by Ann Claycomb
He shrugged.
“I suppose I should be grateful you’re anxious. You could have gone the other way, developed a raging ego, and decided to refer to yourself in the third person.”
“First-person plural,” Robin said. “We would prefer to adopt the royal we when we become that arrogant.”
THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC of The Scarlet Letter would tell the story of the religion that overshadowed the story. Robin was using the organ both to echo the stately chords of old Protestant hymns and to thunder over the rest of the instruments like the voice of the people’s merciless God.
Allan’s enthusiastic praise of the direction Robin was taking the music had left Jim Dolan, the donor underwriting the commission, practically bouncing in his seat. He’d wrung Robin’s hand and asked to hear an aria as soon as Robin had one finished. Maybe one of the opera company members could be prevailed on to learn just an excerpt from the new piece and let Jim hear how it would sound?
Of course they would, Robin thought, just as he himself would offer up the pages of his score before the proverbial ink was even dry, despite his general reluctance to share work before it was complete. Jim had seven figures committed to the creation of this opera. In a clear and concrete way, he owned it. Even more persuasive in some ways was the fact that Jim himself didn’t see it that way. He was just such a passionate fan of opera that he got excited over any new work that might energize the genre and bring in a new audience. To hear Allan tell it, the only way Opera Philadelphia had gotten in the door with Jim, who could clearly afford to donate many millions, was by throwing out plans to talk building renovations or naming opportunities and instead pitching the idea of a new opera with an American novel as the libretto and Robin as the composer.
As for writing an aria for Jim and Allan to hear—Robin flipped through the stacks of paper he’d accumulated since he’d started the project. He had found the complete text of The Scarlet Letter online and excerpted and printed out nearly every moment that he suspected needed to be included. He had more than a hundred pages, including speeches by individual characters, dialogue between characters, and narrative insights about characters—of which there was a great deal and all of it overwritten, or whatever it was Hawthorne had done to his prose to evoke a Puritan sensibility.
He still wasn’t ready to deal with Hester, though at least now he had her vocal range right. He stopped on a speech made by the tenor, Dimmesdale, the father of Hester’s baby who was too cowardly to admit his sin. Robin didn’t have any trouble hearing this voice, a young man’s voice, with some of the physical wavering of a voice that had not matured fully any more than had its owner. And yet it was a beautiful voice, as it had to be to capture the sympathies of the other characters and of the audience, a voice with the lushness of a woman’s, with moments of occasional roughness and enough power in the lower notes to create an impression of restrained sensuality. Robin took the sheet over to the piano. The challenge here, he thought, is that the organ must play behind him whenever he sings, even if only softly or sparely. The organ is the voice of God for this man, the voice of the Church. It has to be there behind him, haunting him, sometimes even drowning him out.
By the time Tae called to say that rehearsal was running long, the text that would become the lyrics of Dimmesdale’s aria was heavily marked up, with words moved and extraneous lines slashed. The music itself, scored for orchestra with the organ as anchor and the violins underscoring the singer’s melodic line, was sketched out so boldly that the pencil was smudged in places, dark as an ink pen in others.
There was, Robin saw now, a striking contrast between his music and the voice for which he had just been writing. The music that gave texture to both the Puritan community and their God was measured, powerful, sometimes implacable in its repetition of themes and phrasings. The character of Dimmesdale was entirely the opposite: weak, both physically and morally, prone to fits of passion. But he had such a compelling voice, a voice in which neediness was not strident but supplicating, insistent as the plucking of a harp.
What would that voice sound like against Kathleen’s?
Robin pulled a fresh sheet of paper out, already imagining the framework for the duet, with the tenor voice pursuing the soprano. He was intrigued by the idea of making this light, young, male voice into a force of sexual power, even of sexual threat. Perhaps the unexpected richness of the tenor’s lower range might burst out and overwhelm the higher voice . . . He scribbled the notes down.
HE FINISHED THE tenor aria for The Scarlet Letter the next afternoon, beating back the strains of the duet that kept trying to start up in his head until after dinner, when he handed Tae the draft of the piece for Dimmesdale and went back to the piano. Writing “Desire,” a duet for tenor and soprano, felt less like creating music than trying to keep up with it. The two voices blended and twined around one another, never dissonant but always and increasingly unsettling together, hard to listen to and just as hard to write. Robin felt so physically restless that he wrote most of it standing up, stopping when it grew dark to switch on a lamp and the overhead light.
“So did you finish the song?” Tae asked the next morning. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, blowing on her tea. “I didn’t even hear you come to bed.”
“I’m glad I didn’t wake you,” Robin said. “I don’t think I had any choice but to finish it once I got started.”
“Do you like it?”
“I think so. I wasn’t sure if it would just be an exercise, putting another voice opposite Kath’s, especially without any context except what I gave it. But I think I’m distanced enough now that it was mostly—not all, but largely—about the way the voices played off each other.”
“When do I get to see it?”
Robin shrugged, a gesture he knew to be telltale to her, meaning that he wanted her feedback as soon as possible but didn’t want to say so.
“I need to get out the door pretty quick this morning,” she said. “I’ll look at it as soon as I get back tonight. What are you going to work on today?”
“Don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll take a break today, leave the house for a change, that sort of thing.”
“You know,” Tae said, “if you’re writing duets for Kathleen now, there’s another voice that’s sort of an obvious pairing, don’t you think?”
WELL, ROBIN THOUGHT later, yes, there was. Harry’s. Kathleen liked to say that Harry had a “Puritan” voice; he smiled now, recalling that description. He would write her into the Scarlet Letter opera, but for the fact that the novel was singularly lacking in compassionate, self-effacing female characters. Whatever she was, Harry was no Hester Prynne.
But her voice, that cool voice that spoke of open spaces high up inside arched ceilings, rather than outside in the sun, her voice was marvelous. Robin flipped through the pages of “Desire” as he considered the shape the next piece might take. He had found himself floundering early on in this last composition for lack of lyrics, but couldn’t even begin to write them himself, not words of desire, either felt or repelled, by or for his daughter. Instead, he had stopped briefly to pace and try to think of the most intense and obvious poetic expression of desire he knew. The words of the duet now were St. Augustine’s, of all things: I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared . . . What is this but a miserable madness?
For Harry and Kathleen, he would give in to the temptation to call the duet simply “Love.” Robin could hear the beginning strains of the piece: cello, violin, piano, and a harp, an instrument he rarely used because it bored him. But here a harp might serve two purposes: to emphasize with occasional rippling, lush scales the ascetic texture of Harry’s voice, and to suggest a loss of something idyllic. It would play at the beginning of the song, but then be cut off, abruptly, when the mezzo started to sing.
And speaking of something serving two purposes—he pulled out his phone and texted Kathleen: Have you had a chance to check your schedule? And do you have a favorite love poem?<
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This time, finally, she texted back almost immediately. Don’t know about that wknd yt, and i think wrong person. Can I ask Harry? And then before Robin could even reply, she sent another text. Told you Harry would know. She says bearet browning and also saffo. Probly spelled wrong. Im ok, pls stop worrying.
Robin wrote back, Trying, and got no reply. He wasn’t sure if he felt better or not for having at least heard from her. He texted again asking her to call in the next few days, then deliberately put his phone on the coffee table and did a search for Sappho on his computer. Her poetry struck him as an odd blend of elevated classical language, full of references to gods and winged chariots, and startlingly visceral expressions of love and longing. Scrolling through a four-stanza love poem, he found lines that he couldn’t not use:
Then in my bosom my heart wildly flutters,
And, when on thee I gaze never so little,
Bereft am I of all power of utterance,
My tongue is useless.
SUNDAY NIGHT, LORRAINE Dolan greeted them at the door and said that she’d made her husband promise not to ask any questions about The Scarlet Letter.
“I can’t stop the man from talking about opera, short of taping his mouth shut,” she said, “but this is a social evening. So if he starts asking you for a progress report, you have my permission to throw a breadstick at him.”
Instead, at dinner Lorraine asked about Kathleen.
“She was down in Sanibel with her girlfriend last week,” Robin said. “I’ve only talked to her a little since they got back but, to quote directly, it was ‘fabulous, amazing, and fantastic.’”
Jim Dolan chuckled. “Sounds like our eldest,” he said. “That girl experiences everything in all capitals. I tell her she needs to consider a career as an opera singer.”
“Singing isn’t exactly Carnie’s strong suit,” Lorraine said. “But your daughter is a singer, isn’t she, Robin?”
“She is,” Robin said. “But she’s promised never to throw anything at the orchestra. She knows that’ll get her disowned.”
“So she’s a soprano?” Jim asked. “What’s her dream role now at, what, twenty-four? I always think that’s an interesting question, you know, to hear how a young singer’s understanding of their craft changes just by hearing the roles they long to do. There was that one young man I talked to at the conservatory here when he was just starting out—stunning baritone voice, just stunning, and so exciting to hear it at, you know, twenty-two, twenty-three, and think what that voice would sound like ten years down the road.”
“And what did he aspire to sing at twenty-three?” Tae asked.
Jim snorted. “Giovanni, of course. The pinnacle of success in his mind was Giovanni.”
“Jim,” Lorraine said dryly, “you’ve lost track of your question.”
“No I haven’t! I wanted to know what Kathleen’s ideal role was.”
As Robin opened his mouth to answer, he registered the fact that his own music for Kathleen was playing in his head.
“I don’t know, honestly,” he said. “She’s suited for both lyric and coloratura roles”—and how could he say that without some pride creeping in?—“but a lot of what I hear is frustration with soprano parts.”
“You mean how she has to either die or go crazy?” Lorraine asked.
“Or first go crazy and then die,” Tae said. “There’s always that option.”
They all laughed. “Yes, exactly,” Robin said. “She’s probably going to confound your experiment, Jim, about judging the maturity of a singer, because she claims that she’s never going to sing some of the classic roles: no Violetta, no Butterfly, no Lucia—”
“My God, stop!” Jim cut in. “She’ll be out of roles completely at that rate.” Then he grinned. “You’ll just have to write them for her, Robin. Have you asked her about Hester?”
“Hester’s a mezzo,” Robin said, and then flushed. He had decided it of course, but hadn’t said it out loud yet. But the news, if it could be called that, seemed to go over well with his hosts. Jim said nothing for a moment, then nodded his head decisively.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”
Lorraine, meanwhile, smiled.
“Good!” she said. “And not just because I love the mezzo voice. It’s been years since I read the book, of course. I’ve been meaning to reread it ever since you and Jim started planning the opera, but anyway, I seem to remember Hester as a striking woman, isn’t she? Tall, dark-haired, deep-bosomed, and all that.”
“She has to be,” Tae put in, “to hold the letter in place.”
“And Pearl, the little girl, she’ll be your soprano then, hmm?” Jim said.
Robin hadn’t even thought of Pearl yet, but of course that was the only thing that made sense. She would be a high soprano, pure, unearthly.
“Well then . . .” Jim didn’t wait for his answer. “Kathleen can sing Pearl.”
Robin shook his head. “I don’t think I’d even want her to,” he said, “much as I’d love to hear her singing music I wrote. There’s something so confining about the world of this book—all three of these main characters just stuck, unable or unwilling to escape.”
“But that’s why it will make such a great opera,” Jim said. “They might as well be cursed, as so many are. It’s the nature of the genre, what makes it so great—that inevitability, that sense of tragedy that the characters can’t escape. You don’t listen to an opera for the plot.”
“You don’t,” Lorraine murmured. “I’m sure some people do.”
“Only someone who doesn’t know the story could do that,” Jim protested. “And then you go to hear how they get there, to their death, their madness”—he waved a hand at Tae in acknowledgment of her earlier point—“or both. You know it’s going to happen, after all, it’s just a matter of time once you know the story.”
As if on cue, Robin’s phone, which was in his pants pocket, began to play the “Ride of the Valkyries.” Everyone at the table jumped, and Jim might have been about to make a joke, but Robin was already out of his seat and halfway out of the room, his phone in his hand.
“Excuse me,” he managed to say over his shoulder. “It’s my daughter.”
He stepped out into the foyer. “You did spell Sappho wrong,” he said, “but tell Harry the recommendation was a good one.”
But it wasn’t Kathleen. It was Harry.
“WHAT DID WE tell them?” Robin asked in the car. He was driving, though Tae had been unhappy when he insisted. His hands were steady and tight on the wheel, at ten and two o’clock.
“About why we had to leave?”
“Yes. I can’t remember what I said.”
“Just that Kathleen was in the hospital. They’re parents, Robin. That was enough.”
He nodded.
“Will you tell me anything?” Tae asked. “Did she have another—”
“Another break, yes. Harry took her in. They got her sedated but they want her admitted for a full stay, ten days or more, and they’ll need my consent on that.”
“You can fly up in the morning,” Tae said.
He nodded again.
“Do you want me to come?”
“No,” he said immediately, then tried to soften it with an explanation. “It’s just that there won’t be anything for you to do, it’s just a lot of sitting in hallways and waiting rooms and in her room if she’s up to it, and I don’t think she’d want you—”
She interrupted him. “It’s okay. She wouldn’t want me to see her like this. I can understand that, Robin. But I could come up for you, you know. I could just stay at the hotel, do some work during the day.”
He shook his head. “Thank you.”
They drove in silence. Robin thought he could hear music, very faintly, almost but not quite familiar. Finally he realized that the car radio was on, the volume set so low that he could barely hear it. He turned it up loud enough to register a Beethoven adagio, then turned it off all the way. He reached over for Tae’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I always tell myself that this will be the last time, that maybe it won’t happen again . . .”
She curled her fingers around his hand and placed her other hand on top. It was an oddly clumsy gesture for Tae, helpless and distracting. He had to extract his hand almost immediately to return it to the wheel.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“Stop apologizing, please.”
“Sor—”
He grimaced and returned his attention to his driving. The Dolans lived in a neighborhood of old trees and deep lawns, the houses set well back from the street. In the dark, the winding road unfurled like a black ribbon in front of the car.
Victoria, mother to Muirin and daughter to Fand, was so named by her mother in hopes that England would save her where Ireland could not. We watched Victoria avidly, suspecting she was cursed by her mother’s choices but not entirely sure. She came to cool her poor feet in the sea, screamed in agony when she turned sixteen. She ran to the shore and rinsed her mouth in the ocean, still retching, and a tiny fish swimming past swallowed some of the pain that leaked from her mouth. We caught it and sliced it open, but we needn’t have bothered. The blade of Victoria’s pain had already begun to work its way through the poor creature, slitting it in two from the inside out.
Victoria defied love. She married against it and lived against it and turned her face from it even as she strained and sobbed and clutched at the back of the man who offered it to her. After she bore his child and not her husband’s, she told her serving women that she was going to bathe in the sea and left them, wearing only her thin shift and with her dark brown hair hanging in braids down her back. She held the knife in plain sight in her hand. None tried to stop her. They thought she was mad. She stood in the small, licking waves of a receding tide and called to us, taunted us with her refusal to come out into the water to die. She opened her arms up with the knife and died in the wet sand dreaming of speaking words of love aloud. Her servants found her and her husband carried her body inland, where it was buried in the dense darkness of rock and soil.