by Rex Baron
Without hesitation Paulo pressed forward, leaning into her and kissed her on the mouth. Lucy drew back for breath and saw David framed in the doorway of the compartment.
“Well, well,” he said with an uncharacteristic smirk, “I see that you two are wasting no time in getting acquainted.”
On the way home, Lucy insisted to David that she had no interest in Paulo, and that the spontaneous kiss had been nothing more than an unfortunate impulse on the part of the young actor. But secretly, she was glad for the glowing ember of excitement that she still felt in her chest. It was not a serious feeling, but the first real feeling of any kind she had known in this strange country.
She stepped into David and Celia's darkened apartment, still seeing Paulo's exotic face in her mind's eye.
He was beautiful and dangerously intoxicating, truly not a man to be taken seriously, she reminded herself. But she had, after all, met the man of her dreams.
As she started toward the bedroom, she noticed a blue envelope from the afternoon post on the side table.
She sighed deeply and decided that she would open it in the morning.
The letter remained unopened. The following day Lucy awoke to find the entire apartment filled with flowers, each bouquet containing a different card describing in dramatic terms Paulo's perception of the evening.
The maid had become discouraged trying to find containers for the multitudes of roses that had started arriving just after dawn and had taken to piling them in the washbasins.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1921 New York Teashop
Celia went out early. She had gone to the teashop on the corner to have her breakfast, complaining that the overpowering smell of all the flowers took her breath away.
She sat in the corner of a frilly little room, designed to be pleasant for women of her age. She hated the lace curtains and the hideous African violet on the tiny starched table.
Could she possibly be as lifeless as these other women her age, who sat around her, sipping their tea with their silly hats and their furs dropped down from their shoulders. On the counter, a display card for throat lozenges with Lucy's picture on it caught her attention. She could not seem to escape the girl's youth.
Everywhere, she was reminded of the contrast with herself and those like her, who sat mindlessly drinking tea with their coats half on, while pretty, hatless girls like Lucy ruined their lives.
Celia stared down at the grotesque little African violet on the table with its furry, dull leaves and hearty purple flower. Hearty and dull, just like all the over-upholstered matrons that surrounded her in the teashop. It was a flower that she would never have thought would be associated with her in any way. She had long associated herself with the white lily. It suited her... because David had told her so.
It was many years ago, 1899 to be exact, when she had first met David Montague. She was in Rome with her aunt, plodding her way through the “Grand Tour” that was meant to serve as a cultural polishing for girls of her social class at age nineteen. She had changed her clothes three times a day, in order to not appear wilted in the sweltering September sun, and dragged off to see yet another room full of paintings, gorged with alarmingly twisted naked bodies... painted by one of the endless list of masters, who she was expected to memorize and skillfully work into conversation at every possible opportunity. She was not particularly fond of paintings, a secret that she struggled to keep, even from her long-suffering aunt. She found most of them either lurid or silly and, to her mind, unnecessarily melodramatic. Why would any accomplished, respectable painter depict scenes of seemingly heroic events, like the sack of Rome, merely as an excuse to display dozens of naked bodies in strange and violent activities? Surely, people of the ancient world would have had the good sense to wear clothing, or, at the very least, a pair of shoes, if they were planning to overtake and plunder a city. What extremely unhygienic and distressing times those must have been, Celia had thought to herself with a sigh, as she pondered yet another classical catastrophe captured in paint.
She had been on an outing to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, to educate herself on the more current and avant-garde styles of painting that might make for acceptable conversation amongst the younger set. People who, like herself, had experienced the forced march through European culture and antiquity as a way of bettering themselves, making them at least appear to have breeding and refinement.
Her aunt had lingered in the Salon de Canova, which was mostly filled with marble busts of wealthy patrons that Signor Antonio Canova had conjured into greatness by imbuing them with noble features and fine lines. What does fine lines mean? Celia had asked herself. They are not drawings, but hunks of stone shaped into rather fine-looking heads... nothing more. There were several self-portraits of the sculptor as a young man rendered in oil paint, perhaps painted before he struck his stride as a cutter of stone. One of them showed the young artist, staring directly at the viewer, very much in keeping with portraits of that type. But there was something about the handsomeness of the face and the fullness of his lips that made Celia uncomfortable. It was as if she could see the breath issuing from between his pale, parted lips. That, coupled with the intensity with which he held her in his gaze made her feel slightly dizzy and clammy. She touched her gloved hand to her throat to absorb the glow of moisture that the painting had elicited, and left the room.
Celia wandered the adjacent salon, struggling to read the painting descriptions in Italian. She leaned in close to try and decipher the fine print.
“Scusi... posso aiutarti?” she heard a voice coming from just behind her.
She turned to see a fine-looking man with handsome features that might have been one of Signor Canova’s portrait busts come to life. He was distinguished... graying just a touch at the temples, and she guessed his age to be somewhere in his late thirties. Her appraisal took only an instant. That was all the time a young lady, from a good family, had to form an opinion as to whether she might speak to a strange gentleman or not. His waistcoat and striped trousers were impeccable, as was the entirety of his presentation, but, nonetheless, she could not help noticing that he was wearing yellow gloves with his otherwise gray and respectable attire.
She could not turn her eyes away from the cloth fingers that gripped his fine straw hat. They reminded her of a romantic character in a scandalous novel by Gustave Flaubert that wore just such gloves in what she imagined to be the exact same colour. She had hidden in her room and read the forbidden book while she was at school, ever mindful that none of the teachers or dormitory proctors would catch even a glimpse of it and recognize the depths of her secret passions.
Gloves of that colour, on a man, were a decidedly foreign and theatrical idiosyncrasy that would never have been tolerated back in Illinois. But the man before her seemed respectable enough, in spite of his disruptive display of frivolity.
“Buon Pomeriggio,” Celia answered, reserving her smile for later.
“Scusi Signorina, ma posso aiutarti a leggere la descrizione?”
Celia stared blankly at the mesmerizing eyes that held her transfixed, far more manly and arresting than any she had seen in the best of the paintings the gallery had to offer. He craned his neck slightly forward to help her focus her concentration and, instantly, she broke into a nervous grin.
“I’m sorry Signor, but I’m afraid my Italian is rather beastly. I’m the wrong person to ask, if you need help,” Celia replied.
The man laughed.
“I thought it was rather you that looked as if you might be in need of help,” he answered in perfect American, Ivy League English. “I’m David Montague. I presume, I’m speaking to a fellow American.”
Celia nodded, careful not to display too much enthusiasm at meeting an American compatriot.
He lowered his eyes and looked out at her from under dark mysterious brows.
“On your tour... are you? And I suspect with an older sister or a maiden aunt.”
Celia’s hand raced to her mouth to contain an impetuous little giggle. She peered around cautiously to be certain her aunt was not within earshot.
“As a matter of fact I am... does it look that obvious?”
“Let’s just say you don’t appear to be much of an art lover.”
Celia had thought at first to protest and counter his observation with a contradiction, but then thought better of it and welcomed the fact that at least with one person, her secret was out.
“It’s only that I find all these galleries rather alike, and most of the paintings silly and theatrical,” she said with a hint of defiance that made the distinguished man laugh.
“So, you don’t like the theater either?” he asked with a slight pouting gesture that Celia found both surprisingly intimate and attractive at the same time.
“Yes, of course, I like it,” she answered, mildly resenting that he was telling her what she liked and didn’t like. “I go to the music hall and I go to concerts. Yes, I very much enjoy the theater,” she stated defiantly.
“How about opera?” he ventured to ask.
Celia was quiet for a moment before she spoke, weighing in her mind her limited experience with that particular form of high art.
“If I’m honest, Mister Montague, I must admit I have not had much exposure to grand opera, if that’s what you mean. But I have several recordings by Giuseppe Verdi... La Traviata and Aida... and, of course La Bohème.”
David could not suppress a spontaneous grin.
“I see you are as much an ardent fan of the opera as you are of painting,” he said.
Celia returned his comment with a puzzled look.
“La Bohème is not composed by Verdi, but by Giacomo Puccini.”
David chuckled in a good-natured way, but Celia’s face reddened nonetheless.
“Well, now that you’ve had your amusement at my expense, I’ll be on my way,” Celia said in a clipped and unfriendly tone. She turned to make her departure, but David gently stopped her by touching her arm with his yellow, gloved hand.
“Please wait. It was not my intention to offend you. I did not correct you in order to appear superior, but because the opera is my business. The reason I asked you if you liked it was that I intended to ask you to come to a rehearsal. I am assisting maestro Puccini to mount a new work. It is called Tosca and will be premiered this coming January... in only three months’ time.”
Celia stood mute, with his hand still resting on her arm.
“Please say you’ll come... as one American traveling abroad to another, let me offer this experience to you as a small token of friendship. Of course, your aunt is invited as well,” he added as an afterthought.
“What is the opera about?” Celia inquired, hoping to seem more interested.
“The libretto is taken from a play by Victorien Sardou that has been all the rage this past season in Paris. It has everything... intrigue, romance and even Napoleon. It is very melodramatic, as you say, but I sincerely hope that you... and your aunt... will find it diverting. The music is painfully beautiful. Oh, do come.”
Celia nodded her head.
“I’ll speak to my aunt. But I tell you now that I have every intention of seeing to it that she allows me to come. At any rate, I suspect she might find it quite to her advantage... a feather in her cap, to be the first in her social set to see an opera... before it has even premiered.”
David smiled with unrestrained enthusiasm.
“Splendid,” he nearly shouted, attracting punishing stares from the other tourists that populated the hushed and near silent room. “Here is my card. Send this to the Hotel Tripoli in the Via Borghese with your answer, and I will call for you at seven. Oh, do come, dear Miss,” he repeated his entreaty as he bowed slightly and departed, leaving Celia standing in the great hall of paintings, holding his card between her fingers, and feeling a thrill stirring within her that she had not found in Flaubert’s book or any other.
It had been effortless to convince her aunt. As she had suspected, the notion of being the first to see an opera that might be all the rage in Europe, within the year, was more than enough to convince the older woman to accept the invitation.
Celia had spent a long time choosing what to wear for the evening. She had settled on a pale blue evening dress with a matching coat that she had been told worked well with the touch of red in her dark hair, and brought out the colour of her eyes. She had no idea what worldly men of his type, who made their living in the theater, might find attractive, and she had worked herself up into a mild state of anxiety before he arrived with a horse-drawn cab at seven o’clock. She remembered that her aunt had given her a conspiratorial wink and one last appraising inspection as she watched Celia pull on her elbow length gloves and glide toward the lobby to meet her gentleman. She felt as if they were mounting battle stations, and her chaperone wanted to ensure that she had enough ammunition to take siege.
Both she and her aunt were delighted to discover that David had arranged a small supper for them before the rehearsal, and they sat at a special table where a trio of musicians approached and gave them a preview of the music from Puccini’s opera that they were about to hear performed. David had arranged it all. He had gone far beyond her expectations to make that first evening they spent together perfect. At one point, following their repast, he called the waiter, who brought out a silver tray upon which rested a small cluster of white flowers. David took the small bouquet and offered them to Celia.
She remembered that she had cradled them in her hands and looked up into his face with breathless fascination.
“They are a type of lily,” he informed her casually. “I got them for you because they cried out that I do so. And now that I see you with them, I was very clever to listen. They are lovely... and suit you perfectly.”
The waitress brought Celia her pot of tea. The room felt warm, so she let her coat drop from her shoulders and sat there in the teashop exactly the same as all the others.
Of course, Lucy was not to blame for Celia feeling old and discarded. She was a lovely girl, but she stood for something new and unsettling that changed things and made it hard for the older, more settled sort of women. Perhaps it had always been that way and had nothing to do with this strange new time. Perhaps younger women had always just come along, changing the world for those who never thought of growing old.
But the fact remained that David had chosen to take Lucy, the younger woman, to meet his friend, the picture actor. She had been asked, it was true, and as David put it, she had not missed the experience, she had “relinquished” it. That was her prerogative. She had chosen not to go, hoping that he would suffer in some way from the deprivation of her company. She wanted him to notice her absence, but he did not. There had been no protestations, not even what might be called polite coaxing, only a small effortless kiss on the cheek before going out the door.
Celia stared at the little African violet, simple and homely, like these women in hats. Her mind raced back to that time when David had surprised her with that first lily, exotic and rare, as rare as she might once have been. But that was a long time ago, before a marriage of over twenty years to a man who never looked in her eyes anymore. She touched the furry petal of the ugly little African violet and felt sympathy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1921 New York
“Don't breathe,” Miss Auriel said sharply. She had dropped a container of dusting powder on the floor and it exploded, sending white dust into the air like fireworks. Lucy watched her in the dressing room mirror.
The little dresser scooped up the powder in her hands, waving the air to try to shoo away the storm, only adding to the white fury swirling over everything.
“I'm so sorry,” she said mournfully.
“It doesn't matter,” Lucy smiled. “Leave it. It will clear a lot faster if you don't struggle with it.”
The embarrassed girl got to her feet. Without thinking, she brushed the front of her skirt and sent a new c
loud into the air directly over Lucy and her dressing gown.
“I'm such an idiot,” the girl cried in horror.
Lucy giggled.
“It doesn't matter. I haven't started with my makeup yet. There is no harm done.”
“You are very kind. I'm not normally so clumsy, I promise.”
Lucy patted the girl’s hand, the gesture of a much older woman, consoling the ineptitude of some poor young charge.
“The actress who I worked for last would have fired me on the spot for doing that, but then she was a mean old cow. I shouldn't say that I know,” the girl said, catching herself, “but she was... and you are so different... a much better singer too.”
“Thank you,” Lucy nodded in the mirror.
“Do you miss Germany?” Miss Auriel asked.
“Very much.”
“It must be so beautiful there... all of Europe, I mean. I've never been abroad. My sort of family doesn't do things like that. But one day I should like to travel. I should like to become an artist and travel the world.”
A glance toward Lucy at the dressing table, watching her, brought the girl down from her raptures.
“You must think me a great lump for never having been anywhere. You know I was actually born in this town and have never been any farther than Staten Island on a picnic. You've probably been everywhere.”
“Not everywhere. You would be surprised that in many ways our worlds have not been so different. Singing takes long study. It doesn't leave time for much else I'm afraid.”
“But you must have been to Paris?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Then you've been to the cathedrals. I read somewhere that Gothic cathedrals, built in the middle ages, were each built in a way so that the space created by the Nave of the church resonated with a kind of sound, like a musical note, and each church was tuned to have a different note. Collectively, they functioned like a musical scale. When pilgrims traveled from one church to the next, they did it in a special order so that they could be affected by the sound and vibration of each place and come that much closer to God... isn't that amazing?”