Maile felt drawn to their world by a flood tide of I want, I want, I want.
With a quick detour to take leave of Mr. Casey, she caught up with them to exit the garden. The name Rienzi felt like a pebble in her shoe. Teachers agreed, she remembered, that the young Wagner had learned a lot from Meyerbeer. Spontini’s influence, if any, was slight. But she also remembered that Meyerbeer had been a Jew. And Rienzi was Hitler’s favorite opera.
THEY DID THE Dutch and the Thai consulates, and then the French and the Spanish, and at each Arnim and Sophia greeted schoolmates and relatives from their extended families, and presented Maile as their newest friend. Guests making the rounds recognized the exciting young diva from the American reception, a prize to be displayed.
Toward midnight, they surged away in Arnim’s car to the outskirts of Salzburg, where the landscape had an ageless, velvety stillness. She was borne along in silence as they motored deep into the forested countryside at the base of Mount Untersberg, farther than she had ever been from the city. Soon she lost all sense of direction but would not ask like a child where they were going. In the light of a sickle moon, the surrounding alps were pale gray. Up there lived the mountain men. Where people stoned witches. Where Karl had gone as a boy.
The surrounding vastness shrank when the car entered a tunnel of oak trees. Arnim slowed to approach a white building tinted soft blue by the moonlight. The wide facade curved down like a giant bird with its wings spread, about to rise and take flight. The steps were scattered with purple flowers from bushes in stone urns.
They stepped into a main room larger than the Mozarteum recital hall. On a chandelier as wide as a carriage wheel, circles of candles reflected off crystal pendants like shards of trapped sunlight. Across the ceiling a naked goddess attended by plump cupids floated on clouds supported by muscular men. A sleepy servant in livery showed the three of them to an outdoor terrace, where they feasted undisturbed on the remains of a luxurious buffet.
When they finished Arnim gripped Maile’s wrist. “Now,” he said, affecting a villain’s chuckle, “you shall be initiated into the water-works.”
“Stop frightening the poor dear.” Sophia rapped his knuckles with a butter knife. “My archbishop ancestor,” she told Maile, “built this as a pleasure retreat. He was an Aquarius with greater allegiance to the zodiac than the Vatican.”
“There were indecencies in more recent times,” Arnim added. “The SS used it as a retreat.”
“Do hush.” Sophia folded her napkin. “We already had Rienzi this evening.” She stood to gaze at a large formal garden that spread out below the terrace.
To Maile it appeared to be a mass of hedges, a dark green tapestry with an elaborate design of hooked crescents and swirls. Beyond the maze rose a forest where the black crowns of pine trees formed a row of spikes. Two servants went into the garden and lit lanterns, making soft spots of yellow that bloomed like fireflies resting on the hedges and forming a pathway. When everything was ready, Maile followed her hosts down the terrace steps, then to her amazement saw that the garden was filled with intricate water displays; a miniature stage with animated figures; a fountain that sprayed mist over rotating stones; a brooklet coursing down little barricades to form transparent fans. “Constructed in 1662,” Sophia said. “All the mechanics are hidden from view.”
Maile stared, unable to conceal awe. “Made just for pleasure?”
Sophia let out a bored sigh. “The archbishop was a scientist. These are hydraulic experiments he had to keep secret from church leaders.”
Arnim leaned across her and whispered to Maile, “Beware. The old satyr is centuries distant yet present among us.” He plunged a hand into a pool and a statue shot up from the center, an entwined mermaid and merman turning lasciviously, their fish-scaled buttocks a buttery yellow in the lantern light. Maile laughed in delight.
“Some guests are quite offended,” Arnim said. “Come, you must claim your reward.” Sophia stepped back, smiling. He took a lantern and motioned to Maile. She followed him to the edge of the garden, then on into the pine forest where tall, densely packed trees shut out the moon. Heavy branches high above creaked and rustled. She stayed close behind Armin until they approached a wall of glass panes that glinted in the lantern light.
“The greenhouse,” Arnim said, ushering her inside.
She walked past racks and tables of flowers in full bloom, a ravishing mass of color and scent; mouth-pink tulips, sun-yellow lilies, white narcissus. Lovely, lovely, she thought. Spectacular. In a corner she came to a can filled with cut roses. They seemed oddly familiar, of a peculiarly dark color, a strange hue, more intense than any variety of red wine, with rich undertones of purple and black. Arnim presented one to her with an operatic flourish, saying she had truly earned her reward.
All at once he raced out the door, lantern in hand, laughing. She was plunged into blackness. Dropping the rose, she stumbled outside after him but he had disappeared. In the distance a window at the Schloss formed a tiny yellow rectangle. Angry and confused, she retraced her way through the trees, afraid of falling, and reached the garden. “Wo seid Ihr?” she called out. No reply.
She stepped onto a flagstone that dipped under her weight. From the ground came a heavy metallic clanking as something leaped up, jagged and dripping. She gasped in terror. Inches from her face a mass of metal and fabric let out a watery sniggering. She lunged away. Her high heels threw her off balance, but she imagined a trip wire, a pit, and she ran crazily.
A short way ahead two figures emerged with a lantern. Maile staggered toward them, nearly weeping. “There was a thing,” she cried out, “awful!” Arnim swallowed a whoop of glee. He linked arms with her and Sophia, and set off for the Schloss. “Family tradition,” he explained gaily, “forbids warning new guests in advance. If you step on the stone again, His Nastiness disappears.”
Sophia burst into giggles. “A Grand Prix driver once fainted dead away.”
Arnim gave Maile a stare of mock gravity. “If that jester behaved like less than a gentleman, I will have him thrashed.” She hated practical jokes but pretended this one had been great fun.
On the terrace they said good night in a mood of tired joviality. Maile was shown to a room with gilded furniture, where she undressed by candlelight, washed in a china basin, and fell into bed feeling that the evening had been one achievement after another; applauded by Salzburg’s finest, including a baron; adopted by a chic aristocratic couple; guest at four other diplomatic receptions. Her name on so many lips, her singing in so many hearts.
The next morning when she opened her eyes, she noticed a fresh bouquet of summer flowers on the bedside table. The sheets had a caressing softness. The ceiling was covered with heaps of white clouds tinted gold against a pale blue sky. In the center a large swan with spread wings bent over a pink-nippled goddess lying on her back to receive him, hair and feathers and skin so vivid that the scene seemed to pulsate with life.
Somewhere close by a clock ticked. Somewhere outside quiet foot-steps passed the door.
Maile recalled her audience last night, crowded up to the terrace at the consulate. Then swirling off into the night to a round of parties that ended at a castle on a lake. Arnim and Sophia were new friends. They would lead her upward into the social heart of the opera world. But there had also been Rienzi. And Arnim’s late-night joking remark as they ate: SS troops had occupied this very building, so it wasn’t quite the paradise it seemed. Although neither he nor Sophia were to blame for any of that. They were simply caught like a pair of dragon-flies in the amber of their own history.
12
EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, and Saturday afternoon during the Festival, the Rosenkavalier entered the kitchen at Schloss Wasserstein to fetch a new supply of fading flowers. Business had been brisk last evening once people left the consular receptions to gossip elsewhere over a final round of cognac. He found the old cook stripping thorns off his usual allotment. “The news here,” she said, wrinkling her nose,
“is our finest brought a guest at midnight, a brown one. That foreign student at the Mozarteum.”
“Ach, a student.” He shrugged with pretended indifference and glanced out at the vegetable garden. The sun shone down hard and bright. “Today we have kaiser weather,” he remarked.
“God smiles on us.” The cook bundled the flowers in newspaper and handed them over. “Seppl’s taking the truck to town. You can catch him if you hurry.”
The Rosenkavalier headed outside to the back road where deliveries were made, confident that his arrangement at the Schloss would continue unquestioned; the cook would go on providing him service without ever knowing why. Disposing of bones for the owners a quarter century ago had been a relief for them, a bargain for him.
On the ride into the city, he considered Fräulein Manoa: a student who was rising fast had certain value. Star performers were worth much more, although trying to sell the Vienna rag press details on Cara Alcazar’s gambling had led to the Festival administration threatening him with a permanent ban from Salzburg. Potentially ruinous. He now concentrated on mid-level soloists desperate to conceal a mistress, a love child, a husband found inside the Dom clad only in women’s underwear. Among students he traded small favors with no one except the French pianist and never approached the dangerously well-connected Yellow Peril violinist. The peasant Karl wasn’t worth his time. The brown girl, however. At winter recitals he’d observed the keen attention her singing aroused in faculty members. Which paled in comparison to enjoying the favor of the American consul, capped off with a midnight meal as a guest at Schloss Wasserstein.
The truck driver lit another twist of Turkish tobacco, chain smoking, and the Rosenkavalier coughed and said, “Seppl, my friend, you must use a superior brand of cigarette. Only a Gastarbeiter has your taste.” He fanned away the stinking blue haze.
“Who cares?” The driver took another puff. “These’re cheap.”
The Rosenkavalier stifled further complaint—a ride was better than taking a bus full of Hausfrauen bound for the market. At the traffic bridge, he climbed down from the truck and walked to the rear of the Silver Fawn to revive his roses in a bucket of water. His concerns moved ahead to the afternoon and evening; Frau Kammersänger Jann’s monthly payment due today; a crate of schnapps brought over from the train station to pay off border guards. He stowed the bottles under his cot, checked his supply of Austrian currency to offer at his own exchange rate to foreigners, then his thoughts returned to Fräulein Manoa.
Her insult to the police while registering for a visa was old news, of no use now, but he’d capitalized on her attempt to attend a von Wehlen premiere by illegal means. The girl was reckless, with her eyes on a career that went straight to the top. Yet in a month Salzburg would again be a provincial town with only a third-rank operetta theater. Swift action was necessary to take advantage of her ambition.
BY THE TIME Maile got to the conservatory at noon, the only free piano was a twangy derelict with sprung strings that couldn’t be properly tuned. She began with humming exercises, three low notes up and down. The tones sounded fuzzy after last night’s food and wine. She recalled breakfast in bed on a tray, a note from Arnim and Sophia. They were indisposed; a chauffeur would drive her back to the city.
At last five tones slid from her throat well enough to add a leading consonant. “Lah-lay-lee-loh . . .” She paused, hearing a word: lo-ko. A Hawaiian word. She repeated the exercise. Once more her thoughts stopped at the same place.
She started over, concentrating on the buried sound within her, a living source that ran through wind and water, lived in trees, walls, and floors, waiting to be called on. No good. The hair on her arms stirred as if a ghostly presence had entered the room, and in her mind she heard, Loko ‘ino. Evil lives here—her father’s all-purpose warning if children got hold of the truck keys to play with the ignition, or found a razor blade in the medicine cabinet. Makua had never said it without reminding them that evil was a partner to good. One could not exist without the other. Lōkahi, the sacred balance that was the basis of life, his oldest lesson. Tūtū’s as well.
Stubbornly Maile sang the opening notes of her contest aria, “Wohin flo—en . . .” Another o seemed to float above her like a bubble.
“Hele aku,” she said. Go away!
Next to the keyboard she sensed a column of heat. Use this! she recalled Makua saying as he pushed his fist against his gut to emphasize that she’d missed a point. Everything had mana—a pebble, a hillside, a leg, a scrap of paper—and by itself a razor blade was not evil, so find the connection, the balance. Loko ‘ino. Where was it in Salzburg, in how many places, in how many people?
A latch clicked and the door opened. “Ach, wohl,” Karl said, “at work after all.”
She jumped up from the piano. He sauntered in, faked a bow, and continued in an affected whine, “I am calling on Mademoiselle Mahno-ah to inquire about her diplomatic reception.”
She gave him a startled look, then felt a prickling desire to fight. “You’re just getting back at me for interrupting you in the basement. Weeks ago!”
He coasted past her to slouch against the wall. “Our tin aristocracy always flocks to a free meal, as long as it’s on silver platters.”
“You have two seconds to get out.”
“Mademoiselle has no comments about last night?” He licked his lips and cupped his hands over his chest. “My own memory of past events is rather good. Did you ever memorize Goethe?” His eyes glittered with aggressive sensuality.
She scowled. Goethe. Standing naked in the moonlit pond, Karl’s semen drying on her legs as he quoted from Faust and cradled her breasts, comparing them to ripe apples. Now his stare pressed on her as if an erection lurked in his trousers. Sex as revenge on diplomatic glamour. Come on, Maile, up against the piano. In a strange way that appealed to her, but if they fell into each other’s arms, yanked off enough clothing to clear the way and did it hard and fast, he would end up picking her brain about everything last night. The magic would be ruined.
“If you will excuse me,” she said in her best German, “I need to rehearse.”
Karl folded his arms. “You were quite a success with the rich and mighty?”
He examined her so fixedly that she knew he wouldn’t leave without a shoving match, and even then he might not leave unless he got at least tidbits of information about the reception. And not lies. They had been intimate in too many ways to deceive each other easily. “I did meet Baron von Gref.”
“He sent my family cheese and medicine when things were lean after the war. A nice fellow. What else?”
Rienzi, she remembered. Sophia’s mother who had to be avoided. Arnim’s teasing hint about the SS being at Schloss Wasserstein. Karl watched her with an uncertain squint, his hair hanging over his eyebrows in a thick fringe.
“Are there still Nazis in Salzburg?” she asked.
He shoved his hair over his ears. “Mother of God, what happened last night?”
“Can’t you give a straight reply?”
“I come up here with questions of my own and apples on my mind, and you’re thinking about local Nazis.” He let out a harsh laugh. She kept her eyes on him. “Morality aside,” he said, “nobody is stupid enough to support Hitler in a recognizable way. Anyone caught running private ‘study groups’ can go to prison for up to twenty years and lose their house and land. That happened when I was a boy, mostly to war widows who couldn’t believe the Reich was lost.”
“What about the rich?”
“Oh ho!” His eyebrows rose with a crafty expression of discovery. “Last night some aristo bragged about art looted from Jews.”
“Don’t make things up.” She stared harder, pinning him so he would keep talking.
“Ah, the fabled treasure hoards,” he said. “Greek statuary was found in the salt mine twenty years ago. No doubt paintings and whatnot are still hidden. Amateur fortune hunters continue to poke around. Including you, in a slightly different vein.” His tone b
ecame gleeful. “An American romantic combating evil right here under her nose. Like Leonore in Fidelio, who went into the dungeon and lived to sing about it. Although that rarely happens in opera. Think of all those dead heroines: Tosca, Marguerite, Aida.”
“If I’m romantic, you’re evasive. Suspiciously evasive.”
“All right.” His smile shrank to a look of cold amusement. “My father said our neighbors had crockery all done up in swastikas. They couldn’t get rid of it fast enough in ’45. To this day I’m sure attics all over Austria are full of similar rubbish. Maybe you’ve noticed this.” He pointed to the inside of his upper arm. “SS men had a tattoo, a small letter in Gothic script, for blood type, in case of major combat injuries. Many survived the war and never went to prison. People protect each other.”
She recalled the porter who’d carried her trunk, Frau Metzger’s glare, the pulled-down sleeve. “The rich didn’t lose much?”
“For a fascinating woman, you can be a real bore. Most noble families considered Hitler a street rat with a crude accent. But modern aristos hate being powerless. Among themselves they’re likely trading fine paintings not seen in public since Paris fell.” He leaned over Maile. “A woman from Ha-va-ee can go to sleep and dream of coral reefs. Not us. Our history has come down to art versus death camps. Mozart versus Adolf, born just hours away from this very building.”
“You sound like an operatic martyr, and you don’t even sing!”
“Sarcasm is cheap. You started this conversation.”
They were at it again, she knew, competing and moving closer to cruelty because the contest started in only ten days. She refused to agree that she’d been cheap, or to apologize, and he refused to let go of his opinions, a man on home ground confronted by an outsider, the two of them standing almost nose to nose, heaping blame on each other.
Abruptly she said, “Take care of your hands. Keep your mind on music.”
He hesitated, then a smile spread across his face, a genuine peace-maker’s smile that she knew suggested a more forgiving nature than hers. In the air between them he conducted a miniature 4/4 bar.
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