Nightingale (32 page)

"A noble gesture, but admit to me that your truest passion is for her voice. And that voice, as you well know, will not last. You have been down this road before, sir, and your passion did not last.” Before Almassy could protest, his grandfather continued. “Isn't it true that you, exactly like Count Oettingen, wish to cage a songbird? Are you prepared for her body to outlast her gift?"

"Maria Klara Silber is the mistress of my soul, sir. When the bouquets of dead flowers come, I shall hold her safe in my arms and tell her a thousand times over that I still love her, that I shall never let her go until death takes me."

The Prince sighed, fixed Almassy with his hooded black eyes.

"I begin to think that life is strange beyond all imagining. I will probably live to regret this, but I shall accede to your wishes. You may marry the young woman and I will give you my blessing and my protection."

"Sir!" Akos went to his knee.

"You may stay in my service if you wish, but with such a wife you may need to secure her happiness by seeking your fortune elsewhere. If that is the case, I shall release you."

"I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Your Highness."

"Time will tell whether I have done you a favor or hung a millstone around your neck, my boy. I have certainly placed you in grave danger by consenting. For your mother's sake, though in defiance of the wishes of your grandfather Almassy, I have had you educated like a gentleman. Now, perhaps, I wish I had not. From the moment Count Oettingen knows of this marriage, I caution you, be on your guard."

"I have met his men in the dark once already."

"Indeed? And they failed?"

When Akos nodded, the Prince said gravely: "Then my advice is even more pertinent. The Count himself may be your assailant the next time."

***

"Shall I cast you a horoscope?"

She was in her teacher’s music room, at the terminator between the window light and that place where darkness began. It was on the dark side that Manzoli was seated, at the table. A single candle glowed atop the old yellowed skull.

His suggestion surprised, for Manzoli had never before offered such a thing. He’d always warned that to look into the future was a dangerous business, not to be undertaken lightly.

"You know that I believe this is no game," her teacher said. "Nor is the future always something we truly want to see." He'd sighed deeply, made one of those effeminate gestures in which his long nailed fingers lingered upon his face.

"I don't think I do, Signor. Haven’t you always advised against it?"

"In your youthful moments of levity, I have," he replied. "But we have reached a rather perilous juncture in your life, have we not? Besides, Klara, rather than examine your chart, I think it would be more interesting to examine the charts of your
– lovers."

Klara startled. Manzoli had never used that word before, and certainly not when speaking of Max.

"You have already drawn them up." Slowly, Klara approached him. There was a sheaf of paper which, she realized, had been laid out upon the table when she'd arrived.

How purposeful this display, how directed…
.

"Yes."

"Why? Why now?"

"A good question." he remarked. He brushed a gray cat from the chair. “Shoo, Hermes! Klara, do come and sit down.”

"Signor, you mystify me."

She drew closer, but she did not take the offered chair. The charts, meticulously drawn, were webbed with colored inks denoting relationships and planetary signs. As she gazed into his collapsed melon of a face, she had a rush of feeling she had not experienced for years, a sense of his otherness, of the betwixt and between of him.

Neither fish nor fowl….

"You are choosing one man over another, are you not?" Agate eyes regarded her. When Klara did not answer, Manzoli simply tapped the chair again with his claws. "Always look before you leap."

"Whose side are you on?"

"Yours, Klara! Always, and above everything, yours."

"Max says that too."

"And it is also what Herr Concertmaster Almassy says. The question is, who do you believe?

"There is no question. I am only important to Max in the same sense that his paintings by Botticelli and Rembrandt are.”

"How can you be so sure?" Manzoli tapped the charts, gave one of his mysterious blackened smiles. "Did you know," he said, gazing up at her, "that Akos Almassy and Maximillian von Oettingen were born on the same day?"

He reached for her hands and drew her, now unresisting, to sit beside him. Klara's mind spun. Akos had never told her his birthday, although she had asked.

"Of course, as you know, sharing a sun sign or even birthday does not really mean so very much, for there is also where the sun stands at the moment of birth, as well as the position of the moon and the planets. So many years between those two gentlemen, but so many curious similarities! Look here, Klara."

The charts lay before her, unequally sliced pies, dotted with the planetary symbols and webbed with the angles of relationship.

"They share their three primary indicators in an interesting way. Both show Scorpio repeatedly. And you know how problematic that sign is. Scorpio is strongly sexed, dominating, and possessive."

"How can you know this about Akos? He said he isn't certain when he was born. His mother had a bad time bearing him and was ill for a long time afterward."

"Yes, he would say that."

"Why should he lie about such a thing?"

"His mother, I understand, was truly sick unto death, but what Herr Almassy has done is to evade your question. What do you suppose his reason for that may be, a man like him?"

Klara said nothing. She could see differences in the charts, certainly, but what struck her most were the correspondences. Although she had only a nodding acquaintance with the geometrical details, she saw the patterns at once.

"The Count is a Scorpio of the first Decan. He is powerful, vengeful, demanding, strongly sexed, and dominating. In his chart Aries rises, and there is a Scorpio moon, doubling the force of his sun sign. Herr Almassy, too, is such a Scorpio. As I said earlier, both men were born on Saint Wolfgang's day, a kind of portent in itself, but Almassy has a Sagittarius rising, between his Scorpio sun and moon. The Count is typical of Scorpio with Aries rising: fair, aggressive, and physical, while Herr Almassy's rising sign makes him dark, but bestows an equally fiery nature. Outwardly, Almassy is more charming than your Count, with a gentler manner towards women. They are two most formidable, and, I might add, dangerous, suitors for the hand of a gentle and ambivalent Piscean lady."

"I am not ambivalent. I loathe Max, and you, sir, may tell him so."

Manzoli's only response was to lift a penciled brow.

"In order to calculate a rising sign, you must have a time of birth. How could you possibly know Herr Almassy's?"

"There are ways, Nightingale, to find out anything.”

Well
, Klara thought,
that might have come straight from the mouth of Max himself….

"Did Count von Oettingen put you up to this?"

"You are too intelligent for me to deny it, Klara, but this information came from Madame Wranitzsky. She gathered all the pertinent dates and times some years ago, because of her personal interest in your young gentleman. Truly, Leo women can never admit they've been abandoned. Madame W is no exception.""

"I once thought you cared about me, Signor, that you were my friend."

"I do. But it seems only proper that you should be in possession of all the facts, especially in the situation you are in."

Klara stared silently at the two charts, saw where the lines and shapes were mirrors.

"They share other positions that are important to you," Manzoli said. He appeared anxious, but determined to persist. "For instance, look here. All the Count's important planets, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, are in Scorpio, which makes him a nearly invincible opponent. His love is naturally dominating, ruthless, and his expression of that emotion – well, perhaps I should refrain from saying perverse. But, look here. Herr Almassy's Mars and Jupiter also sit in Scorpio. Both are ruled by the manipulative and bloody-minded Scorpion, who may destroy an object of desire, simply to keep it away from rival the hands."

"If you intend to frighten me, Signor, you are doing an excellent job."

"That is good."

Klara looked up into the face of this man who had been her teacher, and, for so many years, her heart’s confidante.

Was Manzoli yet another corrupt father, bent upon a kind of incest with his talented and lovely “daughter”?

"Why frighten me now? You are the one who suggested that we employ Mozart, that we perform this opera. You were the one who suggested throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the Prince."

"Because now I have seen Herr Almassy's horoscope." One long nail tapped the paper. "You are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, Fraulein Silber. And into a fire which can do substantially more harm than good, simply because we live in a material world."

"Stick with the rich man, then, is your considered advice?"

"And abjure the adventurer, who, despite of his musicality and youthful charm, is inclined to most of the same sins as Oettingen. All I see ahead for you with Herr Almassy is the same trouble with none of the advantages."

When Klara stood and swept away, not out of the room, but only to the bright side window, Manzoli kept silent. He could wait.

***

When she turns back
, Manzoli thought,
I shall show her the way out of the trap. Perhaps she wants it now. After all, she has always listened to me before, and his renewed affair with La Diva Wranitzsky has most certainly unnerved her….

"And what do you suggest?" Finally, Klara spoke, just as he'd known she would. She did not turn to face him, though. Perfectly erect, she continued to gaze out the window, at the noon-time bustle below in the street.

"Tomorrow is the opera. Perform it as you planned. Have a great triumph as you deserve, my darling Klara! But when you kneel before the Count, swear your allegiance to him."

"And throw over Herr Almassy in public?"

"Only that will do."

"And how do you know?"

***

Klara turned to face him, this man she'd thought of until a few minutes ago as her friend. His round face was pale, though it always was, yet something else underlay today’s pallor, a real fear. She could scent it.

"You are Count Oettingen's messenger?"

"Yes." His gaze did not flinch, yet, she could sense his anguish.

"You have betrayed me, haven't you?"

When he didn't reply, Klara spoke bitterly. "You have never been my friend, have you, sir?"

"Absolutely untrue! I am, and always have been, your friend. Even now, though you do not seem to believe it."

"You are protecting me from myself, from what you see as folly."

"A great prima donna certainly may indulge a folly or two – that I understand. Even Count Oettingen sees it as simply the way of things. So, my angel, apologize and return. All will be forgiven."

"And then go with him to his villa? Be part of the entertainment in that glorified brothel he keeps there?"

"A leading role in anything is never entirely disagreeable."

Klara stared at him in disbelief, wanting to scream that at last she knew he was every bit as horrible as he looked. Instead, she withdrew behind a formal barrier.

"That, Signor, is deeply offensive."

"Not really. Sexual expression is a supremely flexible business, no allusion to actual practice intended." Manzoli wore a ghost of a smile.

"So I'm to lie down and let him and his friends watch while whoever he favors impregnates me? For my own good?"

"During the time to which you allude, I believe he intended to teach you a lesson about the weaknesses of the body inside which we all reside. I'm sure that if you would prefer privacy, asking will secure it."

"I am not a mare to be bred like his noble kinswomen!”

Manzoli was unimpressed by her rage.

"You are female, my dear, and women need children. Now would be a good time to conceive."

"And I suppose you carry this message, too?"

"Yes, I do, and I'm not ashamed to do it. Klara, my angel, a baby will finish your voice. You do not have to be troubled with caring for the thing."

"Into a handy Nightingale Cage?"

"Why not? It is only birth that is wanted to add the final touch of richness to your magnificent voice."

"What if I miscarry? What if I die birthing? That happens, you know. It is supposed to have happened to my mother."

"The search for perfection always entails risks, but Herr Doctor Hundchowsky says you are well formed for bearing."