Prima Donna

by Megan Chance

  I noticed the curious looks from the nearest tables, and I turned back and leaned close to her, deliberately lowering my voice as I said angrily, “If you don’t like it, you’re free to go. See if you’re treated so well at the brothel down the street.”

  “At least a brothel’s not pretending to be something it ain’t,” she returned. She met my glare with an equally hot one of her own, and then she turned on her heel and went into the crowd.

  I was still angry as I went back to the bar. Johnny came up to me just as Billy played a song that was completely different from the one Betsey was singing. She faltered and threw a panicked look in my direction, and then, thankfully, Billy passed out, and the violin and bass continued on without him.

  Johnny winced. “Christ. Who’s been giving him whiskey?”

  “He was drunk when he came in. Didn’t you see? We haven’t given him a drop.”

  Johnny poured himself a drink. “This is what happens when a man tries to bring a little culture into a hellhole. No wonder I never get society down here for anything but a surreptitious fuck. I think I’d sell my soul for a real attraction, but no, Squire’s gets Faust and I get Billy puking over the piano keys.”

  All I heard was Faust.

  “Faust?” I repeated blankly.

  “Yeah. Some opera company’s decided to try their luck out here next week. We’ll see if they can sell tickets enough for one show, much less five.”

  I forgot Charlotte and Sally and everything else. The music went through my head without my beckoning it: the hammer blows of the overture leading into the beautiful harp, the Jewel Song—”Ah! je ris de me voir”—the quartet, the duet with Faust, “O nuit d’amour”…. To hear it again … I was caught up in the daydream of it until all I saw were the gas footlights blaring in my eyes; all I smelled were the beloved scents of rouge pots and sweat and perfume—

  “You want to see Faust, Margie?” Johnny’s voice was quiet, sinuous, tempting as a serpent’s. When I glanced up I saw how closely he was watching me. He reached into the pocket of his vest, pulling out two pieces of thick yellowish paper. “Yesterday the marshal gave me two tickets when I paid him his monthly ‘license’ fee. It seems he don’t appreciate the opera.”

  “You’re going?” My voice came out in a croak.

  “Maybe. I’m thinking about it. God knows I need something to remind me what the hell music really sounds like.”

  He held out the tickets for me to see. The writing upon them was bold and black.

  “I—I can hardly believe it,” I managed.

  He fluttered the tickets at me. “What d’you say? Want to go?”

  A touring company of Faust in Seattle—there was a time when I would have laughed at the very idea, when to see it would have been unfathomable. But now it seemed to brighten a corner of the darkness I lived in, though I knew it was dangerous to go. The kind of people who would be at this opera were exactly the kind of people I should avoid. One could not get lost among respectable people. Someone like me could not stay hidden. They read the newspapers and went to operas and theaters and read reviews and gossiped at their soirees and their dinners. They were the kind of people who had loved me once, who might still love me well enough to recognize me even through my disguise.

  But more than that, I’d kept my hunger asleep these last three years; I was afraid to waken it. And Johnny was clever. Who knew what he might see in me while I watched Faust?

  Yet the desire to hear it again—to hear anything again—was overwhelming. I could not resist it, and I had never been good at denying myself. I would have done anything for those tickets, and I didn’t care if Johnny knew it.

  “Yes, I want to go,” I told him. “Yes.”

  AFTER THAT, I could not stop hearing it. “Ah! je ris de me voir” rang in my head all through that night; I no longer heard Billy’s obscene attempts at playing the piano, nor the singing. I could not have said how the hours passed or what happened within them. Later, as I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, it was as if I watched the whole opera unfurl before my eyes.

  “Look, I’m sorry for what I said. You can stop punishing me.”

  Charlotte’s quiet voice broke into my thoughts; the visions scattered like rose petals across a stage. In my excitement over Faust, I’d forgotten all about our argument that afternoon, and now I realized she’d taken my preoccupation for anger.

  “I’m not punishing you,” I said.

  “You ain’t said a word to me all night.”

  “I’ve been thinking of something else, that’s all.”

  “What? Or is it a secret?”

  I winced at her bitterness. “It’s no secret. Johnny said he’d take me to see Faust next week, and I’ve thought of nothing else since.”

  “Faust? What’s that?”

  “An opera. There’s a company coming to Seattle to play at Squire’s.”

  “I thought you said no opera ever played there.”

  “None ever has before now.”

  “You like opera then?” she asked. “You know this Faust?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I never saw it. What’s it about?”

  “Faust sells his soul to the devil in return for eternal youth and pleasure, because he wants to seduce a young woman he’s come to fancy. She falls in love with him and then he abandons her. She has his child and in a fit of madness kills it, and she’s hanged for the crime. Satan tries to damn her, but she begs forgiveness for her sins, and the angels redeem her and take her up to heaven.”

  “What happens to Faust?”

  “Nothing, I suppose. The curtain falls.”

  “So she pays for loving him, and he don’t pay at all.” She made a cynical little laugh. “Ain’t that the truth of it.”

  “Well, he did sell his soul to the devil, remember. He no doubt ends up in hell.”

  “Yeah, but he got to make the choice, didn’t he? He knew what his reward would be. What choice did she have?”

  “She had a choice,” I said quietly. “She shouldn’t have believed him. She was a fool to do so.”

  She was still for a moment. I heard her steady breathing in the darkness. “What woman believes the truth when she’s told it?” she asked, and her voice had changed; there was suddenly something so unbearably sad in it. “I don’t think I like the story much.”

  “But the music is wonderful,” I said, and then, because it was late and I was tired, and our conversation had lulled me into sweetness, I hummed it for her; just a little bit, a measure or two of the ballad of the King of Thule that led into the Jewel Song, and the feel of the melody vibrating in my throat was both strange and so familiar it brought tears to my eyes. I felt her go still and silent; I felt the reverence of her listening, and I knew that too, I remembered it with a pang that made my voice catch and trail off.

  She sighed. “That was lovely. Does Johnny know you can carry a tune like that?”

  How stupid I was. “No! God, no. And you mustn’t tell him. Promise you won’t tell him.” I grabbed her hand, squeezing her fingers hard.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Promise me. Promise you won’t say anything to Johnny.”

  “All right, all right,” she said, and when I released her fingers, she rubbed them angrily. “I don’t understand you. Why should that be so damned secret?”

  “I just … I don’t want him to know.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “He would … he would put me onstage.”

  “It ain’t so bad. Took me a while to get used to it, but now it’s all right.”

  “I can’t go up there,” I whispered.

  She turned to me, her eyes dark as pitch in the candlelight. “There’s something more, ain’t there?”

  “It’s late. We should go to sleep.”

  “You used to sing on a stage, didn’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “You did,” she said. “And you said it was your idea to turn the Palace into a boxh
ouse. Did you sing in one of them before you came here?”

  I could have denied that I’d ever sung, but she would have known it for the lie it was, and she would be hurt, and I did not want to hurt her. “No. I’ve never sung in a boxhouse.”

  “Then where?”

  I measured my words carefully, not wanting to reveal too much, nervous even at this. “I sang in a beer hall when I was young.”

  “A beer hall? So you do have talent.”

  “My father owned it.”

  “Even so. Johnny don’t know this?”

  “I’ve never told him. It’s better that way. I don’t want him to nag me about it. And I don’t sing any longer in any case.” I was growing uncomfortable now; I wanted the conversation to change.

  “Why not?”

  “I fell out of practice.”

  “How hard is it to fall back in?”

  “Too hard,” I said and felt the tears well in my eyes, the sadness I could not bear for her or anyone else to see. “I’m tired, Charlotte. Good night.”

  She murmured a good night. I heard her disappointment, but I couldn’t salve it. Not now, not tonight. I rolled onto my side, away from her, so she wouldn’t see me cry.

  From the Journal of Sabine Conrad

  JANUARY 9, 1872—I am to sing at the Academy. They want me for next season, to change off with Pauline Lucca and Clara Louise Kellogg for the Italian: L’Africaine, Faust, and La Traviata. I would be glad but it is so far away, and cannot help with funds for now. All of New York City is entranced with Christine Nilsson, she is singing Lucia at the Academy and then will leave and return in late February and in the meantime there is the Philharmonic and some Italian company doing English opera and they have no need of me.

  Gideon says that the soprano with the Mulder-Fabbri Company at the Stadt Theater is ailing, and they’ve asked me to audition as her understudy for Der Tannhäuser. He does not want me to do it, as he fears Wagner will strain my voice, but I have insisted as we need the funds too much. Even if I get that, it is only for a few weeks, and so we must arrange another tour for the spring and summer. Barret said we should arrange concerts here in the city, but Gideon told him most schedules are tied up for the summer already, and they argued about it until Barret stalked off somewhere, and Gideon went to find him. Barret is my brother and I love him, but Gideon has been in the business longer and he knows it better. Yet when I say that, Barret accuses me of being disloyal and worse. I don’t know why he looks at me so sorrowfully or what he means when he says he is failing me.

  I wish I knew what could be done—Gideon says that Barret will only be a problem for us and that I cannot afford to have a drunk for a business manager, even if he is my brother. But that is exactly why I cannot let him go, either. We are the only family each other has just now, and I know he means well and would love him even if he didn’t. I could never send him away.

  FEBRUARY 14, 1872—Tonight I had the night off, as too many in the Mulder-Fabbri Company are ill and there is to be no performance at the Stadt. Barret asked if I would go to dinner with him, just the two of us, and then he smiled and said it would be a family dinner. It had been so long since I’d seen that smile! I thought what fun it would be because he was in a good humor, which is so rare lately.

  But then Gideon came home with tickets to the New York Circus, saying I deserved a treat. He had bought a ticket for Barret too, and I was so excited—I had thought Barret would want to go, as neither of us had been to the circus before. But Barret said I had agreed to go to dinner with him alone, and I must choose.

  Well, what could I do? I was torn, because as much as I’d looked forward to dinner with my brother, I’ve never seen the circus and I have so little time with Gideon that’s not spent in rehearsal or practice. My heart wanted to be with him, and I felt so guilty for wanting it above Barret. Oh, why couldn’t Barret understand that and just come along? We could go to dinner together any night!

  He got that hurt, disappointed look in his eyes. I had promised, but it was all so unnecessary! It was only dinner, and he was being so contrary only because he is angry with Gideon. I know Barret would have chosen the circus any other time, so it was unfair of him to make me feel so horrible.

  Gideon said not to let Barret spoil things and the truth is that I was so excited to go it was easy to forget about Barret once we were there. There were so many people! The main event there was called: the “Mirthful Equestrian Pantomime of: Ride a Jack Horse to Banbury Cross to see an Old Lady on a White Horse.” Of course the lady was not so old, and she did the most amazing tricks on that horse, who was not that white, but who cared? I held my breath every time the tightrope walker swayed, and grabbed Gideon’s arm so he laughed. He bought me a ginger cake and ale and said he liked to see me this way.

  Afterward, we stood outside and looked across the street to the Academy of Music, whose lights were very bright, and carriages gathered out front with drivers in livery slapping their hands against the cold. Gideon whispered to me that they would be coming to see me in only a few months. “Imagine it, Sabine. Imagine how they will hold their breath to see you. They won’t believe such a voice is real, they’ll wonder if it wasn’t an angel from heaven they heard instead.”

  Oh, how I loved his words! After that, I couldn’t bear to let the evening end, so we walked to the Bowery, though it was starting to snow. It was a long way, but I hardly cared, and the noise from the saloons and the theaters and the screech of streetcar brakes and the wheedling cries of the men hawking amusements was like music that seemed to float down with the snow. It was the most romantic night. Gideon took my hand and tucked it into his arm and pulled me close into his side. We stopped at the crowd standing around a man selling patent medicines. His face was so strange in the haze of kerosene torches and the freezing clouds of his own breath that I laughed, and Gideon pulled me into the alcove of a darkened doorway and kissed me so passionately I forgot to breathe. Suddenly I understood why the younkers and their girls had never cared whether people saw them. I didn’t care either. I could have kissed him this way all night on a stage in front of a circus crowd and it wouldn’t have mattered.

  He drew away, but he took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes and said, “Sabine.” He made my name sound like a high A rising, my very own angel’s voice, and he smiled at me and drew me out again into the street.

  Before I knew it, we were climbing the stairs and standing before my door. He said good night; I grabbed his arm, pulling him back to me so hard we fell against the wall. I think I said “Don’t go,” but I wasn’t sure, because before I could finish, he was kissing me again.

  And then his door opened, and Barret stepped out to see us there.

  I felt a great shove, and then Gideon was gone from me and I was reaching for air. He and Barret fell hard onto the floor. Barret pounded on Gideon, who was first only holding up his hands to shield his face, and then he fought back, and I was screaming at them to stop. The hotel manager came up and told us we must leave, that he wanted us out of the hotel by tomorrow, even though we were paid through the week—the money must go to repair a hole in the plaster they made.

  Barret ended up far the worst and lay flat out on the floor. He was drunk, of course. I smelled the liquor on him. Gideon dragged him into their room and laid him on the bed. Barret was muttering again about failing me and saying things like “Don’t, Bina. Don’t do it,” and not making much sense as I tugged off his boots. I was so angry at him. He had ruined this perfect, perfect night, and I wanted to hit him myself. I put my face in my hands and cried, and when Gideon touched my shoulder I just couldn’t bear to look at him. I didn’t want the look on his face to make me forget the one I remembered from earlier, when he had gazed into my eyes and said my name in a voice like an angel’s. I told him to go, and when he left, my tears dried up and I felt very calm, as if this were all a dream I was watching from faraway. I cleaned the blood off my brother’s face, and when I turned to go he grabbed my wris
t and opened the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. He said that Gideon wanted to be rid of him so he could have me all to himself, and I called him a fool and tried to pull away, but he held me tighter. “We should leave,” he said. “You and me. We can go back to Kleindeutschland. Papa can get you a tour. Herr Wirt could help. Please, Bina. You should leave while you can.”

  I said I was staying, but I was too angry to care if he left.

  He said he would stay too then. He said he needed to protect me, and I laughed meanly and asked him, “Protect me from what?”

  He didn’t answer. He fell asleep, and I left him there, snoring.

  FEBRUARY 15, 1872—Barret walked me to practice today because Gideon was auditioning. (I can only say this here, but please God, let them choose a different tenor!)

  People stared at Barret as we went, and well they should because he looks terrible. Both eyes are black and one he cannot open enough to see through, and he kept rubbing his shoulder, which is hurt from going through the wall. He was sober, and I begin to wonder if that is such a good thing, because he asked me very roughly if Gideon had already taken me to bed, and I felt myself go red and told him no in as offended a voice as I could manage, because it would not do to tell him that I wished Gideon had!

  He was very sorry then, and he asked me if I remembered the afternoons on tour when the two of us would sneak out to the confectioner and weren’t those the best times? He said we could do the same thing today if I would skip practice, and he gave me the smile I love but it was lopsided because of the swelling.

  Of course I do remember, though it seems very long ago now and I am no longer a child but a woman with responsibilities. I told him I could not, that Gideon would not like it, and Barret said that the last he’d heard, he was my manager and not Gideon, and he should be the one to say whether I needed practice. He said again that Gideon meant to come between us and I told him that I was tired of this argument, which I am.