Voice of Destiny

by JH Fletcher

  Back at the apartment she made a brief call to Georg Solti, who was flying out that night.

  ‘Give my love to Rome.’

  ‘I believe you’re heading for Europe yourself within a day or two?’

  ‘The day after tomorrow. To Paris.’

  ‘I heard. My congratulations. And afterwards?’ She did not know. ‘I daresay you’ll think of something. You always have.’

  She knew Georg meant well but she recognised a new detachment in his voice, confirmation that she had passed out of the living world of opera into legend. Diva to has-been in twelve hours, she thought. No wonder it was hard to come to terms with it.

  2

  After she’d put the phone down she checked with Otto to make sure he’d collected their flight tickets for Paris; he had, as she had known he would. The French Embassy had already sent her a screed on protocol; she would read that on the plane. The replies to well-wishers were ready for her signature. It took her half an hour to deal with everything. Chores done, she walked onto the balcony and stared past the shimmering leaves of the palm tree growing on the other side of the parapet. Inside the apartment the phone began to ring. She heard the faint murmur of Benedetta’s voice. A moment later she put her head around the door. ‘Telephone, Madame.’

  ‘Say I’m not available.’

  ‘Her name’s Ruth Ballard. She says she met you last night.’

  Lucia remembered; she was the writer she’d met on Hector Godolphin’s yacht. ‘What does she want?’

  Benedetta threw open her hands. ‘To speak to you.’

  Lucia was intrigued. It was strange how you were more comfortable with people of fame when you were famous yourself. She walked inside and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Madame Visconti …’

  ‘We met last night —’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I enjoyed the performance very much. It was most moving.’

  ‘Because of Violetta’s story? Or because of the occasion?’

  Lucia heard her own voice. It was dagger-sharp but she could not help it; she would accept sympathy from no-one, least of all from this unknown woman.

  ‘Both, perhaps. It’s always ennobling to be in the presence of great art. Especially when you know it’s the last chance you’ll get.’ She spoke in a matter-of-fact voice: simply two women together, or two artists, perhaps. Either way, she’d managed to find exactly the right words.

  Then Ruth Ballard said. ‘I wondered if you’d be free to have supper with me tonight.’

  Whatever Lucia had been expecting, it was not that.

  ‘Why?’ Not very gracious, but Ruth Ballard didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Because I’ve always admired your work. Because we met last night and I thought I’d like to know you better. Because I thought it might be fun.’

  Lucia decided to refuse the invitation. ‘I’m a little tired.’

  ‘I can believe it, after last night, but you don’t want to be alone.’

  ‘You think I dislike my own company so much?’

  ‘It’s too soon. After last night, after all the nights of your life, you’re bound to be feeling some let-down.’

  Lucia was unsure whether to be amused or angry. ‘You’re telling me how I feel?’

  Ruth answered with another question. ‘Are you saying you don’t feel any emptiness? After all the wonderful things you’ve done in your career?’

  Suspicion of motives came with the territory.

  ‘And I suppose you’ve got suggestions as to what I should do to fill this emptiness you say I’ve got?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve made the offer; it’s up to you if you come or not. If you do, there’ll be just the two of us. Nothing exciting, nothing like the grand occasions you’re used to, but I thought we might enjoy it.’

  ‘No photographers? No reporters?’

  ‘Definitely not. I don’t know how you put up with them.’

  Lucia thought: She’s right. I don’t want to be alone. ‘What do I wear?’

  ‘Clothes. People might talk, otherwise. Anything casual; it’s not a party.’

  3

  It was a nice house, unpretentious, with a lawn and flowerbeds running down to the water. From the terrace the harbour was a panorama of light: boats and ferries, the errant glimmer of the moon. Across the water the opera house, fragile-seeming at this distance, was no more than a tourist destination. It was hard to believe that last night, or any of the other nights of her life, had really happened. It gave her an uneasy feeling, as though she had stepped out of her previous existence and into an unknown place. Ruth put a glass of cool wine into her hand. Lucia stared at her as though she had never seen her before. Ruth touched her arm.

  ‘It’ll be fine. You’ll see.’

  Panic ebbed as Lucia wondered about this woman who seemed to read her innermost feelings.

  Even this, Ruth seemed to understand. She smiled. ‘Come and sit down.’

  Music played softly in the background. Corelli; Lucia was used to people deferring to her over their choice of music and was glad that Ruth had not.

  With her hostess in linen slacks and a simple blouse, her own dress from one of Italy’s leading fashion houses was too formal but it didn’t matter. Everything was easy here. The conversation, like the music, was light but never inconsequential.

  Ruth said: ‘I’ve read one of your biographies. You were in the war, too.’

  ‘In Italy, yes. And you?’

  ‘Burma was the worst of it. And the best.’

  ‘How could it be both?’

  ‘Because I nearly died. And because it was there I met my husband.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He was killed two years ago. In a car accident.’

  Killed … So simple, so portentous a word. Lucia had also known death. Yet Ruth was smiling, seemingly at peace. What a remarkable woman she was. So remarkable that Lucia, whose hackles rose more quickly than most, was quite untroubled when Ruth said: ‘What do you plan to do with your life now?’

  ‘I wish I knew. It’s been troubling me for months. It’s been suggested I might like to direct. But I thought I’d prefer something outside music.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Lucia was turning over stones in her mind to see what might lie underneath.

  ‘I went to Vietnam in 1974 …’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘I sometimes think the whole world knows. When I was there I saw a hospital crammed with children, victims of American bombing.’

  ‘Propaganda?’

  ‘No doubt. But the children were real. It was terrible.’ She lifted another stone. ‘Here, in this country, I’ve seen kids on the street. I went into the outback, once. The stories I heard … I have a journalist friend who wrote that when we harm children we destroy the future, and ourselves. I believe that. Governments don’t seem to care. I think I’d like to do something about it, if I could. A foundation, perhaps, something to get people thinking. To save some of the children, at least … Ourselves, too, if they really are the future.’

  ‘They certainly are. But even to scratch the surface would be an enormous task.’

  ‘Is that a reason for doing nothing?’

  ‘Not at all. If you save one child …’ Ruth prowled to the sliding doors leading to the yard. She looked across the harbour at the city’s lights. ‘I’m thinking of selling up here. Moving to the coast somewhere.’

  She came back, looked searchingly into Lucia’s face. ‘When you’ve thought out what you want to do, let me know. I’d like to help, if I can.’

  ‘Would you? Would you really?’

  ‘I try to do everything I can through my writing,’ said Ruth. ‘But sometimes, like now, it doesn’t seem enough. There are times when I would like to do things, not just write about them. God knows there’s enough that needs to be done.’

  ‘I feel the same. Injustice and indifference … They are so powerful, so frightening, yet no-one seems to care. I feel I have t
o do something about it, however small. If you’re able to help, and willing …’ She seized Ruth’s hands. ‘Join me in this and I know we’ll make a difference.’

  ‘Even one child …’ Ruth kissed her cheek.

  For a moment uncertainty returned. ‘It’ll need a miracle,’ Lucia said doubtfully. ‘A series of miracles.’

  ‘So we’ll make our own miracles.’ Ruth smiled. ‘Stay in touch.’

  For a moment, standing there together in the warm darkness, with the lights of the city shining on the other side of the harbour, all, even miracles, seemed possible.

  Two days later, with Otto and Benedetta, Lucia flew to Paris.

  4

  The salon was heavy with grandeur. There were a number of dignitaries, men and women as solemn as funerals. The gilt-framed portraits weren’t too cheerful, either: the Prince of this, the Count of that, the jewelled stars on their puffed-out breasts more lively by far than the doughy faces above them.

  Lucia thought it was lucky they couldn’t read her thoughts. They’d guillotine her, if they could. Opera singers were more dependent on the princes of the world than they liked to admit but Lucia, for all her Italian blood, would always be too much of an Aussie to be comfortable with titles or grandeur. Except her own, of course.

  There was the pregnant hush that was, as always, attendant upon glory. Any minute now, Lucia thought. It came not in the crying of trumpets but in the be-sashed and lounge-suited figure of a man, elegant, narrow-faced and smiling, who emerged through a massive wooden doorway flanked by flamboyantly uniformed guards. He walked forward and stood, hand on breast, upon a shallow dais. From an invisible source came the softly played notes of the ‘Marseillaise’. Not even royalty could have been more royal.

  Lucia had been through as many performances as any king, yet this occasion, like all the rest, had a majesty of its own. She became caught up in its momentum, and afterwards would be able to remember few details of what had happened.

  A man, Hubert something-or-other, spoke on behalf of the Ministry of Culture. He went on and on while Lucia focused her attention on the portraits. ‘Services to art … The unparalleled majesty of her presence … A voice beyond parallel in the annals of opera …’

  So this was what it came down to, she thought. Forty-four years of endeavour, since Seta Cehovin of Monfalcone first set about training her voice; now here she stood, garlanded by words, with the best of her life behind her. Unless she decided differently.

  Hubert whoever-he-was stopped speaking. The skirt of her gown brushing silkily against her legs, she walked forward, prompted by protocol and her own innate sense of theatre, to accept with suitable humility the honour that had been bestowed upon her by a grateful French nation.

  Chevalier des artes et lettres …

  Afterwards, in an adjoining room, the luncheon was honoured by candleflame, the heaviness of solid silver tableware, the smiling attentions of the President of France. At last it was over. The President withdrew. With her new decoration secure in its mahogany box, Lucia enjoyed the feeling of royal progress between the ranks of smiling courtiers. A limousine returned her to the real world, if that was the right description of an existence shared between the George V hotel, the most opulent in Paris, and the glittering shops of the Champs Elysées and Place Vendôme.

  5

  ‘Any messages?’

  There were several. She flipped through them. The Australian Embassy. The Italian Embassy. A reporter from Le Figaro. Another from Paris Soir. The BBC. Maude Arkwright, from EMI. Lucia paused, frowning.

  ‘Tho Chi Dong?’

  Benedetta shrugged. Don’t ask me.

  She decided to phone this one first, found it was the Vietnamese Embassy.

  ‘Mr Tho Chi Dong.’ She pronounced the name carefully, hoping the operator would understand her accent. She need not have worried; within seconds she was speaking to the man she wanted. A cultural attaché, or so he said. She found herself remembering Hanoi, her visit there six years before and the dramas it had created for her afterwards.

  ‘Thank you for returning my call. I would like to make an appointment to see you, if I may.’

  Lucia was dubious. ‘I’ve a very heavy schedule.’

  ‘Please. I would not ask if it was not important.’

  ‘Would you be able to come to the hotel?’

  ‘Of course. Now, if you wish.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’

  ‘Better I explain when I meet you.’

  She laughed, amused and exasperated by the games diplomats play. ‘You make it sound very mysterious.’

  ‘Not at all. It is very simple.’

  Within ten minutes he was at the door. He was short but stockily built, wearing a well-cut suit. About thirty-five, she thought, although with other races it was never easy to tell. ‘May I offer you a drink?’

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps a glass of water.’

  Benedetta brought him a glass. He sipped while Lucia waited. From past experience she knew that Vietnamese never liked to come straight to the point but it seemed that this man was the exception. He put the half-empty glass on the table beside him. ‘The Khmer Rouge have done terrible things in Cambodia. Hundreds of thousands of the people of that country — even more, perhaps — are dead.’

  This was too close to home for comfort.

  ‘I know all about the Khmer Rouge. I had a friend who went back to Cambodia. I never heard from him again —’

  ‘Forgive me. You are wrong. We are aware of your friendship with the conductor Khieu Pen. We share your grief at his disappearance. Of course you didn’t hear from him. The Khmer Rouge cut off all contact with the outside world. He could not have contacted you, even if he’d wanted to. Believe me, you do not know all about the Khmer Rouge. None of us knew. When we began to find out what they were like, we knew they were not to be tolerated. That was why they had to go.’

  ‘Why your army invaded Cambodia, you mean?’

  ‘To rid the world of an intolerable tyranny, yes.’

  ‘That isn’t how many people see it. Nor do I see what business it is of mine.’

  ‘Some would say it is everybody’s business to rid the world of evil.’

  Lucia was not prepared to get into an argument about abstractions. ‘The Cambodians and Vietnamese have long been enemies, have they not?’

  ‘Long ago, yes. No more. The world becomes smaller every day. We cannot afford enemies.’

  ‘What has this to do with me?’

  ‘There was a time when you were a friend to our people.’

  ‘I hope I still am.’

  ‘The Americans killed many Cambodian people through their bombing. The Khmer Rouge killed many more. Between them, over a million dead. A million and a half, perhaps. The country is in ruins. By getting rid of the Khmer Rouge, we have restored hope to the people of Cambodia. But we need help.’

  ‘Why should you care about Cambodia?’

  ‘Not only for Cambodia! For ourselves, too! We are a poor country. We need development aid, technical assistance. It will not happen so long as the rest of the world believes us to be the butchers the Americans say we are. We need someone to speak on our side.’

  At last she understood the direction this conversation was going. Her eyebrows questioned him. ‘To speak on your side?’

  ‘Or sing. A concert to celebrate the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. The rebirth of hope in Cambodia. To draw attention to their need for aid. And our own.’

  ‘I am retired. An old lady. No-one will care.’

  Gently he corrected her. ‘You are one of the greatest opera singers in the world. Many would say the greatest. Your support would mean much to us.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how much trouble I got into last time? I still can’t perform in the States, or visit there. Even in Australia there was trouble.’

  Tho leaned forward, face earnest, hands clasped between his knees. He said: ‘If you had the opportunity to change what you did, knowing wha
t you know now, would you do it?’

  It was a serious question, deserving a considered answer. ‘It was worse than I’d expected. I hadn’t foreseen the hatred. But the war was wrong. I thought so and I said so. So no, Mr Tho, if the situation arose I would change nothing. I would sing in Hanoi.’

  ‘Then sing for us again.’

  She was six years older and some of the apostolic fire had died. Yet she remembered what she had told Ruth Ballard about the children she had seen in Hanoi. If her words had meant anything at all …

  ‘I will do it, but subject to one condition. I must make a phone call. I shall let you know my answer tomorrow.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  1

  With the creak of aluminium and the popping of rivets, the antiquated DC8 took off from Hanoi and headed south. Lucia sat in the window seat with the Vietnamese official beside her and Otto and Benedetta in the row behind. She said: ‘You’re sure the others have gone ahead?’

  Tran Chong was quick to reassure her. ‘Oh yes. As our people in Hanoi told you.’

  ‘You’d better be sure about it. I’m not going to perform by myself.’

  ‘You will meet them in Phnom Penh. At the hotel.’

  ‘And Khieu Pen’s family?’

  ‘We have been making enquiries. We shall know more about that when we arrive.’

  Lucia stared at the jungle flowing beneath the wings. The plane was flying so low that there were times when its belly seemed almost to brush the topmost branches.

  ‘Do your planes normally fly as low as this?’ Although she was fascinated rather than frightened by the sensation.