15

EVERYTHING has changed now. The day hums with possibilities. Bess hasn’t got time for breakfast: Audran has promised to call for her at 10am. Her head is whirling with what he had told her the previous night. Her husband has gone to see his flying machine. She is glad he is not there to ask any questions about her air of eager anticipation, so different to the torpor she has known. As self-centred as he is, he would have noticed how she cannot stay still.

Bess was aware of Harry leaving, shortly before dawn. She woke to the smell of a struck match and saw her husband writing at the desk by candlelight with his back to her. Feigning sleep, she watched between almost-closed eyelashes as he placed his latest note close to her pillow. He stood quite still with his hands behind his head, looking away, the pose of a man who is very tired or deep in thought, then departed. She heard the latch of the door slip shut; muffled voices outside; the noise of an engine harsh in the morning stillness.

The tone of his note is contrite, apologising for his absence this Sunday – his only day without a show. He likens his ambitions for the Voisin to a complex stage routine that must be planned and rehearsed again and again to ensure perfect execution. Opening with ‘Adored Light of My Life’, his note concludes: ‘Forgive me! All day in the flying field will I be thinking upon you. Until this evening and forever, Your Sorry Houdini.’

Bess skims it, then secretes it in her little box. She pulls back a curtain just enough to confirm her impression of another warm and sunny day. In the bathroom, the tiles are pleasantly cool on her bare feet. She sips from a glass, splashes water on her eyes and brushes her hair, which needs attending to. It can wait: one of her hats will cover it. She considers pinning a flower to her bodice but decides it might appear flirtatious.

She has been ready for several minutes when Audran comes for her. They exchange greetings but otherwise say little after the manager indicates she should follow him. She thinks they will go to his room, but when they draw close to the door marked ‘Private’, he pauses in the corridor and raises his hand, urging silence. He smiles, which Bess has seldom seen him do before, and says just one word: ‘Listen …’

At first she hears nothing apart from their breathing. Then she makes out instruments playing softly in the distance and voices in glorious harmony. It is the same tune she has heard before. The one that first caused her to leave her room and seek its source. But it is not coming from the manager’s own room, and there is nothing in the corridor other than the linen closet. Audran turns and opens the closet door, as Bess herself had done. Then he reaches past a pile of tablecloths, stiff with starch, and releases a catch. Like something from a child’s fairy-story the back of the cupboard itself, all the shelves of stacked sheets and serviettes and doilies and pillowslips, swings inwards on hinges with a faint groan to reveal an opening.

‘Forgive me for going first,’ Audran says. Then he steps into the cupboard. It is large enough for easy entry, especially for someone as small as Bess. She breathes in the comforting scent of pressed linen and with three paces is through the closet into a much narrower corridor, with just one light-fitting on the bare wall and no carpeting on the floorboards.

There are only two doors, ten yards or so apart. The music, louder and more distinct now, appears to be coming from behind the first of these doors, neither of which have numbers or signs.

‘My husband would admire that closet entrance,’ Bess says. ‘He regards himself as an expert in secret panels and false walls. What is this?’

‘These are the hotel’s most private quarters. Two rooms, only one of which is presently in use. They date back over fifty years to the gold rush. It was not unusual for guests to be in possession of nuggets or gold dust worth a great deal of money. These gentlemen often preferred not to involve banks in their transactions. The Metropole could offer them accommodation where they might conduct business in private. The rooms are similar to your own, but more … discreet. Now. Are you ready?’

She is once again a Floral Sister waiting to be summoned for an audition in a promoter’s office. She nods, holding her leather clutch-bag in front of her, and sees Audran run his right hand over his hair before knocking three times on the nearest door.

It is opened at once, as if the knock has been expected, by a tall man. Older than Audran, with a moustache and sad, tired eyes.

‘Welcome, signora!’ he says, while acknowledging Audran with a nod of his head. They enter the room. The door is closed behind them.

The air is thick with stale tobacco smoke. Bess can also smell something sweet and pungent: shaving-lotion, perhaps, or hair tonic. And she can hear the music she has been searching for, music coming from a protuberant metal horn, shining in the morning light, attached to a compact black machine on the opposite side of a window to a piano. The tall man is now standing next to the machine with the horn. Bess wonders if he is gesturing to her to come closer, has even taken a step towards him, before realising that he is keeping time with the music that swells and recedes like a tide. A chorus of voices fades, then there is only hissing and clicking before the man fiddles with a knob on the top of the apparatus and it falls silent.

‘That music,’ she says. ‘I know it. I have heard it before. Is it yours?’

He shakes his head.

‘This is the slaves’ chorus, from Nabucco,’ he says. ‘A special recording. Very rare. Music by Giuseppe Verdi. The master.’

‘That’s it! Nabucco – I saw it in Vienna. That is, we saw it. My husband and I … though I think he fell asleep.’

Still standing near the door, Audran resembles the host at a party watching his guests mingle without him. Now he steps forward.

‘It seems introductions are superfluous. But, Signor Puccini, let me formally present Mrs Wilhelmina Beatrice Houdini.’

‘Bess,’ she says.

The composer takes her hand and raises it to his lips.

‘The whole world knows of the feats of your husband, signora. But until now I did not know of his wife’s great beauty.’

Behind him, she sees the word ‘Edison’ on the side of the music machine, close to a handle. The composer is still holding her hand.

‘The honour is mine,’ Puccini says, scanning her features like a score. ‘Yes, a petite soubrette. A character type in opera. A clever girl. Despina in Cosi, by Mozart. Another master.’

He catches her eyes with his and it is like looking down into a bottomless pool. Still holding her hand very lightly, as if leading her across a dance-floor, he invites her to be seated at one end of an ottoman against the wall. Puccini remains standing alongside her.

‘Now, dear lady, Signor Audran has told you much already. But it seems I owe you a personal explanation and apology. I have disturbed you.’

‘Not disturbed. Intrigued me.’

‘As you like. Let us say I have distracted you. And I know what this means. I am here myself to escape from distractions, of which there are too many. I am here for the work I must finish.’ His gaze shifts to the piano; the pile of paper atop and beside it. ‘I need to find quiet and calm to compose my music. And I must have solitude. Somewhere far from the public and newspaper people for a few weeks, or a month, though I think not more.’

‘But surely you did not need to come all this way? I know how tedious the journey can be. We came only because my husband is being paid well for an engagement at the Opera House.’

‘Where there is no opera,’ the composer interjects, ‘a curious name. You might say I have come to escape. Though I have not your husband’s expertise for this.’ He has his back to her now, standing to the side of the window, looking out. ‘There are other reasons,’ he continues. ‘In Sydney, next month, there will be the premiere in Australia of Butterfly.’

Bess clasps her hands together with delight.

‘Madame Butterfly in Sydney! How marvellous. We will be there also, in Sydney. My husband performs at the Tivoli after completing his engagements here. I have seen your opera before – in London, I think. So beautiful. So sad.’

The composer bows his head.

‘Ah yes, my Butterfly. My lovesick little maiden who waits so long for Pinkerton the American to return. More than three years. But it has taken twice as long for this work to travel here. It might be interesting to discover how it is now. Though I have made no commitment about being there.’

Audran has retreated into the adjoining bathroom, where he appears to be assessing towels. The composer continues, though he is still looking away.

‘My new opera, this work I must finish, is set in a wild frontier. A place where living was rough. I thought in this new country, a place far away, I might experience that feeling of the west. But it is too civilised here.’

He surveys the room, with its carpet and fine furniture, as if with regret.

‘Why not seek inspiration in America itself?’

‘That is a question already put to me by Otto Kahn, the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, when I told him of my plan. First, I rode the train from New York to California. The view from my carriage was interesting. A lot of nothing. But I find San Francisco is a modern city. Also, too, Madame has told me about this place where she was born.’

‘Madame …?’

‘Melba. I am told she is like a queen here. I have worked with Madame. Listened to her stories about this place near the bottom of the world.’

‘I have seen her. Heard her,’ Bess exclaims. ‘The voice! Like nothing I ever experienced before. She has helped you come here?’

‘It is complicated. But no, she has not assisted me. Nor, I believe, is she aware I am here.’

‘She is absent,’ Audran interjects as he returns. ‘The Age this week reported she was in Adelaide. On her way to engagements in Europe.’

‘A good thing for me,’ Puccini says. ‘Casting for the new work is yet to be settled. Madame would insist on the role, I know this. She will want to be my Minnie. She would insist it is her right. Because she is still angry with me for not making her my first Butterfly six years ago.’

‘Her voice is so pure.’

‘We all know this. But only I know she is not my Minnie. Too old, I think, though she is younger than me by several years.’ He is still observing something happening outside. ‘And I will be older still by the time I finish my work. And unless I finish, there will be no opera for anyone. Not for Otto Kahn or Tetrazzini or Destinn or whoever is my Minnie instead of Madame. Caruso will say I should just choose whoever is the prettiest.’

‘Caruso will be in this new work?’

‘He is. We have our Dick Johnson, the outlaw. But, still, no Minnie.’

‘What is he like – Caruso?’

The composer turns to her. Bess sees that, for the first time, he seems amused. Though his dark eyes are still so sad.

‘Enrico? If he were here in this room he would kiss both your cheeks and be most charming. You would smell his cologne and admire his waistcoat; the colour of lavender. But at heart he is still a peasant from Napoli. You could offer him a dish with the finest French sauces and he would choose, instead, spaghetti with clams. He is a practical joker, too. Has played a trick on Melba herself on stage in Boheme. Yet still he can sing. It is a marvel that a voice so wonderful comes from within a container so crude. And he must always be the centre of attention. I have had to remind him this work is the Girl of the Golden West. Not the Man. The heroine is always at the heart of my operas. And always she is flawed, adored, and doomed. Though perhaps not this time. I am not sure how it will end, if it ends. Minnie is elusive. I have hoped I can find her in Melbourne.’

He is looking at her. For the first time, she is conscious of a clock ticking.

‘Does anybody know where you are?’ she asks.

‘Very few people,’ Puccini replies. ‘The manager here and Otto Kahn at the Metropolitan. Not Caruso, for certain. He loves to talk. I am content for him to think I am locked away in my Tuscan villa, composing and shooting at ducks and gazing at the sky at night.’

A polite cough reminds them of the manager’s presence.

‘The Maestro comes for the sky here, too,’ he tells Bess. ‘A special star.’

‘No star. A comet,’ Puccini replies. ‘You have heard of Halley’s Comet?’

‘Read of it,’ she says. ‘Though I know little about stars. My husband has studied the spirit world and the supernatural, but not the heavens.’

‘This comet is real, and very beautiful. Maybe, sometime, we can look for it together.’ She cannot see his face as he says this, because he is addressing her over one shoulder as he again fiddles with the Edison machine, adjusting some levers and winding its handle. He stands back after lowering one end of the horn apparatus on to a spinning black cylinder. Audran is considering the crease in his trousers.

She hears a crackling sound, then the slaves’ chorus once again. Even in the same room it seems to be coming from some distance away. The recording ends after just a few minutes, but Bess waits until Puccini has attended to his hissing machine before declaring the music to be magical.

‘Enrico would shrug and say: “a chorus number”,’ the composer replies. ‘“Pretty tune, but just a chorus: lots of slaves on stage at one time.” He has done well for himself, making many recordings for these machines.’

Puccini removes the cylinder and returns it to a cardboard container.

‘This chorus was sung at the memorial service for Verdi in Milano nine years ago,’ he says. ‘I was one of so very many walking behind the coffin of this man I never met. And I still feel like I am walking far behind him.’

With the phonograph silent, Bess is again conscious of the clock.

‘And now, madam, perhaps you will be less curious about any music you hear,’ Audran says. ‘For the maestro will play his machine and not even put a sock in the horn to soften the sound, as I have suggested.’

‘I must have my music,’ Puccini says with a shrug. ‘But we cannot have you roaming the corridors again late at night like Lady Macbeth. You know her? Verdi also. He wrote so many operas. But it is always so slow for me – slower still when I have interruptions. Some more welcome than others.’

It seems to Bess this meeting may be over. Yet still she has a question.

‘Mr Audran said I should ask directly. Can I tell my husband about this?’

‘For now, signora, I believe not,’ Puccini says. ‘Unless this will cause you awkwardness. No doubt your husband is a man of great honour. But he works with others. And it can be hard not to speak of things you know.’

Bess nods. The idea of keeping a secret thrills her.

‘I understand. He will be away often, too. Leaving me here … waiting.’

‘Just like my Butterfly.’

Audran is guiding her to the door.

‘May we talk again sometime?’

The composer approaches and takes her hand again.

‘I hope so. And you will not need to wait three years.’