The headwaiter brought a porcelain tray with an envelope, and told Sophia that her driver was waiting in the Italian courtyard. She read a note. “Heavens,” she said to Maile, “I have left a dozen relatives dangling. We must continue our conversation. I enjoyed it immensely.” She left, dropping her cigarette into an urn filled with sand.
Her driver. For some women, Maile thought, social engagements were the same as a job that involved actual work. Sophia von Schönweilershof had servants who sewed on buttons, mailed letters, ironed skirts, did the shopping, the cooking, the dishes. But none ever sat with her in this café.
The headwaiter returned to offer more coffee. “Just the check, please,” Maile said. He looked away as if busy with something else. Anyone at the baron’s table, she realized, was a guest. Although a tip was no doubt expected. Having only a twenty-schilling note, she slipped it under her saucer.
Like her host, she was also escorted to the entrance and given an umbrella. No deposit required, she thought in nervous satisfaction, no niggling reminder that the umbrella must be returned. Her huge tip had been worth it. And Arnim with von Wehlen’s laundress! That was a fortune in gossip.
Outside, the rain had turned into a heavy fog that rolled up from the river in slow swirls, obscured the promenade, and coiled around tree trunks. Familiar sights appeared as vague, rounded shapes. Pale yellow clouds tumbled from the overcast sky, clung to rooftops, and crept down the sides of buildings. Maile crossed the footbridge feeling as if the city were afloat. Soon it belonged to her alone, and she walked on aimlessly, filled with a strange, unnamable desire.
In streets still deserted after the storm, water in its most secret form had come to visit; trickling under bushes, droplets plinking onto the base of a statue, a faint sound like breath as fog brushed against a wall. Moisture clicked into cracks and window frames. In a courtyard a random scarf of mist dipped and enclosed her. She inhaled its cool dampness, then held the umbrella at arm’s length and swept it in a circle.
Sunlight spread around her as the fog rose. She had wandered into the Old City’s maze of crooked back streets. A dog shook its wet fur and a hail of water drops rattled against a wall; butcher boys sprinkled sawdust on wet steps. She furled the umbrella, and the concerns of daily life plodded back: contest aria, grocery shopping.
A short way ahead of her, the Rosenkavalier stepped out of a hidden stairway. He cradled his flowers on one arm so he could doff his cap to her. She regarded him with distaste. Deep wrinkles furrowed his scalp, three vertical lines on flour-white skin, as if the skull beneath had shrunk.
“Ach, Fräulein Manoa,” he said, “the lady I have been seeking.” Ten minutes ago he had learned by way of a Scimitar sub-waiter that Professor Jann’s student had sat at Baron von Gref’s table. “I have a most interesting proposal. My calling card,” he added with mild humor, and offered her a rose.
She didn’t take it. His teeth were the color of granite. His chemical scent spread around them. She broke eye contact.
He withdrew the rose, saying, “My services are available at any hour: money changing, locating a doctor, a chauffeur. My many contacts also include Festival House personnel at the highest level.”
“And so?”
She spoke in a haughty tone, but he saw curiosity in her expression. Carefully he drew her in with an outline of what he could arrange: a message to a certain Festival House secretary, relayed to the daily schedule manager, passed on to a conductor’s assistant, who—in the midst of rehearsals, performances, and social events—would inform the most famous Dirigent in the world that the few auditions granted during the very busy Festival should include a certain young singer. If she were fortunate enough to win the upcoming contest, that did not guarantee being granted such an audition. First the path had to be smoothed, and before Festival professionals departed for the year. Should Fräulein Manoa not win the contest, of course there would be no audition. If she auditioned and was not successful, the process the Rosenkavalier had initiated would cost her nothing.
“I see,” she said. She edged around him to walk on.
He bowed as she passed. What he’d described was not entirely a fantasy—the upper reaches of the music world had many backdoors. In his string calendar he made a knot to mark the conversation.
Reluctantly Maile returned the Scimitar’s fine umbrella, and went on to the Mozarteum to continue the work she had abandoned. Her practicing felt automatic, lifeless. Nothing more than lost time, but she stuck to it out of a sense of duty. She revised her opinion of the Rosenkavalier from creepy little busybody to someone who could be useful. It made excellent sense to get an audition when Europe’s greatest musicians were in Salzburg. Her savings were nearly gone and soon she would dip into money put aside for the trip home. Although if she won the contest, Professor Jann would not approve of an audition that he didn’t arrange himself. Would he really refuse to let her sing for the world’s most famous Dirigent? He might. No, he wouldn’t allow it.
On the way back to Getreidegasse Twenty-Five, Maile shopped for soup cubes and toilet paper. She hated the idea of another year of struggling for recognition, eating gristly sausage, singing in student recitals, grateful to be someone’s guest.
The instant she stepped inside the house, Frau Metzger rushed out of her kitchen. “Dangerous news has reached my ears,” the landlady exclaimed. “Come with me.”
Maile was used to her dramatic announcements. “Sorry, I have to study.”
“Your reputation is at risk!” The landlady put hands on hips and leaned forward. “You were seen speaking to a certain disreputable person, after your so recent triumph among diplomats. Have your standards descended to the gutter?”
Against her will Maile followed her into the kitchen, thinking sourly that she had spoken to the Rosenkavalier just an hour ago, that the quick spread of gossip should no longer be a surprise.
They sat facing each other. “It pains me deeply to explain certain things,” Frau Metzger said, “but you will see I have your best interests at heart.” She wiped her brow with a handkerchief and launched into a recitation.
Originally, the Rosenkavalier came from far out in the valley, a section so poor that a family with glass windows was considered rich. Decades ago, peasants dealt with illegitimate or deformed babies by a method they called “making angels.” He was der Engelmacher. Frau Metzger shuddered so violently that her cheeks wobbled. He never had a real name, she continued, people just knew to ask around. At night a new mother took an infant to him, and he had it baptized, then left it in a secret place where animals couldn’t reach it and people couldn’t hear it crying. Within days the baby starved or froze. The Engelmacher buried it and received his payment.
Frau Metzger paused to pour herself a tot of schnapps from a bottle she whisked off a low shelf. “In my youth I once saw him with a newborn,” she confided. “My own eyes.” She drank, coughed, and leaned over the table to whisper, “During the Reich you could be executed for making angels, but after the war it was common again when Occupation soldiers, especially Negroes, fathered children all over the countryside.” But that job didn’t last, she went on, and about fifteen years ago he began selling flowers to Festival visitors, roses stolen from graves. Now he wore a clean uniform and supposedly supported himself through currency exchange, but in fact by trading in scandals, especially among prominent musicians.
“So,” Frau Metzger concluded, “you are warned. Your reputation is so precious. Promise me you will not again go near him.”
Maile stared past her. She had been flattered that the Rosenkavalier knew about Super-Sopran. The possibility of an audition as he’d outlined it seemed part and parcel of the way things were done here— nothing wrong with taking advantage of that. Although in spite of music, the city’s real industry seemed to be secrets: fresh gossip, gossip thirty years old, diplomatic gossip in fourteen consulates on levels she couldn’t imagine. What Frau Metzger described had a powerful ring of truth: poor, ignorant peopl
e dominated by church laws. Allowing a baptized infant to starve was evidently preferable to the sin of abortion. The clan would never believe such a tradition had existed anywhere in the world, much less in the name of God. They would not understand how she could stay one more day in this country.
At last she said, “I thought he was a former concentration camp guard.”
“Oh no,” Frau Metzger exclaimed, “that would have been much better than his true occupations.”
13
THE NEXT MORNING Maile came downstairs to see a news vendor whipping papers off a stack as customers tossed coins into a tobacco tin. Most Salzburgers read free copies in a café to save a schilling for a roll to go with coffee. Politics, she thought, vaguely worried. The Red Army.
She bought the Nachrichten, headlined, TAUSENDE TSCHECHEN FLIEHEN IHRE HEIMAT. Thousands of Czechs Flee Their Homeland. Soviet leaders had declared an end to Prague Spring. Mass arrests were taking place throughout the country. An Austrian journalist was quoted: “Citizens shouted, ‘Go west before the Russians come!’” A map showed the movement toward Prague of over a million Warsaw Pact troops.
People around Maile made grim jokes: Germany is west, France is west, Salzburg is dead south—we’ll get tanks instead of refugees. Niemals, others disagreed, we are protected by the diplomats here. That’s reasonable, she told herself. Armies don’t advance on a whim. There’s no reason to attack a city full of musicians.
A Festival House press release took the rest of the front page: von Wehlen’s eight-track recording of Othello would be filmed next month in Italy. The storm scene required hundreds of extras on Piazza San Marco; a Medici bedroom was on loan for the scenes of love and murder. Maile went on to the conservatory and found the main hall jammed with singers, from beginners to advanced, all speculating about highly paid film work. Before the first class started, contestants from across Europe began arriving.
Two hours later, fourteen had checked in with the registrar. Those from Western Europe quickly made contact with local students, but competitors from Iron Curtain countries rebuffed any attempt to draw them into conversation. Word spread that a singer and a violinist from Prague had been delayed. By the next day their arrival seemed doubtful.
The only Soviet entrant, a pianist, was accompanied everywhere by two chaperones who waited at the door when he used the WC. His stylish suits outshone the shoddy clothes and shoes of competitors from Dresden and Bucharest, who were housed in the drab youth hostel under the watchful eye of a local Communist matron. The three Russians had a suite at Salzburg’s best hotel. Austrian students shrugged off such inequalities among supposed comrades.
Maile constantly saw Karl at the conservatory—after breakfast, before lunch, after lunch, before dinner—but they never spoke, their past relationship discarded to engage in mental combat. When they met on the way to separate practice sessions, they traded stares, wordless challenges. According to recent gossip, he had made an important emotional breakthrough with interpreting Schubert. A red stripe on his right wrist, it was said, showed where a sickle had sheared off a patch of hair and skin. She finally solved the riddle of her aria: it was the hope of love rather than love itself that animated her character.
NO DINNER THE night before, no breakfast. For lunch a seedless roll washed down with tea and honey. Maile felt properly hungry and lean, nothing to block the nimble movement of her diaphragm or obstruct the flow of her spirits between throat and gut.
The world would begin at three o’clock. The archbishop of Salzburg had donated the use of his palace for the afternoon. Contestants had drawn lots. Karl was number six, she number seven. Any piece longer than eight minutes had been condensed. Pauses were built into the schedule to allow for the tolling of the Dom bells, a sound that by law could not be silenced.
Maile knew that seeing Karl before he stepped out to perform would be unbearable. To keep her nerves from fraying, in her room she worked on an Italian crossword puzzle. At three-twenty she did only a basic vocal warm-up, on Jann’s advice. She arranged her chignon higher and fuller than usual, as befitted a modern-day countess. At three-forty, when she estimated that the first four performers must have finished, she went downstairs.
The usual crowds of leisurely afternoon shoppers irked her— people blandly unaware that her life would change before nightfall. A series of slow booms from the cathedral’s bell tower announced the three-quarter hour with vibrations that pierced her hollow stomach. She climbed the palace stairway slowly to prevent a racing heartbeat, a dry throat, a twisted ankle.
On the top step the Soviet pianist was smoking a black cigarette with a gold filter tip while his minders used pocketknives to clean their nails. He looked through her, and she stifled a nip of fear. Last night’s gossip had awarded him first place: no one else could match the brilliant arrogance of his playing, which gave him the crucial edge, the extra five percent that marked a winner. The Czech contestants had not arrived, two fewer competitors to worry about. Mozart, she recalled, was never allowed inside the palace, never considered more than a servant.
She entered and felt reduced to a speck.
Columns of green and black marble rose two stories to a network of gilded vines that twined across a distant vaulted ceiling. Ahead stretched a white marble floor that looked as long as Getreidegasse, with a carpet running down the center like a river of purples, blues, and reds. She walked past massive oil paintings, tapestries of Crusaders battling Turks, and came to the archbishop’s receiving chamber.
The tall door stood open. People were clustered outside, relatives of local contestants. The interior resembled a gigantic jewelry box lined with burgundy brocade. Four men and two women sat in ornate chairs, their backs to the door; in front of them a black concert grand piano on a low platform. The registrar stood to the right beside a screened gallery where professors were seated, unseen by performers or judges.
Workmen rolled a gleaming harp onto the platform, set a stool in place, and stepped out of sight. A slender Parisian with a long brown braid entered alongside her accompanist, announced a Ravel scherzo, sat down, placed her hands over the strings. A shower of sixteenth notes sprang into the air. The piano answered and the room filled with fresh, exotic melodies.
Enviously Maile imagined a French painting—pastel ponds, bridges, picnics, ladies strolling in weather that was always summer. Her own Mozart aria offered nothing new. This much more modern music had the allure of scented mist. A countess in a Baroque opera was as familiar as the rye bread people ate every day. Even shop signs here were Baroque. Old hat, boring.
The last tinkling notes of Ravel drifted away. Maile walked off to a side room reserved for contestants, and from the Dom came a rumble of bells, four strokes to mark the hour. They faded, followed by the registrar saying, “Nummer sechs, bitte.” Karl had just missed getting her own number, seven, lucky number seven.
As he stepped out on stage, she eased in front of contestants standing in the wings. Pili crept out from between her ribs, eager to explore. “Go back!” she whispered, and clapped a hand to her side.
Karl flexed his wrists, announced composer, opus, title, sat down and adjusted the bench. He extended his hands over the keyboard but didn’t touch it—a pause to invoke the instrument so it would not refuse him. His posture was taut: head, neck, back, arms, legs. He lowered his fingers and the insistent beat of the opening chords filled the room: double forte, crescendo, arpeggio. He repeated the driving melody a step higher, and the dynamics unfurled, intensifying and racing up the scale.
His notes spattered Maile’s face like sharp raindrops. Tone, he’d once said, had to be drawn out of an instrument, and he was doing that beautifully. She gave in to the sweep of his sound as the lead phrase climbed again and again and ended with a smartly accented peng!
At the first transition he went through a run at almost double tempo—a tiny one-measure mistake she was certain no one else heard. He glossed over it and returned to the Wanderer’s restless theme. She
listened hard for the emotional breakthrough the others had talked about: it was there. After laying the groundwork, he plunged into phrases without hesitation, throwing himself into the splendor of wandering freely. Emotion literally flowed from him, the piano an extension of his body, his innermost beliefs, his soul. She longed to be a pianist and make music in the same way, to have joyous physical contact with an instrument, to be a hero of Romanticism, in search of love and truth—
A climbing line of chords broke off. In her mind Maile filled in the missing notes, but a white gap opened up in the room, as distracting as a burst of light: three seconds’ worth of silence.
Karl continued with the descending run and recaptured the theme. The save was smooth. She breathed in. He had kept perfect pace. Neither timing nor tonality was marred, and he finished with a flawless display of verve that celebrated the driven, solitary artist—yet as he struck the final majestic chords and they expanded around him, against all logic the short, awkward silence hung in the air. She saw it and felt it, and knew that the judges did too.
He got to his feet and stared at the keyboard, a terrible hesitation, as if to accept that all the beauty he had created was not enough. Close, very close, but his efforts had fallen short, were no more than a pile of damp ashes. She wanted to shout that a minor defect meant nothing, that no one deserved to fail for a three-second memory lapse. But music was made, not discussed and defended, and contestants had no power except what they demonstrated on stage, under pressure, naked.
Karl faced the judges, bowed, and stepped off the platform. As he approached the contestants waiting backstage, Jean-Paul lunged to one side. Others gave way like ghosts. From somewhere far off Maile heard the registrar ask for entry number seven. Pili set her lungs on fire. The platform ahead looked twenty feet tall. She took a long breath. Heat rose around her like a suffocating tide of sand. Wings, she thought, wings, wings, and imagined them with such obsession that she felt feathers caressing her neck.
Aloha, Mozart Page 23