8

HARRY is interested in how things work. He will look at a stained-glass window in a church or stately home and admire the soldered joins but not the beauty of the overall picture. Study the workings of a clock but not register the time.

He believes he is a master of mysteries. Because he has devoured so much detective fiction (Conan Doyle and Poe are his favourites), he maintains he only needs to skim the first few chapters of a new book to guess the plot. When he encounters other escape artists his priority is to assess their techniques, which he invariably suspects have been appropriated from himself. He knows their tricks; his only interest in rivals is evaluating their expertise. On stage, his art lies in making the impossible seem effortless. Off stage, however, there is much he does not know.

The fast-approaching comet has yet to flash across his consciousness. But he has heard something about another aspiring aviator setting up at the Diggers Rest field. A fellow called Banks, with a Wright flying machine. Yet he is apparently just a motor mechanic from a Melbourne garage: surely not the type to thwart the ambitions of the great Houdini.

Harry is unaware that another flying machine has been put on public display in Martin’s department store in Adelaide, a smaller city than Melbourne five hundred miles to the west. This aircraft, the same model used by Louis Bleriot to conquer the Channel, has been imported by local businessman Frederick Jones. Like the Wright brothers, Jones has a professional background in bicycles. He has also been captivated by the magic of flight but, unlike Harry, is too timid to leave the ground himself.

To help cover costs, Jones permits his new Bleriot monoplane to go on display in Martin’s Magic Cave – its basement – as part of an advertising promotion. Customers are invited to view this world-famous contraption that ‘has passed over the rolling deep and is ready to tackle the airy billows’. The Bleriot – little higher than a man, its most striking feature a single propeller up front – stands stationary for three weeks as curious people file past. It is a chrysalis. Dormant. Waiting for its wings to be freed.

If Harry were to see Adelaide newspaper advertisements for Martin’s latest attraction it might strike him that the way the Bleriot is billed – ‘The Talk of Kings and Emperors; The Wonder Of The Age’ – is similar to Rickards the promoter’s descriptions of his Mysteriarch. Man and machine are both on show. But Harry is like someone perpetually locked within one of his own trick cabinets, ignorant of anything on the other side of the sliding panels.

He is also oblivious to much going on within the Metropole. He assumes himself to be its most illustrious guest. Horace Audran has encouraged this belief. Harry has no inkling that in his own hotel, on the morning after his lunch with Bess, a man who is a much more renowned figure in performance venues worldwide is trying to settle into another day’s work.

HE is a tall man who walks with a slight limp, the legacy of an automobile accident several years earlier. It hurts his right leg to be seated too long at the piano, gleaming black, situated in a corner of a room like the one shared by Harry and Bess and their porcelain son, but on a different side of the building. The piano is near a casement window, but the white lace curtains have been kept closed. The window has been edged open just enough for warm air to combat the fug of cigarette smoke. He has a lit cigarette in his mouth, its burning tip close to the fringe of his dark moustache. Another cigarette, forgotten, burns unnoticed in a heavy glass ashtray resting on the piano keyboard, to the far side of the highest notes. Beethoven used these notes; he seldom does. He must keep in mind which notes the human voice can reach. Resting on both his lap and the piano keys is a disordered pile of composition paper. He plays a few notes on the piano with one hand, scribbles on the paper with the other, stops, repeats the process. Continues. Sometimes scratches through what he has just put down with his pen or tosses away a sheet altogether. A small pile of discarded sheets near his left foot, resting on the piano’s damper pedal, suggests an unsuccessful morning.

This is hard work. Always, it seems, harder than before. The struggle within himself is more fierce. It never gets easier to release what he hears in his head. Musical notes, like insects, resist being pinned on paper.

He puts the pen aside and rises from the piano, ash falling from his cigarette as he stretches with both hands pressed into his lower back. He eases back the curtains so he can peer out at the street below while staying hidden. Harsh morning light accentuates the angles of his face. Then he turns to study his reflection in the mirror on the other side of the window. Was his face always so lined, the shadows beneath his eyes so dark? He can see grey in both his hair and moustache. He must attend to that.

Giacomo Puccini is fifty-one. He fears he looks older. Since the death of his countryman Giuseppe Verdi nine years earlier, Puccini is regarded as the pre-eminent Italian operatic composer. His fame rests on a series of successes which have sparked standing ovations in opera houses from London to Milan, New York to Buenos Aires: La Boheme in 1896; Tosca in 1900; Madama Butterfly four years later. Now it is 1910 and another deadline looms: in December the popular tenor Enrico Caruso is contracted to sing in the premiere of Puccini’s new opera, La Fanciulla del West – ‘The Girl of the Golden West’ – in New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Expectations are high.

But there is a problem: the opera is unfinished.

The composer has his theories about why this is so. Why there has been such a long gap between this work and the last one. There have been too many interruptions. And it is always easier to reconsider an old work, perhaps even make some amendments, than complete something new. In just one month, at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, his Butterfly will be staged for the first time in Australia. This news had surprised the composer. So slow? Close to six years will separate the Sydney production of his opera and its world premiere at La Scala in Milan.

The premiere … What a disaster Milan had been. Performers were jeered; critics were savage; the composer was humiliated. His poor crushed Butterfly: with what feline rage did they hurl themselves at her. He now believes it was all organised. Jealous rivals in the Italian opera world had orchestrated a hostile reception. He had to retreat. Withdraw the opera. Make changes. After some reworking, two Acts becoming three, Butterfly found its wings and became an international hit. But this belated success has only made the composer’s paralysing fear of failure more acute.

It is such slow work. Always questions without answers. More starts than finishes. And he is still not sure how this new work will end. There will be something grand, he knows that, but it is proving elusive.

He sighs, ponders the crumpled sheets of paper, dabs at ink on his fingers with a handkerchief. Piano, paper, ink … they are just tools, like his Edison phonograph. He composes with his heart and his head, never his hands. Beautiful music comes from inside a violin, not the fingers holding a bow. The phonograph can play music but never create it.

He ignites a new cigarette with a gold lighter that he snaps shut before returning it to a pocket in his checked waistcoat, inhales, holds the burning cigarette out as if to study it. This is a strange existence in a back-to-front place. Warm in February, when there might still be snow in Italy. He misses his home by the lake. But he was right to come. There are fewer distractions here. He can try to focus on Minnie, his Girl of the Golden West. She is another Butterfly with a strong spirit, confronting all that fate delivers.

He returns to the piano. Picks up the top sheet of composition paper. But before resuming work he picks out on the piano keys a simple melody – the love duet from the first Act of La Boheme. In his memory, this music came to him without strain. He wonders if he will ever recapture that sense of easy release. Wonders if he will ever do anything to surpass Boheme.

He will always be judged against his own operas as well as the works of others. And it always seems that anything new he creates does not match what has come before. A performer like Caruso, meanwhile, improves with age. Like wine. But if he – the composer – does not keep working, Caruso will have nothing to sing at the Met in December.

Smoke settles over him as he resumes his labour. Playing notes, scribbling on paper, closing his eyes to help him hear the sounds he is summoning. Progress is made. A page is almost completed without being discarded. Then he stops.

There is a rapping at the door, even though he has left out the sign requesting no disturbances. One knock. Pause. Two more in quick succession. The composer rises, grimaces as his right leg twinges, then opens the door for the hotel manager. Audran is carrying fresh linen and a basket of oranges, which he places on the small table beside the unmade bed. If he notices the fug of cigarette smoke, he doesn’t comment on it. For all he says is this:

‘Good morning, Maestro. There has been a complication.’