Nightingale

by Juliet Waldron

"The night after I had my first big success at the opera. At first I thought I loved him." Klara gazed into Akos' eyes, those beautiful eyes, praying not to see the love there change to disdain. "I had to."

  He took her hand in his, gently carried it to his mouth and kissed it with as much reverence as he might have kissed the hand of the Virgin herself. When he raised his eyes to her again, he said, "For so many musical women, especially those of great talent, it is often this way."

  "Ah, Herr Almassy…." His sympathy, his high regard, hurt almost as much as she had earlier imagined his disdain might. "I am ruined for the love of any honest man."

  Klara rolled her head from side to side in grief, buried her face in her hands.

  "Don't believe it." He was stern as he took her hands away, refusing to let her hide. "Never say it. He has done his worst, but he hasn't touched your soul, Fraulein. It remains pure and bright as your name." He drew her close against his slim strength, rocking her and her sorrow, her illness, like a child.

  The sun came and went, a slow moving, a golden line upon the floor. After a while Akos said softly against her cheek, "I have heard about Giovanni Lugiati."

  The look on her face, the flush, the rapid rising and falling of her bosom, the renewed tears, told the story of this next humiliation without words. To keep her from running from him, Akos' strong arms tightened, drawing her against his shoulder like a baby. Klara, far gone in the momentum of confession, was too weak to resist.

  The kettle hissed softly; the fire crackled. The rattle and noise of the street, the sound of chatter in the apartment below rose into their silence. Akos held her, gently rubbed her back. Klara drew a deep sobbing breath, rested her head against the somber black broadcloth that covered his muscular shoulder. Now that it had all come out, she felt exhausted.

  After a pause to use her handkerchief, she said, "Herr Almassy, I know what I must do. I must take the money I have saved and leave Vienna, try to make a life outside of the Empire. It is a bitter choice, though," she trembled as she spoke the words, the words which revealed the cross upon which she hung, "to choose between freedom and my art. Oh, when I think of never standing upon a stage again!"

  "A nightingale in a cage," Akos interrupted, quietly repeating Max's words. His strong arms were still around her. His face, serious and beautiful like that of a dark angel, turned to her.

  "I am not afraid of Count Oettingen, Maria Klara. I will help you fly away. And not to obscurity, but to fame in another place. The Count does not command everywhere."

  The room seemed to brighten, to open, at his words. A ray of sun, a miracle upon this afternoon of gray cloud slabs suddenly entered the kitchen windows.

  Klara gazed at him in wonder. Her hand began a slow traverse along the bones of his cheek and jaw, deliberately, carefully, as if she were blind and learning to know him by touch. Akos' strong hand came to make an echoing tracery of her sad, sweet face. Tears stood bright.

  "You mustn't endanger yourself on my behalf. I must find the strength to do what I must alone."

  "I can take care of myself. And in this world, as you well know, by the rule of law, by the rule of church, a woman has no being but in a man. You will need help."

  Even through the tears, her blue eyes flashed. She had allowed herself to depend upon Giovanni, too, upon his promises of eternal love. As if he had read her mind, Akos said, "But, Frauelein Silber, another pledge I will make to you. It is not my intent to take you from one cage only to seek to put you into another."

  A sob rose. With those words he pierced straight to her darkest fear, the fear Max had taught her to know whenever she imagined the love of any other man.

  Was this truly the miracle she'd prayed for? Was there a man on earth not like Max, wanting only to possess, to control, to display?

  "Maximilian is not only a powerful nobleman, but he is a man who is said to take pleasure in killing. And you ah, sir….”

  "A mere musician, but I too have secrets, Maria Klara, for that is but one of the roles I play. I do not deny that your Count is a formidable enemy, but I am more than he thinks. You shall be free. Yes, you shall be free. I swear it!"

  Capturing her hand, he brought to his lips. This time when he kissed, his mouth touched not the back, but made a tender salute to the palm. There was a thrill, not only in the warm caressing, but in his brave words, which had filled her winter dark heart with a spring-time of hope. She wanted to put her arms around him, to kiss him, but instead she said, "I cannot accept your help. I must do this thing alone. When Max comes back, I shall break with him for good and all. I shall leave Vienna.”

  Akos pressed his fingers to her lips, turned to the door. That was when Klara heard them, the footsteps.

  "What is this?"

  A sharp voice came as the door banged open. It was Liese, big hands resting on full hips as she took in the scene. Behind her came Messer, lugging a shoulder load of wood.

  "What's wrong, my darling?" In the next instant she’d thrown off her cloak. "Herr Messer says you have been crying."

  After one look at Klara's swollen pale face, Liese rounded on Akos. "And so she has! Why, who are you, you criminal? She has been crying terribly! It will surely hurt her voice!"

  "Be quiet, Liese. This is Herr Almassy." Klara paused to hold back a cough long enough to explain. "He is Concertmaster to Prince Vehnsky. He is curing my cold."

  "I told you he brewed medicine and rubbed the little mistress’ feet," Messer said. "She was resting easy at first, but then she started to cry."

  "Idiot!" Liese turned toward Messer. "You never should have let him in here. Now, get into the parlor and get a good fire going. At once!"

  As Messer dutifully shuffled away with his load of wood, she turned back to Almassy, straightening her plump gray self. "You, sir, if you value your hide, will leave here at once."

  "I can't leave now," Almassy said. "The treatment is not finished."

  "If you don't go now, young man, I shall summon Count Oettingen's men and they will make you wish you had."

  "I am not here to make love to your mistress." Akos seemed neither awed by nor interested in her threats. "I belong to the household of Prince Vehnsky, and as his chamberlain will tell you, I particularly understand the healing of singers. Healing your lady desperately needs or she will not sing a note this Carnival season. If you stop me now, the consequences will be on your head."

  "Let him alone! Let him finish or or I think I'll die!" Klara’s body was aching, humming, buzzing. Since Liese had come in, her whole body had begun to ache.

  "Since the mistress commands, you shall stay then, finish whatever it is, but I caution you, sir. I am here now."

  Ignoring Liese, Akos knelt to take up Klara’s foot once more. Klara blew her nose again and coughed, now productively. This odd treatment had somehow liquefied the icy lump she'd been dragging about for the last few days.

  About a half an hour later, when the parlor had been pronounced warm, Almassy, at Liese's bequest, swept Klara into his arms and carried her to the divan there. The ease with which he did so proved there was more muscle in his spare frame than she’d imagined.

  The apartment was a series of rooms with no hallway, a very old-fashioned Viennese apartment. The first room beyond the kitchen was a narrow pantry, filled with pots and pans, hanging herbs, strings of dried apples and bright jars of conserve. A half consumed leg of mutton sat on a tray on a shelf, covered in a cage of wire mesh to keep out mice. A servant's bed in a cupboard occupied one wall.

  The next room was more interesting. Although Liese led him quickly across it, Akos knew this was Klara's. The bed was built into the wall, so that it could be closed on all sides, like a cabinet. There was a stove, a window and an elaborate lacquered Chinese screen that hid a washstand. A tall chifferobe completed the furnishing.

  The parlor was last. Fire crackled inside a squat white corner stove and a divan upholstered in a bright India cotton print sat close by. Now dizzy and exhausted, Klara clung to Ak
os. Leaning against his broad chest, she could hear his heart beating steadily beneath the black waistcoat.

  After gently setting her down, Akos drew up a chair and sat beside her. He took her small hand and gently began to rub it, in almost the same way he’d rubbed her feet. Liese settled a blanket around her mistress, nervously watching.

  "If you could bring the tea pot," Almassy asked softly. "Your mistress must finish it."

  "I hope to God you know what you are doing, young sir." Liese’s round face was flushed with distress.

  Almassy’s eyes never moved from Klara.

  It seemed to Klara that, in some mad way, what they had done this afternoon, the massage, the long embrace in which she'd been a sobbing child on his shoulder, the confession, had been more intimate than anything she'd ever done with Max. Random surges of heat and pain, of coughing and sneezing, shook her. She imagined she saw tiny golden stars flying around Herr Almassy’s elegant dark head.

  At last both Klara's tears and the racking cough stopped. She blew her nose one last time and settled herself into the divan pillows. His eyes, she thought, were such a strange dancing tawny color, like a shaft of mellow autumn sunlight.

  Diligent, strong fingers moved and moved, pausing only to place a drop of something upon her forehead, another upon her throat, upon her breast bone, to gently but thoroughly rub it in. Even through the cold, she could smell it, the scent she noticed on their first evening, the mysterious green, full of musk, pine and shadow. Suddenly she was terribly sleepy.

  "Don't worry. You are safe. Everything will be all right. Sleep now, beautiful Maria Klara Silber, sleep."

  Chapter 3

  It was the next day when Klara awoke. The favorite cat was a fluffy warm bundle pressed against her side. She returned to consciousness with a rending thick cough. In a facing chair, Liese sat watching, deep circles around her eyes.

  "Oh, Lamb! Are you awake at last? Twelve hours! I was about to call Doctor Hundchowsky. How do you feel? Tell me that you are better, that that Hungarian sorcerer hasn't made you sicker than you were."

  "I'll judge how I feel in a half an hour." Klara sat up. At once she was aware of discomfort in an odd place. Her feet ached so badly that walking on them would be a kind of insult, so she simply sat there, rubbing her eyes and clearing her throat, which was still raw and scratchy.

  As bad as she felt today, there was still a sense that the worst was behind her, that she was now on the still miserable-but-mending downside. Her chest ached, and every cough brought up quantities.

  "I shall not be able to sing for days, but in another week, perhaps, I believe I'll be free of it. Now, no more talk for me. Bring breakfast and then fetch my secretary box so that I can write to Prince Vehnsky and make my apology."

  "Oh, Mistress!"

  "Liese, I can't sing and that's all there is to it. But I do feel as if somehow I've skipped straight through the worst."

  The stove was stoked again, and in a few minutes, Klara washed in the basin of hot water Marie the maid carried in. She’d sweat during her sleep and needed all fresh underclothes, chemise, shift and stockings. After putting these on, she slipped into the old wool morning gown.

  She discovered a surprisingly good appetite for her breakfast, a soft boiled brown egg sitting staunchly in a blue china cup, rye bread and butter, accompanied by a cup of honeyed black tea. After the tray was gone, she picked up the small secretary box and set it in her lap.

  Selecting a sheet of paper and taking up a quill, she penned a graceful note of apology to Prince Vehnsky. Education had given her the confidence to do this. Klara was even bold enough to ask the Prince if she might have the honor of singing for him when she was better. When the letter was dispatched (a man servant, Hermann, had been called up from the stables to personally deliver it), Klara went back to nursing her cold.

  Liese brought the three-legged pot from the kitchen and left it to steam on a ledge of the parlor stove. Soon, the head-clearing scent of scented oils filled the room. Even though Klara felt miserable, it was always so boring to be sick! Restlessly, she began to look over arias which had been sent to her by audacious young composers.

  She got heaps of such stuff, because to gain the interest of a prima donna might also be to gain the interest the powerful connoisseur who was her protector. Oettingen protected Klara from many risks, both financial and those of artistic reputation, involved in staging any new opera at the conservative court theater.

  Of course, the Count had the final say in all such matters. While he was by nature a traditionalist (what aristocrat could be anything else?), Klara had to admit that Max's taste in music was unimpeachable. Sometimes, however, unable to get staging for an entire work, Klara would buy arias she especially liked for her own use at winter concerts.

  Poor composers! They labored to rescue Beauty from Oblivion, to show her forth in triumph, but it was the singers like Klara who got the adulation, and the money. Klara tried, in small ways, to remedy what she saw as injustice, although Oettingen always grumbled that she was far too lavish.

  "And with my money, too, you little baggage! Forty ducats for a couple of songs? Why, those fellows are lucky if they get a hundred and twenty for an entire three hours of opera."

  "But, Sir, that's not fair recompense for their labor, and you know it. Besides, these songs I've purchased are wonderful, and are written especially for my voice. I shall not be so mean as to cheat the Orpheus who has surrendered them to me."

  "Orpheus? Fair recompense? Grosse Gott! You musicians certainly bestow airs and graces upon yourselves! In which I, among others of the first estate, indulge you." Maximillian shook his head as he spoke. His own aging silver blond was, as usual in public, concealed beneath a severe white wig. "All right," her patron said, "I grant that the songs are lovely, that they are tailored for you like a beautiful dress. Still, Little Nightingale, if you give Herr Weczek forty ducats this week for his arias, how do you propose to pay for your horses?"

  When Klara had insisted upon remaining in her own apartment three years ago, Maximilian had made some conditions.

  "If you are going to insist upon playing the paradoxical part of the free woman, I think you should assume the responsibility for a few of your expenses."

  One of the subjects Max had had her educated in was how to keep accounts. Therefore, Klara, who knew how much she earned, had become certain she could manage without his help. Initially, she had been surprised at how much time and energy bookkeeping took. The first year on her own had contained some difficult moments, but, eventually, she’d gotten her household in hand. She had not chosen to live in more than respectable surroundings, did not have a taste for expensive wine or furniture, nor did she keep many servants.

  The largest expense for a prima donna was clothing, for both on stage and off, an image of success and style had to be maintained, but this was one of Max's weaknesses and he paid for her dresses. When he was in town, he never missed a chance to accompany Klara to the dressmaker, where he displayed a refined understanding of woman's clothing.

  "Dressing his doll." Klara resentfully muttered to herself whenever she was particularly overwhelmed by Max's insistence upon a dress she did not much like. Within the homey confines of her own apartment, she enjoyed the small rebellion of living in a series of comfortable loose morning gowns, linen or cotton in summer, woolen in winter, her hair wrapped in a scarf and cap, like an ordinary burgher's wife.

  The other big expense of living apart from Max was keeping her horses stabled in the city, and the pay of the two men who cared for them. This equipage of horses, carriage and grooms, was necessary to support the status of a reigning prima donna. The horses had been a gift and the men engaged by Max, but Klara paid for this upkeep out of her own pocket. So, when he had challenged her about the extravagance of forty ducats for music, Klara had a reply ready.

  "As a matter of fact I've been worrying over those horses for the last six months. I don't think I really need them. Why don't you
take them? Just be sure to leave me Hermann. He's an excellent servant."

  "You can't arrive at Court in a rented carriage," Maximilian had sputtered. "Everyone would talk."

  "And who would they talk about, Max?" Klara had dared it, lowering her long auburn lashes demurely, but knowing that she'd got him over a barrel. If the acknowledged mistress of the mighty Councilor of War was to arrive at any public place in a rented carriage, the focus of gossip would hardly be the lady!

  "I'm beginning to fear," Max said slowly, his pale eyes studying her with a mixture of amusement and irritation, "that someone is getting as much above herself as Madame Wranitzsky did."

  "Ah, but she spent your money on jewels and parties. I'm not like that, as you know."

  "I grant that for a singer, you are a most economical woman, subject to this one glaring exception. Mark my words, Maria Klara, you will have down-on-their-luck musicians flocking around your door if they sense you are a soft touch."

  "Oh, don't be silly. Composers are not starlings."

  Max, however, had been right. Klara did get a great deal of music pressed upon her, much of it distressingly ordinary. Today's offering, however, was a contrast, so intriguing that she was actually tempted to sing it. Klara only got so far as to clear her throat. What she felt caused her to put the notion aside. Sight reading, hearing this wonderful melody in her head, would have to be enough for today.

  She read music for some time. These first pieces, by a composer from some far-off little city, pleased her so much that when she had finished his offering, she had the energy to look at some of the other pieces. The work of the next composer, however, did not buoy her spirit. These others proved tedious and predictable. Soon headache and the loggy feeling of illness forced her to lie back upon the sofa and wrap up in a blanket.

  The fire hissed softly. She was weary, but warm and comfortable. Satz climbed up and after a couple of turns upon the blanket got comfortable, a soft furry length stretched against her side. Soon, she was dozing.