The Doctor and the Diva

by Adrienne McDonnell

  “Surely there are other rooms available in town?” Christopher insisted, flustered. His sealskin coat dripped and water shook from his fingertips.

  At such an hour? The inn’s manager doubted it. Christopher went out into the rain again and left Erika staring at her water-stained luggage. She removed her cape, suspended it from a hook, and watched a tiny pond form on the floor below the hem.

  Twenty minutes later Christopher returned, having found no alternative. The innkeeper dragged in a spare mattress that consumed nearly all the small chamber’s floor space.

  Erika took a towel from her bag and pressed moisture from her hair with it. “I don’t mind at all—really I don’t,” she told Christopher, but two prongs of irritation appeared between his eyebrows. Clearly he didn’t relish the prospect of spending the night on a pallet on the floor.

  For their supper the portly innkeeper set down plates filled with long noodles. The aroma of the food improved their mood. The pasta sat pooled in a sweet and sour tomato sauce, thickened by red onions and currants, and flavored by hints of vinegar and red wine. “You have tasted our vino nobile?” the innkeeper inquired, and he filled their glasses from a big carafe.

  The wine (“the king of Tuscan wines,” as the innkeeper called it) moved down their throats like a cleansing fire. Two things made Montepulciano famous, he claimed: its wine, and the grand vistas visible from this mountaintop by day.

  The dining room was dim as a cave, with two gas jets like torches against the wall. While they ate, the proprietor told them about his city and its history.

  After they’d finished dinner, Christopher opened a window and stuck his head out. The rain had ceased. “Go put on your coat,” he called excitedly to Erika. “Don’t you want to have a look around at the town?”

  At midnight, after so many stormy hours, they found almost no one about on the slick black streets. Together they went out like children, giddy from the wine and the sense that this whole deserted, fortressed town was theirs to explore like a darkened stage.

  As they climbed a stone staircase toward the piazza, they saw chasms of blackness between the houses and dripping ivy on walls. On the steps Erika stopped. “Don’t you just wonder what’s out there?” she asked.

  By dawn a landscape of fifty miles would be visible from here. For the moment, darkness obscured the panorama of Tuscany. What exactly lay before them out in that abyss—other than a few lights, which they managed to discern like faraway stars? Were there also rivers, hills, towns, lakes—or endlessly terraced slopes of olive branches and vines?

  At the piazza, they felt they’d reached the top of the world. By the glow of streetlamps, they saw that it was all here, surrounding them—the tower of the Palazzo Comunale, the Duomo, a fountain, the Renaissance palace that had once belonged to the Del Monte family. All hers now, and Christopher’s—only a backdrop for them.

  Perhaps it was the vino nobile they’d drunk that made them feel playful and frivolous, or the hope that if her prova were a success, their lives might suddenly change. Christopher took a flamboyant leap over a wide puddle. Lifting her skirts, Erika swung around and around until she was dizzy. The pavement glittered where shallow depressions had been filled by water. Moisture seeped into her leather shoes. Her toes grew wet, but she didn’t care.

  On this night, in this hill town, they were both unknown, and as free as they would ever be. In these silly, capering moments, Erika could almost imagine that it was not Christopher beside her but a lover who had accompanied her to Montepulciano.

  Suddenly he reminded her of an off-duty sailor, skipping across the midnight piazza like that, his sealskin coat slapping his calves. “Can you snap your fingers and click your heels together at the same time?” he asked, and jumped high to demonstrate, both legs thrown to one side as his ankles touched midair. Erika laughed. She hoisted her skirt to her knees and tried the same, but landed—splat—with her right foot steeped in a puddle.

  As their voices reverberated against the gloomy medieval stone façades and she danced in circles, he must have noticed the flirtatiousness in her laugh, and sensed her craving for intimacy.

  At the inn that night, Christopher was excruciatingly proper. While she changed into her nightgown, he waited downstairs. When he came up, she lay on her nun-like cot and listened to him remove his boots and wet socks in the darkness. When the sounds ceased, she knew that he planned to sleep in his damp trousers.

  “Christopher,” she whispered, “haven’t you brought any pajamas with you?”

  “No,” he said. He settled on the floor mattress, a blanket drawn over him.

  His trousers had been drenched, she recalled, when she’d mounted the inn’s staircase behind him. The wet cuffs of his pants were pasted to his boots.

  “Christopher, you can’t sleep in those trousers. They’re soaked through.” His modesty seemed absurd to her.

  Discomfort soon got the better of him. She heard a rustling under his blanket as he stripped off the damp trousers and tossed them over a chair, all without exposing his unclothed legs.

  A stark square of moonlight shone through the room’s one high window. In the dimness Christopher settled on his back, his hair a pale-colored patch against the pillow.

  Wordlessly she got up and knelt on the floor beside him. “Would you let me try an experiment?” she asked. “Close your eyes.”

  Christopher obeyed. His head lolled against the pillow, his arms fixed against his sides.

  “Sometimes I try to imagine what the world must be like for my blind landlady. Donna Anna was curious about what I looked like, and she asked if she could touch my face.”

  “Did you let her?”

  “Of course. Would you mind if I did the same to you?”

  “All right.” He relented.

  For the first time in almost three years, she felt the sweetness of placing her hands on another human face. She didn’t intend to seduce him, of course—only to play, and continue the lark of the night. She shut her eyes, too, her fingers exploring the contours of his cheeks. He lay completely still. With her index finger, she traced the length of his thin nose. Her thumbs followed his jawbone, and she felt the coarse grit he’d shave away tomorrow. Like a sightless woman she examined his firm lips, the sad pouches under his eyes, until his face became like something sculpted by her own hands.

  “That’s enough,” he said crisply, and flipped onto his side, away from her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

  “No harm done,” he said, “but we both need our sleep.”

  Like a child chastised, she found her way back to the cot and pushed her bare feet deep under the covers, pulling the sheet as high as her neck.

  She had touched his face, wishing it were Ravell’s. If only Ravell lay beside her in this odd cell of a room, ready to share her victory or her folly, or whatever her prova turned out to be.

  Erika sat on a sloping pasture outside Montepulciano’s walls, with a writing board resting against her knees. Sheep fed on the hillside grasses as she addressed an envelope to Ravell. The sun was so strong it had dried the ground after the previous night’s rain.

  She folded a copy of the program that announced her debut and tucked it into the envelope, along with a small photograph of her dressed as Carmen, in ruffles, a shimmering Spanish shawl, and a bodice that cinched her waist. The photo and the program would tell him everything, really—how, on the twenty-third of July, at nine o’clock in the evening, she would sing in full opera regalia from a mountaintop city in Tuscany.

  MONTEPULCIANO

  R. Teatro Poliziano

  Questa sera 23 Luglio 1913 a ore 21 precise

  Prima Rappresentazione Straordinaria

  dell’opera in quattro atti

  CARMEN

  di G. BIZET

  con i seguenti artisti:

  Erika von Kessler

  (Carmen)

  Edoardo Audia

  (Don José) . . .

 
No need to say anything else.

  Still, it did not seem right to moisten the envelope’s seal with her tongue and send it off without adding a few words, composed in her own hand.

  My dearest Ravell,

  As I write to you, I am sitting on a grassy slope in Tuscany, with the ruins of an old castle around me, buried in ivy. Pink geraniums grow out of the soil where blood was once spilled. The old Castello walls fell in 1232, the year rivals from Siena murdered half the population here.

  I live in Italy now, and I send you this program hoping that no matter how far away you may be, you will share the joy of my singing debut in Italy—also known as my prova, my test performance.

  Papa has loaned me three hundred lire in order for me to sing in Carmen, the role of my choice. It is not cheap to hire a theatre, an orchestra, and a cast. Papa and my former voice teacher Magdalena wanted to come, of course, but I discouraged them. If the performance is a fiasco, I do not wish them to see it, and if it proves a success, there may be future (paid) engagements for them to witness.

  I have so much more to tell you, dearest Ravell, but will do so in another letter. With greatest hopes of hearing your news—

  My fondest love, Erika

  Ten piano rehearsals, five rehearsals with full orchestra.

  As the night in question grew closer, she fretted over anything that might affect her vocal cords. She tossed a jet of pungent roses from her room. Cigar smoke made her hurry through hallways. To protect herself against filaments of fog, she knotted a white scarf around her throat and covered her mouth and breathed through the scarf’s gauzy tail.

  The house was full, Christopher reported with glee.

  Just before the curtain rose on the evening of July 23, Erika opened her Spanish fan. The night was warm, but at precisely nine o’clock, she waved the fan lightly and a chill of nerves passed over her, like an icy breath against her décolletage.

  Applause for the conductor as he marched to his stand. Then a hideous quiet from the draperies’ other side. Why, Erika wondered, had she chosen this torture for herself? The morass of possible disasters that awaited her . . . As many dangers as strangers’ judgmental faces on the curtain’s opposite side. Suppose the lyrics died in her memory? Suppose she opened her mouth to find her voice gone like a ghost? Three times since she had eaten her early supper, she had checked to be sure the voice had not left her.

  The overture reassured her with its rousing, festive air. As the curtain swept upward and she waited to make her entrance, a draft cooled her half-nude shoulders, the sleeves of her gypsy dress hardly more than puffs of fabric that clung to her upper arms. Your aim, Magdalena used to say, is to make the audience fall in love with you. Erika leaned her head far back and swiveled it to lessen the tension in her neck, conscious all the while of her throat, the plush scarlet of the silk flower she carried, her fissured bosom. Herself, exposed.

  Nearby, just around a corner where she dared not look, the audience waited like a darkened forest.

  “But we don’t see La Carmencita!” the soldiers cried.

  She made her entrance with the long-stemmed flower in her mouth, with young men surrounding her from all sides, their voices adoring. At their center she rose up like a lick of fire, the highest flame.

  She sang the “Habanera,” not in the French language of the composer, but in Italian, so that the good people of Montepulciano would understand.

  E l’amore uno strano augello . . . Love is a rebellious bird . . .

  As the footlights met her eyes, she shed her old self and became Carmen. It was Carmen’s golden hairs that glistened on her bare arms, the gypsy girl’s nonchalance that roughened the edges of her song. Such gorgeous indifference Bizet had infused into the music. . . . The composer released his heroine’s allure like the taunt of a charming, vicious bird. The aria flew out as though it had been caged in Erika’s chest, and yes, she realized with certainty—her voice was soaring tonight. She knew the part so well that she did not have to think; she drew breaths and exhaled the purest music.

  In that aria she heard herself flying, unattainably, just above the reaches of young men’s hearts.

  Silence followed the last lyrics. Then a figure shot up from a seat in the audience and shouted, “Brava, brava!” The violence of the stranger’s cries sent a startled shudder through her. A throng of others rose to their feet, and they made her repeat the aria twice more.

  If Italians like your singing, Maestro Valenti said, they will always let you know.

  She sang like a woman balanced on the blade of a knife, the music keen and seductive. The melodies passed through her as though they had always existed, even before the composer happened to write them down.

  When she sang the “Seguidilla,” the phrases skipped like sweet laughter around the yearning tenor Don José. More applause followed, along with the thunder of feet so loud that the floor planks shook and she smelled the rising dust. Four curtain calls followed Act I. Her head fell forward and she curtseyed so low that she worried her breasts might fall out of her dress. Tears of gratitude wet her lashes. Finally she was able to get away and hide in her dressing room. How, after that, could she expect to do so well through the rest of the opera?

  “Ice water,” she begged her voice teacher in a whisper as he met her backstage.

  Maestro Valenti quickly brought a crystal pitcher of ice water. He said very little, as overcome as she was. As he poured, Erika noticed that his face was mottled and pink, for he must have been as concerned as she was about how well she would survive the next three acts. He squeezed her shoulder as though to imbue her with courage.

  She refused to receive anyone in her dressing room except for her silver-haired voice teacher and Christopher. There, she lost all modesty. Right in front of them, she pushed a handkerchief between her cleaved bosoms and wiped dry the crack of sweat.

  You always know if a performance is a triumph, Magdalena used to say, by the end of the first act.

  Christopher brushed back his hair with excited rakes of his hands, and his forehead shone. “You should have heard the man next to me. He cried out so loud I don’t know if I’ll be able to hear the rest of the opera through my left ear!”

  Erika sank onto a velvet settee, dazed. The ice water flushed coolness into her and strengthened her vocal cords. She caught sight of her underarms in a long mirror on the far wall. During the next acts, she warned herself, she must not lift her arms too high or with too much abandon, particularly as she danced with castanets—or the audience would notice the dark moons of perspiration that stained her dress.

  She feared she would not last, but she did.

  The “Gypsy Song”? They encored that aria, too, with a mad stomping of feet. Through beams of stage light Erika saw dust showering from the rafters.

  When Don José stabbed his beloved Carmen to death at the end, the women of Montepulciano wailed.

  The final curtain rose and fell, rose and fell, and rose again. The audience kept her singing half the night, her voice spiraling toward heaven.

  Backstage, Maestro Valenti kissed his fingertips and bowed low, and when he straightened up, the moisture in his eyes surprised her. Just behind him was another of his former students, a man who had come up from Naples to play Escamillo and sing the “Toreador Song.” The bass-baritone kissed her hard on the mouth and fell back, as though drunk with the taste of her.

  Christopher rushed toward her, laughing at her victory, his neck red with emotion, his arms outstretched for an embrace, his ribs bumping hers. Bodies crowded into the dressing room, fans bearing bushy bouquets in both fists. A stranger pushed his way forward, sniffed her bare shoulder, and ran out before she could swat him away. Mark and Edmund had traveled to Montepulciano with Donna Anna; now they formed a protective tunnel so that the blind woman, whom they guided inside, could come close to Erika’s ear.

  “You sang divinamente,” the elderly lady whispered with heat. “Che bellezza!”

  As the room emptied slowl
y, Maestro Valenti took Erika aside to say, “There is an impresario from Milan here who wishes to speak with you.”

  Erika turned, aware suddenly of a broad-shouldered gentleman whose silk cravat gave him an air of importance. An impresario from Milan? But why would he come to this obscure performance, in such a small city? A very plump, expensively outfitted lady stood beside him. They reserved their comments until the others had departed.

  “May I present Signor Lorello and his wife, Signora Lorello?” Maestro Valenti called loudly, and then, with great sweeps of his arms, her teacher shooed stragglers from the dressing room. He bowed, drew the door shut, and left the two visitors from Milan alone with Erika.

  Lorello clasped his hands behind his back, his lips pressed together in a secretive yet pleasant manner. His heavy-set wife was more effusive. “We have heard many Carmens,” the signora said, “but never in Italy have we seen anyone who suits the part as beautifully as you.” The wife had black hair and currant-colored eyes that glinted in a face of white skin. An overwhelming fragrance of gardenias emanated from her.

  “You’re too kind,” Erika said.

  “You have,” the impresario noted with a sober expression, “grandissimo talento.”

  “We are on holiday,” Signora Lorello explained. “We rarely attend opera in a provincial city like this, but when everyone told us about the new mezzo-soprano—” She smiled. “We realized this might be the exception. We never expected to come to Montepulciano to discover someone.”

  The wife’s gaze slid to Erika’s waist. “Tell me,” Signora Lorello said, “did you diet for the role, or are you naturally so slender?”

  “I had to study Spanish dancing for the part. It’s wonderful exercise—”