Die Upon a Kiss (39 page)

“Bueno, bueno,
I will sing,” she was saying crossly, shedding sables, bonnet, gloves already as she strode to her dressing-room. “First it is, O Consuela, you are not as good as that little Neapolitan tart. Then it is, O Consuela,
you must learn Euridice in the next two days. . . . But oh, so
sorry, we shall use this d’Isola after all. . . .
Hannibal?
Corazón?”
She looked around her.
“Ai,
the man is never about when you have need of him!”

The dressing-room door slammed behind her.

From the front, through the curtains, through the flies and scrims and clustered trees of Arcady, January could hear the murmur of voices, the boisterous whoop of some Kaintuck in the stalls, and a woman’s coarse, shrill laugh.

Orfeo ed Euridice, before THAT audience. God help us.

January stepped once more into the concealing shadows of the flats as the chorus filed on past him. In the hall the overture had started, beautiful and delicate, muffled by velvet, by bodies, by paper-leaved trees and canvas. Cavallo in his black tunic paused, his broken lyre in hand, to trade a quick whisper with Tiberio—“. . . in La Scala,” he said, naming the greatest theater in Milan, where presumably the impresarios didn’t deal in slaves on the side. The heat of the gas-jets flowed back, the smell thick and gritty. Caldwell’s voice echoed in the backstage. “But where could she have gone to?”

The curtain went up.

The first act was, mercifully, short. January gritted his teeth, torn between the grief and beauty of the music and the rising noise of the pit. Conditions were not ideal and Cavallo, who had arrived late with Ponte, was nervous and out of voice, but had Orpheus himself been singing January doubted the Americans would have sat still for it. There was no getting around the fact that for most of the act it was one man in a golden wig alone on-stage singing in a language nobody understood.

“Give that feller a musical saw!” somebody shouted about two verses into “Cerco il mio ben cosi,” and was joined by other cries: “Kin you at least juggle them apples?”

In the wings, January understood.

Euridice dead, and yet I breathe . . .

Return her to me, or shut me up in death myself. . . .

Thus his own heart had cried to the dark of the empty Paris streets, those smothering weeks of the cholera, following his wife’s death. The dark had not replied.

But no one in the pit, unfortunately, understood Italian. “I like that dress you’re wearin’!” “How about singin’ ‘Sweet Violets’?” Howls, whoops, and whistles greeted the descent of Love from the flies, and January knew exactly why a few moments of quiet greeted the beginning of Madame Chiavari’s “Se il dolce suon.”
I am that sweetest
song. . . .
They were hoping now that something would happen.

And, of course, it didn’t.

“Pigs!” Cavallo flung himself off-stage like a man into battle. “Swine grunting and nosing at the most beautiful music . . .” He sprang out of the way as Paddy and Liam shoved sections of rock past him, and Tiberio ran to join the hosepipes to the gas-jets that would illuminate the fanged and towered doors of Hell. Amid her attendant Nymphs and Heroines, Montero was re-arranging the black curls of her wig and talking impatiently to Bruno Ponte, her ample curves beneath the white grave-robe and bandages the least ghost-like thing imaginable.

“Where has he got to, then? He said he had a thought as to where that provoking girl had got to, and this was the last I saw . . .”

Ponte, transformed from Arcadian shepherd to fuzzy-legged demon, shook his head. “I told him myself I had checked all the boxes, and the attics, though what she would be doing in those places in the first place I cannot imagine. . . .”

Belaggio emerged from his office, glanced around him as if seeking someone—Big Lou, probably, thought January—then hastened to the rehearsal-room door with the air of a man hoping for the best. “On-stage, go, now,” he heard the impresario saying in rough Spanish, gesturing to the horrifically-costumed men as they emerged. “Bruno . . .”

Ponte dashed to lead the demons onto the stage. None of the African women, January noted, were in the actual performance—he wondered how Belaggio had explained them to Caldwell. Of course the selected members of the Opera Society would ask for women. Every breeder of new slaves was a plus.

January stepped into the line of demons as they streamed past, and searched out a place for himself as close to the concealing rocks as he could manage. Between the footlights, the firepots, and the gas-jets, the whole stage was like an oven; for a moment all he could think of was that.

Then it came to him that after nearly twenty years of playing in anywhere from two to thirty operas in a year, this was the first time he had ever actually been on a stage. Even in Paris no one hired black men, even for chorus work. For a moment he was seized with an almost unbearable terror, a quaking conviction of nakedness, and a certainty that when the Chorus of Devils leapt forward to surround Orfeo, he, Benjamin January, was going to trip on his own big feet and fall flat on his face in front of everyone in New Orleans.

He wanted to flee to the darkest corner of backstage and vomit.

The ballet dancers blew like bright-colored leaves through the wings to change into Blessed Spirits in double time.

Gluck’s unearthly music replaced the Boston Woodcutter’s March.

The curtains parted.

Flame glared and burst from the black-and-red gates of stone and iron, and steam billowed from the jets of the machine beneath the stage. The audience—returned to good humor by the ballet—fell silent as the demons surged forward, leaping and cavorting before the doors of Hell.

Given the relatively few actual singers and dancers in the crowd on-stage, January thought the angular, disharmonious Demon Chorus went quite well. The Africans kept to the rocks at the stage’s edge, as they’d been instructed, leapt, bounced, strutted, and spun, shouting and shaking their make-believe weapons with the enthusiasm of men who have learned to take each day as it comes. Orfeo, arrayed in white now and clutching Apollo’s golden lyre, stepped to the gates and was surrounded, shrieked at, and threatened, while Tiberio laid on greater columns of fire from the gas-jets and Paddy and Liam shook the smoke-painted scrims to catch the filtered crimson light. January had always respected this scene in an opera whose basic premise—the original legend’s tragedy of lost trust transformed by a banally happy ending—annoyed him.

When a composer writes about the most brilliant musician in the world, sooner or later in the course of the work he is going to have to come up with music that the audience really believes would gentle the Devils in Hell.

And Gluck did.

The gates of Hell opened. Head bowed, lyre under his arm, Orfeo passed through into shadow. The demons knelt, arms crossed on their breasts in humbled silence as the curtains closed.

An arm like an iron bracket hooked around January’s throat from behind, twisting and squeezing with a force strong enough to break his neck.

TWENTY-FOUR

There wasn’t so much as a half-second that January didn’t realize it was Big Lou. He dropped his weight, rolled his shoulder forward, trying to throw the man over, the swollen gray buzzing of blocked carotids already swimming in his head—it was like trying to shift a mountain. He got his foot in front of him and heaved backward with all his strength, and this did topple Big Lou between two columns of rock, jarred loose the strangling grip. January rammed and hammered with his elbows back behind him, beneath him, as he felt Big Lou rise up under him like a whale surfacing. He rolled, tried to get up, to kick, and Lou grabbed him, downed him. He heard the dark rags of his costume rip, his own grunt as the breath was driven from his lungs.

“Shaw!” bellowed January, rolling away from a punch that drove splinters from the stage-boards where his head had been. “Shaw!” And heard only a scream from backstage, and the drumming of panic-driven feet.

And smelled smoke.

Far more smoke than there had been a moment earlier.

It was dark among the flats and plaster rocks, only the red-glassed glare of the gas-jets giving a sort of infernal light. He grabbed Big Lou by the collar, dragged the bald bullet-head down with all his strength as his fist slammed upward. It was like hitting a cannon ball. Two, three times he struck, and rolled his head aside as Lou pounded him again. The man’s massive weight pinned him, the smoke-sting in his nostrils he’d thought—prayed—was just the leftover from the Demon Chorus grew worse. As he rolled, finally, to his feet, from the tail of his eye he caught the searing flare of red light from backstage.

And heard someone scream, “FIRE!”

Minou’s here! Upstairs, halls crowded, no way to get
down . . .

Lou grabbed him, slammed him against the wall. This time January curled his shoulders, head tucked, spun the man’s weight into the wall instead. He kneed him hard, slammed his elbow into Lou’s throat, his own blood streaming into his eyes where the papier-mâché mask-edge had driven into his brow and cheeks. The shrieking was louder: “Fire! Get the pump . . . DAMN it . . . !”

Out front, too, now, screaming, the crash of benches, trampling.

Damn it, damn it, fire . . .
He hammered that cannon-ball head trapped between his own fists and the bricks, frantic to finish this, get out while he could, get out before he burned.
God damn it, damn it, damn . . . !

Big Lou staggered and January—mask shattered, costume in rags around his gasping body—stepped back to grab the only loose item in the wings heavy enough and hard enough to make any difference, a sandbag counterweight dangling from one of La Flaherty’s dance-wires. His fists were bleeding and Big Lou lunged for him like a wounded bull. He swung the sandbag and connected with the huge man’s skull so hard, he felt it through his arm to the shoulder.

Lou stopped, drew himself up, swaying. Red light haloed him, smoke and shrieking. . . .

Fall, God damn you, FALL!

January smote Lou again with every ounce of strength in his body; this time the man’s eyeballs rolled up and he went down. Someone knocked a flat over, running toward the door. The wild glare of orange-and-yellow flame spilled among the shadows. January pulled off his belt and the belt from Lou’s pants to bind the big man’s hands. He heard a man shout something that wasn’t
Fire,
incoherent words, and a girl screamed “Don’t! No!” but he barely paid attention. Seizing Lou’s bound hands, he began to drag the unconscious man back toward the stair, toward the door down into the prop-vault and so outside.

Blinding smoke filled backstage. Through it, January could glimpse the lick and lash of flame. Hot air seared his throat, and he dropped to his knees, crawling, dragging, but at least he could breathe as he crawled. The darkness among the flats confused him. He tried to avoid a blazing wall of trees and found himself lost in a pocket of smoke, walls around him, doors. He’d taken a wrong turn and couldn’t tell where he was in the huge cavern of backstage.

Only knew that the theater was burning, that he had to get out or burn, too. . . .

“This way!” A girl’s small hand grabbed his wrist. She must have seen the white designs on his chest, gleaming in the churning night of smoke. Coughing, dragging Lou’s unconscious weight, he crept after her blindly, writhing along the floor. In the sulfurous glare he saw Vincent Marsan’s daughter’s narrow, pointed face. Once her skirt caught fire and January dropped Big Lou’s hands, tore the burning cloth away from the bodice of her mourning dress. In her petticoats she grabbed Big Lou’s arms and the two of them began to drag again. . . .

Stairs, smoke pouring down them into the draft from the door. Lou’s heels bumping as January hauled him down. The alley’s darkness and the alley’s mud, and red light swirling behind the theater windows like the mad gleam in a lunatic’s eyes. People churned and heaved in the narrow space, shoving, calling each other’s names. Some were fighting to get out of the alley and others fighting to get in with water from the Promenade Hotel. The screams of horses, panicked and terrified by the smoke, from the other side of the wall as the stable-grooms led them away from the danger of the fire. The splash of water, the sudden choking sweet stink of wet hay.

Minou,
thought January,
I have to find Minou. . . .

He shoved Big Lou into the doorway in which the Gower boys had hidden to wait for their prey, and started to lead Jocelyn Marsan down the alley to safety. She balked, pulling back: “Mr. Knight’s still in there!” she cried. “The men with guns . . . !”

“What men?” January pulled the girl back against the corner of the cotton-press wall, out of the shoving, shouting crowd that jammed Camp Street from curb to curb. Carriages filled with maskers in Roman armor, Turkish pantaloons, dark evening-dress, and the rough clothes of stevedores and boatmen crammed and mixed and shuffled with them, adding to the sense of nightmare and preventing the pump-wagons from Municipal Engine Company Number Fourteen from getting through. The red flare pouring from the broken front windows showed him her terrified dark eyes.

“Orpheus—the man who played Orpheus, in the gold wig. And one of the Devils . . .”

“Maestro!” Shaw grabbed his arm. “You seen Belaggio?”

“He’s in the theater!” gasped Jocelyn Marsan, pointing back at the burning building. “Signor Belaggio and Mr. Knight both! Mr. Knight went backstage, and I followed him through the door at the end of the corridor. . . .”

“Why?”

She looked a little startled that Shaw would demand an explanation, but said, “He was selling slaves. He and my father. He was going to send me to the convent, and I thought if I told him I knew about the slaves, he’d let me go to school in France instead. But when the fire started, the man who’d played Orpheus, and one of the Devils, came out with guns, and made them go up the stairs—”

“Damn it!” Shaw looked back toward the wild Hell of smoke and red-lit windows. “Why the tarnation . . . They’ll never get out!”

“They will.” Rose Vitrac stepped forward. January saw she was in evening dress—her old yellow tarlatan singed and smoke-blotched—and felt both horror and gratitude that he hadn’t known she was in the theater. “The rest of the building’s starting to catch now, but only just. That first blaze, the one that drove everyone out . . . I think that was set up.”

“Set up?” said January, baffled—flames were beginning to show over the edge of the roof.

Shaw only narrowed his eyes and asked, “You mean they fired the place on purpose?”

“I mean the flame appeared all at the same time in the empty boxes—but
only
in the empty boxes—and in
every
empty box, all the way along. It didn’t spread from one to the other, and it didn’t catch in the ones in between. And only in the
back
of the boxes, just the flare of firelight. The fire on the stage was all behind the flats,
behind
pieces of scenery. . . .”

“Like that there volcano,” said Shaw. He looked back at the flame pouring from the windows. “Sure is goin’ good now. . . .”

“But they started it as a controlled burn.” January remembered the soaked timbers of the door of Cornouiller, the varnished troughs on Mt. Vesuvius’s sides. “To clear the theater.” It was probably, he thought, the only reason he and Jocelyn had gotten out alive. “Did anyone see d’Isola?”

“No,” said Rose. “Nor Hannibal. Though in this crowd it’s hard to tell. He wasn’t in the orchestra during the performance. I looked for him from the gallery. Cochon says he was hunting for d’Isola—”

“Cavallo’s dressing-room,” interrupted January. “Cavallo was the one who searched the dressing-rooms. He’s a Carbonaro, he’d have guessed what Belaggio and the Austrians were up to. If d’Isola stumbled on one of the fire-pots in the boxes . . .”

Their eyes met. Then Shaw turned and plunged down the alley, January at his heels, pushing through the crowd that shoved the other way.

“Our friends from Young Italy were one-up on us, looks like,” said Shaw, shedding his coat as they reached the stable-yard gate. “They guessed Knight’d have to meet Belaggio to get his money—which the Opera Society folks would hand over for the slaves—the minute they’s off the stage, whilst everyone else was watchin’ the rest of the dancin’. The slaves all got outa there, by the way, first thing. In them demon-suits they oughta fit right into the crowds all over town tonight. . . .”

The back end of the theater, as Rose had guessed, was dark, the blaze being concentrated around the stage and backstage, where it would drive all witnesses away. Except, of course, thought January, those witnesses who’d chanced upon the fire-pots in their beds of wet clay, the little vessels of paraffin or the hosepipes from the gas-mains set with reflectors, to cast the terrifying glare of fire on the curtains. . . .

He wasn’t the only one who had a horror of a theater fire.

The private door into the passway was locked. There wasn’t much space in the narrow slot for a run, but January and Shaw were strong men, bracing themselves off the rear wall of the stable-yard to lunge forward against the timbers. The wood of the door gave on the first blow— backing off for the next, January saw the place near-by where the cage of dead rats had lain and thought,
Pea-nuts. Goobers. Ground-nuts.

Something no one but the daughter of a plaçée, the sister of a free cab-driver of color, would know that rats loved.

No wonder he’d had the buried conviction that no European had been behind at least some of the crimes.

The next second he and Shaw crashed through the door and literally fell over two bodies, curled and crumpled in the little space at the bottom of the blood-stained stairs.

“What the . . . ?” Shaw held his lantern first high, to show the thick black dribbled trail of blood-stains, then low over the horror of bloated dark features and swarming ants. Though it was hot as a chimney in the stairway, there was little smoke. There were black stains on the walls, on the risers, all the way up and disappearing into shadow.

The men were no one January knew. One had been shot, the other’s throat gashed ear to ear with a razor. Neither had been killed here—there was too little blood at the bottom of the stair around the bodies, though the risers were splashed with dull black stains. Both appeared to have been dead for at least a day.

“Well, I will be dipped in shit.” Shaw stood up again.
“That’s
where they got to.”

“What?”
said January. “Who . . . ?”

“This’s the feller got hisself killed yesterday down at the Turkey-Buzzard. I remember that purple jacket.” January, who had climbed a step or two up to examine the black satchel that rested on the stairs, came back now to look. “I knowed the boys at the morgue would pull the teeth out’n a corpse if nobody claimed it, or sometimes cut the hair off a likely woman, but a whole body . . . ! An’ this must be t’other fella that was missin’. Dr. Ker came in this afternoon, said as how there’d been a break-in at the morgue last night. . . .”

“La Scala,” said January, remembering Cavallo’s tardy arrival, his nervousness on stage. He pointed to the bodies. “It’s Cavallo and Ponte.”

“It is not, either. . . .”

“Who will die in the fire, along with the enemies of Italy. I heard Cavallo say to Tiberio,
la scala. . . .
Which is the name of an opera house in Milan, but which also means
the stairway.”
He nodded toward the satchel, halfway up the stair. “And now we know what d’Isola stumbled on that got her taken prisoner.”

Shaw and January took the black-stained steps two at a time, passing the other items the conspirators had stowed there—a jar or two of potash, a coil of hosepipe. Metal washtubs and a reflector. And something else, something small that glinted in the juddering lantern-light like a wicked little gold star. . . .

Through the shut door at the top of the steps January heard them: “The man has done us no harm.”

“Not yet.” The thick Sicilian accent was unmistakable even if January hadn’t heard that quick exchange backstage. “The girl—I’ll give you the girl. She is a friend of
la patria.
She understands.”

Shaw glanced back as January joined him beside the door, gasping in the heat. January mouthed,
Tiberio,
realizing Shaw knew neither Italian nor Sicilian—

Who else but the little maker of fire, to stage this?

“But I do not go to ground and to hiding—I do not destroy my own usefulness to our friends—to give an Irish drunkard another year to drown himself in a gutter. You understand silence, do you not, Signorina?”

She must have whispered “Yes,” because Hannibal’s weak hoarse voice chimed in with “I assure you gentlemen that I understand silence as well. Why should I concern myself with what becomes of M’sieu Belaggio?
What
is he to Hecuba, or Hecuba to him? These our actors were all
spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air—”