A Severed Wasp

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “Yolande Xabo,” the bishop corrected. “She drew thousands to her concerts, with people standing out on the streets.”

  Yolande looked down deprecatingly. “I don’t have much voice left. A voice goes long before the music does. A singer’s career is, you know, necessarily short.”

  Katherine looked pointedly at the nicotine-stained fingers, and saw that Yolande, too, was waiting for her to say something, that it mattered. She tried, “You still understand the music, and you make the audience understand it. Piaf sang, and moved audiences, long after her voice was beyond its chronological prime. It is the capacity to touch people that matters.”

  “P—” Yolande asked.

  “Edith Piaf. A French singer, a child of the streets who was wonderfully poignant.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t—” She came close to Katherine, asking in a low voice, “You really liked it?”

  Liked was not exactly the word. It was not Katherine’s kind of music, any more than rock had been. “It was kind of you to sing especially for Bishop Juxon. I think everybody appreciated it very much indeed—it was a comfort.”

  Yolande accepted that. “When I first met Allie—long before we were married—I was young. You know, an adolescent. I started singing professionally when I was thirteen. You pretty well missed the sixties, didn’t you?”

  What did the sixties have to do with it? Was Yolande already singing then? If she started at thirteen, it was possible. “Not entirely. I was here one year playing with the Philharmonic, and a group of actors and musicians held a peace vigil around the fountain in front of the Plaza. We all carried candles, and it was very quiet and what you might call undemonstrative. Erlend and I were barely middle-aged, then, but we were by far the oldest people there, and I think the young ones appreciated our presence.”

  “Erl—”

  “Erlend Nikulaussen, who was guest conductor at the Philharmonic for a series of Beethoven concerti.” As Yolande looked blank, she explained, “He was a well-known conductor, half Norwegian, half Finnish, and a descendant of Sibelius.”

  “And you were close friends?”

  “I became good friends with many conductors, most of them now dead. The music world is small, and we make some deep friendships through music. Erlend and I were both certainly antiwar—particularly one as ambiguous as the Vietnam one seemed to be—our own was bad enough, but it wasn’t ambiguous. However, it made us more than willing to add our silent protest. Then some troublemaker shouted out that foreigners had no business there, and I in my naïve idiocy waved my American passport and might well have lost it if some hefty tympanists hadn’t surrounded Erlend and me and wafted us away, and before we knew it we were in the Palm Court of the Plaza drinking hot buttered rum.”

  “How casually you say that—the Palm Court and all the taken-for-granted perks of the privileged.”

  “I don’t think we took them for granted,” Katherine murmured,—and surely you can have all the perks you want? Why do you still sound so wistful?

  “I hated my conductors,” Yolande said. “All they wanted was my—you know—body, and they were jealous of my music. How different the world of your kind of music must be.”

  “There’s plenty of jealousy in the world of classical music, too,” Katherine said.

  4

  Driving home with the Davidsons was certainly pleasanter than a taxi, and the springs of the Saab were in fairly good condition.

  Suzy leaned forward. “What did you think of Yolande’s singing?”

  Katherine replied carefully. “It is not a kind of music with which I am familiar, and surely she should not smoke if she has a weak chest?”

  Suzy said, “I gather that she had asthma as a child. The early medication for asthma was made up into a kind of cigarette, and while that has not been used in the United States for years, it was standard treatment wherever it was in South America that Yolande grew up. Allie has tried to get her to stop smoking, and I think she would like to, but she got hooked early. Having once been an avid smoker myself in the days of my rebellious youth, I have a certain sympathy. I still miss it. But she’s been smoking more the past couple of years than she used to.”

  The dean said, “Hearing her did give you an idea of how she must have mesmerized crowds.”

  “Indeed it did.”

  Suzy said, “If I were her doctor, I’d prescribe that she see Bishop Chan at least twice a day—although he was never a smoker, ironically. It meant a lot to Yolande to sing for us the way she did tonight. And she’s generous in many ways—with the Gomez children, for instance; she’s paying for Fatima’s remedial work this summer as well as for their regular tuition. And she didn’t stash up the millions she should have. Most of the money went to the crooks who managed her, and when she got out of their clutches they kept everything that should have gone to her. Allie got a lawyer, but they had even cleverer and more ruthless lawyers. Allie inherited a little money, and a bishop’s salary is not small pickings, but they aren’t rolling in gold the way people assume they are.”

  “Bravo,” the dean said.

  “Well, I try to be fair. Most of the time. I’m not happy about Yolande’s hold over Tory.”

  “Do you exaggerate it?”

  “I don’t think so. Tory absolutely idolizes her. And I suppose Yolande makes me feel guilty for not being home when our kids get out of school. I do not like to think of her as a substitute mother for my baby.”

  “I doubt if Yolande thinks of it like that,” the dean said. “At least half a dozen of Tory’s classmates are there nearly every day for tea, and I think she enjoys being a kind of goddess to the kids, now that she no longer has her adoring public. It’s harmless enough. And just as Emily has seen through the glitter and stopped being part of the group, so, too, will Tory, when she’s a little older.”

  “You’re probably right. It’s my own guilt feelings …”

  “Nonsense,” the dean said. “By the way, Madame Vigneras, you do know that Emily took you seriously when you offered to hear her play?”

  “I offered seriously,” Katherine said.

  “We do thank you.” Again Suzy leaned over the seat. “She’s working hard on a little program. I’ve persuaded her to keep it short.”

  “She’s talented, isn’t she?” The kind of drive Katherine felt in Emily occasionally accompanied a second-rate talent, and when that happened, it usually brought disaster.

  “We hope so,” Suzy said, “but piano got short shrift in her life until after her accident—Mimi told you?”

  “Yes. She has a lot of courage, your child.”

  Suzy nodded. “She’s stubborn as a mule. That can sometimes be an asset.”

  “All inherited from her mother,” the dean assured Katherine. “Tory may look like Suzy, but Em’s the one who can be pigheaded.”

  “And thank you very much, kind sir. I always knew you appreciated me.”

  “You have to have all the faults as well as all the virtues of stubbornness to stay married to me. Anybody else would have abandoned me long ago.”

  Katherine liked them. There was warm affection between them as well as love. They were good companions. As she and Justin had been. Liking the same books, the same plays, the same people. Even the note of criticism in Suzy’s voice as she talked about Yolande Undercroft was a revealing that she was totally human.

  “By the way,” Suzy said. “We have a family tradition that on the first Sunday evening of the month everybody stays home, we have dinner together, and then we—or at least some of us—make music. Felix is usually with us. You’ve just missed the first Sunday in June—possibly lucky for you—but we’d love to have you come for our July music-making. Mimi sometimes manages to survive our noise, and we’ll ask her to bring you, if you’d like.”

  “I’d like very much,” Katherine said.

  At that the dean bellowed with laughter. “I hope you’ll be able to stand it. We are always loud and sometimes we don’t play together. You can imagine
what it sounds like when I finish three measures ahead of everyone else?”

  “I can see that it takes talent.” Katherine smiled. “I have a feeling that it will sound familiar to me. We used to have musical evenings, too. My son had a lovely voice, and a talent for the violin. He died before we knew whether or not he would have been as gifted a musician as your John.”—And John tears my heart, because I cannot look at him without thinking of Michou.

  She and Justin had been determined not to push Michou; they had dissuaded his teacher from putting him on the concert platform as a child prodigy, insisting that it was better to wait for his talent to mature. She still thought that they were right in having given him a far more normal childhood than he could have had if he had started playing in public. “Justin and I used to sing opera—you should have heard us do Aïda and Radames. Mimi and Rodolfo were in our repertoire, too. Occasionally, when I was on tour, we used to drive instead of taking trains or planes, and we sang the miles away—I might add that neither of us had any singing voice whatsoever. A kind of alto is the best you could call me. I’m not saying what kind.”

  Suzy and the dean joined in her laughter. Dave said, “We’re not quite that elevated.”

  “I’d hardly call it elevated. We were just in the habit of memorizing music and it came easily to us. I do look forward to Sunday. I love the English horn. I’m not a Wagner buff, but the horn solo in the prelude to the third act of Tristan always gives me chills with its haunting loveliness.”

  “It’s one of Dave’s best pieces,” Suzy agreed.

  “And John—I do look forward to hearing John.”

  “John’s good.” There was assurance and pride in the dean’s voice. “He’s also fallen head over heels in love with you. You’re an excellent example for him.”

  “I think I’ve fallen head over heels in love with John, too,” Katherine said. “He’s going to be spectacularly handsome, which will do him no harm on the concert platform.”

  “Thank God he doesn’t realize it,” Suzy said. “That he’s handsome, I mean. He keeps thinking his dark eyebrows and lashes are weird, as he calls them. I don’t disabuse him. He knows he’s talented, and that’s enough for a young adolescent to know about himself.”

  At Tenth Street, the dean helped her up the steps and made sure that she was in the apartment, and that the lights were on, before he bade her good night.

  5

  It had been an interesting evening, but she was tired, and moved gratefully into her bedtime routine. The bath water was less muddy than usual, and she lay back, relaxing in the scented warmth, letting her mind drift into free fall.

  Yolande Undercroft. Yolande Xabo, singer. Manya Sergeievna. Manya had had an enormous following, too, though probably nothing like Yolande’s. Why is it that a serious artist never gets the … Tant pis. Never mind. Manya had flowers after every performance, so that the apartment always smelled like a hothouse. And Manya had been a star, in every way. She moved with the assurance of a star. The plaudits never surprised her. A rare bad notice brought out a stream of Russian oaths. But her angers never lasted. She was generous of heart. Generous to Katherine when the child, still grieving for her mother, did not know how to return Manya’s love. Generous to her as an adult. A warm and loving grandmother to the children, and especially to Julie, after Michou’s death, when Katherine’s own shock and grief were so great that it was a barrier between her and Julie, even when she rocked the little girl, tried to dry the child’s tears, her own eyes tearless, dry as sand.

  Manya had always been there to help, to pull the strings necessary to get Katherine out of that prison in Paris, out of France; to fly—once that became the usual mode of travel—to Katherine and Justin whenever she was needed. Only once, and that was the last time, had Manya asked, instead of given.

  The overseas call had come early one morning when Katherine was at home in Paris for a few weeks. Nanette had called her to the phone, looking anxious. “Madame, for you.”

  The voice on the phone was faint, not the wind-filled, echoing faintness which sometimes accompanies overseas calls, but faint in itself. At first, Katherine had no idea who it was; then, ‘Aunt Manya! What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m not well, Katya. I’m not well.’

  Manya Sergeievna was always well. Katherine could not imagine her except bursting with vitality. Even after Thomas Forrester’s death, the actress’s passionate grieving had been suffused with life.

  But the thin, frightened voice repeated. ‘I’m not well.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’ Katherine asked automatically, then realized that Manya, always ready to come to Katherine in any emergency, to change plans, postpone openings, would never herself ask for help; so she said, ‘I’m coming Aunt Manya,’ understanding with a sense of shock that Manya must be desperate to call at all, to admit weakness. ‘Jean Paul will get me on a plane tomorrow,’

  ‘But Julie—’ There was little protest in the trembling voice.

  ‘Nanette is here. And Justin.’

  She wanted Justin to come with her. She knew that Manya was dying and she was afraid. But Justin was in the midst of some recordings, and Julie, who adored her “Mamushka,” would need one of her parents at home. So she caught an early flight the next day. Justin had called ahead, and the farmer who took care of the few animals Manya still had on the farm met her at the airport. ‘She’s very bad,’ he said, his face lined with grief as well as work and age. ‘But she’s waiting for you. She won’t go till you come.’

  There was a nurse in a white uniform and cap. She, too, said that Manya was waiting. ‘They often do, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t even know she was ill,’ Katherine said helplessly.

  ‘She didn’t want you to worry. And it’s gone more quickly than any of us thought …’

  The great bed in which Manya had continued to sleep after her husband’s death was made up, empty. A hospital bed was by the long windows which looked into the woods. A hanging candle gave a soft light on the icon in the corner.

  Katherine scarcely recognized the shrunken body lying propped up against the pillows. Manya had lost weight, radically, so that she was as thin as Justin after Auschwitz. Her skin was yellowed and wrinkled. But a smile of absolute delight irradiated her face as she saw Katherine, and she stretched out her arms, so thin that they were only bones with dry flesh hanging from them. But the smile was so brilliant that all else faded and Katherine ran to her stepmother. Was she holding Manya, or was Manya holding her?

  ‘Child of my heart,’ Manya said.

  Katherine could only murmur, ‘Manya, Aunt Manya …’

  The old woman had talked, then, brokenly, often difficult to hear, about Thomas Forrester, about her life in the theatre. ‘Jealousy—it is the ugliest of all human emotions. God has kept me from it. And Tom. And then, I have been practical. I never had on the stage with me any young woman who could replace me, overshadow me. I have seen what that can do to a star. Once a young actress tried to … and I fired her. To try to get to the top by leaving bloody bodies under your feet is not … and I never …’

  ‘Of course you never,’ Katherine reassured.

  ‘You will be hated—’ Manya’s thin fingers clutched at her. ‘You will be hated for what you are and who you are and I cannot protect you.’

  ‘But you have, over and over again.’ Katherine stroked the thin hand.

  ‘You are not jealous, thank God you are not, but you will suffer from the jealousy of other …’

  Katherine began to smooth the thin, white hair, softly stroking it back from the old woman’s feverish brow.

  ‘I do not want you to suffer from the green bile of jealousy …’ Manya’s voice was so low that Katherine had to bend over to hear. ‘I would protect you. But we cannot protect those we love. All I can do is warn you. You have been hurt from sick jealousy; and you will be hurt again, and the worst will be when you are old …’

  Katherine turned from her stepmother to the present, t
o the tub which was relaxing her tired muscles. She drew some more hot water, and leaned back again. Manya had frequently talked of her paranormal gifts (another reminder of Yolande?), but there had been no evidence of them until that night of her death. As for jealousy—yes, there had been plenty. And it had been bad. And Manya had still been alive for the worst of it; what more could come, now?

  There was the rainy night when a younger artist had followed her out the stage door after a performance and pushed her, so that she fell (accidentally) on the slippery iron steps, hit her head on the cement, and lost consciousness. When she awoke, two days later, in the high white bed of a hospital in a strange city, Justin was sitting by her, had been sitting by her until she came out of the shock of severe concussion, his face haggard, his unshaven jowls bristly. How tender he had been, how gentle—until she was out of danger, at which point he became furious with her for having been hurt, for having put him through so much anxiety.

  ‘It is typical of men,’ Manya had said, after flying to Paris to meet them. ‘They are always furious with us if we sneeze. Pay no attention to him.’

  Far worse had been something which happened less than a year after Michou’s death. Manya had been with them, on a brief visit after the close of a play, and before starting rehearsals for a new one. It had been in December, a few weeks before Christmas. Presents from family and close friends were saved, to put under the tree; they were trying to keep Christmas happy for Julie’s sake; Wolfi would come for Epiphany and the gifts of the Magi, but there had always been a tree for the children, and surely Julie deserved presents and music and laughter.

  Gifts from anonymous admirers Katherine had learned to open ahead of time, after receiving an emerald necklace which she had had a hard time returning to the donor. Nanette brought the mail into the bedroom each morning while Katherine and Justin were having breakfast; Manya ate in her room, in bed, not joining them till lunch. Before Christmas, the mail was always heavy. There were several packages which were obviously books, and she opened them, keeping the cards and addresses aside for thank-you notes. There was another parcel, the size of a shoebox, and this she opened. It was, in fact, under the outer wrappings, a shoebox. She took off the lid, pulled aside the tissue paper. And there was a white rat. Dead.