replied. “I’ll take this, and the carpet and the armoire with the rosewood inlay. Ship them all to the farm.”

  “As you wish,” the doubtful proprietor acquiesced. There was no point in quarreling with a customer over a matter of taste, especially one so strong-minded as Mathilde Benoit. But oh, he thought as she turned her attention to a glass-fronted étagère, how this purchase would have horrified her father.

  Once the statue was installed in the foyer, replacing a marble bust of Napoleon that had glowered at visitors for thirty years, Mathilde brought Nikos through the dark hall to view it. “It’s Chiron,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Monsieur Delery told me. Did you know him?”

  Nikos snorted. “He was before my time. Why would you buy such a thing?”

  “I had to buy it,” she said solemnly. “When I saw it, I knew it had been sent to me.”

  “By whom?”

  “By the Fates.”

  “And are you tempting the Fates, Mathilde, displaying it here where anyone who visits you will see it?”

  She smiled. “Why should I care what people say?”

  “You should care what they think.”

  “I don’t care,” she insisted.

  But she should have cared. The town was already outraged by Mathilde’s indifference to the local swains and her preference for a man she had met who knew where, a man who, according to the servants, visited her only at night, a man so enchanted with his horse that he brought it into the drawing room. So rumor flew from house to house, flapping its feathered wings and wagging its countless tongues, and it wasn’t long before Father Desmond heard the din and made up his mind to pay a pastoral visit on his wayward parishioner.

  Nikos was in the drawing room finishing his favorite meal, a bowl of oat porridge and a glass of red wine, while Mathilde, seated at the piano, played to him from a new score. He claimed that oat porridge satisfied both his man and his beast. Chewing grass, hay, and grain was the opposite of pleasure in dining, but his stomach wasn’t designed for much else. The standing order for a large bowl of porridge was one of the many mysteries that created a buzz in Mathilde’s kitchen, despite her assurance that the doctor had recommended it for her health. As Father Desmond gripped the cord and slapped the clapper inside the bell, Nikos clanged his spoon into the empty bowl, refilled his wineglass, and lifted it to his lips. “Visitors?” he said.