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Aloha, Mozart

Page 25

by Williams, Waimea


  “Forgive me if your teacher has already mentioned such this,” von Gref said.

  Jann’s words, she thought: Despite what anyone may think about von Wehlen’s past . . .

  That put the conductor in a positive light.

  “Now you must select your gift.” The baron pulled over a small tray covered with a piece of linen. “Arnim has reserved tickets for your concert. I hope you will be our guest afterwards.”

  He raised the cloth and Maile saw a little silver figure of Orpheus holding a lyre, an enameled brooch of a harpsichord, a tiny gold flute. She picked up a small lace square embroidered white on white with a cluster of angels, their faces and hair emerging from a background of clouds like visible spirits embedded in the threads. “This,” she said.

  “Ah.” Von Gref smiled. “Made by my great-aunt. She wrote frightful poetry in Vienna and founded the Salon for the Unmasking of Words, because corruption at court disgusted her. She had no artistic gift, just a keen suspicion that art could disguise evil.” His gaze lingered on Maile, inviting comment, but she looked down again at the angels and thanked him.

  “WHAT A SULTAN’S ransom!” Professor Jann said. “Seventeen arias.”

  Opera scores were arranged on his piano desk, the lid, on music stands, on a bookcase. Maile joined him in scanning library copies with yellowed pages and pencil marks that showed decades of use: Mozart’s most glorious roles for women. Today Jann would choose what she performed at the prizewinner’s concert. Something conservative, she was sure, but agents would be in the audience, and she was determined to impress them with fire: Donna Elvira’s passionate rage from Don Giovanni. As with Carmen and other forbidden fruit, she knew that aria only from practicing with Jean-Paul in the basement.

  “I have given this piece the most consideration.” Jann picked up a Figaro score. In silence they studied the countess’s first aria, a plea to Amor: Be attentive, O god of love . . .

  “Beautiful,” she said. “Not very dramatic.”

  He laughed lightly. “Your usual complaint. For a prize concert I admit a need to impress—”

  “With explosive coloratura!”

  “Certainly not.” He warned that singing with an orchestra for the first time would be humbling. A soloist had to fight off a sense of chaos produced by the massed sound of instruments. Arias from Giovanni or Cosi were dangerously heavy.

  They argued their way through Idomeneo and Titus. After half an hour had come full circle to Figaro, and Maile felt on the losing end of the decision. “Donna Elvira,” she said. “I have it memorized.”

  Jann gave her a suspicious look. “A little practicing on your own?”

  “Can’t I experiment? You once encouraged that.” He didn’t reply. She admitted being coached on the piece by Jean-Paul in exchange for a carton of cigarettes.

  Brusquely Jann cleared his piano desk and paged to the aria. “Skip the recitative. Stand over there in the corner.”

  She took up her position and pictured herself as a Spanish noble-woman in Renaissance Madrid: white ruff, black gown, string of pearls. Bedded by Don Giovanni, cast aside, tortured by the memory of love.

  “Well?” Jann played an introductory chord.

  She inhaled so deeply it left her dazed, and she sang in accusing tones, “He betrayed me before heaven and earth . . .”

  Jann fastened onto the melody, the pacing perilously swift. “Hold the tempo.”

  She tipped up her chin, cheeks prickling. He cued her next entrance with the stab of a forefinger. She hurled the phrase at him: “Shamed me and left me to mourn!”

  “Six beats,” he said, “not five and a half.”

  His fingers raced up the keys, playing the interlude with such intensity that it stole her concentration, and she didn’t get a full breath as he passed the coloratura line to her, and she attacked it on instinct: “Though cast down . . . abandoned . . .”

  Her response slipped perfectly into place, and their melodies entwined and caught fire. Jann’s notes swarmed over her. She took them in as if gulping red wine.

  “Draw back now,” he shouted over the onward rush of the music.

  In a logical corner of her mind she knew that he wasn’t leading or bullying, they were simply entangled. She eased into the lyrical core of the piece, the rage for vengeance overcome by love.

  “Forgive him and keep going,” Jann cried out.

  They recaptured the furious pace of the beginning, unleashed emotion held in check by human pity. “Forgives,” she concluded. “Love forgives . . .”

  Jann didn’t bother to play the final phrase. “Quite so!” he exclaimed.

  Maile breathed heavily, coming down, thinking that they had crawled into each other to make music. In ecstasy. No coddling. Can you sing this or not? I can.

  “This really is a beastly aria,” he said in a more critical tone. “The student orchestra will give it an adequate although not brilliant rendition, which is fine.” With a pencil he made rapid notes on the score. “By the way, yesterday I turned down an agent who wanted you for Wagner this fall. An ambitious little theater on the Danish border. Good Lord. Certain death. Voices like yours make agents greedy.”

  She almost howled in disappointment. The Rosenkavalier claimed he could get her a Festival House audition, but true or not, that had to remain a secret. She dared to scowl. “When will I get my chance? It doesn’t have to be Wagner.”

  Jann pointed to photos on the piano of himself in Tosca, Don Carlo. “In these works, the brass sections—not to mention the timpani—are so powerful a lead singer can lose ten pounds during a three-hour performance. Constant diaphragm pressure forces the liver four inches out of place. The stomach is compressed until it resembles a mashed orange.”

  She put a hand over her midriff. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good. Agents or conductors may approach you directly. I expect to be informed. Perhaps something can be worked out. I doubt it. Contracts are notoriously final.”

  Conductors, contracts. The words had sexual appeal.

  “Another consideration: a tour of South Africa is very lucrative, but most artists have an unspoken agreement not to go there.”

  “Isn’t a Hawaiian soprano too tan for Cape Town audiences?” She grinned. He didn’t react. She turned on him in protest. “You’re taking over my life!”

  His expression remained unperturbed. “At twenty-eight I sang Mephisto against my teacher’s advice. It took my voice six months to recover. Then I rushed from London to Hamburg to perform Boris four times in one week. Ego, ego. Critics ridiculed my exhausted czar.” He picked up a small black-and-white photo. “I keep this as a reminder of my greatest mistake. You must live with yourself after your performing days are over.”

  A picture of two men in street clothes. After a moment she recognized a young Alexander Jann and an equally youthful Werner von Wehlen.

  “Americans have their own mentality about culture,” he said. “In Europe, artists were and still are held to a moral standard. Yes, such a position is old-fashioned and romantic and too often a farce, but for me it is reality.”

  “The two of you were friends?”

  His eyes lit with a hard gleam as though dragging a memory into the present. “Von Wehlen conducted the victory concert when Paris fell to German troops. After the Allied victory, he evaded trial for war crimes and was put to work salvaging the Salzburg Festival. Briefly I sang under his baton.” Jann replaced the photo with neat finality. “If you are offered a role in next year’s Rappresentazione, I will do my all to see that you get it. In return, promise me you will not audition anywhere without consulting me. Then let’s get back to work.”

  She imagined herself as Soul in the midst of angels and demons, swirling though life with them, climbing the stairs to paradise. The possibility of auditioning at the Festival House faded away.

  “I promise.”

  THE AUGUST HEAT felt unnatural, tropical, the air moist enough to scoop up in handfuls. Thankfully, Jann thought, Sa
lzburg suffered such temperatures only a few days a year. At home he changed into linen trousers, a cotton shirt, sandals, then threw open the front room windows in the hope of attracting a breeze off the river. Outside in the garden the flowers drooped in the late-day heat.

  Dora peered in from the kitchen asking, “Fisch oder Fleisch, Zander?” Fish, please, he replied, and she said their Jause would be ready in five minutes. He heard the insistent rhythm of chopping. From a mail tray he picked up two telegrams that had just arrived: the first announced auditions for Bach concerts with Konsort Wien, the second for a leading role in Rappresentazione. Each, he felt, a perfect opportunity for Maile. He hated the thought of telling her because it signaled a further step in letting her go.

  He couldn’t wait until he had the house to himself, and chose the first number that occurred to him: nine. From the kitchen came a light sizzling sound. He shut it out and opened Plato’s Apologia. The presence of his wife persisted.

  Dora, who stayed slim for him, who assembled elegant little meals, who was intelligent and schooled, and to whom he now owed everything because he was no longer rich or famous enough to attract a fifth wife. Last night she’d distressed him with a confession. For months she had been giving money to the Rosenkavalier. Jann knew about years of similar payments to a certain Sondergeist, for his silence concerning her decade of sexual slavery. Even the idea of going through such degradation aroused Jann’s deepest sympathy, but he’d never been able to rid himself of feeling that his own masculinity had been compromised—a stupid, deplorable attitude, he knew. He and Dora hadn’t even met until years after the war. Before going to bed, they agreed that her only choice was to continue making discreet “legacy” payments; exposure would be ruinous to their lives in Salzburg.

  Stubbornly Jann paged through Apologia, looking, as first intended, for the wisdom of Socrates on teaching and students. His work as a music professor continually inspired bursts of internal and external emotion, which was expected, but the harder edge of physical desire had been growing for months. It began, he now admitted, after Maile finally sang a perfect Suzanna and crowned him with roses, then it intensified at the contest when she so exquisitely expressed the hope of love while he sat behind the screen in the archbishop’s chamber. An hour ago that same desire had become nearly unbearable with Elvira’s aggressive eroticism as she begged Don Giovanni to resolve her passion.

  Socrates on the role of the teacher: Jann studied a page, his Greek rusty. Nine lines were too many to translate. With difficulty he put together a single sentence: Truth must be relentlessly pursed, not discovered like a lucky coincidence. A poor version of the original, he thought, although the gist was there. Yes, yes, the true teacher lit a blaze in a student, including the flames of love, but directed those to the subject being taught. Seducing a student was easy, low, a pathetic form of self-love. His second wife had been a student, and he’d fed her need for his approval. A teacher had to bring all the glories of sex into play, then instead of crossing the physical line, focus on what was beyond sensuality: the creative soul. Socrates would view sex with a student as a betrayal, a sterile act, impotent.

  Jann closed Apologia, feeling outmaneuvered. He didn’t need to struggle with a language he’d studied fifty years ago to discover a truth. He didn’t need a book, any book. He knew life’s rules, and love’s rules, and was confounded by his blithe willingness to trample them. To recapture, even briefly, the splendor of being young? To inhabit the great roles again, the rulers and rogues that had made him famous? The control of an overwhelming attraction should be ancient history for a man of his age.

  “Komm, Zander,” Dora called gently, “fertig ist’s.”

  Nine was null and void. He would have to start over later.

  Putting Apologia aside, he went join his wife. They conversed pleasantly but throughout the meal he plotted with the silent finesse of a Shakespeare villain. On what pretext could he get Maile to come here? Yes, the sauce was excellent. When would the house next be safely his for several hours? Indeed, the heat should lift by evening.

  THE NEXT MORNING Maile entered the recital hall with two minutes to spare. Her thoughts vacillated between the exhilaration of me, me, me, up there in front of the orchestra, and the panic of being one voice pitted against so many instruments. Violinists and cellists called out jokes: they would play only Russian repertoire after the Soviets invaded Austria, the conservatory would be renamed the Stalinareum.

  As she mounted the stage, the musicians fell silent. She walked into what felt like a cloud of respect and envy, all those eyes, everyone thinking, Prove yourself, we’re just part of the background. She faced away from the orchestra to stand between the conductor’s podium and the first violinist. Her audience of three sat in the middle of the hall: Professor Jann, the registrar, the head of the conducting department.

  “So, meine Herrschaften,” the registrar announced. “Elvira aus Don Giovanni.”

  The first chord was so loud she clenched her fists in surprise. No friendly piano to start her off. The student conductor had a florid style with a looping beat she could hardly follow. The string players just behind her gave off astonishing vibrations that struck her back like a collapsing wave. Every fortissimo shook the wooden floorboards underfoot. Worse was the massed sound Jann had described: a whirl of violins, violas, and cellos, the orchestra’s workhorses, which she was supposed to count on, and did, but only for a few measures until flutes and clarinets joined in to create a flood of wailing sonorities.

  She sang in desperate search of rhythmic or tonal cues; melodies parallel to hers were embedded in different instruments, no easy echo from an oboe, no matching harpsichord line. The conducting professor ignored her to constantly stop his protégé: “Repeat measure fifteen! The initial trills are impossibly muddy.”

  Vibrations continued to slam into her horizontally and vertically, a weird, stunning effect, like being trapped by opposing waves and tides. And with an orchestra of only twenty-five! Not the sixty and more instruments required for Aida.

  For twenty minutes she barely hung on. Jann sat rigid and expressionless, by tradition not allowed to comment. The student conductor gave her no attention as he wrestled with the greater task of holding so many musicians together. Finally there was a runthrough. Maile got a flying upbeat and sang, “Hell has opened to swallow the betrayer!” Cellos growled out earthquake sounds, predicting Don Giovanni’s doom. “God’s mercy will not stay the arm of justice!” The orchestral answer came with an unexpected, perfect force that nearly lifted her off the trembling floor as her projecting voice and the accumulated instruments fused in a violent expression of hatred and love.

  Wow, she thought, and missed her next entrance.

  Ten minutes later, Jann led her out to the corridor. She still shivered with excitement and could have sung on and on for the sheer joy of it. He walked slowly and heavily, as if he had just run a marathon.

  “Not bad,” he said. He gave her a honey lozenge. For the dress rehearsal, he told her to follow the first violin for tempo and cues. “Watch just the tip of the bow. Your peripheral vision must take in the conductor to your left and reality to your right. Often the concert master is the true leader.”

  She nodded, proud to receive insider’s advice. First violin. Tip of the bow.

  “Go rest. You must let all your muscles ease. Jaw, neck, back. Off with you.”

  Outside the conservatory she felt ecstatic and huge for having survived. “Not bad” meant excellent. Meant superb. Meant marvelous, my dear. Every hedge and tree glowed at her with an intense green. The sky throbbed blue. She walked down Schwarzstrasse, feeling the entire orchestra trailing behind her, an immense, invisible cape of sound.

  A DAY LATER at the registrar’s office, Maile got a free ticket to the prizewinner’s concert for Frau Metzger in the hope of paying off her old debt for Body and Soul. She was also given two telegrams and an envelope, which aroused her curiosity so much that she opened them in the hall as
students walked around her.

  Her prize money would arrive at the conservatory tomorrow. In cash! “Please present your passport as identification.” The second telegram, from Professor Jann, invited Maile to visit his home at 2:00 p.m. She couldn’t quite take in such a break in the traditional student-teacher relationship, but of course she would go.

  The third message was handwritten in English: At noon today you are scheduled for a five-minute interview with Herr Maestro Werner von Wehlen at the Festival House. Be prompt. Signed, A.E.G., Secretary.

  She bit her lips and went outside before someone she knew asked what was so exciting.

  In her mind she heard a voice from the past: Cool head, main thing. This afternoon at Jann’s house there would be tea, served formally by his wife—a huge compliment. But before that, there would be von Wehlen, who wanted to speak to the contest winner. Was the Rosenkavalier responsible for this chain of contacts that led to the top? It made no difference. A five-minute interview wasn’t time enough to sing anything. Talking to von Wehlen would be harmless; no chance of being offered a job. The Festival still had three weeks to run, and ill performers, even in minor roles, were always replaced by experienced singers flown in from Berlin, Rome, London.

  All the way back to her room Maile practiced an imaginary conversation. Every sentence, she decided, had to begin with Herr Maestro to avoid accidentally addressing him as Du. Upstairs she waited in a knot of impatience for the approach of noon. Walking to the Festival House would take only ten minutes. Less. Finally the Dom bells struck the three-quarter hour.

  Frau Metzger called out from below, “A gentleman of quality to see Frau Manoa!” Maile grabbed her purse, then hesitated. “Quality” was the landlady’s word for any man in a good suit, and there was no need for von Wehlen’s secretary to come here. Unless to cancel the interview.

  She crept down to the front door as if moving quietly could ward off bad luck.

 

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