“Halt!” von Wehlen shouted.
Heads jerked in his direction. The ushers and the audience froze. He crossed his arms, his baton erect in his right fist, and he stared out until silence had reclaimed the auditorium. With a faint nod he turned to face his orchestra once more.
People filed back to their seats. The ushers retreated up the aisles to their posts. Maile breathed out and felt her lungs deflate, her jaw clenched tight. In her mind she saw through the walls to the street, where a Soviet tank cannon was aimed at the glass entrance doors, and thirty feet ahead she saw the white line of a baton glide into a down-beat. The instruments responded with a prolonged sigh of melody.
“La— ci da-rem. . .” Don Giovanni sang, thin and shaky. Yet the tempo was exactly as rehearsed, and it grounded her, and by the end of the phrase his proposal was sweetly tempting: Give me your hand. She concentrated on a point inside her mouth—just back of the nose, upper palate, the place where all tone began—and eased in with her reply: In truth, fine sir . . .
From the first note she realized that she could actually perform while a conductor quietly stirred the music so it wound into her heart. Soprano and baritone passed the melody back and forth, pacing the seduction, creating a world of emotion for the delight of the audience. On cue she turned to her seducer. He toyed with the ribbons on her bridal crown. She leaned against his shoulder. They sang the lovely phrases that brought two people closer: Will you? and Oh, yes, then together, Come, let us seek happiness. Hand in hand they faced each other as the orchestra played out the trills that sealed their choice to be lovers.
As the last tones trailed off, the lights on both sides of Maile seemed to bulge and swirl. She couldn’t feel her legs or feet. A searing wave of applause nearly knocked her backwards. She moved forward through glinting dust motes as thick as snow, gulped a breath, and her nose trembled with a sneeze. She puffed out her cheeks to suppress it and found herself on the edge of the orchestra pit beside her partner. The curtain came down behind them with a heavy draft that shivered her skirts. The clapping went on and on, peppered by rowdy cries that reminded her of the Red Horse. She noticed Don Giovanni acknowledging her, one arm extended in a courtier’s gesture, giving her a full share of their success. Below in the pit she caught sight of von Wehlen, smiling, warm and indulgent. He motioned for her to curtsy.
She took hold of her skirt, right hand and left. The audience in the front rows became individual faces, and she looked from one to the next feeling helplessly grateful: her people, a mix of aristocrats and grocers and butchers. She strained to find Frau Metzger in the middle of the eleventh row, proud possessor of a von Wehlen ticket, what she’d held out for, a lifetime dream fulfilled. Two, four, six, eight, Maile counted, and in row nine saw a tall white-haired man, his expression anguished. She completed the bow but her energy collapsed into the memory of curtsying for him after the contest, joking and going off to drink champagne. Countess Almaviva, Countess Manoa. She bent forward in another deep bow, and the Grand Stage at the Grand Festival House closed around her, a dark cell with only the awful beating of her heart.
OFFSTAGE, MAILE COULDN’T reply to a security guard who asked where to find her for the final curtain. She let him lead her down a hall into a side room with comfortable chairs, where a woman served tea and the on-call doctor was summoned. After a few tactful questions they left her alone. She sat still, assailed by melodies cycling in her brain: Sweet Leila—ni, Pa—nis ange-li-cus, a sonorous cello solo.
Sometime later the guard returned to take her back for the last bow, the performers joining hands in a line to parade forward into a crushing atmosphere of heat, lights, and wild applause. Maile gestured to the audience like the others, right arm out in thanks or straight up in an Olympian’s salute. She smiled with radiant generosity, as they did, and accepted a bouquet from assistants who came out bearing bundles of red roses. The cloud of fragrance made her even dizzier.
Backstage again, she plunged into a crowded hallway, thrust the roses at a wardrobe worker, and pushed on through union men and rehearsal coaches, secretaries, bodyguards, all exclaiming about Herr Maestro’s victory. Panic could not stop him! What was that thud? Ein kleines Boomlein. Who cares?
A smiling, bright-cheeked dresser waited for Maile. She sent the woman away and yanked at the bodice lacings. Her pulse knocked against her ribs, one-two, one-two. She shook off the costume. The sound of her heartbeat changed, becoming fuller and deeper: tok-tok. She clamped both hands over her breasts as if the tones might escape into the room, the hall, the theater, an unnamed secret whispering itself to the world. A mirror reflected her image head to foot, naked except for a glittering bridal crown. She pulled it off and the sounds shivered down through her diaphragm into her hipbones, where they throbbed like a second heartbeat: tok-tok, tok-tok.
She turned on the shower and stepped under a steaming mist of liquid hot needles. Gasping, she drenched herself, shut off the taps and pulled on a robe. She answered knocks on the door, handing out costume pieces to workers from the headdress, garment, and shoe departments. Another knock and she grabbed up the heap of petticoats, flung them out, and slammed the door. Her wild pulse slowed. The only clothes left in the room belonged to her.
From a drawer she took out an evening purse with a long shoulder chain. The sound of a hand striking a gourd seemed to be waiting within her, a spirit ready to leap out like the dead calling to the living, a law without hope of appeal. Madame Renska had said, “You know nothing about European conductors.” She recalled seeing von Wehlen for the first time in his grand car, a black-and-white newsreel racing through her mind, his stare meeting hers.
She slipped on her black beaded gown and sat down to arrange her hair. From the hallway came the thump of costumes being loaded onto rolling racks. Hangers zinged on the metal bars. D-sharp, she thought automatically, then doubted it, and the note swam away. Somewhere outside workers chanted, “Hoch, hoch.” Lift, lift, the pitch as definite as if written on a score, low B-flat—but that wasn’t right either. She tried to label every sound she heard, but each seemed higher or lower in a wavering world where nothing familiar made sense. A handful of hairpins spilled to the floor with a pinging clatter of more notes she couldn’t name. She kicked the pins aside and shoved open the window.
The warmth in the dressing room flowed into the night in a stream that felt strong enough to pull her out into the endless current of the sky. Everything was higher or lower than something else: the warehouse below, dressing rooms above; Professor Jann in the audience, she above him on the stage; the conductor above the orchestra and below the singers, controlling all the performers and listeners. In every great opera, passion fought with honor, and souls were lost or won. Yet life offstage was never that clear. Her purse held a roll of fifteen one-thousand-schilling notes. I will find you, he’d said. Somewhere in private, she was sure, because he valued discretion, and knew that she couldn’t risk refusing to pay him.
From the dressing rooms Maile found her way to a private elevator that went down to the artists’ reception on the main floor. The world changed again when she walked into the brilliantly lit foyer. Guests were lined up to speak with Othello, Aida, Don Giovanni. Waiters served trays of champagne flutes that glowed with a chilly golden blush. Bouquets of roses stood on pedestals. Everyone spoke rapidly in a mixture of congratulations and relief. She thought the lovely clothes, the jewelry, and the charm on display were like a visual reply to a long-ago question from a German teacher who had asked why students in Hawaii wanted to study his language and culture. Because it belonged to poets and philosophers, because it was elegant and uplifting.
Maile took her place last in the receiving line. The majority of the audience was outside, townspeople in their evening best, staring in through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. No tanks behind them on the street, no frightened expressions.
“Fine work, Frau Manoa,” an elderly man said to her in English, “most particularly for one who comes to us from s
o far away.” She warmed with pleasure and shook his hand. He introduced her to somebody else, and one after another more guests came down the line to bestow their compliments: her singing was a model of Mozartian refinement; her stage presence revealed a beguiling manner. Their accumulating praise felt earned. Only six weeks ago, on opening night, she had been an onlooker in street clothes. Now she was not only inside but at home among the world’s finest musicians, to whom a phrase in a duet mattered more than a car, house insurance, taxes, whatever concerned most other people most of the time.
A rustle of clapping spread from the head of the receiving line. Everyone faced the main hall, saying, “Er ist’s,” and “Jetzt kommt er.” Ladies and gentlemen plucked fresh champagne flutes from the trays of passing waiters.
Von Wehlen entered the foyer, his hands at his sides, his expression elated, regal. Guests raised their glasses in a cheer. The people outside pressed against the glass doors, shouting, “Maestro, Herr Maestro!” He glanced around slowly as the sound grew until it quivered against the ceiling, then he raised a hand in a precise motion that produced instant silence.
“Please,” he said, “no toasts in my name. This success belongs to you, my supporters, and to my orchestra, although above all . . . to my singers.”
He stepped over to the receiving line. His admirers receded in a flushed, respectful mood as he shook hands with the first soloist. Maile faced the guests so she wouldn’t stare at him. Her thoughts focused on old questions: Who was Werner von Wehlen, apart from the Festival, apart from performances in Berlin and Vienna, apart from recordings and films? Why should it matter to someone from Honolulu?
He took his time with each performer. A particularly fine tribute was repeated softly by ladies and gentlemen in front, and passed on to those farther back. Maile watched him from the corner of an eye and felt the energy he emanated moving closer and closer. She tucked her purse under one arm, the other, then hung it from her left shoulder by its chain. He was three singers away. She kept her back straight, her eyes lowered. Two more singers. She saw only the motion of arms and hands, then just one pair of hands, his hands, and she understood that his mana was not in his head, mind, or heart, but in his conductor’s hands. If she touched them, she would belong to him, and work with fabulous musicians in fabulous productions for the next thirty years. For the sake of music she would never speak of how the world’s most famous conductor had climbed through the ranks, or the secret of his continuing wealth, or the silence maintained by an entire nation over so many years. She would never speak of her own past: Jann, Karl, Madame Renska, Makua, Auntie Lani. Evil was necessary in life, and good would come around again. Her choice was about lōkahi, balance.
Von Wehlen stepped in front of her. “Ah, my protégée,” he said. She raised her head, and he extended his hand. “You proved yourself. I have a role for you this fall in Venice.”
In her mind Maile heard another voice, from the realm of ancestors, Tūtū asking, “You still have three souls, or none?”
Inwardly she shivered and sensed a sickening blankness where her souls should have been. After coming so far, living so lean and working to exhaustion, the accusing question had caught up with her. It mattered all the way back to childhood, when the world was in balance from the highest level in the sky to the deepest place in the ocean, from the eastern to the western horizon. She could not simply respond to von Wehlen with a rank insult—Nazi, filthy penis—the man who had only given her what she craved. Around her the room went black. The heat of so many people was suffocating.
She kept her hands at her sides. “Herr Maestro, I cannot accept your offer.” He tilted his head slightly, as if perplexed. The guests behind him fell silent. His expression didn’t change. For a moment Maile thought she’d accidentally spoken to him in English, although he was fluent in four languages, including English. “Or your contract,” she added.
He tucked his outstretched hand into his vest, gave her a demolishing glance, and stared at a point above her head. “Leave.”
Guests peered around him. A trickle of whispering among those who were closest quickly intensified. Maile felt the air surge and stepped behind the receiving line, wild to get away, close to fainting.
“A toast to music,” Don Giovanni called out. “A toast!” Someone handed him a glass and he raised it. “To music, to music!” the crowd repeated, but their words didn’t cover the ferment of gossip as her name passed up the row of singers, the outrage confirmed by guests and murmured among waiters. By the time she got outside, people on the street said to each other, “That’s her.” Some gawked, most deliberately turned their backs. She had done the unthinkable, the inexcusable.
Her knees trembled and she sat down on the rim of a fountain. The stone was like a block of ice. It sent a jolt up her back and she clenched her fists to stop shaking. A couple in peasant clothes walked past, pointing at her. She wanted to cry, to sink into the water. The frigid marble made her thighs ache.
She strode off in a rush of humiliation, watched by remnants of the audience, Festival House guards, ushers and box office staff on their way home, townspeople, a rubbish collector. Gossip swept her into the streets of the Old City—“Herr Maestro. . .” “That woman. . .”—and moved ahead of her like mist blown by wind. The doorman at an elite hotel frowned when she stopped in front of it, breathless. Move along, no unescorted women allowed here.
With no sense of direction she went on until she saw nobody and nothing except the high sides of unlit buildings. Curving cobblestone paths warped away into darkness. At last she caught her breath, but still felt smothered. Above the rooftops the Fortress was a faint black mound against the dead, moonless sky. The height of it fascinated her, a place with fresh air.
She headed deeper into the dark city, walking hard, looking for the narrow road that led up to the castle though stone gateways that were always open. Outside Skolaren Kirche, something detached itself from a pillar, a glinting shadow. The Rosenkavalier danced toward her with mocking little steps, flipping his hands as if shooing flies. “Pariah, fool,” he crowed. “You murdered your career!”
The sight of him numbed her. From his jacket he pulled out a key and waved it, imitating a baton. “This opens the door to the cathedral tower, my Mooress. Go on up. The leap from there will be quick and painless.” The silver braid on his sleeve sketched a wild pattern in the dark.
All she wanted was her hands around his skinny neck. He leered and minced just out of reach. She dug into her souls for the worst curse she knew, and stood with her legs spread wide, and splayed her fingers. In a hideous quaver she chanted, “O . . .‘oe . . . ka‘u.” You . . . are . . . mine.
He lowered the key and stepped back. She swung her arms side to side and repeated, “O . . .‘oe . . . ka‘u,” chopping each syllable. His expression changed from startled to confused to fearful. He raised a hand to cross himself, but his arm stiffened and stopped at his forehead. She laughed—the Engelmacher asking for God’s help—and she clawed at him and arched her spine like a lizard goddess, claiming him piece by piece. “O ‘oe ka‘u!”
His shoulders trembled, his head, his torso. He leaped away from her, and his hat spun off and skidded over the cobblestones. He bent to snatch it up but fell on all fours, slipping, scrambling, pursued by fiends, a frantic figure that scrabbled off along a wall and vanished around a corner.
Once more she stood alone in a dark, deserted part of the city. The silence made her feel hollow, her curse nothing more than a fit of mindless rage. It hadn’t changed anything. Only she had changed, beyond hope of forgiveness; she had given in to the wrong kind of enchantment, all for the sake of some grand ideal that was rotten at its core. Turning down von Wehlen didn’t feel good or brave, just obvious and disappointing, like a child caught lying and having no way out except to admit, I did it. Now she had no future whatsoever. Nothing more to do tomorrow except pack—and then leave. His final word.
She retraced her steps, looking for landmarks that
led back to Getreidegasse. Her chignon shifted and threatened to uncoil into tangled loops. Her beaded gown covered a heap of ashes in the shape of a woman who would dissolve with the slightest breeze. The lump of money in her purse was only a reminder of how close she’d come to being wrong for the rest of her life. Newspapers littered the street in front of a kiosk. She stepped over photos of tanks along the Danube and wondered if it was still possible to get across the border. The thought of leaving Salzburg felt like a wound opening up. Had the lie begun with staring at the von Wehlen posters before the Festival started? Seeing him in the flesh for the first time? Going to the interview? Pinning it down no longer seemed important. An hour ago she had sung perfectly. The greater soul of music that should have grown within her was not there.
At Getreidegasse Twenty-five she pushed her key into the lock. A man stepped from an adjacent passageway, reading a score in the light from a shop window. Professor Jann. Turn the key, she told herself, slip inside, shut the door—fast, clean, gone.
He offered her the score, his expression neutral. “The solos are difficult,” he remarked. “The pay is negligible.”
She never expected to hear his voice again. The buildings around her wavered as if the entire street had slid underwater. She took the score, an old library copy of Mozart’s C-minor Mass. The title on the cover dissolved. She couldn’t feel her breath or the movement of her lips, tongue, cheeks, palate, throat—her voice! The only thing she had left. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Betrayal does not have to be final,” he said. “Betrayal also goes both ways.”
She gripped the score and leaned into him, her forehead pressed to his chest, and she cried without understanding or caring, because there was nothing left of what they once shared and argued over and fought for. Nothing left of anyone else at the conservatory.
Aloha, Mozart Page 31