Voice of Destiny

by JH Fletcher

  Two women and three small children, all unarmed, who, having escaped from the Viet Minh, had sought safety with the French soldiers.

  A few days later it began. Fits of recurrent madness, of despair and disbelief punctuated by the outcrying of questions that would never be answered.

  I went back to France. I stayed with you in Siena. If anyone could help me recover, I knew it would be you. I was determined. I wanted you and I wanted so much to be well. I thought I could force myself to be healed. For a time I even imagined I had succeeded; after the outburst on your terrace, there had been nothing. I was cured. Then I went to Algeria, to more horror, and the madness returned. I killed an Arab who had been trying to surrender. I stabbed him to death, deliberately, with the bayonet I had taken to carrying. There have been other episodes. I have thought to go to the doctors but dare not, fearing that they will lock me away from the light.

  I must live with it but not with the thought that one day I might turn on you, too. There is only one way to ensure this cannot happen. I could not leave you in ignorance. I had to explain, so that you will know why I cannot see you again.

  2

  The damn fool! The damn, damn fool! I cannot see you again … Did he think she cared about that? Didn’t he know that she would understand, care for him? That this was the purpose for which she’d been placed upon the earth? That art itself was a form of love, that love forgave all?

  Had he been there, she would have shredded him with her fury; even, perhaps, with her indignant nails. He was not there. There was a distance between them far greater than that separating New York from Prague. For whatever reason, he had rejected her and any future they might have had. For all the talk of ambushes and trauma, rejection was at the heart of his letter. I cannot see you again. What could she do? She could pursue him, phone Le Travailleur and demand, his address. Which they might give her, or not. Even if they did, would he agree to see her? She might be risking even greater humiliation.

  She needed to think, while life, perforce, went on. Every day she drove to the Met. There were rehearsals of principals, chorus, orchestra. As always, she attended all of them. There were performances, dinners, interviews, smiles for the cameras. There were business discussions, telephone calls, sessions with the hairdresser, fittings for this costume or that. The world became a hammerbeat of busyness; its preoccupations protected her from the reality that threatened, always, to break in.

  3

  She gets up. Lead in her feet, her lungs and heart, and in the eyes that look back from the mirror, from the darkness that lies within the glass. She walks to the lavatory. She empties herself. She comes back into the room. She puts clothes on her back because she must; she hides herself behind the shield of garments, from the shuttered eyes that stare at her from the mirror. That burn her back as she walks away.

  That’s how she would have been, had she permitted it. She would not. She would laugh brightly, she would sing, she would take each minute by its scrawny neck and wring it to a croak.

  She imagined the world’s spiteful comments, if it knew what had happened to her. Her lover had abandoned her. How well she had taken it. What courage. What an example to us all. What a joke.

  In the echoing emptiness, anguish howled. Nevertheless …

  She would let him go. Because she must. Because his lack of faith in her as well as himself had destroyed them both.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  1

  ‘You’ve been on at me to fix you up with some concerts in Australia and New Zealand.’ On the phone from London, Monty Cardozo sounded close to dancing, which would have been a sight to see.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’re holding the Olympic Games in Melbourne in November. They want you to sing at the opening.’

  Now it was Lucia’s turn to dance but Monty hadn’t finished.

  ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’s opening it, so you’ll be hobnobbing with royalty. And I’ve organised you a couple of recitals in Japan and one in Auckland.’

  ‘I’ll need to fit in a visit to my father while I’m over there.’

  Which set him growling, as she had known it would.

  ‘You don’t want much, do you?’

  But he was the master of blending dates and obligations; she knew he would oblige her, somehow, and was unrepentant. So he should, she told herself. He made enough out of her.

  2

  She flew to Japan, she gave the recitals as arranged. Tokyo. Extracts from Forza, Trovatore, Lucia and Tristan amid a city of jostling crowds, lights, blaring traffic. Osaka, by train. Semiramide, Manon, Nabucco, Bohème. Flew out to Sydney, reeling, under a haphazard blaze of stars.

  Traviata, with Raimondi and Bastianini as her supporting stars, Giulini conducting. She was harrassed by executives from the newly opened television channel, requesting, pleading and finally demanding that she broadcast for them.

  ‘An international debut! A homecoming to remember!’

  She could not do it because of the terms of her contract with the Olympic authorities. They flounced off, as temperamental as any prima donna.

  On to Melbourne, more disoriented than ever, and an opening to remember, with the Duke as promised and lesser dignitaries by the score, including a cabinet minister who, at a dinner party, fingered her thigh beneath the table and smiled hopefully, looking for what else he could get. Which was nothing. A day’s break, followed by a gala performance of Norma, with mezzo-soprano Stignani. Fireworks; features in the papers, one of which described her as music’s Don Bradman. The following day she caught a plane to Adelaide, where a rented car and driver were waiting. It was very different from her last visit. After ten years and what seemed several lifetimes, she came back to the mallee.

  3

  This time she had not made the mistake of turning up unannounced, so she had known they’d be waiting for her. What she had not expected was the spread laid out for her in the hall that she could clearly remember being built, the big men shouting and hauling, the air hot with oaths and the smell of cement, the same hall where she had first been told she had a remarkable voice.

  There were flags and cheers; they asked her to sing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ with the children — quite a gang of them, now, in a big school that no-one could have imagined in her day — and she did so, trying and failing to bridge the gap between those she had come to visit and the big deal she had no wish to be.

  This time, at least, her father attempted conversation. Ten years ago he had looked much older than she’d expected, but since then he didn’t seem to have changed at all: a dried-up string bean of a man with lined neck and faded eyes, knuckles protruding like pebbles from hands broken by a lifetime of work. He was cautious of this unknown woman, this celebrity so improbably claiming kinship; it was like being told he was related to a goddess, or the moon.

  ‘Mother okay, is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s good.’

  Strange how the idiom, as well as the accent, came back after only a few days in the country.

  ‘See much of her?’

  ‘When I can. She spends a week with me every summer.’

  ‘I hear you got a beaut place there. Siena, is it?’

  ‘It’s nice. But Australia’s my home, too.’

  ‘Not much doing round here for an opera singer.’

  It was what they’d told her last time.

  He added: ‘You did good at the Olympics. Watched it on the telly.’

  ‘Have you got a set?’

  ‘No signal round here. Adelaide’s the nearest place.’

  ‘You went all that way?’ She could have wept. She put her hand on his arm. ‘I so wish —’

  He cut her off: ‘Give me an excuse to watch the Olympics, didn’ it?’ As in the old days, the mallee was no place for emotion. It was sad, yet there was consolation in knowing that after all these years, with hardly any communication, he still cared.

  Edma was with him. Dumpy, short of breath, she was not as wary as she’d been the
last time. She said: ‘He keeps a scrapbook with cuttings of your concerts.’

  ‘Where does he get them?’

  ‘Best ask him.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Your mother sends them.’

  Her eyes pricked; she swallowed. You think you know people and then find you know nothing.

  ‘Were you thinking of staying over?’ Edma asked.

  It was impossible; even Monty Cardozo’s magic only extended so far, and she was due in Auckland in two days’ time.

  ‘I would love to but I can’t. It’s one of the hazards of my life. There’s never time to stand still.’

  ‘You chose it, I s’pose.’

  Dead right. But at least she’d made contact again, and it felt a lot better than it had last time.

  She went to Auckland, stopped off in Sydney on the way back to Europe, decided one of these days she’d buy herself an apartment. She left instructions with an agent, telling him there was no hurry. It was a decision in principle; not something to do now but for the future, when something special came on the market. Ever since the war she’d been reminding the world she was an Aussie; maybe the time had come to do something about it.

  4

  She appeared in Tosca at the Paris Opera, with Nicola Rescigno on the rostrum and the tenor Luc Tomas trying unsuccessfully to get into her bed. If that wasn’t enough, there was tension, wire tight, in the city. A month earlier President de Gaulle had dismissed General Massu for criticising his policy of self-determination for Algeria, and feelings were running so high that there was talk of civil war. The audience was affected by it. The tension spilled over onto the singers and the performance was disappointing.

  Lucia was disgusted, feeling that she and the rest of the cast had let down both themselves and their public. She was so upset that she came close to cancelling her appearance at the dinner the following night. Only rumours that the President might be there made her change her mind, not because she had affection for de Gaulle but because her absence might be given a political twist.

  It was very grand and stuffy. The President did not come but there were endless speeches from po-faced men, with Lucia wishing she had the courage to walk out in the middle of them. At last it was over. She made for the door and found herself face to face with Jacques Mazetta.

  The blood stood still in her veins.

  ‘Lucy …’

  She dragged a smile from somewhere. ‘Paris seems to do this to us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not like Gentile.’

  The memory came to her at once: of the pair of them lying naked in the sun beside the pool, the happiness that she had hoped would last for ever.

  ‘Not at all like Gentile.’

  They stared at each other while the guests surged this way and that about them.

  She said: ‘You came here …’

  ‘To see you, yes.’

  ‘Like the first time. Why?’

  ‘I’m always reading about you in the paper. I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘And your illness?’

  ‘Better.’

  Both of them were growing desperate at all they were not saying. In a strangled voice Jacques said: ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  And that, too, was what he’d said the first time they met. Then she’d said no; now she did not. She’d been sitting with Nicola Rescigno. She found him and told him she was leaving. She returned to Jacques. They went out into the freezing February night and caught a taxi to her hotel.

  She led the way down the corridor to her suite, thinking, I cannot and I must not, but knowing exactly what she was doing and what was about to happen.

  Yet for a moment it did not. With the door shut tight between them and the world, they looked at each other.

  My love. My true love.

  She knew it would resolve nothing. They had been together before and had separated for ever. Now this. Afterwards …

  She would not think of afterwards.

  This was real. This was now.

  She went to him, touched him.

  Now.

  5

  Afterwards they lay side by side on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and talked.

  ‘And now?’ she said. There was no answer. Things were as they had always been. As they would continue to be for as long as they pursued their separate careers. ‘Algeria?’

  ‘I’m going back tomorrow. I’m only here because of this Massu business.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘People are talking war.’

  It was a terrible thought, yet for the moment neither of them was interested in what might be about to happen to France. That would come later, but for the moment … What’s going to happen to us?

  They had come together, been one and happy. Now they would part. Once again, nothing had changed. It was hopeless, an endless rending with no change in sight.

  The following year, at La Tranquilla, Lucia received a letter. It was postmarked Algiers. The harvest was over for the year and once again the stubbled fields were empty of grain beneath a warm and autumnal sun.

  She recognised the writing and her heart began to thump. She stood on the terrace and turned the envelope in her hands before slitting it open with her thumbnail.

  It is only a matter of time, now. As you will know from the news reports, in North Africa, as in Asia, the French are beat and freedom has won a great victory …

  And then: You will see from the enclosed announcement that I have got married. It was not an easy decision but I think it will prove best for both of us.

  After she had finished the letter she read it again carefully, as though she had difficulty in understanding the message, short and simple though it was. Then she folded it and held it tightly in her hand and went down to the pool. The flowers were blooming in the beds. Delicate, scented things. Carlo had mown the lawn and trimmed the edges. He was a good man, as Gianna his wife was a good woman. Beyond the grounds of La Tranquilla the harvested fields folded into each other until they merged with the line of purple hills. In North Africa, as in Asia, the French were beat and freedom had won a great victory. The only building in sight was the white-walled chapel at the head of the densely wooded valley down which they had ridden. Down which they had ridden. There was no wind and the trees were at peace. High overhead an eagle inscribed circles against a cloudless sky. There was no sound anywhere. The French were beat and freedom had won a great victory.

  The scene blurred and she put her hands over her face while tears ran through her fingers. She tried to quieten herself and could not. She cried noisily, like a hurt child. The pain was in every part of her body. The world was pain. There was no strength in her legs and she sank to the grass, shoulders hunched, while the tears continued to flow. The French were beat …

  In time she became quiet, more composed, although the tears continued to seep from her eyes. She dashed her face with water from the pool and stood up. She walked slowly back up the stone steps to the house. Gianna was nowhere to be seen. Lucia went into the living room. Sunlight was golden on the furniture, the shelves of books lining the walls. There was a vase of flowers on the mahogany table, an antique she had picked up in Genoa. The scent of the flowers filled her nostrils. She went across to the piano, stood by the keyboard and picked out a succession of chords.

  It helped. Music was nourishment for her soul. In time, very soon, it would take over again. Art would replace pain. Art, too, was love. Of the spirit rather than the flesh. It would abide. It would overcome loss. Very soon.

  But oh, the ashes of hope. The chords were harsher, now. There was anger in them, a determination to fight the pain. To overcome. Music was her solace and her peace. Her throat was sore with tears. For the moment she could not sing but in her head she could hear herself, hear the crescendo of her voice rising. Rising.

  A phone was ringing in the house. The sound stopped as Gianna picked it up. Lucia’s fingers rested on the piano keys. Gianna opened the door.

  ‘M
r Cardozo,’ she said. ‘From London.’

  She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t. Monty’s exuberance, even long distance, would be too much to bear. Nevertheless she walked to the extension phone on the table and picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Baby …’ Monty’s glee hammered nails into her head. ‘Have I got a deal for you!’

  She passed a hand over her eyes and swallowed in an effort to clear her throat.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  6

  So went the road down the years, marked by adulation, praise and headlines stark as tombstones.

  Visconti gloriosa! — Corriere della Sera

  Italy’s finest dramatic-lyric soprano — Musical America

  One of the experiences of a lifetime — Opera Magazine

  Outstanding, breathtaking, magnificent — La Prenza

  A performance beyond criticism or praise — Frankfurter Zeitung

  Visconti brings the house down — New York Daily News

  A performance of incomparable flair and dramatic impact — The Times

  1958. Race riots in London. French nationalists rebel in Algeria.

  1959. Tibetan freedom fighters crushed by Chinese military. Death camps in Kenya: UK authorities silent.