by John Gardner
Always she was moved by the beauty of a view, a moment, a sight never to be captured again: the Jungfrau seen from some grassy vantage point at Interlaken, Switzerland; the House of Commons and Big Ben almost lost in a great swirl of snow late one afternoon in London; standing on a bridge in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, catching her breath as a spear of light hit the water for a second, then was gone; her wonder, walking into the Place de l’Opéra in Paris, seeing it for the first time; even the New York skyline, lit by a raging electrical storm, seen from the windows of the apartment. She wanted to go out in it, feel the lightning, brave the danger, dare the electricity to strike her down. But Paris, that was a moment. …
With Paris there, in his head, he thought of an afternoon at the Louvre—again her first visit—when they quarreled for a minute, over something silly. How she had disappeared and he had been distraught, looking for her, only to find that she had bought a small Egyptian figurine, a kneeling slave. She presented it to him gravely, then her mouth puckered and she was full of laughter again. Her voice was always with him, though sometimes he could not capture her face because of the very nature of its mobility.
Their physical moments burst in him once more. The unexpected times, when they could not wait to get to the bedroom in Corfu, or the games they would play—a question and answer interrogation on music. The winner would choose how they would perform the act, for there were countless, amusing variations of that. Things which kept their most private moments sweet—she, the whore, he, the client; he, the innocent, she, the predator; the honeymoon couple—she had a way of unveiling something new every time they played that game.
Yet Stanza was an innocent when they first came together, locked, and unlocked, winding the spring and slowly easing it down until exhaustion. Just as her voice and talent onstage was natural, so she had come to him virtuous yet crammed full of the instincts of a woman’s love. For a second he had a picture of her long hair tumbled over a pillow; then, again, hanging over her face, the tresses sweeping his belly. So, together, they found the elusive fount of youth and happiness.
It was a time that seemed endless. He thought they really believed nothing could change, that this thing they had was unquenchable, would stretch with them into eternity, for she had wrought a miracle in him. His work became better, his insight sharper, because of her. Sometimes they seemed to have exchanged minds. He had known entire days with her when neither spoke a word except the endearments of love, yet they knew what each was thinking.
A thousand moments spent with her—public and private—raced through his mind, like time-lapse photography. They had it. Then, suddenly, it was gone, leaving dust and ashes in his mouth, squeezing his heart until it cracked.
The last notes of the final song of Kindertotenlieder faded—
“In this weather, in this storm, in this tumult, they are resting, as if in their mother’s house, not frightened by any tempest sheltered by God’s hand, they are resting, as if in their mother’s house
Sie ruhn wie in der Mutter Haus.”
Big Herbie had taken an omelette to Pucky, who lay on the bed, grave and silent, listening to the voice that had launched and, possibly, sunk a thousand of Passau’s ships. She looked up at him, reaching for him so that he had to put the tray down and take her in his arms. She whispered, “Whatever it is, Herb, it’s not going to happen to us. Tell me it’s not going to happen to us.” So he told her, and held her body to him, as fragile as a small animal.
“Is not going to happen to us,” he said quietly and left as the last notes faded and dissolved into the air. He thought again of The Tempest—
“Are melted into air, into thin air,” he said aloud, then made Passau’s omelette, took up his tray and with a deep breath, lumbered out to him, playing the idiot.
“There you are going, Maestro Passau. Three-egg omelette, with all the herbs I can find. ’Erbs as you Americans say. That gets on my wick, this pronunciation—’erbs.”
Passau shrugged and looked emotionally drained.
“Hey, Lou, why don’t I get us a nice glass of wine? Cheer us up, eh?”
“As you like.”
“Okay, I like. Get my omelette and nice glasses of wine for the both, okay?”
He nodded and began to fork his omelette. When Herbie came back a few minutes later, with his own omelette and two large glasses of Zinfandel, Passau was being a shade more energetic about the food. “I had to teach Stanza about cooking from the beginning,” he said. “Teach her even to boil an egg. She knew nothing.”
“Not even spaghetti?”
“Especially not even spaghetti.”
“But she was from an Italian American background, yes?”
“Of course, but her mama did everything for her. Taught her nothing. Her singing came first according to her father, so the mama didn’t teach her squat.”
“Shame on her mama. What was her family name?”
“Jacobi. Helluva name. Don’t know where it came from.” He went silent again.
“So, you taught her good, Maestro.”
“I taught her excellent, but she was still a very literal woman. One day she decided she would keep house—we still got the Park Avenue apartment. Veronica got to keep Woodstoke Hall—the place outside Rhinebeck—and a large cash settlement. I kept Park Avenue. …”
“And the place on Lexington, Lou. Where you did the slap and ticklings on the side.”
“When I was with Stanza there was no need for the place on Lexington,” he snapped, and Herbie realized that, so far, Passau had not uttered a crude word about Constanza Traccia. Dear God, he thought, this is a first. With all the others he could not wait to describe his sexual athletics. This time he did not even attempt to brag. There was none of the street-talk language, none of the bounce. Constanza was the real one. Could it be, the only one?
“You still kept Lexington, Lou. I know it.”
“Then if you know it …” He twirled his fork and shrugged. “When you know something, Herbie, don’t bug me with it. How d’you know it?”
Herbie jumped in. “Because we have a mutual friend, Lou. But, as you would say, that comes later. Tell me about life and love with Constanza Traccia.”
Passau paused in his eating, took a sip of wine. “A mutual … ?”
“That comes later. Stick with the chronology. She decided to keep house, you were saying.”
“Oh, that. Yes.”
“So, what was it like with La Tempesta, Lou?” Seeing if he would crack and talk of her as he talked of other women: almost malicious, giving away their secret physical selves.
Maestro Passau took another sip of wine, deeper this time. A nod, then—“The most productive period of my professional life; the most creative; the happiest. Check the record, Herb. From 1948, when I first met her, until 1955, I did more traveling than at any other time in my career up to then. Sure, I’ve traveled a lot since. Concerts everywhere, but the big foreign concerts started around forty-nine. The last was in the summer and early fall of fifty-five.”
“Where did you go on that last one. The last tour with Miss Traccia?”
“We did London, Vienna, Paris and Venice. Seven weeks. Arduous.”
“Okay, but what’re your greatest memories of her?”
Slowly, Passau shook his head. “The memories are for me, Herb. Those I don’t share. …”
“Confession time, Lou. You not telling me everything?”
“Only what matters. What is germane to my life.”
“Okay, in a nutshell, tell me what it was like.”
“Roller coaster; storm at sea; earthquake; doing aerobatics—I did aerobatics in a small plane. Learned them from an expert. There’s nothing like stretching the envelope, Herb. Doing things that might make you stop living suddenly.”
“Like rock climbing?”
“Better than climbing. You strap yourself in, climb into the air: high, where it seems clean and the earth is a long ways off below you. Then the precisi
on. Like conducting, there has to be precision—rolls, loops, roll off the top, hesitation rolls, falling leaf, hammerheads, spins. Very precise. You got no time to throw up. Bet I could still do it. Want to try sometime?”
“No, Lou. I prefer feet on the ground.”
“Pity. Nothing like it.”
“Except living with Constanza Traccia?”
“Sometimes. Sure.” He left Herbie for a moment, forking up the last morsel of the food, pushing the tray to one side, taking another sip of wine, his mind faraway, over the horizon of his memories.
“Difficult?” Herb asked, and Passau shook his head.
“Opera singers belong in a different cage to other people. Sure, Stanza belonged in a different cage. But, God, it was more an Aladdin’s cave than a cage. With her it was wonderful and terrible at the same time. Beautiful. With her even the difficult times were shot with beauty.”
“That good?”
Passau gave a mirthless laugh. “Sure, that good. But, like aerobatics, you had to know what you were doing. You had to know how she flew.”
The long pause made Herbie think he was with Passau in a timeless, soundproof bubble. Faraway, out across the sand and water that was Captiva Island, he thought he heard singing. Passau’s head came up, cocked. He also heard it. Timeless, clear, girls’ voices in harmony from some launch offshore. You couldn’t tell what they were singing.
Suddenly Passau said, “In Venice, the last time we were there, late one afternoon, early evening, we rode down the Grand Canal. Not much traffic on the water. Then we saw a large gondola—there’s a name for them, I forget. Some of the kids from the chorus were singing. Would you believe it was the ‘Barcarole’ from Tales of Hoffmann? To hear it, low across the water, bouncing off the houses, was something wonderful. She joined in—we were a long way apart, but the voices met, swayed, like the gondolas.” A count of twenty seconds or so. “There’s a memory.” Then, “You know poor Offenbach died during rehearsals of Hoffmann. Never got to hear the thing performed. Ironic.”
“That was your last time in Venice with her?”
“Yes.”
“You finished the tour in Venice, then back to Corfu. The place was a secret. How you manage that, Lou?”
“What you’d call tradecraft. The Germans taught me something, you see.”
“And the Russians?”
He shook his head. Herbie thought there was a ghost of a smile on his lips. “In those days it was BT.”
“BT?”
“Before Terrorists. You could book tickets in another name and nobody would really be any the wiser. From New York we would both shoot off in different directions. Tiny would drop me at La Guardia, PanAm Terminal; Stanza would get her driver to take her to what was then Idlewild—New York International. Then we’d both hop cabs. She’d go to La Guardia, I’d go to Idlewild. We’d fly different airlines to Athens. Mainly turbo-props in those days. Took forever. Usually an entire day. Sometimes we’d have to fly to other places, then change flights. We met up in a tiny hotel, out-of-the-way place, in Athens. I kept a small plane there—Martin Spinebrucker’s name, like the villa. We’d fly to Corfu. Sleep one day afterwards, then enjoy what time was left.”
“Nobody could get in touch?”
“Of course they could get in touch, but you got to remember, Herb, this was the fifties. Very little direct overseas dialing. Calls from London to New York took about an hour. You booked the call and they got through about an hour later. In France it was longer. In Italy it could take a day. On Corfu, sometimes two days—three even. People had a number for me in the States. Message service. I’d call in, collect the messages, but the orchestra and the company were in good hands. There was never any panic. Not until the last time.” Again he was faraway. The look in his old eyes spoke danger; one hand started to tremble.
“But the last time you went from Venice?”
“From Venice, yes. That was easy. You know how travel works best, Herb? Best when you don’t want anyone to know?”
“Hide in plain sight?”
“Just do it. Nobody thinks you just hop a plane. If they’re looking for you, they approach the whole thing as though you’d be sneaky. Intrigue. We could only do that when we were in Europe. The press never got on to Corfu—well, not until 1960, and that was an accident.”
“You said just now that nobody knew until the last time, Lou. You mean that? When the press found you?”
“No. I mean the last time I was there with Stanza.” Mouth closed. A shutter coming down over the eyes. “We stop now, Herb?”
“No. No, we go on.”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell it.”
“Confession, Lou. You said it would be everything. You have to know yourself, and to do that, you have to share.”
“Sure. Like Tolstoy said, ‘I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.’ Melodramatic, huh?”
“Tell me, Lou. I’m your friend. Tell me.”
He did not speak for almost a minute. “Don’t know if I can tell you, Herb. Don’t know if I’ve got the balls. Some things in life are so fucking awful that you hide them. Bury them deep and never dig them up.”
“Dig this one up, Lou. You never told anyone about this before. Why? How? Do it, and do it now, Lou. Make you feel better. Sharing it.”
For five minutes or so, the old man sat still, eyes not seeing, hands trembling. It was the trembling that was the worst thing. From his hands it seemed to progress through his entire body. His body did not shake physically, but Herbie could feel it.
At last, he said, “Okay. Let me take my time. This is very difficult for me. Okay?”
“We do it at your pace, Maestro. Just tell it all. Tell it how it happened.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “We flew direct. Venice-Athens. A beautiful morning. We took off from Athens, in my little plane, after lunch. No clouds. We had six entire days before being due back in New York. Couldn’t have been happier. Got to the villa around five o’clock. Sun shining. Not a care in the world. …”
(16)
IT WAS LATE SUMMER. A warm evening, and the villa smelled of lemons. Stanza’s favorite scent. She had soap brought over especially from France because she loved the smell.
They checked the villa, opened windows, unpacked. Even though they were tired, she suggested they should walk down to the taverna and eat out. Showering together, she was in a playful mood and began to soap him down. One thing led to another, so afterwards, they showered again, and he had to call her in from the little balcony that ran along one side of the upper story because she was standing there, dressed only in her underwear. Passau playfully berated her. “You want to get the whole village here? I’m going to have to fight them off. They’ll be standing in line.”
“And you’ll be first, so I won’t let any of them come in, my darling. Only you. So don’t be such a prude.”
“I’m not a prude. Just it’s not seemly for …”
Her eyes opened wide. “You were going to say for a married woman, Louis. I saw the word forming on your lips. You were …”
“I was going to say, for a woman of your international importance, and reputation.”
“They don’t know that, here. They don’t know who we are, but it won’t last forever. They’ve started building new hotels near the town. Near Corfu itself. On our last visit, Nikko said that, eventually, they’ll have hundreds of people here every summer—and, Lou, you were going to say ‘married woman.’” She looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face was set and grave, brow wrinkled. “Admit it.”
“Okay, I admit it.”
“You want to be married, Lou? I thought we’d been through all that. I thought you said all marriages ended up as eventual failures. You weren’t going to make a mistake again.”
“This time it wouldn’t be a mistake, Stanza. I’ve been thinking about it. Why don’t we? Why don’t we get married? Do it here. On the island. I’m tired of taking planes without you. I don’t really care
if the press know about this.” He waved his hand, to indicate the whole villa.
“Maestro and Diva discovered in Greek love nest.” She swirled up from the little dressing table and flung her arms around his neck. “I couldn’t be more happy, Louis. Yes! Yes! Yes! Marriage. I’ll even go through a Jewish wedding with you. Under the canopy, the breaking of the glass, everything.”
Again, one thing led to another. When it finished she said, “I feel married already; who needs the piece of paper?”
He rolled away from her, his hands caressing her bare shoulders, eyes locked into her eyes. For Louis Passau, you could drown in her eyes. “We need the piece of paper, and the ceremony, Stanza. I don’t care if it’s Jewish or Catholic, but we need it.”
She kissed him lightly. “Okay, so we need it. Let’s do both. ‘L’chayim’ first, then ‘Kyrie Eleison.’” Sliding from the bed, she began to get dressed again. “I’m not going to wash you off. I want you with me through dinner and later,” giving him a wicked look, eyes flashing like a Gypsy. He thought of the first audition, and her Carmen.
Louis lay on the bed, his whole being swollen with happiness. This time, with Stanza, it would last forever.
The light was fading as they walked down towards the road, the moon already up and high. Constanza sang snatches of ‘Porgi amor,’ from Figaro—
“Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro—
Grant, love, that relief to my sorrow, to my sighing. Give me back my treasure, or at least let me die.
“You’ve been granted relief,” Louis chuckled, clinging to her. “And nobody can return your treasure. It’s gone forever and it’s mine.”
She laughed, wrapped her arms around him, “Grant, love, that relief. …”
She snuggled into his shoulder. “Please grant me relief, Lou, darling. More relief.”
“I love you,” he said.
“More than any other woman you’ve loved?”
“There were no women until you. What of your men?”
“You know all about that. Truly, were there no other women until me?”