The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  Needless to say, the Quebec media were all over the story. D’Ambrosio the Sexist! D’Ambrosio the Barbarian! D’Ambrosio the Wretch! D’Ambrosio the Holocaust Denier! D’Ambrosio the Murderer! Whatever! Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio is quite simply Canada’s most brilliant director and filmmaker in decades—that’s what the public just doesn’t get! And they didn’t stop there! Soon rumors were swirling about Bruno’s sexual orientation. It’s true there’s no wife or girlfriend in the picture, but what does that prove? Not a thing! You’ve been single for I don’t know how long, and half the women in Toronto could vouch for your heterosexuality, if your letters are to be believed! I’d like to silence the rumormongers by pointing out he’s never been seen with a lover or boyfriend either. Rumors are given more credence when they happen to concern a man of D’Ambrosio’s standing. Envy is an illness and its first symptom is calumny. Never forget that.

  I’m quite certain that Bruno is being besieged by hordes of agents as I write these lines, each vying for him to sign up their baritone to take the place of the treacherous Kroll. Anamaria has been playing with Wotan all evening. Such a cute little dog! I think once we’re back in Montreal I’ll find her a little chihuahua or another little pet . . . But are we ready to have children, Gabriel? Anamaria and I, I mean. Not you. You’re still a child. Children should never have children of their own.

  I’ll be back in touch soon.

  Your brother,

  Michel

  * * *

  Rome, October 9, 1999

  Wonderful news, Gabriel! Kroll’s replacement has been found! We have our Scarpia! Bruno told us this morning. We didn’t expect any less from him. He seemed satisfied. You’ll never guess who it is! Although, of course, you need to know the opera scene to understand. It’s the Polish baritone Mariusz Golub. A big strapping man like you! The directors always find a way to have him take off his shirt at the end of the act. That way, they’re sure the audience will come back after the intermission. He’s just finished Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, which he spent buck naked virtually the whole time. And I won’t even mention the Don Giovanni production in Augsburg, in the purest Regietheater style imaginable, where he wore nothing but a pair of tight fluorescent underpants for all of Act III. Bruno is a big fan of this type of production that pushes art to extremes. He says, and here I really must agree, that the public needs to be shaken out of its set ways and habits. His words are music to my ears. Do you know how many fusty old productions I’ve had to subject myself to for The Magic Flute alone? I won’t deny I shone in some of them—Santa Fe and Des Moines spring to mind—but there comes a time when a genius needs to swoop in and shake the music scene out of its torpor! Too bad for the old fuddy-duddies who might be outraged at seeing a swastika on Scarpia’s arm!

  Golub will be in Rome tomorrow morning. The filming schedule will have to be reworked. All his scenes will be done first, five weeks from now. Filming is to officially begin November 21. Six weeks and it will all be over, in time to launch the film in the spring.

  I’ll keep you posted,

  Michel

  * * *

  Rome, October 10, 1999

  My dear brother,

  Phew! What a day! Bruno had pledged to make some changes as of this morning, and he was true to his word! He arrived at our apartment around eight o’clock, along with Wotan, to explain how the rest of the day was to proceed. We were expecting to be taken to the church, Sant’Andrea della Valle, which we can see from our apartment block, in order to go through the mise en place. Instead, Bruno arrived carrying a set of bathroom scales. We’ve become so comfortable in each other’s company that he just comes on in; no need to knock, just like one of the family. He asked us to weigh ourselves, then wrote down our weights on a big piece of cardboard he put up on the wall. I’m ninety-five kilos; Anamaria is seventy-five.

  “There you have it, dear friends. Our goal is to bring Michel down to eighty and you, Anamaria, to sixty before shooting starts in six weeks. I think it’s possible if you put your minds to it. You won’t be left to your own devices. I have a personal trainer and dietician to help. They’ll be here shortly.”

  We pointed out that we’d already shed a few kilos before leaving Montreal, but he insisted. He takes such good care of us. A real father. The individuals he was referring to arrived a few minutes later, carrying weights and two elliptical machines. The trainer is a Suzuki-type woman with an Olympic medal from Lillehammer in the luge. The dietician emptied the cupboards and presented us with a menu for the day. It can’t have been more than a thousand calories. Anyone who’s overweight dreams of just this, Gabriel: someone coming into their home and showing them exactly what needs to be done, stepping in to stop them being so spineless. Anamaria was a little reluctant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to lose any weight. But Bruno is so convincing.

  “My entire concept for the film revolves around a victim-executioner relationship that borders on sadism. Your attitude, your appearance, your every movement must scream deprivation and withdrawal. Your curves will prevent the public from believing in your suffering. Catharsis will be impossible. Don’t forget the camera adds five kilos! I’m concerned with reality! It’s authenticity I need!”

  “But the truly great Toscas were never just skin and bone,” Anamaria tried to protest. “I—”

  “Enough! Anamaria, you have to believe in my vision. Do you believe? Yes or no?”

  “Yes, of course, Bruno. It’s just—”

  “Well, prove it then! As things stand, you’re too big to fit the space I’ve reserved for you in my tableau.”

  You really must see the determination in the man’s eyes when he sets out his ideas, Gabriel. You want to believe him! You want to follow him! I had a word with Anamaria to get her to stop tormenting poor Bruno-Karl. Sometimes when she gets an idea into her head, she can be like a spoiled child. I think Haitian mothers overindulge their children, at least at the table in any case. Anamaria was allowed to eat whatever she wanted at home, whenever she wanted. It’s a big change for her. For me, too, but I intend on living up to Bruno-Karl’s production. Eventually, she realized this was our golden opportunity.

  Bruno left around nine o’clock. He’s juggling a number of projects, including stage direction for a French rock singer’s show. He’s not going to make his fortune with A Century with Tosca! He has to accept the bread-and-butter contracts too. Apparently he’s in talks with Cirque de la Lune. They’re looking to set up shop somewhere in Italy on a permanent basis. Perhaps in Milano. The kind of thing they can’t manage in Quebec. The trainer stayed until noon. Forty-five minutes on the elliptical and an hour of weights. By the time she left, I could have gnawed Anamaria’s arm off I was so hungry. We had a hard time concentrating on our voice exercises this afternoon. But we’ll just have to get used to it. This evening, we rehearsed a few scenes with the pianist Bruno found for us. A very patient man with a permanent smile.

  I’m off to bed. All this exercise has me exhausted.

  Michel

  * * *

  Rome, October 11, 1999

  Dear Gabriel,

  We could barely get out of bed this morning. How do you do it? Every muscle in my body aches terribly. Bruno woke us at eight; otherwise we’d have slept until noon. A good thing he’s here.

  The trainer came back at nine o’clock. It was hard to start exercising again, but if that’s what it takes. And once we were into it, we couldn’t feel a thing. Endorphins, isn’t it? It will hurt less tomorrow. Anamaria isn’t saying much. She seems to have courageously accepted her fate. It would be a shame to let all those years of singing lessons go to waste over a simple aesthetic detail. She can see that now. My brave little Anamaria. I am as much in love with her today as the very first day we met.

  Do you remember that day in 1980? It was winter. On the advice of the music teacher at school, Mom had found me a vocal coach of my own, Madame Lenoir on Rue Saint-Dominique. How could I ever forget her? You never forget a singing teac
her. You ask such idiotic questions, Gabriel! May I remind you that Mom would have paid for your lessons, too, but you dismissed her out of hand, just like you disregarded every other sign of her affection. You preferred debasing yourself, chasing after a ball with those idiots at the sports center. That Saturday morning when Mom brought me to Madame Lenoir’s for the first time . . . I’ll remember it till my dying day. She lived in one of those red-brick houses in Villeray, on the ground floor. We walked right on in without knocking. There were a bunch of green leather armchairs lining the long hallway. Mom put a finger to her lips so I wouldn’t interrupt the lesson that was going on in the studio. I was a little apprehensive. Madame Lenoir had a portrait of Maria Callas on the wall and, on a corkboard, a postcard featuring a quote from the great diva: “An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down.” Words that were to become gospel for Anamaria and I. We sat. In the studio, Madame Lenoir was giving instructions to someone we couldn’t see. I can still remember what she said: “Sing as though you have a cold, Anamaria. The sound must travel beyond the nose as though you had a cold. I’ll play the intro and you pick it up . . .”

  And then the miracle happened.

  She sang Scarlatti’s Se florindo è fedele. You could already hear the velvet in the timbre that would have her win all those auditions and competitions. At once strong and fragile, somber and full of light, Anamaria’s voice brought Mom and I back to a preverbal time when words didn’t get in the way of the senses. How else can I describe it? Even Mom’s jaw dropped in surprise. She who is normally so completely in control of herself. It was the end of Anamaria’s lesson and the beginning of our love affair. I already knew that voice would haunt me for days to come. I knew that, for the rest of my life, I would do anything to hear it once again. The studio door had not yet opened to reveal her face to me, but I already knew we were meant to be together. We heard footsteps. Madame Lenoir opened the door, and out came Anamaria. She was twelve, the same age as us. Big eyes, warm and deep like her voice. Mom liked her immediately.

  “You sing so well! I held my breath for the whole song!”

  Good old Mom called it a “song”! Anamaria introduced herself. She said she knew Mom’s restaurants. The following week, I arrived well ahead of time to hear much more of her singing.

  “You know, Michel, as long as you’re here five minutes before the lesson, that’s plenty,” Madame Lenoir would tell me.

  It didn’t take long for her to notice my interest in her young student. Anamaria was still a little shy, until Madame Lenoir, who always called us “my little darlings,” one day suggested we sing Rossini’s cat duet. That was when we really got to know each other. Meowing at each other. Then my voice broke, and I had to wait a year until I saw my fair Anamaria again. One year of waiting as a teenager is like ten years of waiting in adulthood. I went back to Madame Lenoir and Anamaria was still there. She’d grown. She lived on Querbes in Outremont, just her, her brother, and her mother. She didn’t come from a family of musicians either. Her father, an Italian, had left her mother when she was very young. He went back home. They rarely saw him. She would spend the odd vacation over there with her brother and would each time come back disappointed. Her father lived in a small town south of Rome and everyone stared at her because of the color of her skin. Everywhere she went, they looked at her like she was from another planet. Then news from the father dried up, and he stopped sending money. Anamaria’s mother had to work like crazy. The singing lessons were a luxury the family could ill afford, and when she was fifteen her mother regretfully announced that she’d have to give up the thing she loved most of all, the only thing that made her smile. Imagine my dismay. Not only was I going to lose the only friend I had in the world besides my brother, she would also be condemned to a life without music, all over the stupid business of money. You didn’t know this Gabriel, but it was Mom who paid for Anamaria’s music lessons from the time she was fifteen. Even the one-on-ones and the masterclasses with the top American singers at two hundred dollars an hour—that was Mom, too. She always insisted I never mention it; she didn’t want Anamaria’s mother to feel uncomfortable. I’m telling you this so you might see your mother’s true colors at last.

  But it’s getting late. I think I’m even more exhausted than yesterday, and Anamaria wants to go for a stroll before bedtime. God knows where she gets the energy from! There’s no stopping her! Maybe the psychologists are right, after all: we all end up marrying our mothers!

  Michel

  * * *

  Rome, October 14, 1999

  My dear Gabriel,

  For four days now, Anamaria and I have been subjected to a training regimen that many would find unbearable. But our motivation knows no bounds! It must be said that we’re cheating a little, due to Anamaria’s fondness for food, what else? In the evenings, when the pianist, the director, the personal trainer, the dietician, and the whole battery of people taking care of us have all left us in peace, sometimes we’ll slip out to walk the streets of Monti, one of Rome’s historic neighborhoods. It’s teeming with trattorias, gelaterias, and pasticcerias that Anamaria drags me off to, ravenous after all that sport. We have a carbonara or a tiramusu and fior di latte ice cream, then we return to our apartment in silence. With the intense workouts we’re doing, I can’t imagine these little treats make the slightest difference. Once on our way back from Anamaria’s favorite ice cream parlor, we stopped at the foot of Palazzo del Grillo to watch the swifts flit across the Rome skies. Sitting outside a little restaurant in the square, a priest stole a glance at us. For a second, I was tempted to walk up to him and ask him to marry us there and then, as the swifts flew above us, in the splendor of the Rome evening.

  We’ve been learning about the details of the filming in dribs and drabs. We met Golub. He’s staying someplace else in Rome, not with us. We’ll be starting with scenes from Act II in Palazzo Farnese, from what I’ve heard. But nothing to worry my head about before late November. I think I’ll go lie down. I can barely think straight. I need to go to the post office to mail these letters tomorrow. Keep in touch and don’t do anything stupid. Claudia didn’t deserve you anyway. What are your plans for Christmas?

  Your brother,

  Michel

  The Königsberg Zebra

  Berlin, November 2, 1999

  Grotesque and disgusting? Why, thank you. Coming from you, that’s a compliment. I do try my best.

  Your letters arrived last week. Five months to get back to me—you took your time! I was worried, honestly. And there was nothing in them that reassured me. I find everything you say about the whole production completely exasperating. If ever I get my hands on that D’Ambrosio of ill omen, his Proustian moustache had better watch out. I saw his photo in the Berliner Tageszeitung when Kroll walked out in October. Apparently, he let Kroll rip up his contract under one condition: that he would never reveal his reasons for leaving. Although that’s no more than idle speculation, naturally. Kroll, it seems, is using his unplanned holiday to spend some time with his daughters at his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. There were photos of them too. In among the fir trees. Very touching. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it, Michel? Photos of you in the tabloids with the children you’ll have with Anamaria? That’s sure to sell Mado’s frozen meat pies by the thousand. But who am I to poke fun at your dreams, grotesque libertine that I am?

  When are you coming to Berlin? My travel budget is somewhat limited. But wait till you hear this: I found a job. Or rather the job found me . . . The sports center where I work out, the SEZ, asked me if I’d like to be a trainer there. The pay’s not great, but I get to meet people. It’s helping me get over Claudia. I’ll spare you the hoops I had to jump through to get a work permit. Let’s just say I’m not sure which I’d rather endure . . . German bureaucracy or circumcision without anesthetic.

  You really shouldn’t get so worked up about Suzuki, you know. I’ve told you before: she meant you no harm. I was her fa
vorite, that’s all. Every parent—yes, I think of her as my mother—has a favorite, especially those who deny it. And the opposite is also true: children have their favorites too, the ones they want to die last! With no father in the picture, let’s just say I prefer Suzuki to Mom. I think she’s worth more than a father. And you’re wrong about that photo of our grandfather. Sure, I found it fascinating, but it was the context more than anything that interested me. Do you know a lot of men who had their photo taken in a leotard alongside the archbishop of Rimouski in the 1950s? I so wish I’d known him! And I think that you, well, both of us really, we’ve never seen Mom’s childhood in Rivière-du-Loup for what it really was. Judging by what you wrote in your letters, you’d think it was something out of Charles Dickens or The Little Match Girl. And you wonder why I despise Mom so much? My God! I’m not short of reasons! Let’s just say I share the unions’ concerns about her. She exploits her employees, she takes on girls who otherwise wouldn’t find a job, then has them work like crazy in her restaurants. Didn’t you see the documentary? Waitressing Hell. Did you know she has them take a vow of cleanliness before she hires them? Has anyone ever told you that? Or about how she greases the politicians’ palms to get around zoning bylaws, or the vertical integration that ensures she has absolute control over everything and everyone, from farm to fork.

  And people lap it up. A flagship. A national treasure. Just like your D’Ambrosio.

  I never told you, but just before I left for Germany I decided to take a trip to Rivière-du-Loup. It was Christmas 1998. Just to see. Because Suzuki had told me I should go one day, and since I had no intention—and still don’t—of returning to Canada, I thought it might be the last chance to see where my ancestors were buried. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want Mom to find out. It’s none of her business. Now you can go running off and tell her everything, just like you’ve always done. None of that matters anymore. I called Suzuki from Toronto before I left. She didn’t want to tell me too much, confirming what I’ve known to be true all along: she lives in fear of Mom. She was a bit offended, too. I hadn’t spoken to her in years.