In the dark, they searched for the key. Rodolfo found it and hid it. Their hands touched. Mimi’s was icy. He took it, warming it. “Che gelida manina,” he sang—“What a frozen little hand.” They told each other about themselves and—as inevitably happens between tenors and sopranos in opera—began to fall in love.
From outside, Rodolfo’s cronies called him to come join them. Embracing, voices pouring out joyous octaves, Mimi and Rodolfo left the garret arm in arm.
Act Two took place moments later in the Latin Quarter. Ariana watched from the wings as Rodolfo, Mimi, Colline, and Schaunard mingled with a huge crowd of extras in front of the Café Momus.
I am Musetta, she told herself. I am Musetta.
The strings and winds sounded her mockingly coquettish cue.
With a toss of the head, waving hands, gay laughter, she became her character and entered on the arm of Alcindoro, a baritone and a rich and very elderly admirer. She stopped short at the sight of Marcello. He used to be her lover, and with a lingering glance, she made it very clear that she still cared for him. Angry when he pretended not to notice her, she broke into a luscious waltz reminding him—and the gathered public—of her charms: “Quando m’en vo”—“When I go through the streets.”
Shrieking suddenly that her foot hurt, she dispatched Alcindoro to buy new shoes. She and Marcello embraced. While a military parade distracted the crowd and the waiters, Musetta and Marcello and his young friends slipped giddily away, leaving Alcindoro to pay their café bill.
While the stagehands shifted sets for Act Three, Lucco Patemio took Ariana aside. “You do splendid work for a novice.”
She couldn’t quite believe that the world’s most popular tenor was complimenting her. “Thank you,” she said shyly.
“You have a delicious voice, my child,” he said. “But in this house the high B in Musetta’s waltz is a waste. Take it an octave down.”
The suggestion shocked her. “But the high B is the aria.”
He leaned across the table to touch her wrist. “Save it for La Scala, where such things are appreciated. And, my child, if you do as I say, you will be singing at La Scala. I’ll see to it.”
Darkness was falling and Ariana could feel London closing around her as she hurried through the artists’ entrance the night of the performance.
From the moment in Act Two when she flounced, laughing and flirting, onto the stage, she had a strange, almost disorienting sense that she was no longer singing Musetta’s music or creating her character: Musetta’s music was singing her, the character was creating her.
Disregarding Lucco Patemio’s advice, she took the high B in Musetta’s waltz…because that was what Puccini had written and that was what Musetta would have done. The house rewarded her with two minutes of bravas.
There were even more bravas in Act Three.
The scene was the Barrière d’Enfer, one of the Paris tollgates. It was a snowy February night as Mimi met Marcello and told him Rodolfo had left her for good. When Rodolfo came out of the inn, she hid and overheard him tell Marcello he still loved her but was afraid her poor health would kill her if she continued living in his cold, damp garret. At that moment a fit of coughing seized her, and Rodolfo, recognizing her, rushed to embrace her.
Musetta’s laugh rang out infectiously from the inn. Marcello dashed jealously inside. An instant later he and Musetta emerged, arguing furiously. Musetta exited in a scenery-chewing fury.
(The audience applauded, holding up the action.)
In a final lyrical duet, Mimi and Rodolfo decided to attempt a reconciliation—at least till spring.
The last act took place back in the garret. Rodolfo and Marcello—single again—sang regretfully of their old sweethearts. Colline and Schaunard arrived with a loaf of bread and a salted herring—the day’s food.
Musetta, agitated and trembling, burst in with the news that Mimi, dying, had left her viscount and wanted to spend her last hours with Rodolfo.
Rodolfo helped Mimi into the room and settled her on the bed. She was touchingly happy to be back, but wished she had a muff to warm her hands.
Realizing this was probably her friend’s last wish, Musetta volunteered to sell her earrings to buy a muff and medicine.
Alone, the lovers remembered how they first met—the dropped key, their hands touching in the dark. The others returned. For a moment Rodolfo thought Mimi had fallen asleep, but then—from his friends’ expressions—realized she was dead. Sobbing, he threw himself across her body.
The curtain slowly fell.
Afterward, when the cast had taken its bow, Lucco Patemio approached Ariana with a thin smile. “Do you mind, my dear,” he said, “only the principals will take solo calls.”
“Musetta is a principal.”
“Not tonight.”
And suddenly she understood. Greed was speaking through him. “It’s because they like me, isn’t it?” she said. “You sang poorly and I sang well and the audience knows. And you’re scared that if I took a solo bow I’d get more applause than you.”
It would be two years before she learned that no one, not even a prima donna, talks to a tenor that way, but that night she was young in the ways of her profession and she spoke as she had sung, with all the truth in her being.
“You will not bow,” he said, “because the audience has seen enough of your silly cowlike simpering.”
She did not bow, but she stood behind the curtain, out of sight of the audience, applauding the other principals, and except for Lucco Patemio they smiled at her and applauded back as they returned to their dressing rooms.
She spent exactly one night hating, refusing to talk to Mark, refusing to make love or even to kiss, and then the hatred was lifted. Her reviews the next day were good.
Lucco Patemio’s were not.
Her second Musetta was Friday. Saturday morning she and Mark took the boat train from London to Paris. They spent the afternoon walking hand-in-hand in glorious sunshine along the Seine, exploring bookstalls and flower stalls and junk stalls.
Sunday morning at eleven they joined the well-dressed American and British expatriate throng at the Pro-Cathedral and heard the Archbishop of Canterbury preach a sermon on nuclear disarmament.
There was a reception afterward in the cathedral garden: tea and tiny gateaux and a sea of very expensive Easter bonnets.
The Archbishop grasped Ariana’s hand warmly. “I heard you sing.”
Astonishment took her. “You heard my Musetta?”
He smiled broadly. “No, I heard your ‘Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.’ Your voice inspired the whole congregation.” And he took Mark’s hand. “My compliments. You have a lovely wife.”
Ariana sensed something very much the matter when she and Mark got back to their borrowed apartment on the Rue de Fleurus. She put a cup of chamomile tea down on the table in front of him. She listened in silence while he explained as coherently as possible—and it seemed hard for him to be coherent—that he must go home today. Right away. No delay.
“Panagia mou, why?”
He didn’t seem to be able to come up with a why.
“What’s the matter, Mark? Is it you? Is it me? Is it us?”
She went to him, sat on the arm of his chair, slid an arm around his shoulder. He gazed at her a long moment, and then he took her hand with a tightness that surprised her and pressed it to his astonishingly hot, damp mouth. When he finally spoke his voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away.
“I love you. I really do love you. And …I want to live my life with you and I want to marry you and…”
“Mark, we’ve been through those wants. Why are you upset? Is it because the Archbishop thought we were married?”
“I have to go home. That’s all.”
“You have to go home today?”
“That’s right.”
“And I still have a Musetta to sing at Covent Garden, not to mention three Rosinas in Düsseldorf where I’ve never been before in my life and w
here I kind of hoped we’d be together.”
That afternoon, silently, they shared a taxi to the airport and took separate planes, she across the English Channel, he across the Atlantic.
Rosina was the last assignment in the world Ariana felt capable of at that moment: the youthful, lighthearted heroine of Rossini’s Barber of Seville.
Fortunately, audiences invariably loved the amiable idiocies of the libretto and the deft humor of the melodious score. Barber was all surface, charm, and comic precision.
In the first scene Count Almaviva sang a serenade beneath Rosina’s window. Figaro, the town barber, entered boasting of his various remarkable skills. Almaviva asked his help in winning Rosina. Figaro warned that her guardian, Dr. Bartolo, guarded her jealously and intended to marry her himself. Rosina dropped a note to the serenader, asking his name and intentions. Almaviva sang another serenade, claiming to be “Lindoro,” poor but full of love. Figaro suggested that the count disguise himself as a soldier and ask to be billeted in Bartolo’s house.
The second scene took place within the house. Rosina wrote a letter to “Lindoro.” Her soliloquy—“Una voce poco fa”—“One voice does but little”—and its spectacularly leaping, filigreed cabaletta constituted one of the best-loved coloratura arias in the soprano repertory. Ariana sang exactly as DiScelta had taught her, and the audience applauded warmly.
She tucked the letter into her bosom as Bartolo, her aged guardian, entered. Basilio, the music teacher, warned that Almaviva had arrived in Seville to court Rosina; he recommended a slander campaign to drive the count away. But Bartolo had no time for slander and wanted to marry Rosina immediately. He asked Basilio to help him draw up a marriage contract.
Figaro, who shaved Bartolo daily and thus could come and go in the house as he pleased, entered. Rosina gave him her letter to pass on to “Lindoro.” Bartolo returned, glanced at the desk, and accused Rosina of writing to someone.
At this point there was a knock at the door. Berta, the comic maid, admitted Almaviva, who was impersonating a drunken officer.
Almaviva whispered to Rosina that he was “Lindoro.” Bartolo demanded to see the letter Rosina had written. She handed over a laundry list. Bartolo exploded in anger.
The resulting fracas attracted a police officer, who arrested the count. Almaviva gave the officer his card. The officer, snapping to attention, arrested the doctor instead. A rousing final chorus brought the curtain down to appreciative applause.
In the next act Count Almaviva returned, disguised as a music master replacing Basilio, who he said was sick. Bartolo was suspicious until the count handed him Rosina’s note, saying he had intercepted it before it could reach Almaviva. Bartolo summoned Rosina and stayed in the room, snoring, while the lovers, going through the motions of a music lesson, plotted their elopement. Figaro arrived to shave Bartolo and stole the balcony key from his pocket so that the lovers could escape that night.
Basilio arrived unexpectedly and was on the verge of upsetting everyone’s plans when the count bribed him to pretend to be sick. Bartolo, finally realizing he was being duped, pursued Figaro and the count from the house.
He then returned and showed Rosina her letter, saying that Lindoro was merely a go-between courting her for the count. Believing herself betrayed, Rosina agreed to marry Bartolo, who went to summon the police.
The count and Figaro entered via the balcony. Rosina accused “Lindoro” of deceiving her, but he revealed himself as Almaviva and they fell into each other’s arms. Basilio arrived with the notary, but the quick-thinking Figaro presented the count as the prospective groom. By the time Bartolo returned with the police, Almaviva and Rosina were married. Told that he could keep his ward’s dowry, Bartolo resigned himself to the turn of events, and the opera ended in general jubilation.
The Düsseldorf press gave Ariana three nice little mentions, and after two more Rosinas she returned to New York. The hinges sang out two notes of “Amazing Grace” and she plunked her bags down.
Mark kissed her. It wasn’t the kiss she’d expected. He looked sober and drawn. There were dishes in the sink. And unchanged sheets tangled up on the bed. And shirts tossed into the bathroom hamper, overflowing onto the tile floor. Collar shirts. Shirts with stays and neat little buttons.
She picked one up and studied the label. Brooks Brothers.
“You never used to shop at Brooks,” she said.
“They were having a sale.”
It had been twelve days since they’d said their silent goodbye in Paris, and—subtracting the weekend—that left ten working days. There were ten blue broadcloth shirts.
“You wear these to class?”
“I haven’t been going to class.”
She looked around the apartment, carefully now, sensing that the coziness had gone out of the chaos. Everything was wrong. Stacks of Barron’s weekly teetered on tabletops instead of homily outlines. Wall Street Journals lay crumpled in the corner where three unread weeks of The Church Times should have been nesting. A Dun and Bradstreet sat on the shelf beneath the coffee table where the Hebrew-English lexicon used to be wedged.
“So what have you been doing?” she asked. “Playing hooky in button-down shirts?”
“I’ve been working.”
“You took a nighttime job?”
“Daytime. Harry Forbes got me a position with his brokerage house. I’ve quit seminary.”
She stared at him, not wanting to believe what she’d just heard. “You’re doing this because of me, aren’t you,” she said quietly. “Correction—you think you’re doing it because of me.”
“Maybe we should talk,” he said.
“Maybe that’s the first intelligent idea you’ve had in twelve days.”
She sat at the table. He brought two cups of tea; two threads of steam wisped up into the air and he bowed his head.
Then, it spilled out. He’d been having doubts. Not just about the divinity of Christ or the tripartite God, not just about the formularized prayers that turned a conversation with the divinity into something only slightly less rigid than an exchange with Mrs. Vanderbilt…
“Mark.” She laid her hand on his. “Get to the point.”
For one instant their eyes met. His were large and hurt and there was shame in them, and she had never before seen shame in the eyes of Mark Rutherford Junior. He told her about a student who had invited a girl into his room—perfectly innocent, a second cousin—and whom the seminary had thrown out as though he’d been committing all the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Mark, I may be an opera singer, but what do you take me for, a lovesick moron? Sure you’re having doubts, but they’re not about Apostolic legitimacy and they’re not about somebody’s ninth cousin, they’re about us.”
For an instant he sat absolutely still.
“Or maybe,” she said in a softer voice, “maybe they’re about me.”
He began pushing out denial that had all the weight of a tombstone. “Honey, I swear, of all the things in my life I never doubted—”
“Will you quit lying to yourself and will you please quit lying to me? Are you so scared of wounding me, so scared of making me feel you can’t trust me? Or maybe you don’t trust me? Is that it, Mark? Do you take me for some kind of coward or idiot? A piece of singing fluff, pretty to listen to, nice to sleep with, but count on her when the bills come due, not on your life? This didn’t happen over a weekend, and it didn’t happen because some administrator in that seminary went on an antisex crusade. This has been coming ever since we met. And let me tell you something, Mark Rutherford Junior, I will not be the reason you make yourself unhappy! Be a minister, be a garbage man, but don’t blame me!”
“Hey, hold on, who’s blaming who?”
“You!” she screamed. “You’re blaming me! A minister can’t be married to a singer because a singer performs on the stage and everyone including the Archbishop of Canterbury knows that’s one step up from streetwalking; and so to spare my feelings and my career y
ou’re sacrificing everything and selling yourself to those Wall Street goons peddling stocks and bonds and futures and debentures and all that manure so you and I can continue in unwedded bliss while I warble my way to the top and you shlep the number six train to Wall Street every day for the rest of your life!”
“You’re hysterical. Maybe we should both shut up.”
“The Rutherford way? Don’t talk about it and maybe it will curl up and die?”
“This has nothing to do with the Rutherfords.”
“This has everything to do with the Rutherfords and even though you’ve made it very clear that it’s none of my business, I’m going to ask anyway. Did your father cut you off?”
Amazement washed across Mark’s face.
“Did he tell you it was me or seminary tuition?” She took his silence for admission and she began shooting words at him in a voice so low it was almost a stinging whisper. “Panagia mou, voïthia! Goddamn it, Mark! If we can’t trust one another, what the hell are we doing in each other’s life!”
He didn’t seem to have an answer for that one.
“Don’t you think you can count on me for anything?”
Or for that one either.
She lifted her teacup and sent it eight feet through the air, smashing into the wall behind him.
He ducked, half expecting a kettle or a lamp to follow. But nothing followed except silence, and when he looked her way she wasn’t there anymore.
“Ariana?”
She was not in the bathroom, not in the bedroom crying, not on the landing outside, not in the courtyard downstairs, not out on Perry Street hailing a cab.
She was gone.
And except for the stain dripping down the wall and the two suitcases standing inside the door, it was as though she had never come back to Perry Street at all.
9
ARIANA WENT TO RICHARD Schiller and told him she needed $2,000 quickly. “I can book you into Andrea Chénier next July in Cincinnati.”
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