Nightingale (33 page)

Klara knotted her fists. "Have you been nothing all these years but Max's paltry little echo?"

"I think you should realize," Manzoli retorted, while slowly getting to his feet, "that Count Oettingen's peccadillos are a small price to pay for his support. How many artists never reach their potential because they cannot find a suitable patron, because they have to scrimp, to work when they are exhausted, to marry in the ordinary way and take chances with their health? You are not among the common herd, Maria Klara, and you never have been. You have never had to claw your way out of the chorus; or suffer from greedy kinfolk who wish to capitalize upon your talent. I'd think over what you are about to do very carefully. You could also die, you know, bearing Herr Almassy's children. More likely, in that case, considering the circumstances you will find yourself in once you have left Count Oettingen's protection and left this Imperial Court which worships your talent, not to mention all your oldest and most faithful friends."

How had she ever imagined that he cared about her? Suddenly he appeared monstrous: gross, fat, effeminate, his bald pate, fine features and those lashless and browless blue-glass eyes! Evil pander!

"Well, yes, here we come at last to the truth of it. If I leave with Herr Almassy, I will be leaving you, won't I, Signor?"

"Yes, Klara. It is not only upon the Count's behalf that I plead, but upon my own. The thought of you far away, where I can never hear you sing again, devastates me." He gazed at her miserably, suddenly as deflated as a leaking bladder. Klara folded her hands, and hoped to keep her expression as blank as his had been at the beginning of this travesty.

Any game, Max always said, is better with several players….

"I shall consider your advice, Signor. In times past, you have always had my best interest at heart. Perhaps I shall do as you suggest and remain where I have always been so well cared for, with my generous benefactor, and my excellent teacher. I fear, as I now consider it, that it might break my heart to leave Vienna."

Then, just as she had at the end of her lessons, Klara dropped Signor Manzoli a deep curtsy. She allowed him to take her hand in his soft grasp, raise it to his lips and kiss it. She saw his face again as she rose, the puffy whiteness, the wobbling turkey chin.

He was terrified at the idea of losing her! He was terrified for another reason, too. He’d been hand in glove with Max, and he knew that she would not forgive him for it. Well, let both the monsters dangle! Let them both imagine that she that she might decide to stay.

She had been in dreadful apprehension of the night they would perform the opera, the moment when she would publicly ask to marry Almassy. Now, after this, all that fear had burned away and pure rage took its place. The idea of shriveling the guts of her perfidious teacher and his diabolical Master at the same time seemed worth any danger that might follow. Truly, oh truly was it said that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

Chapter
20

Klara had just spent a fearful hour waiting to meet the Count, for, after a day’s silence, he had sent a letter saying nothing more than he wanted her to attend the opera with him. As soon as he arrived, he’d said, without any other explanation, that he had been “called away
”. She could not understand why he had bothered to come to tell her this in person. In fact, she heartily wished he had not.

And why he had not simply sent her another message? Klara knew something was up, but decided to try to bluff her way out of it, to pretend that she had been looking forward to his company.

"What do you mean, sir? That you have put me to the trouble of dressing to accompany you to hear Bernasconi wobble her way through some dreary old piece, and now you will not be going?"

"Exactly," said Max.

"Well, I shall stay here, then. I didn't want to go anyway."

"I think you should hear the piece. Alcina is a bit stiff, but, even sung by Signora Bernasconi, it is of musical interest." He paused and then added, "You shall go with your Concertmaster."

"Herr Almassy is not my anything," Klara said firmly. "And when the Prince does not go out, I imagine that he must wait attendance upon his lord."

"Not tonight," said Max. He wore an inscrutable smile. "In fact, he will soon be here. I took the liberty of
– borrowing – him from Vehnsky, in order that you should have – ah – agreeable company this evening."

Klara's heart leapt at the idea of spending the evening with Akos, but at the same time she was afraid. Taking anything from Max was always some kind of devil's bargain; she ought to know that by now.

***

All the way in the coach, they speculated upon what it was all about. Clearly, they were being drawn into one of Max’s games.

"Max, I assure you, never does anything except by design."

"And as that is certainly the case, especially after what you have just told me about Signor Manzoli," Akos said, turning toward her, "we had better not dare much."

Klara put her arms around him and despite what had just been said, they shared a long, sweet, lingering kiss there in the winter darkness.

"A subtle torturer, this man
," Akos said as their lips at last parted. "To be so close all evening and yet not dare to even hold your hand."

"But before we arrive…
." Klara slipped her arms passionately around his neck.

***

They were shown to the Count's box. Here, they found, already seated, Signor Manzoli, sipping madeira, the bottle set upon a small round table. After uncomfortably saluting each other, they settled in to watch
‘Alcina’
. Despite the waning talent of Signora Bernasconi, Klara was interested to see a fair number of connoisseurs in the audience, mostly lovers of ‘old’ music, like the Baron von Swieten.

"If the Baron is here, the piece must be worth hearing, just as Max said." Klara could see Von Swieten sitting with friends somewhat farther around the upper circle.

"The Baron,” Manzoli said, “favors Handel above all other composers. And I assure you, my dear Klara, the piece is a little jewel, even if it is old."

Alcina was, just as the Count had promised, beautiful. They found it easier than they had imagined to simply listen, despite the underlying thread of anxiety. Great music, after all, was a shared passion.

The story was rather stiff, about a sorceress, Alcina, and her craving for the love of a young Prince, who already has a fiancé. His fiancé is dispossessed by a spell, but not being the kind of lady to take this sitting down, she revenges herself upon Alcina by stealing her magic staff. Then she commands first Alcina's spirits, and, next, her runaway Prince, to attend her.

At the end, the Prince himself breaks the spell and returns to Alcina, bringing the magic staff along with him. When that happened, Klara knew that if Max were there, he'd be nodding approval. She also began to wonder if Max had already anticipated their operatic grand gesture with one of his own.

She soon gave up trying to unravel it, however, for the music was simply too glorious! Just as Max had said, Alcina had been worth hearing.

The problem was Signora Bernasconi. They all agreed that the best they could do was to imagine what the notes should be, and what the music would sound like if sung by a competent singer. Every note wobbled grotesquely and the tone at the tops and bottoms was forced and harsh.

"The only thing we may thank god for," Akos sighed, "is that by next winter, even she will have raised the white flag. By then, surely, her voice will be gone. How does she still claim roles?"

"General von Gotz, of the Court Theater Committee, will have it so," Manzoli said.

"She is a handsome woman, certainly, but the gentleman must be deaf."

"He is."

Their attention was distracted when a mysteriously empty box beside theirs was entered, somewhere in the middle of the first act, by a tall masked couple, accompanied by servants in black dominos. They were lavishly dressed in clothes of beaded, glittering black.

Something about them was uneasily familiar. As they settled, Klara realized that the woman's dress was an eerie echo of the stage costume of Signora Bernasconi, complete with twisting beaded and embroidered serpents winding up the front.

At the end of the first ballet – Alcina's spirits and the prince’s attendants – and just as Bernasconi began to shriek her aria of rage, a man in close fitting black suit, wearing a death's head mask, leapt from the wings onto the stage.

The singers recoiled. This was not part of the opera!

The mask approached Bernasconi. From beneath his cloak, he drew forth a bouquet of dead flowers and offered it to her. She shrank away, stumbled backwards. The gift was flung at her feet and then Death made another, astonishingly acrobatic leap which carried him across the orchestra and into an aisle. As he went bounding away, cloak streaming, as quick as a cat, a few male members of the audience went in shouting pursuit.

But the damage had been done. Signora Bernasconi collapsed. Servants came to her aid, but the other singers and the ballet of spirits quietly withdrew into the wings.

Every hair on the back of Klara's neck stood up as she took in the scene, the awful bouquet beside the prone figure of a once great Diva.

Dead flowers! The terrible gift presented to any singer who dared to perform past
their prime.

"
Strega
!" a servant cried, pointing up in Klara’s direction. "Murderess! Assassin!

"No!
Gott!
I would never do such a thing!" Klara grasped her lover’s hand. "My time, too, will come."

"Fraulein Silber would never be party to such…!" Manzoli rose to his feet and shouted, but before he had finished, Almassy caught him by the back of his gown.

"Signor! They do not accuse Fraulein Silber."

Klara and Manzoli stared down at the stage, at the protective servant, then their gaze turned to the box beside them with the mysterious couple in black.

The gentleman was in the act of handing his lady a walking stick, an unusual one, with a large and ornately carved serpent. A moment later, they unmasked, and gazed down at the bedlam below, with a regal serenity. Klara gasped as she recognized Max and Iveta Wranitzsky.

Wranitzsky, gone from Vienna these five years, and now, back again! With staff in hand, it was clear that she was intended to complete the role of Alcina.

The impresario came onto the stage. As servants carried the limp form of the Bernasconi away, he stepped up to the footlights and called out, "Madame Wranitzsky has returned to us tonight."

The groundlings at once set up a roar, chanting her name.

What would happen next was obvious. Wranitzsky inclined her sable wig to the audience and then turned and passed through the curtains of the box.

“Will you not stay to hear justice done to the music?” Manzoli turned to Klara. “You really should stay to hear the lady sing, Klara. She has returned to Vienna in the most astonishing voice. She will soon be your chief rival
….”

***

"
Grosse Gott!
I feel as if horses have run over me!" Klara clutched her lover’s arm. They had immediately left the box and gone down into the parterre. "Poor Signora Bernasconi! She is only forty-five and her voice is gone! She was shrieking the tops, and chest voice was all that was left. Oh, my dearest Akos! I’m only twenty years younger … what shall I do when it comes to me, the night of the dead flowers? How shall I live after?"

"In time, it comes to all singers." Akos pressed her fingers gently. "But you will have one at your side who will always adore you." His dark head, the long black hair falling forward, bent over her hand, but Klara couldn’t stop trembling.

Her sweetheart had an ear like an angel's. He had fallen in love with other voices! Could she, oh, could she believe in his eternal love?

How often the nuns had spoken of the vanity of this world, of the sin of pride! Pride in beauty, pride in talent! Vanity, all of it, when everything was destined to decay into old age, ruin and the grave!

Sin inevitably led to punishment, and had she not sinned? Sinned with pride, sinned with lust and with vanity? Sinned greatly? Punishment would surely come from the very earthly things in which she now took so much delight.

And now, Max had taken Wranitzsky for his lover again and proclaimed it to the whole city of Vienna! Was she jealous? Afraid, now that the break had come at last?
What did she feel?
A torrent of warring emotions surged. One thing was certain. In two days, Lent would begin. She would perform the evening before at Prince Vehnsky’s. There, the choice would be made, the choice which would decide the rest of her life.

Chapter
21

Klara, wrapped in a
n embroidered robe sewn with crystals, sat in her cage and sang the first aria, one of mourning. In it she told of her capture by a great magician who had turned her into a woman. He had fallen in love with her song, and now he held her prisoner.