by Rex Baron
But the shortest of the reporters spoke up, shattering Helen’s performance of feigned modesty.
“Wasn’t Lucy von Dorfen capable of a high G6… above that?” he asked in all sincerity.
“Yes that’s true,” Claxton broke in, “but Miss Liluth’s voice has not only range, but stamina and endurance as well… qualities that are usually only seen in much older singers with more seasoned voices.”
The critics all scribbled Claxton’s comment onto their notepads, as he extended a comforting little smile across the table to Helen.
“Miss Liluth and our national treasure, dear Lucy von Dorfen were great friends in America. It is a great pity that we will never be able to hear them sing together,” the Prince added, with a look of great sadness on his face. Then, without any warning, he came to his feet. In deference to his rank, everyone at the table instantly jumped up, so as not to remain seated in his presence.
“I must be going now,” he stated without explanation. “Thank you gentlemen for your interest in my protégé, Miss Liluth. I’m sure you will find her performance captivating and regard her as an asset to our opera community.”
He extended his palm in Helen’s direction so that she might place her hand on top of his for him to kiss. He clicked the heels of his shoes together, ever so slightly, as a symbol of gallantry from his military days of long ago. Helen dipped in a partial curtsey and bowed her head in respect as she watched him don his hat and stroll out of the café with his two silent aides trailing behind. All three disappeared into a waiting Duisenberg touring car that had stood in readiness the entire time.
The three critics gathered up their notepads, gloves and hats, and duplicating the formality of the deposed Prince, bowed slightly and said their goodbyes to Helen and Claxton. Helen stood frozen where she stood.
“I do hope you are able to pull this off,” he said, as he dropped back down in his seat and finished the dregs of coffee at the bottom of his cup. “You’ve got guts, I’ll have to give you that. But, I’m not sure you have what Lucy had.”
“Oh, you mean a voice,” Helen snapped back at him. “I can sing. David said so.”
“I’m sure our Mister Montague said a lot of things to encourage you. I believe it’s called pillow talk, my dear,” Claxton taunted her.
“But I can sing… not as well as Lucy I admit, but I do have a voice,” Helen insisted.
“Yes of course, but I think it wouldn’t be amiss if we do a little enhancing spell before the performance, just to build your confidence. Your are dazzlingly beautiful, of course… but, alas, I fear there are going to be times when your looks are just not going to be enough.”
Helen sat down in the chair opposite him and peeled the veil back over the top of her hat, revealing eyes that were now glistening with fear. Claxton patted her hand.
“There, there… not to worry,” he said in a mockingly reassuring voice. “Claxy’s here and he’ll make sure that everything turns out perfectly.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Helen and Claxton’s apartment, Bayreuth
The morning of the premiere Helen was frantic with nervous anticipation. She banished Ilse from her sight for some small infraction in one moment, then begged her to keep her company, to take her mind off the performance, in the next. She knew that she should be resting but she had not slept all night. Every time her brain relaxed enough to welcome the approach of sleep, it would suddenly fill with haunting images of Lucy, taunting her and laughing at the idea that she would be arrogant and foolish enough to think she could ever take her place in the hearts and minds of her German fans. She saw herself in these wakeful nightmares, alone on stage, croaking out shattering and horribly off key sounds that elicited laughter and derision from the audience. At one point, she found herself screaming, “Cut…cut, I can do better.” But then realized that there were no cameras turning and what she had just sung could not be undone.
By late afternoon, Claxton had formulated a concoction that he presented to Helen as her enchantment elixir. It was an atomizer, filled with an unpleasant, oily-smelling potion that was meant to transform her into an irresistible creature that both the audience and critics could not help but adore. He had explained the certainty of its effect with all the conviction and flair of a snake oil salesman and, within a matter of moments, he was pleased to see that Helen had begun to settle into a tenuous confidence and healthy excitement that replaced her afternoon mania. She sprayed herself with the contents of the bottle every hour before she had to dress to get ready to leave for the theater, again and again reciting the diminishing chant:
“Ochnotinos
Chnotinos
Hnotinos
Notinos
Otinos
Tinos
Inos
Nos
Os.”
When Claxton had retired to the kitchen to replenish the seltzer water in his cocktail, Helen’s young maid approached him in a state that could only be described as unnerved.
“Excuse me, Mister Claxton, but what is she doing? She sounds like a mad woman ranting an unholy litany. Is she all right?”
Claxton laughed at the young woman’s perception of the situation.
“Perhaps I ought to fix YOU a cocktail… to settle your nerves. I seem to be surrounded by unhinged women today,” he replied glibly.
Ilse stared at him, insistent on an answer to her question.
“Oh, yes of course she is all right. She’s simply doing what a lot of actors and singers in the theater do before a performance. It’s merely a superstitious ritual, like carrying a rabbit's foot… that’s all, nothing more.”
“But what she is spraying smells dreadful,” the young woman observed candidly.
Claxton roared with laughter.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just a little something I threw together to calm her nerves and focus her mind on the suggestion that she will be well received, and nothing to the contrary,” Claxton answered as he waved his glass in the air theatrically.
“But what’s in it,” the girl insisted.
“Let me see… certainly nothing harmful… nor anything particularly powerful or even helpful for that matter,” he replied. “The magic potion contains a bit of peppermint, some rose water, black pepper, some ground sage and just a hint of urine… just what we had lying around, so to speak. And before you ask,” he said, holding up his index finger to silence the impending question. “What she’s saying is an old peasant remedy, a diminishing chant for headaches. As the length of the word diminishes the headache slowly subsides.”
The young woman regarded him with wide-eyed suspicion.
“Does it work?” she asked incredulously.
“Who knows,” Claxton answered nonchalantly, “I don’t get headaches. In the end, dear Ilse, it is only meant to take our dear Helen’s thoughts off her jangled nerves and give her something to occupy her mind. Its purpose is to give her a bit of confidence… nothing more.”
He patted the girl’s arm as if he were patting a dog and dismissed her.
“There, there… don’t trouble yourself about it. You’ll find that if you remain in Miss Liluth’s employ, her behavior is often exceedingly more eccentric than this.”
•••
Bayreuth’s Opera House
“The seeds of death are sown with love.” The phrase repeated itself in Claxton's head as he sat in the dark, watching the small figures below on the stage of the Opera. He had read the ironic phrase as a footnote on the musical score of Tristan and Isolde in the programme that he held in his hand. It was reportedly the sentiment of the old “Cossack,” the composer Wagner himself, and he wondered if, as with Doctor Faust, there was an escape clause built into his own bargain of love and death.
All of Bayreuth had turned out for the premiere. The old opera house, nearly every inch encrusted with gold, looked to Claxton like the inside of a great Fabergé egg.
He watched Helen on stage, glowing with unnatural lig
ht, as she offers a deadly potion to her beloved Tristan. She is unaware that her maid has substituted a love potion, and instead of the pale mask of death, she sees in her lover’s face the radiance of love and the devotional ardor of one who has found the Holy Grail. The two lovers fall into a passionate embrace of unquenchable, but impossible love… and sing.
Claxton watched as Helen sang the introduction of the impending death theme. How appropriate that his dark little angel should be singing this role, involving a fatal mix up of this kind, particularly after the way the love philter for Prince Henry had been muddled. There was no way of telling what the old boy really thought of Helen. It was understandable that he should offer his support and kindness to anyone who presented herself as a dear friend of Lucy's, but the fact remained that Helen's charms seemed to have little effect on him. It was as if his sight, hearing and comprehension had been tuned to a higher scale, a frequency just above the realm of ordinary human’s tastes and experience. This was the ethereal plane where genius and the truly gifted, like Lucy, dwelt. He was able to commune on that level, through a sensitivity of his own that was, perhaps, the last vestige of his aristocratic claim to personal divinity.
Claxton snickered to himself. Helen was as ethereal as a leg of mutton. She was far too fleshy and of this world to interest some high-minded, thin-blooded aristocrat. Her dark sensual charms, sexual and otherwise, were the only gifts that she had truly perfected. She was dangerous, more than any femme fatale, because those who loved her remained painfully alive. They became the walking wounded of her love.
How appropriate that Helen should sing the love and death themes of this opera, Claxton thought, as he watched her glide across the stage into the arms of another man. Perhaps love and death were nothing more than both sides of the same coin after all.
He had realized that one night in Venice, when he turned his face from his shaving mirror to argue with Helen and realized, in that particular instant, that he loved her. From that moment on, he had become totally immersed in her, and knew that he would die without her.
He chuckled quietly, sitting there in the dark, at the sad absurdity of his life. To die a death for humanity, in the name of sacrifice or liberty, is universally celebrated and revered. But to drag oneself through the mire of unrequited love, to suffer for the sake of what one has created and idealized in his own mind is a small, silent, agonizing death that goes totally uncelebrated by anyone.
Claxton craned his neck around to get a look at the Prince, above him in the royal box. He was, after all, a crafty old thing not to get involved in the ways of this kind of love. He was no fool to steer clear of the likes of Helen, who, like a Lorelei, would lure him and his ship of state to rocky reefs and certain destruction.
The retired actor felt an exquisite pang of sentimentality. He wanted Helen to sing well, to have a triumph. But as he listened to her voice from where he sat, he knew that she was giving only a serviceable performance. He feared that the looks and physical presence she relied on would not be enough to ensure her success. She lacked confidence and it showed. The elixir that he had cobbled together for her, out of odds and ends from around the apartment, had not perked her up as promised. But, then again, even a genuine potion that he might have made and consecrated to the gods could scarcely have enchanted an entire theater to fall in love with her.
Before the performance, he had worried that Helen would find no opening night bouquet from the Prince to galvanize her talents. It was crucial, he thought, that she should feel respected and encouraged by her so-called mentor, so he had taken the precaution of sending one himself, enclosing a forged card with vague sentiments that might be attributed to the Prince. But at the last moment, while she was being helped into her first act costume, a small floral accolade had arrived by royal messenger, so he slipped the card, unnoticed, from his own offering and told her that it had arrived from an anonymous admirer.
Helen lay on stage under a canopy of silk, aboard the ship bound for Cornwall, singing while in her lover’s embrace. She peered out beyond the footlights, searching the audience for the man with the scarred face. She knew he must be there in the dark, watching her intently as he had that night at the ball. She could not find the piercing blue eyes amongst the shadowed faces, but she knew he was there. He had sent the flowers… of that she was certain.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Helen and Claxton’s apartment, Bayreuth
“Perhaps they were translated incorrectly to you,” Claxton said, trying to be pleasant.
Helen paced their rented apartment in a rage. “How dare they print that the moving picture actress would be better off remaining silent, as in her films. They compare me to Lucy. Oh, they don't mention her by name, but they make it clear enough.”
“The reviews have got to say something positive. Surely they mentioned that you were beautiful?” Claxton replied feebly.
“Sultry was the word used, or sensual. The man who translated it for me couldn't find the appropriate word in English,” Helen said with a sneer. “They go on to say that whatever strange quality it was that I was exuding was still out of keeping with the character. Damn them.” She slammed the newspaper down on the sofa.
Claxton picked it up and casually perused it while he popped a bit of pastry from the plate he held on his stomach into his mouth.
“Dreadful picture too,” he scowled.
Helen slumped into a chair and buried her face in her hands.
“Why did we ever come to this god awful place? It's poor… there are labor strikes going on everywhere, and the only people worth knowing, who have anything left, are that handful who were at the opening last night… and they're all laughing their decrepit asses off at me.”
“It doesn't matter a lick what the critics or anyone else says as long as the Prince is behind you,” Claxton said with a smug look. “He sent you roses didn't he?”
Helen let out a sharp little artificial laugh.
“I telephoned the residence this morning to thank him for the premiere, and was told that he accepted my gratitude but was detained and was unable to speak with me in person. That sounds like the Royal brush off, wouldn't you say?”
Claxton sat up, letting the pastry fall to the floor. He swallowed the lump that he had in his mouth and stared back at her, stunned.
“Well, that does put it in a rather dimmer light, doesn't it?”
•••
Helen had spent another sleepless night, lying awake, rehashing the insulting reviews she had received over and over in her head. She comforted herself by imagining that there had been some mistake… that when she had telephoned the Prince’s residence, her call had somehow been misdirected and that he had no inkling that she had tried to reach him. She decided that the first thing in the morning she would drive to the elegant chateau where he lived and pay him a call. She would suggest that it was a social visit to thank him for his patronage. That way, she could suss out his reaction to her opening night and see how the negative reviews in the press had affected his professional interest in her.
When she appeared for breakfast, Claxton was already at the table, reading the London Times and munching a triangle of toast heaped with bilberry jam. She frowned with disgust at the enjoyment he seemed to get from so small a pleasure. Gathering her silk dressing gown around her, she dropped down heavily in the chair opposite him. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the little silver pot on the table and sighed a deep theatrical sigh that was designed to attract his attention.
“Well,” he said, without looking up from the paper.
“I’m going to see Prince Henry this morning. I simply have to know what he thinks,” Helen said with yet another sigh. “I mean, I’m sure he wouldn’t go to all the trouble of investing his patronage and money in me if he didn’t think I had talent and could be his protégé.”
Claxton looked up, sensing an opportunity to be genuinely consoling and hopefully win some small measure of Helen’s affections.
&nb
sp; “I’m certain there is some misunderstanding, that’s all,” he offered weakly. “Your performance was dynamic and very well acted. I agree that your voice tired a bit in the third act, but that’s to be expected. I was there and I thought you were radiant.”
“Dynamic, radiant… that’s great, but even you aren’t saying that you liked my singing,” Helen snapped at him in frustration.
“Well, all that matters is that the Prince likes it and is still backing your European career. You need him and we can’t afford to lose the income, especially since I just engaged a friend of Ilse’s to be my driver,” Claxton informed her with a smug little grin.
“Why all of a sudden?” Helen asked.
“I’d say it’s just in time,” Claxton replied, evading her question. “We can use him to drive us over to the Prince’s place and make just the kind of impression we need him to see. If we want him to think of you as a great and successful singer, then you have to look that way.”
Helen did not answer but continued to watch the little man as he continued his pitch.
“Besides, it never hurts to pull up in a grand car with a driver to make one feel like a million bucks. You are going to need that confidence, if we are going to pull this off,” he said. “We can’t let a couple of bad reviews stop us. And remember, my dear girl, if there is anyone who can bewitch a man, it’s you.”
Helen took great care in dressing for the critical audience with the Prince. She made sure that her makeup and hair were perfect, and chose a pale blue dress because she knew that it had been Lucy’s favorite color. Perhaps she could ensure the Prince’s favor by reaffirming her connection to the dear one that had been his true protégé and lost love.
By eleven o’clock, Ilse answered a knock at the door of the apartment, and opened it to see Carl-Heinz dressed in the full livery of a chauffeur, a grey jacket with brass buttons, knee-high black riding boots and a military looking cap with a black patent leather bill.