by Eva Ibbotson
Meanwhile, behind the locked doors of the theatre, the dress rehearsal of The Magic Flute was going as Witzler intended: badly!
Herr Berger, the bass who sang Sarastro, missed his entrance; the stage lift stuck half-way, leaving the Queen of the Night with her head and shoulders sticking out of the trap-door. Pino stumbled over his footstool and began his duet with Pamina flat on his back. Klasky halted the ‘March of the Priests’ three times to hurl insults at his orchestra, and Raisa’s dachshund entered stage left and tried to lift his leg against a tree.
At five in the afternoon, Raisa said, ‘I go to Schalk,’ and flounced off, to be brought back by Jacob who said that when he had told her she had sung like a piglet with the croup, he merely meant that she had not given absolutely of her best. At six, a portly gentleman in the chorus fainted. At nine, the A.S.M. gave notice and the coloratura from Dresden was apprehended on her way across the drawbridge in an attempt to return to her native town. At ten, Frau Kievenholler’s cousin broke a harpsichord string and had hysterics . . .
At two in the morning Jacob brought down the curtain, informed them that they had one and all brought ruin and disgrace to the art of opera, and said he would dismiss any performer who appeared before six p.m. the following day.
‘Not too bad, eh?’ he said to Klasky, rubbing his hands, as they walked back across the Fountain Courtyard. And having left everyone nicely keyed up, the wily old fox put on his pyjamas, pillowed his bald perspiring head on the bosom of his Rhinemaiden, and fell asleep.
Though she had been to bed late, Tessa woke early on the day of the performance. Woke and stretched in the wooden bed in her room high in the West Tower, and walked over to the window to look at the much-loved view of shimmering water and soft blue hills which, in two days’ time, she would leave for ever.
‘Oh, let it work, tonight,’ she prayed. ‘Let it go as we hope!’
For Nerine, receiving her breakfast tray in the canopied four-poster, the day ahead was one of unremitting labour. Not only that, but her preparations would have to be made in secrecy. Now, sipping her coffee, she considered her strategy. A long rest, then a massage, followed by a face-pack and scented pads behind the elbows and knees. Her hair would have to remain in curlers until the last minute: ringlets à la Grecque demanded a very tight curl. Probably it would be best if she had a light supper sent up and just appeared to Guy in the lôge itself. Yes, that was the thing to do. She would part the curtains and just stand there. He would turn, unable to believe his eyes!
She put down her cup and reached for the mirror, ready to begin.
‘Oh, God, no!’ Her heart began to pound and droplets of perspiration broke out on her forehead. It couldn’t be – no, it couldn’t be! Not now, at the eleventh hour, a spot on her chin!
She leaned forward, peered, passed a hand over the glass – and fell back on the pillows, sighing with relief. It was just a speck of dust on the mirror – those dratted castle maids not dusting properly. What a fright she had had! But it would be all right now, it would be a triumph!
Thus Nerine prepared to recreate for this all-important night, with selfless dedication, her seventeen-year-old self.
By midday, the castle courtyard was a-bustle with carriages and cars as more visitors arrived from Vienna or Neustadt for the performance. Men staggered across the courtyard with tubs of oleanders to decorate the foyer, an awning was erected to the theatre door. Baskets of nectarines and peaches were carried up from the village to augment the cold collation and champagne set out for the party after the show. Bouquets were carried to the dressing-rooms . . .
At six-thirty there was a knock on Nerine’s door.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘I absolutely cannot be disturbed!’
But when Pooley returned, it was with a dark blue box and a note scrawled in Guy’s hand: ‘This is for tonight which is, after all, our anniversary. I shall be waiting impatiently. Guy.’
She opened it, and gasped. A diamond necklace – but a necklace out of a fairy tale, a dream! He had said her engagement ring was part of a parure . . .
Happiness overwhelmed her. That was the one thing which had worried her a little: that, dressed as she had been at seventeen, she would be a little too simple, too understated. Now the necklace would add the last, entrancing touch. Young, yes; girlish and unaffected, yes; but also cherished, valued, adored.
Oh, fortunate, fortunate Guy to see what he would see tonight!
‘I cannot go on!’ announced Raisa, squirting throat spray across the dressing-room. ‘My uvula it is septicked with pimpules and my head she explodes!’
‘I’ve forgotten every single line,’ declared Herr Berger, emerging yet again from the lavatory. ‘I can’t remember a single word. After “In diesen heil’gen Hallen”, I can remember nothing.’
‘Yes, you can, Herr Berger,’ said Tessa soothingly to the shivering bass. ‘After “In diesen heil’gen Hallen” comes “kennt man die Rache nicht”, and anyway Herr Witzler himself will be in the wings.’
‘I am schweatink like a porker; I am ill . . .’
‘Where’s Papageno’s bird-cage, Tessa – for Christ’s sake, where has it gone?’
‘That blasted flautist’s drunk again. Can you rustle up some black coffee, ’ighness – and quick!’
‘The Button!’ screamed Klasky. ‘Where’s Beethoven’s button?’
‘I have it here, Herr Klasky.’ Tessa, as always, was everywhere; comforting, contriving, finding what was lost.
‘First call for beginners, ladies and gentlemen. First call for beginners.’
Jacob wiped his brow. ‘Stay with me, Mozart,’ he begged.
‘He will, Herr Witzler, I know he will,’ said Tessa fervently. ‘I can feel him sort of floating over the theatre, wishing us well.’
Jacob smiled at his under wardrobe mistress and, in a rare gesture of affection, laid his hand briefly on the silken head. ‘You must go out front now or your aunts will be worried.’
‘No. Let me stay, please. I belong here now.’
But Jacob was adamant. ‘No. We shall need you in the interval, but now get into your box, my little princess, and we will play to you.’
The third prince had built his theatre after a visit to Versailles. Dazzled by the blue-green marble, the aquamarine silk curtains, the Corinthian columns with which the Sun King had adorned his opera house, the prince had copied the sumptuous colour scheme of blue and gold, hung a hundred Bohemian chandeliers across the auditorium and ordered his griffin, his lily and his glove to be emblazoned on the front of every box.
It was in this exquisite theatre that Guy’s guests now waited to hear an opera that was the quintessence of Austrian life. For the composer, whom the ancestors of this very audience had spurned, insulted and underpaid, was now more uniquely ‘theirs’ than any other. Prince Monteforelli could remember his grandfather telling of the time he had been taken, as a little boy, to the Theater an der Wieden on the night when Mozart himself went backstage to play Papageno’s glockenspiel. Now, deaf or not, he intended to hear his thirty-second Magic Flute, if need be through his very bones.
How distinguished he looks, thought Waaltraut, down in the stalls, craning her head yet again at the main box, canopied in gold, in which Farne sat. So dark, so brooding. But why is he alone?
The same question was on the lips of most of the audience as they gazed at the solitary figure of the Englishman who, even in repose, seemed to have a knack of commanding attention in every gathering in which he found himself. Where was the widow?
‘Ah, Putzerl,’ said Maxi as Tessa, who had been waylaid by her old nurse wielding a hairbrush, slipped into the box which Maxi was sharing with the aunts. She was in dark green velvet with a big lace collar, her auburn eyes shining with excitement, and even Maxi, unmusical as he was, suddenly found himself looking forward to what lay ahead.
It was time, now. The audience was falling silent. And then a rustle as heads tilted to look up at Farne, whispers of ‘There she is!
’
And in the box set aside for Pfaffenstein’s princes Guy turned, rose and caught his breath.
Nerine continued to stand quite still, one hand holding back the blue silk of the curtain. Her eyes were on his – wide, questing, the mouth a little tremulous.
It was she, now, who said softly, ‘Do you remember?’
Guy could not speak at first, only reach for her hand and carry it to his cheek. She was dressed exactly as she had been then: the same dusky ringlets danced on her bare throat; the dress with its tiny, starry flowers was the same; she held, as she had held then, the smallest, most delicate of fans. Standing there, seeking his approval, his delight, she was seventeen again; the world had just begun – all life, all hope was before them.
‘I remember,’ said Guy – and she had never heard in any man’s voice what was now in his.
The orchestra entered, followed by Herr Klasky. Guy pulled out a chair and, smiling her thanks, she seated herself. The conductor raised his baton.
And in that moment, deeply, utterly and most enchantingly, Nerine sighed.
What makes a truly great performance? What blend of grinding work, talent and sheer luck? Is there a conjunction of planets that needs to be evoked? Does the audience send back, across the footlights, some mysterious wave of empathy which the players absorb into themselves?
What alchemy, on this night of nights, turned the fat little Italian, Mastrini, into a prince able to express a love so pure, so ardent that it transcended passion itself? What made the hausfrau from Dresden give to the Queen of the Night’s aria, with its cruel F in alt, an icy, brilliant glitter that brought a shiver to her listeners? And Papageno, the birdcatcher, whose simple ditties have become folk-song all over Europe . . . Papageno can be a clown, a simpleton, the Common Man. This Papageno, an unknown baritone whom Witzler had promoted from the chorus, was all of these and much, much more. As he finished ‘Ein Vogelfanger bin Ich, ja’ – the song that Mozart himself hummed through cracked lips as he lay dying – the audience stirred like the sea, and Monteforelli dabbed his eyes.
The Queen of the Night vanished into the split rock, the stage lift worked, the prince and the birdcatcher set out on their adventures. The scene changed and in a room in Sarastro’s palace lay Pamina, abandoned and afraid. And here was alchemy again as the quarrelsome, rapacious Raisa became a young girl whose simplicity and seriousness was affirmed in every limpid note.
Felicity followed felicity. The duet between Pamina and the birdcatcher as they preached a tender sermon on conjugal love ended in a torrent of clapping which Klasky dissolved as he took his players forward into the solemnity and seriousness of the High Priest’s temple. Darkened by trombones, by muted trumpets and muffled drums, the music spoke now of the poetry of man’s existence, of the necessity of suffering and endurance in the creation of a perfect love.
‘I will be nicer to Mother,’ thought the Countess Waaltraut, and the acid-penned critic Mendelov, who had come from Vienna, closed his notebook and shook a wondering head.
Guy was beyond thought. He had forgotten even Nerine, held as if in a vice by the miracle that was this music.
Solemnity dissolved once more in laughter as Papageno played his magic bells and the delectable animals that were the Heidis danced to Tamino’s flute. And then Sarastro himself, for whom Mozart wrote the most profound and fiendishly difficult arias in all music, singing of ordeals to be overcome and trials to be met before the lovers could be united . . . the great C major chorus extolling courage and virtue . . . and the curtain fell on Act One of Jacob Witzler’s Magic Flute.
It came down to a thunderclap of applause, to the stamping of ancient, rheumatic feet, to a chorus of ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Bis!’ Guy caught a glimpse of the small shape that was Tessa slipping out of the neighbouring box before he turned to Nerine.
‘I won’t ask you how you enjoyed it,’ he said when he could trust himself to speak again. ‘I can see it all in your eyes.’
‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh yes.’ A hand was pressed against the diamonds at her throat as though to hold back the emotion which otherwise might have choked her.
‘I think we should go backstage now and congratulate them. It’s quite a long interval and you haven’t met Witzler yet, have you? We won’t stay long, but I’d like to say a few words.’
Nerine smiled. ‘You go, my dear. They will want to see you. But I need a few moments . . . quite alone.’
‘Are you sure?’ Guy looked at her tenderly. ‘I can easily wait.’
‘I’m sure.’
She waited until Guy had left the box before gathering up her skirts and running to the powder room. It had been an anxious moment. The theatre was warm and she was almost certain that a drop of perspiration had run down her throat. She had felt her hair go limp, too, just at that part where all those priests were marching about. And if the neck of her dress had moved even a fraction, it would have revealed the remnants of the mosquito bite. She had instructed Pooley to wait for her and, yes, there she was.
‘Hurry, girl!’ ordered Nerine. ‘That ringlet’s not right. And I’ll want fresh powder on my shoulders . . . and lots here on that wretched bite . . .’
‘Wait!’ The peremptory voice halted Tessa, already through the baize-lined door and into the corridor which led backstage.
She turned, saw Guy, and without thought or volition ran like a child into his arms.
‘Oh, wasn’t it marvellous? Wasn’t it beyond belief! You must be so proud,’ she said, her head against his chest.
‘Proud? I? It’s you who have to be proud. I’ve never heard anything like it, Tessa. Never in my life.’
‘I know.’ She lifted her face to his, rubbed her eyes with a small fist. ‘Isn’t it stupid to want to cry because one is so glad and glad and glad to be alive!’
If Guy had let her go then, while they were just two people united in homage to something that was greater than them both, all would have been well. But Guy did her an injury. He went on holding her, made no movement to loosen his arm or draw away – did not appear, in fact, to have understood that she was a being separate from himself.
His foolishness lasted only a few moments before he did, after all, collect himself and let her go. But those few moments were to cost Tessa dear.
Witzler, when Guy reached him, tried desperately to maintain the pessimism and gloom his race demanded. ‘This act wasn’t too bad,’ he admitted, ‘but who knows what may happen in the last one? There is Sarastro’s larghetto and the cyclorama for the fire and water scene . . . Oh, many things can go wrong still – many, many things!’
But his eyes, as he shook hands with Guy, shone with an unquenchable happiness. One perfect act, at least, thought Witzler. They cannot take that away from me. One act behind which I can stand when I get up there and meet him.’ And ‘him’ – it is often so with those who practise music – was Wolfgang Amadeus, not God.
But nothing was taken from Witzler that night. Guy returned to find Nerine already seated, her profile tilted attentively to the stage. Klasky entered, the curtain rose, and the enchantment of this performance – which was to become an operatic legend – held. The slow march for the priests unfolded with an awe-inspiring majesty; Herr Springer, sober for the first time in months, played his flute solo like an archangel. Sarastro’s sublime ‘In diesen heil’gen Hallen’ had the Uhlan captain vowing to foreswear roulette and the Archduchess Frederica wishing she had not bullied the pearls out of her late husband’s niece. Raisa sang her G minor lament, ‘Ach Ich füls! with a despairingly, unearthly grief and the orchestra consoled her in a postlude of heavenly tenderness.
The thunder thundered, the lightning flashed, the ‘star-flaming Queen’ re-entered, and traditional disaster after disaster was avoided as trap-doors opened as smoothly as silk and costume changes lasting two minutes were effortlessly accomplished. The dreadful old crone who had appeared to Papageno was transformed into an adorable young girl and then – the very heart of the opera now
– the lovers, united again, faced and overcame their ordeals. And with a last, exultant chorus – Mozart standing up to be counted in E-flat major – the opera ended.
It was now that the audience paid their greatest tribute. For the curtain did not fall on a burst of applause. As Klasky dropped his head in weariness over the score, there fell over the entire theatre a total stillness. In that solemn and magical hush, the spectators took hold of their departed souls and admitted them once more into their bodies.
It was in that moment of utter silence before the applause which would presently raise the roof, that Guy turned to the woman for whom this miracle had been wrought.
She sat with her dark head leaning against the blue silk draperies of the lôge. One lovely arm lay relaxed and still on the arm of the gilt chair, the hand with the great diamond hanging free. The marvellous eyes were sealed by luxuriant, dusky lashes; her bosom rose and fell, softly, rhythmically. Her breathing was steady, but every now and then a small, incongruous and not entirely pleasant snuffling noise came from between her parted lips.
Guy leaned forward, suddenly anxious. Had she been overcome? Had she fainted?
But, no. There was no cause for alarm and certainly none for the black despair which now overwhelmed him. Naturally and – but for the small snores she emitted – gracefully, Nerine Hurlingham lay deep in sleep.
12
Refreshments and champagne had been laid out in the great hall for the cast and those who cared to join them. However when they had eaten and – more particularly – drunk, they were inclined to wander back to the theatre where they felt at home and, carrying bottles and glasses, to come to rest amongst the scenery – lolling contentedly against pieces of temple, sprawling across pillars.
Everyone was exhausted, tipsy and for these few hours completely happy. For their triumph was as tangible, as unmistakable, as a seam of gold in a rock face, or as the discovery of a new planet, or the act of love. Tomorrow there would be tensions and rivalries again – and hard work as they struck the set and prepared for the journey back to Vienna. But tonight belonged to the gods and even Jacob who never paused, paused now. Even Jacob who never praised, now praised.