Mozart’s Blood

by Louise Marley

  “Oh, a brand new toy,” Ugo breathed. “Lucky boy.”

  Benson’s grin wavered. Domenico came closer. “You idiot, ignore him!” he snapped. “Use the damn thing!”

  An hour passed, and the crescendo of pain swelled. Ugo tried to give himself up to it, to hurry things along. He made no effort to hold back his moans or the gasps that burst from him. But he was still himself when Benson, with a curse, flung the shock baton on the floor.

  “It’s no good!” he spat. “The guy’s not human!”

  Ugo saw Domenico’s fist clench. Benson saw it, too, and took a swift step backward, out of reach. “Of course he’s not human,” Domenico hissed. “That’s the whole fucking point.”

  Benson’s lips opened, but it seemed he had no answer.

  Domenico leaned over the bloody cot, his hair dark with sweat. His breath was sour with fury and urgency. “I want to know how to find them,” he said. “And you’re going to tell me. I won’t stop until then.”

  He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small, flat object wrapped in white paper. He kept an eye on Ugo as he tore off the paper, revealing a small, gleaming knife.

  Ugo felt the itching begin on his chest, and he kept his face still to hide his rush of satisfaction. Through dry lips, he croaked, “Oh, bravo, my friend. A scalpel. I hope you didn’t harm the doctor.”

  “Surgical supply,” Domenico grated. He held the blade out as he approached the cot. “Get his pants off, Benson,” he said.

  Benson said stupidly, “His pants?”

  “His pants!” Domenico shouted. “Damn it, what do you think the scalpel is for? We’ll see what he thinks about losing a testicle!”

  Ugo began to laugh.

  14

  Ah! ch’ora, idolo mio, son vani i pianti…

  Ah! Now, my love, tears are in vain…

  —Don Ottavio, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni

  During a break in the staging rehearsal, Octavia slipped away from the little group sipping cappuccino in the canteen under the ellipse. She paced the corridor, twisting her scarf between her hands, and counted back the days since her infusion in New York. It was only five. She should be all right. She should be able to make it ten days with ease, though it had been a long time since that had been necessary.

  Before Ugo’s coming, thirst was always her greatest worry. It was not only in San Francisco that Hélène had gotten in trouble. She had been dismissed from a cast in Chicago for missing a performance. There had been other near things, and not only for Hélène. Teresa, sailing on a private yacht from Naples to Venice, had not dared to use the tooth on board. By the time she disembarked, she was desperate. When she fed at last, in the shadows of the Ponte di Rialto, she took too much. She never forgot her victim’s woebegone face as his breath faltered and his heart ceased to beat.

  Indeed, she remembered the face of every person who had not survived the tooth. Those faces haunted her sleep. Her perfect memory resisted all attempts to edit them out.

  But now, with fond nostalgia, she was remembering Vincenzo del Prato. The castrato’s plump, sweet features were as fresh in her mind as the day she met him.

  She wandered out of the ellipse, through the stage door, and into the empty theater. She stood for a moment in the orchestra, looking up at the loggione far above. Just so she had stood that very first day she had been allowed at last to enter La Scala, vouchsafed by Vincenzo. The restoration of the old theater was so faithful that it hardly seemed possible her old friend was not still here. She thought if she turned, just so, she would see him standing center stage, winking at her during his bows as he had done the last time she saw him alive.

  She sighed and tipped her head up to gaze past the soaring façade of four balconies to the sculpted trompe l’oeil ceiling with its splendid chandelier. There was a hidden passageway there, in the rafters of the theater, where compassionate Milanese had stowed Jews to save them from being sent to the internment camps. In 1943, the Allies had inadvertently bombed La Scala, smashing its roof and the upper levels to dust. Yet now it was restored to its glory, its history retained. The theater’s memory was even longer than Octavia’s.

  Impulsively, she strode up the aisle toward the lobby, winding her scarf around her neck as she walked. She ran lightly up the stairs to where the palchi ringed the first balcony. She wanted to step into one of the boxes. She thought if she could simply sink into a plush chair and gaze out into the theater, she would feel calmer. She tried several doors to the boxes, but they were all locked.

  She wandered along the marble corridor, glancing into the reception room, trailing her fingers along the wall. She had been in Australia in 1943. Vivian Anderson was at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, and she and the rest of the cast had heard the account of the destruction of La Scala on the wireless. Vivian bought a Times and pored over the newspaper, trying to find out how bad the damage was.

  “Vivian,” someone asked her, glancing over her shoulder. “Have you sung in Milan?”

  She bit her lip and folded the newspaper hastily. There had been nothing in it. It was hard to get news out of Italy during the war. “No,” she said. “I’ve never been there. It’s just so sad. That beautiful old theater!”

  “Oh, I know,” the other singer had said. “We all feel connected to La Scala.”

  “Miss Voss?”

  Octavia whirled, startled out of her recollection by the approach of one of the opera house tour guides. “Yes?” she said, more sharply than she intended.

  The guide, a pretty young Frenchwoman, blushed. “I’m sorry, I just—it looked as if you wanted to go into one of the boxes.”

  Octavia took a breath and managed a smile. “Actually, I did. You probably have keys, don’t you?”

  The girl’s blush subsided, and she stepped forward, pulling a ring of keys from the pocket of her blazer. “I do. Which one would you like? The double box is lovely.”

  “That would be so nice,” Octavia said. “Thank you, Miss—”

  “I’m Francine,” the girl said, her blush rising again. “Just let me know when you leave—I’ll be over there.” She pointed to the pillared reception room on the other side of the corridor.

  “Thank you, Francine,” Octavia murmured. “I only have a few minutes before the rehearsal starts again. But this will be so restful.” Francine nodded, as if this were perfectly natural. She unlocked the door and held it wide for Octavia to pass through.

  Octavia closed her eyes as the door clicked gently shut behind her. She waited in the silence for the space of a breath or two. When she opened her eyes again, the sensation that swept over her was one of stepping into a different century. Of coming home.

  The perfection of the recreation of the double box stunned her. Its blue and white ceiling appeared unchanged since it had been painted in 1813. The fireplace looked as if at any moment a maid might come in to lay a warming blaze. The floor was the original marble, the brass fittings and velvet draperies a perfect revival of the early days.

  Octavia leaned forward to look out into the theater. It was bigger now, of course. The stage was twice the size it had been, and the seating had been expanded. But the silk damask curtain, the towering proscenium, and the tiers of seats basked undisturbed now in the afterglow of two hundred years of music. They seemed to be waiting, secure in their elegance, for the magic to begin again.

  Teresa had stood in the center of the stage of La Scala, with Vincenzo watching from the wings after murmuring instructions to the accompanist. The director and his assistant sat in the middle of the house, their heads bent together, talking. As the accompanist played the opening bars to Amore’s aria from Orfeo, their voices rose, as if having to sit through an audition was an inconvenience.

  Her voice faltered on her first phrase. They didn’t notice. They were not even listening.

  “Gli sguardi trattieni

  Affrena gli accenti…”

  The accompanist, a plump man with a powdered queue and a r
eddened nose, scowled at her over the harpsichord. Teresa took a deeper breath and lifted her chin. She took a long step forward, to the very edge of the stage, and fixed the director with an icy stare. She began to sing again, and her voice rose into the theater, finding the resonance of the curving walls, the wooden seats, the high dome of the ceiling.

  “Rammenta se peni,

  Che pochi momenti

  Hai più da penar!”

  And now, at last, they stopped talking. The director and the assistant turned to her, straightened, and listened. The assistant’s mouth opened, and stayed that way. The director put a hand to his powdered wig, and then to his cravat.

  Teresa let her gaze rise to the loggione as she finished the aria. She sang the final cadenza to her imagined public, the listeners who would come, who would hear her and remember.

  Octavia remembered that day with a clear poignance that made her heart ache. She knew, now, that she had not sung with technical perfection, or even showed her voice to best effect. The aria was too limited in its range for that, with none of the dramatic, sustained notes that would later become her hallmark. She had been only seventeen years old, after all. But she had made music, and the walls of La Scala had rung their response.

  Octavia put her chin on her hand and closed her eyes again. They were all gone, of course. Long gone. The director, and his silly, foppish assistant. Vincenzo. Mozart.

  Only she, of all that time, was still here. And Zdenka Milosch. And, of course, Ugo.

  Oh, Ugo, she thought, with a fresh pain in her breast. Che successa, mio amico?

  She heard a door open and close far below, and she startled, opening her eyes, coming abruptly to her feet. She shook herself. She knew better than to dwell in the past like this! And Ugo must surely come back soon.

  But as she left the box, the unease that had been building in her for the past days made her legs tremble. Something was wrong, or he would have sent word. Ugo was as tough as they came, and smarter than most. He must be in terrible trouble, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

  Giorgio ran Octavia and Peter through their blocking for the first scene of act one, and then gave them a break while he started on act two with Nick Barrett-Jones and Richard Strickland, the Leporello. Octavia and Peter sat in chairs at one side of the rehearsal room, sipping bottles of water and watching Nick and Richard work.

  Richard was as jolly as he was plump, the sort of singer who kept everyone laughing with his asides and antics. He was the perfect Leporello, Giovanni’s servant and sidekick. He had performed the rôle dozens of times, and he slipped into the blocking easily.

  But Nick Barrett-Jones was even slower now than he had been earlier in the week. Peter groaned as Giorgio repositioned him a third time beneath the window for his “Deh, vieni.”

  Octavia leaned close to Peter and whispered, “Our Nick doesn’t look too well today.”

  Nick’s hair was still damp from the shower he had evidently taken during the lunch break, and his eyes were reddened. His voice sounded rough, as if he hadn’t slept.

  “Must have been out on the tiles last night.” Peter snickered.

  The singers tried again, and Octavia felt sorry for Brenda, who kept coming forward, ready for her entrance, and then having to step back as Giorgio struggled with Nick. Richard slapped his round stomach and rolled his eyes at his colleagues, who covered their mouths to hide their laughter.

  Massimo Luca stood to one side, waiting for his part of the scene. Octavia felt his eyes on her, and she turned. He looked a little tired, too. He lifted one hand in greeting and smiled. She smiled back and wished Nick could get on with it so she could hear Massimo sing again.

  At last Brenda had her moment, beginning her duet with Nick in which the lovestruck Donna Elvira gives in once again to Giovanni’s wiles. Octavia nodded approval at the easy flow of Brenda’s dark soprano. She didn’t sing full voice, but not quite mezza voce, either. Nick began to force his own voice, covering Brenda’s tone.

  “Too bad,” Peter murmured when this happened. “Brenda sounds so lovely.” Octavia nodded agreement.

  The scene went forward, with Giovanni putting the hapless Leporello into his clothes to pretend to make up to Donna Elvira. When they reached Massimo’s entrance, Giorgio called a halt. He turned to Peter and Octavia. “You two might as well go,” he said with a little sigh. “We won’t get past this scene this afternoon.”

  Peter immediately excused himself, saying he and David were going to the Galleria to do some shopping. Octavia tucked her score into her bag and busied herself winding her scarf around her neck, lifting her hair out of her collar. She didn’t look forward to going back to Il Principe alone, to face the empty suite, to spend the evening trying to assess how thirsty she really was.

  But there seemed to be nothing else to do. She belted her coat and slung the bag over her shoulder. She had just reached the door of the rehearsal room when she found Massimo at her elbow.

  He held the door for her and followed her out into the corridor. “Doesn’t Giorgio need you?” Octavia asked.

  He grinned down at her. His forelock, black and glossy, flopped charmingly over his forehead. “In a moment,” he said. “They went back to the duet again.”

  “Good grief,” Octavia said. “Again? You’ll be here forever.”

  “I know. It’s wearing, all this standing about.”

  “It certainly is.”

  They glanced back through the small window. Giorgio was putting Nick in position once again, and Brenda was mopping her brow with a lace-edged handkerchief.

  “But I thought—” Massimo went on, turning back to Octavia. “You’re at Il Principe, right? Not far. I have my car, and I thought we could have dinner.”

  Octavia hesitated. It would be so nice to have company, so long as this charming young man didn’t think…

  He grinned and pushed back the lock of hair. “Just dinner,” he said. “A little trattoria I know in the Brera. They make a wonderful cioppino, and they’ll be thrilled to meet you. Say yes, Octavia. Dinner, some wine…Nothing else. I promise.”

  Disarmed, she burst into laughter. After all, if Ugo showed up, he could join them. And she wasn’t yet so thirsty that there was any risk. “Yes, of course, Massimo. Thank you. I’d love to have dinner.”

  She went back to Il Principe and took a long bath. She put on a pair of American jeans, with a white cashmere sweater and heeled boots, and she twisted her hair back with a silver clip. When Massimo called from the lobby, she took up a lambskin blazer and a long silver scarf and ran down the stairs to meet him.

  His car, a beautifully maintained vintage Mercedes, had a deep, dark charm that suited Massimo Luca. The doorman opened the door for her, and she climbed in, settling back against the deep, well-worn leather seats. It was good to be going out. She had left a note for Ugo, in case, and she had her cell phone with her. She glanced over at Massimo as he took the wheel. Passing headlights illuminated his profile, the cut of his lean chin, the curved blade of his nose. He gave her his slow smile.

  “I like the jeans. You look about twenty years old,” he said.

  “Flatterer. I’m older than you are.”

  “You don’t know how old I am.”

  She tilted her head, watching him as he negotiated the twists and turns of the streets leading into the Brera district. He wore a leather jacket and a white shirt, open to show his strong, smooth neck. “I’ll guess,” she said. “Twenty-eight?”

  His brows rose. “How did you know that?”

  She laughed. “Call it experience.”

  “Shall I guess how old you are?”

  “You can guess, but I’ll never tell you.”

  “I’ve read your bio, though.”

  “You know perfectly well singers’ bios are all lies.” He laughed, his rich baritone filling the car’s interior. She touched the carefully preserved leather of the dashboard with her hand. “This is a marvelous auto,” she said. “And you’re probably proud
of its age.”

  “Yes. It was my father’s. He gave it to me after I graduated from the university. We’ve kept it in the family a long time.”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “I will, at dinner. Here we are.”

  The trattoria was tiny, with white lace curtains at the windows and no more than a dozen tables. They went down two steps from the street, through the door that opened directly into the dining room. The padrone, a compact man with a brush of white hair, came bustling out to meet them. His wife came behind him, smoothing her apron. There was a little fuss of introductions, of choosing the best table, of settling them with an aperitivo. No one produced a menu, but Massimo had evidently arranged everything. An antipasto of olives and bruschetta and grilled eggplant arrived, with a glass of pinot grigio, and was followed by a salad of tomatoes and basil and mozzarella liberally drizzled with green, fragrant olive oil. By the time the padrone brought them a decanter of red wine and bowls of cioppino bristling with shrimp and clams in their shells, Octavia had heard all about Massimo’s father, a physician, and his mother, a designer for one of the minor Milanese fashion houses; she knew about his married sister and her twin daughters; she knew his brother was a great worry to the family, skipping from job to job; and she knew that Massimo had studied in La Scala’s own school, and had tested himself in regional opera houses before accepting rôles at the big theater.

  “And now,” he said. They were wiping their fingers on warm, damp towels. Their bowls were replaced with tiny glasses of limoncello and a plate of crisp biscotti. “Tell me about you.”

  Octavia shrugged and sat back in her chair, cradling her glass in her fingers. She had perhaps drunk more than she should already, but she loved limoncello, and it always made her think fondly of Sorrento. “There’s nothing much to tell, really. You’ve already read my bio.” He laughed, and she smiled up at him from beneath her lashes. He was remarkable, really. Such poise, at such a young age. She had not been nearly so sophisticated at twenty-eight, even though, at that age, she had been the slave of the tooth for nine years.