Mephisto Aria (12 page)

Outside the night air was bitter cold again as the four of them strolled along the Getreidegasse. The sense of group gave the illusion of a sphere of warmth against the icy air. Most of the shops were closed, and only the soft yellow streetlights presented a brave front to the evening desolation.

They wound their way through narrow passages and ornate archways, and reached the Domplatz. Magda brought them to a halt at the center of the plaza before the Salzburg cathedral. Wide stone steps led to the arches of the façade and to the four colossal statues of saints. In the near darkness of the plaza, they rose up, blue-gray, and seemed ominous. “Here is where they perform Jedermann,” she said. She pointed toward one of the towers, now black against the cobalt sky. “The angels ‘fly’ down from there on wires, and heavenly voices call out from as far away as the Peterskirche. The devil, on the other hand, simply strolls in from the street. Very medieval.”

Von Hausen shook his head. “Yes, in a city full of anachronisms, a medieval morality play is the biggest one of all. Though, in fact, it’s not medieval at all. It was written in 1911.”

He looked up at one of the massive saints, as if disputing him. “You should read Jedermann, for laughs, Katherina. The devil’s the only one who speaks the truth.”

Magda linked her arm in that of her husband. “Joachim has always had a place in his heart for the devil. That’s why I married him. Besides, everyone knows that evil is nothing but sex. Nicht wahr, Joachim?”

Gregory Raspin came alongside the couple “A common practice, to equate sex with the devil, encouraged by religions that seem to care an awful lot about the subject. But sex is just one of the avenues toward perdition.”

“And what might the others be, Mr. Raspin?” Magda asked.

Raspin gestured toward the Festspielhaus. “Music, for one. Even Plato thought so. Mob activity, for another. And for a third, simple intoxication. All those things can unleash the demon. Or liberate the true vitality of the human being. We are, after all, a bundle of wants and urges, held in check by guilt and good manners.”

“What a pessimist you are,” Magda chided.

Katherina was not sure she liked the direction the conversation was taking, but by then they had reached the Salzach River. Streetlights glowing along both riverbanks gave slight comfort, while in the middle, the rapidly flowing Salzach was dark and menacing.

Gregory Raspin halted at the corner. “Alas, this is the street to my hotel. Much as I have enjoyed our little theological chat, I must leave you now.” He took the women’s hands one by one and pressed a cavalier kiss to the backs of their gloves. “Good evening, ladies.” He hinted at a bow and turned away from them, quickening his step.

Katherina glanced back toward the bridge and the Pension Stein, and remembered now what had made her want to hurry. Magda was talking about painting the cityscape from the perspective of the Salzach bank, but Katherina was scarcely listening. She looked for a light in Anastasia’s window and wondered if it was too late to suggest dinner.

Then she saw them. Anastasia and a man—a great bear of a man—emerged from the narrow Steingasse and walked toward a waiting taxi. The bear opened the car door, waited as Anastasia entered, then doubled over and got in after her.

Von Hausen saw where Katherina looked. “Ah, it appears Madame Ivanova is going out for the evening.”

“Who do you suppose the man is?’ Katherina asked lightly.

“Her husband, it looks like. Boris is his name, I believe. A big executive in Deutsche Grammophon. Yes, that was definitely Boris Reichmann.”

XV
Mesto

Inexplicably depressed, Katherina climbed the stone steps to the pension in the dark. She was in Salzburg, she reminded herself, the opera capital of Europe, in a starring role. Everything she ever craved. Why wasn’t she euphoric?

She was tired, of course, after a day of rehearsing, and the steps seemed steeper than usual. She panted, and inside her thick scarf her exhalations came back moist, warmed with her own heat.

Mercifully, the heavy oak door of the pension was unlocked so she did not have to fumble for the key. At the sound of the front door closing, Frau Semmel appeared in the entrance to her office holding a long white box. She was beaming.

“Isn’t it wonderful? These arrived just a little while ago. You have an admirer, dear.”

“An admirer?” Katherina repeated, dumbfounded. Her heart pounded. For the minutest fraction of a second, she hoped it might be from… No. She had just met the woman. But no one else seemed likely. Her manager never made such gestures, she had no family, and no one in the general public knew where she was staying.

Baffled, she unfastened the ribbon and opened the carton.

“White roses!” Frau Semmel exclaimed, hovering next to her. “And even before opening night. Romantic, nicht wahr?”

Tied to one of the stems was a little white envelope. The card inside was succinct. Frau Semmel read it out loud over Katherina’s shoulder, as if to assist her.

“Sorry they are not silver. Yours truly, Gregory Raspin.”

Her room seemed smaller than before, the crucifix over the headboard larger. She sat down on the edge of the bed, confused.

She’d gotten flowers many times before—but never before a performance. It was a good sign, probably, that her career was advancing toward stardom. Performance offers, quality roles, fervent fans. Everything was falling into place. So what was causing her vague malaise?

Katherina stared at the white roses, still in their box at the foot of her bed. That was the answer. Gregory Raspin was paying court to her in the guise of the rose cavalier, if only for the length of a metaphor. He had stepped into the role that belonged to Anastasia. Dignified and debonair as he was, the thought of him wooing her in place of Anastasia was—distasteful.

She plucked one of the roses from its box, holding it by its head, velvety and fragrant and fraught with suggestion. She recalled the rose duet she had rehearsed that morning. The weaving of her voice with Anastasia’s, not in banal and comfortable harmonies, but in a complicated back and forth through subtle dissonances. How skillfully Strauss suggested resolution, tantalizingly brief, before he pulled them apart again, leaving them to strain to be reunited until the whole duet climaxed in unbearable sweetness. Like courtship itself was supposed to be.

But Strauss, for whatever reason, had intended his rose cavalier to be sung by a woman. For a man to presume the role was, ironically, a travesty. Or at least the travesty of a travesty.

Detlev was right. Opera was its own world. Everything was allowed, as long as it was beautiful. She got up from the bed and stared out the window at the dark Salzach below.

Thoughts turned in her head like sea birds. Morality plays, the devil as sex, flirtation, identity, Raspin’s reduction of the human being to a bundle of urges. She wasn’t sure what it was, the discussion, the unwanted sight of Anastasia’s husband, the unwelcome flowers, but she was morose. Her vision clouded and the spark of a dreadful memory glowed brighter—of the last night of her childhood.

She turned from the window and swept her eyes across the room to her canvas shoulder bag where the journal lay. Had her father recalled that night as well? Had he recorded it?

She fished the journal from the bag and leafed through it, skipping the entire 1950s. An important decade for Germany, she knew, but she would read those pages later. Finally she found the entries for the terrible week that had destroyed her childhood. They were all brief, scarcely a paragraph each, but their very brevity seared her.

May 14, 1960

Two new private patients this week. A sign of the times, that people now can afford the luxury of dermatology.

Katya’s birthday is tomorrow. We offered to have a party for her but she said she’d rather we took her to the opera. Strange taste for an eleven-year-old, but she’s been obsessed with singing since we took her to see Figaro last winter at the Staatsoper. The only tickets available on short notice were for Gounod’s Faust, the one opera I would have preferred not to see. I explained the story of Faust to her, but she’s too young to know what that means in real life. So I simply told her that all good fortune is paid for in the end. I don’t think she understood.

May 16, 1960

An expensive mistake; I should have known. We didn’t even get through the performance. Katya was restless through the whole first act and complained of a sore throat. Her forehead was hot, so I put my arm around her and told her we could leave at the end of the act. She half fell asleep resting against Lucy, and at intermission we took her home. She was coughing by then, and crying. We gave her aspirin and let her sleep with Lucy, and that seemed to calm her. Dawn is breaking now. When she wakes up, I’ll take her to the clinic. The specialists there will probably confirm that it is just a bad cold and we’ll put her to bed for a week.

May 17, 1960

Diphtheria. I should have suspected it, but she had no lymph-node swelling. There’s been an outbreak in the city. The next morning Katya’s throat was swollen nearly closed and she couldn’t stand up. By the time we got a diagnosis and medication, she was in respiratory distress. They’ve given her antibiotics, but she’s unconscious. I sat by her bed all afternoon and it seems like she’s breathing a little easier now, but I’m ashamed that I waited a whole night before getting her to the hospital. How much harm did I do my daughter in those twelve hours?

May 19, 1960

Katya is breathing better and is no longer in critical condition, but she’s still delirious. She rambles on, semiconscious, about ghosts. And as if that’s not enough disaster, Lucy has fallen sick too. The symptoms are the same, just as violent, but Lucy’s heart has never been strong. The doctors are doing all they can, but meanwhile we are all in hell.

I pray to the God I don’t believe in—let them recover. Don’t make them be my payment.

Katherina’s throat tightened and her eyes teared up. She knew what was coming as she turned the page.

May 25, 1960

Dear God. Lucy has died. Heart failure. She was the warmth and light of this family, and now she’s gone. I force myself to keep going but I can barely walk from room to room.

I plod on, for Katya’s sake. The antibiotics seem to be working and she’s pulling through. The illness has deranged her, though. She’s conscious, but when I told her—as gently as I could—that her mother had died, she barely reacted. She just turned her face away and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t think he’d do it.”

Katherina closed the journal on her lap and dropped back against the bed pillow, letting the tears flow. She had not wept for her mother in years, but the brief entry in the journal made her recall the whole force of her childhood bereavement. Strange that her father had not understood that guilt and grief had weighed on her even more than it did on him. She was, after all, the cause of the death, infecting her mother the night she lay coughing in her arms.

She did not remember saying the words that he recorded, but she knew they had to be true; they were the logical outcome of the dream. And in over twenty years, she hadn’t forgotten the dream.

In her fever, she had dreamt she was on a stage behind a curtain that was about to go up. On the other side she could hear the buzzing of a huge audience waiting for her to perform. Everything in her told her she had to sing, but she couldn’t even take a deep breath to begin.

A man approached her, handsome in white tie and swallowtails. The conductor, she thought. He was supposed be with his orchestra, but had come to find out why the curtain had not risen. Claudia Martin, dressed as Cherubino, in blue satin knee pants, stood right behind him.

“Help me,” Katherina begged. “I can’t breathe.”

“Of course I’ll help you, but you have to pay for that. What are you willing to give up?”

Her chest heaved as she tried to suck in air. “Anything you want.”

“I want the one you love the most.”

“Yes, I agree,” she’d said, gasping. “Just help me.”

“Very good.” He nodded and walked away.

At first she was disappointed because nothing happened, but then she discovered she could take a deep inhalation. She waited for the curtain to part, and when it did, she opened her eyes to the white walls of a hospital room and the somber figure of her father. That must have been when he broke the news to her.

Bitter memories. She was sorry now she had made herself relive them.

Soft tapping on the door wrenched her from her reverie. Katherina glanced at her watch. Nearly midnight. Who would bother her so late at night? She set the journal aside and got up from the bed.

Anastasia Ivanova stood in the corridor in her winter coat and fur hat. Her cheeks were still red from the frigid night air. “I’m sorry if I disturb you,” she said, cold lips slowing her speech and thickening her Russian accent. “I saw your light…”

XVI
Grazioso

“No, not at all. Please come in.” Katherina’s mood changed instantly, as if the room had suddenly grown lighter.

Anastasia swept in bringing some of the night cold with her, and she waited for a moment just inside the doorway. She seemed nonplussed, as if she had not expected anyone to answer the door.

Katherina slipped the heavy woolen coat off Anastasia’s shoulders and laid it across the foot of her bed, brushing away the box of roses. She gestured toward the one chair next to the gas fireplace. “Sit down. I’ll turn up the flames. Is everything all right?”

Anastasia sat down delicately and bent toward the blue and yellow flames, rubbing the warmth into her upper arms. “Yes. Well, no,” she said, then started again. “My husband’s here.” She hesitated again. “He’s staying at the Hilton Hotel. We were separated, you see. I knew he was flying to Vienna this week, but he surprised me by stopping here first.”

“I see.” Katherina could think of no other response. She wished she had something to offer, wine or chocolate, but she had nothing, so she simply sat down next to the other woman.