The Doctor and the Diva

by Adrienne McDonnell

  As Erika rose to sing, her heart fell into her shoes. If he was too deaf to shape an opinion, why audition at all? Her vocal cords withered before the first notes emerged. He played. (How did he manage so well? From the habit of touch? From memory?) She sang limply while the daughter waited in a chair. As soon as it was done, Erika bowed and thanked him, and she hurried out, knowing she would not return.

  Later that afternoon, feeling somewhat dispirited, she went to sip a limonata at Doney’s famous caffè. There, she saw children—English children—eating cannoli, their tongues licking long hollow tubes filled with sweet ricotta cream. She imagined the bliss that would come over her son’s face if he tasted one.

  Because she could not send Quentin spoonfuls of gelato or panna cotta, she mailed him a package of hard candies that she hoped he’d suck and swallow like love. She sent him a tiny carving of a terra-cotta angel that would fit in his palm. On the Ponte Vecchio, she bought a tooled leather birdcage—a new home for Quentin’s parakeet—and she arranged to have it shipped.

  But no note arrived to thank her for these presents. Quentin was so young, his skills with pen and paper so tentative, that someone needed to prompt him, obviously. But no one did.

  37

  On the morning Erika had spent waiting to audition at Maestro Brassi’s studio, she’d taken a business card left on a vestibule table—that of an English-speaking accompanist advertising his services. Nobody answered Erika’s knock when she went to inquire at his address. The accompanist lived in a neighborhood where wet laundry hung between the narrow houses and rained a few drops on the heads of passersby. The front door was dented and scuffed at the base, evidently having been kicked open on many occasions. She took it upon herself to go directly up. The business card indicated that he lived on the fifth floor, under the roof.

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, Christopher Wise still wore his dressing gown and slippers. At first Erika presumed that he was ill.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “I’ve come to inquire about an accompanist. No one responded when I knocked downstairs—”

  “That’s quite all right,” he assured her, and invited her in. “This is one of those days when I’ve been awfully slow about getting dressed.”

  He was a young American of about twenty-five, the first blond fellow she had seen for days. When he smiled, his nostrils flared, and one dimple was etched like a crescent in his left cheek.

  His living quarters consisted of a single room. In order to change his clothes, he excused himself and disappeared behind a painted wooden screen. While she waited, she heard the pouring of water and splashing as he washed himself in a basin. He called out apologies for the disarray of the place.

  The bed, which doubled as a divan, was unmade. So many books and opera scores lay upon it that Erika could not have sat down. She wondered if he survived on bits of bread and cold soup carried five flights up to his room.

  “You’d like to hear me play while you sing, I suppose,” he said.

  Christopher Wise sight-read effortlessly. He kept the tempi brisk and firm, and still provided her spaces to breathe. His hands showed a surprising span—they arched like bridges and came down forcefully on chords.

  “Your voice is awfully good,” Christopher said. “You may think I’m flattering you, but I’m not.”

  She could tell that his enthusiasm was real. There was something unguarded about him. He shivered, as if he’d just felt a gust of good fortune.

  “I am honestly surprised,” he repeated, “at how marvelous your voice is.”

  His reaction buoyed her, and made her almost giddy. She felt closer to Christopher Wise, suddenly, than to any other person in Florence—closer than she had felt to anyone in weeks. His bow tie was askew. One end of it hung dog-eared. Impulsively she reached over—as she might have done with her son—and set his limp tie right.

  “I haven’t got a piano yet at my new lodgings,” she said. “Would it be all right if I came here in the mornings?”

  They agreed that she would come every morning at ten-thirty. He would drill her for new roles she wished to add to her repertoire. He would help familiarize her with entrances and exits of other cast members.

  “I’m not a good sight reader,” Erika confessed.

  Christopher Wise assured her that they would repeat everything a thousand times, each little parlando stretch, until a new role became instinctive to her.

  Light pervaded the room. His building stood a story higher than the other narrow houses in the neighborhood, and his windows overlooked the terra-cotta rooftops of Florence. With her head thrust through an open pane, she lingered, half-longing to fly out. Odors from the centuries-old streets rose up—scents of dust and cypress, of roses and wet stone.

  He asked how long she had been in Florence. “Have you been to the coffeehouse at the Boboli Gardens?” he asked. “Why don’t we go there right now for something to eat?”

  Exuberantly he trotted down the stairwell steps, moving so fast that he might have been falling down—flight after flight—yet at each landing he turned to wait for her.

  They lingered at the caffè until late afternoon. “A husband and a son,” Christopher repeated. “Was it difficult for you to leave them?”

  “It was the most painful decision I’ve ever made,” she said. She sank into sadness, and for the first time in days, she allowed herself the luxury of a few tears. She took the cloth napkin and blotted the dampness under her eyes.

  He was so receptive a listener that he might have been a womanly confidante. Or did he seem more like a much younger brother? It was hard to know, because she had never had a younger brother.

  To cheer her up, he plucked three fat strawberries from a plate and placed them in her palm. She sniffed them before tasting. Fragoli, she thought, reminded of the fruit’s name.

  From the gazebo-like coffeehouse they could see views of the Arno, the cupola of San Frediano, and the campanile of Santo Spirito, the Duomo, and the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Christopher Wise had no money, she knew, but he had a refinement that made it seem natural for him to be there, drinking dry white wine and biting the tips of wild strawberries with his even white teeth. A caffè suited him better than his shabby room.

  As for his own story, Christopher explained that he had left Chicago about nine months earlier to come to Florence. His ambition was to compose or to conduct, though he had not yet decided which.

  She felt faintly sorry for him when he revealed his aspirations, although she did not quite know why his dreams sounded doomed to her. Why did she have this vision of him in twenty or thirty years: for all his charms, still as an impoverished accompanist? By then he would no longer be considered a young man lit by hopes; by then he would be a sad, faded fellow in rumpled suits who lived for his own private appreciation of culture. Did he secretly believe her yearning for grand accomplishments a little hopeless, too? Why was it that others’ dreams might sound ludicrous, but never our own?

  “Every morning after practice,” Christopher said decisively, “we should go to a different caffè on the Via Tornabuoni, or we should explore other things—like a few old curio shops I know about. In a few weeks, I will have shown you all the little treasures of Florence that have taken me nine months to discover.”

  Erika sighed. “You know, I still haven’t found a good voice teacher.”

  “Maestro Valenti,” Christopher said. “He’s your man. Valenti must know every impresario from Naples to Milan. I’ll take you to audition for him.”

  He announced this with such self-assurance that she realized his circle of professional acquaintances was far greater than she’d assumed. Later she learned that he worked with a number of talented singers. He was poor, perhaps, but ambitious.

  Strolling back past the statues and cypress-lined lanes of the Boboli Gardens, Erika thought what a relief it was to be able to speak in flowing paragraphs to an American, and not have to grope for each sentence in Italian. �
�Do you ever feel lonely?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I have two very close friends, both Americans. They came to Florence around the same time I did. We see each other constantly. What about you? Are you lonesome?”

  She had to admit that she was.

  At dusk, after she’d left Christopher, she stopped to watch a group of boys of various ages kicking a ball in a piazza. Someday Quentin’s voice will deepen and crack like that older one’s, she thought. But I may not be there to see his calves lengthening, or the knobs of muscle forming in his arms. Another boy raced so close past the bench where she sat that she smelled his raw animal scent. He retrieved the ball and hurled it. The boy’s hair was damp; in the heat, his scalp glistened as he bent to tie his shoe.

  As suppertime neared, the pack of boys thinned. The ball drifted, unattended for longer stretches. An impatient mother appeared, and she hooked her arm around her son’s head, pulling him homeward.

  Eventually the square was deserted except for Erika, who remained seated on the bench. No more boys yelled to one another, no ball resounded against the paving stones. Through open windows, the aroma of sizzling meats wafted toward her. During this hour when families gathered together, Erika felt the stone bench underneath her grow cold. On this warm autumn evening, no one in the city of Florence waited for her to return home.

  38

  Since her arrival in Italy, it was the memory of Ravell that gave her courage. On the morning she was hurrying toward her audition at Maestro Valenti’s studio, with a portfolio of scores tucked under her arm, she imagined Ravell beside her. In her mind she planned a letter she might send to him. I am alone now and living in Florence. Like you, I have left Boston—I’ve ended the old life, and begun another.

  In Italy, Erika rarely spoke of her son. In her thoughts, only Ravell understood her torment and her struggle; he forgave what few people could.

  She reached Christopher’s building very early. They had agreed to head to Maestro Valenti’s studio together. On the stairs she passed his two American friends, who seemed to be leaving with terrible haste. Seeing her, they paused and tried to stifle their giddiness.

  “Are you Madame von Kessler?” one of the young men asked. He introduced himself as Mark and the other as Edmund. The two had spent the night on Christopher’s floor. After what must have been a late evening soaked in wine and endless talk, they had failed to carry themselves home until now. Mark’s tie dangled like a snake from his pocket, and Edmund had thrown his vest over one shoulder and held it there by his hooked thumb.

  “Christopher tells us that you’re going to meet Maestro Valenti,” Mark said. His long hair was whisper-fine, his shirt half-buttoned, a little fissure of flesh visible on his well-toned chest. He stood in a languorous way, with his weight leaning into one hip. He was clearly aware of his good looks.

  The shorter man, Edmund, had the homeliness of a Hapsburg monarch with his narrow head and slack jaw, and his red, protuberant lower lip.

  Erika felt a faint dislike for both of them—they, unlike Christopher, struck her as insufferably young. Mark and Edmund acted excessively polite. No doubt they viewed her simply as their friend’s employer. Their presence reminded her that her accompanist’s situation was not as solitary as her own.

  “You are silent this morning,” Christopher said as they walked through the Oltrarno and a street shaded by ancient trees toward the master teacher’s house.

  “I’m thinking—” Erika said.

  “Of what?”

  “You must see me as very old. What age do you suppose I am?”

  “Twenty-nine,” he said at once.

  “I’m far into my thirties.”

  “The perfect age for a mezzo,” he said.

  With the flicker of a smile, she pointed at his bow tie, dog-eared once again. Despite his elegant hands and manners, there was always something askew about Christopher, as if he’d just been napping on a sofa, fully clothed.

  Tucking his chin into his collar, he looked down to inspect himself. “Oh, dear,” he said, trying to pat his bow tie smooth.

  It was not yet seven-thirty in the morning. When had she ever been summoned before a voice teacher at such an hour? According to Christopher, Maestro Valenti was the most dedicated vocal instructor in Florence. Opera was a religion for him.

  “Valenti wastes no time on small talk,” Christopher said. “Relentless work—that’s all he cares about. Valenti won’t speak of anything personal or trivial except—”

  “Except?”

  “Except that Valenti is a sort of hypochondriac. He has a passion for people’s little ailments. He can’t hear enough about yours, and he’ll confide in you about rashes he has found on the most private parts of his body. You’ll see all his powders and pills. Homemade potions, I think.”

  A maid escorted them into a studio with an amber-tiled floor where the maestro—sixty years old, perhaps—sat hunched at the piano, playing something modern by Puccini. He did not glance up as they entered.

  Maestro Valenti wore a suit of summer white, his silver hair swept off his forehead, ending in a long wave that touched his back collar. All of this contrasted with his dark eyes and smoky complexion. Black eyebrows hinted at the color his hair had once been.

  Wordlessly, the maid handed Erika a tall glass of water and went out. Erika sipped and felt a cool river move down her gullet to her stomach, where a hollow of hunger had carved itself. She thought of the chocolate and bread she’d left standing on the table in her room. Why had she not made herself eat something before coming here? Light-headed and suddenly nervous, she wanted to sit down.

  “What role do you know best?” Maestro Valenti called out, not bothering to look at her as he continued with whatever he was playing.

  “Amina,” she said, “in La sonnambula.”

  He hummed as he played, the music a hive that enveloped him. It broke off abruptly.

  “ ‘Care compagne’? Will you start with that for me?” From a cupboard he retrieved the score and dismissed Christopher, indicating that it would be no problem to accompany her himself.

  The maestro’s olive complexion had charcoal nuances, with smudges of half-moons below his eyes. As he resumed his seat at the piano and flexed his fingers, the wrinkles at his knuckles appeared dark gray.

  “Care compagne” . . . The first time she had sung it at the New England Conservatory, she had been fourteen. Each time she sang it—or any aria—she was never absolutely certain what tones she might float. At first her voice sounded faded to her, but as she and Maestro Valenti eased into the next part (“Come per me sereno”), the phrases came with more surety, and she let the loveliness Bellini had composed—the legato beauty of it—carry her.

  The studio’s shutters had been thrown open like arms to the warm autumn morning. Birds flitted from twig to twig along the shady boulevard. As she sang, she saw a single rose in a tubular vase on a nearby table. Erika imagined herself inhaling its fragrance, the promise of its unfolded petals, its mysterious crevices.

  For the audition she had worn a décolleté dress, for she could never bear the restriction of a high-necked blouse as she vocalized. The balm of early morning light caressed her neck and upper chest. The pouf sleeves she wore made her feel youthful—as if she were dissolving into the happiness of the village girl Amina.

  Silence followed her singing. After a pause, the maestro’s fingers sought the keys again. Valenti waved a hand and encouraged her to go on being Amina—all the way through the next part, “Sopra il sen la man mi posa.” He hummed and played and called out entrances and exits and cues for other, imaginary cast members—as if the room had filled with unseen villagers. She saw that Valenti wished to measure her stamina. It was not a couple of arias he wanted her to sing, but the entire opera.

  While he called out lines and played, in a kind of shorthand, the music that ran between Amina’s parts, she grabbed her glass of water and gulped. The water lost its chill as the scenes rolled on. Her eyes sh
ut as she drank the water like a fast prayer, letting it moisten her tongue and throat before continuing.

  Finally she had sucked the glass dry. As she set down the empty glass, it knocked against a shelf with a hollow echo. Valenti rang for the maid to bring more water, and the music went on.

  Occasionally, when Erika pronounced an Italian word badly, the maestro’s spine tensed and his fingers flinched from the keys. “Your Italian is not so bad,” he said, “but for the stage, every word must be perfect. Repeat after me, ‘Sono innocente.’”

  “Sono innocente.”

  “That’s right. ‘Innocente.’ Take a little bite out of the middle of the word—that’s how we pronounce it.” He shook his head. “You don’t realize how cruel Italian audiences can be about foreigners’ mistakes. If you mispronounce something, they will laugh you right off the stage.”

  Later he cried, “Hit each note cleanly! ‘D,’ then jump—as the composer wished—neatly up to ‘C’.”

  Twelve times he made her redo a particular phrase. He seemed not to mind how long it took her to perfect it.

  After that he did not interrupt her again. While she sang, his strange little humming continued as he played. She heard strains of the opera’s other, unseen characters that were so alive in his head.

  How stupid she had been not to eat anything. By now her exhaustion was such that she felt she had become—like the heroine Amina—a sleep-walker herself. Her vision dimmed and the studio’s amber-tiled floor blurred. She heard her voice, but it came from afar, like tones from under the piano’s lid. Would she last to the end of it? She tucked one curl behind her ear and her fingers came away wet with sweat.

  “I am going to faint,” she considered telling him, but they were too close to the end not to keep on. Her shoulders swayed, and her legs felt as though they were melting. Only the music carried her through it—no food, no nourishment, left inside her at all.