33

BESS sits up in bed poring over the contents of the entrancing carton: the lightweight metal horn that takes up most of the space; a compact black apparatus that reminds her of a child’s wind-up music-box; several smaller pieces carefully swathed in paper; instructions explaining how this new model Champion phonograph should be assembled. She is even more fascinated by what has been included in a slim but surprisingly heavy package tucked within the box. After untying the twine securing the wrapping, she removes three single-sided phonograph recordings, each in a flimsy paper sleeve.

The labels on the first two mean little to her: ‘When You And I Were Young’, by Henry Burr, and ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’, sung by Miss Lil Hawthorne. But she studies the other platter as if sight alone could reveal its secrets. The circular label is crimson. On either side of a small hole in its centre are the words ‘VICTOR RECORD’. Above it is a drawing of a small dog looking quizzically into a horn similar to the one lying close to her on the bed. Below, in half a dozen lines of irregular type:

Italian Duet

Boheme – O soave fanciulla (Puccini)

Duo and Finale, Act 1

(Thou Sweetest Maiden)

sung by Melba and Caruso

accompanied by the Victor Orchestra.

She holds the disc with the index finger of her left hand pressed against the underside of the central hole, making a small pink full moon of flesh. This must be it – the duet the composer spoke about at Audran’s dinner. She hasn’t heard it before. How thoughtful of her husband to get a copy for her. Then she considers the label again and shakes her head. Her husband has no knowledge of music. Had he chosen these recordings himself he would surely have left a fulsome explanation of his selections: ‘I’ll Be Your Sweetheart’ is a title certain to appeal to him. But an aria in Italian? Not his style at all. The discs must have been included by her husband’s driver, probably selected at random from an assortment provided by the Champion company. From what she has heard of Jordan he is a man more interested in money than music. But she feels an intense longing to listen to this recording, which means first assembling the phonograph.

She tries, again, to make sense of the instructions. All these parts: tone arm; turntable; reproducer; diaphragm; crank-wound spring … Which are which? In her clumsy fingers they feel like pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles. She needs help. Her husband’s mechanic, the diligent Frenchman more at ease with metal cogs than people, would be able to assemble this thing without difficulty. She remembers him on the deck of the Malwa, always in his hat and tie despite the sun, using a tiny jeweller’s screwdriver and spanner to take apart and then reassemble a travelling alarm-clock while others conversed or played cards or read dime novels. Antoine would be happy to assist her, without doubt, but he is attending to the Voisin with her husband, who is also good with machines.

Audran? No. He has that wonderful reproducing piano but no phonograph.

Of course. A black box with a handle. A metal horn glinting in the light. A tall man keeping time with his hands. Music ending with clicking and hissing until a knob is turned to stop it …

The composer has a machine. He will be able to help her. Surely he will.

Bess places the phonograph pieces back in the carton, the horn last of all and the recordings wedged down one side. Then she pauses. She shouldn’t interrupt him. He is immersed in his work. So if he seems distracted or annoyed she will show him the recording of his music, apologise for the intrusion and then excuse herself. A brief visit: that’s all it need be. But she should do it straight away, lest she change her mind.

She places the package to one side and slides out of bed, wincing as soon as her feet touch the floor. All the muscles in her legs are tender and her hips and ankles are bruised. The Metamorphosis routine has extracted a higher physical toll than she had expected. Yet she has proved she can still do it. She is capable of being more than a spectator. A bath with mineral salts will help to ease any aches, but she doesn’t have time for that right now. So she splashes water on her face, then pokes at her hair with the handle of a tortoise-shell comb. From her wardrobe she selects a lightweight dress that she has already worn at least once in the past week. Then, after stepping into a pair of flat-heeled shoes, she picks up the carton with both hands and leaves the room, feeling like a little girl showing off a new toy on her birthday.

In the corridor, around the corner, she checks to see that nobody is watching before proceeding any further. It feels quite natural to her now to enter the linen closet, and although it is difficult to keep the box balanced and upright with one arm while fumbling for the latch that opens the back, Bess has more room to move than in the trunk the previous evening. Then she is there, standing outside the door without a number. She hesitates before knocking sharply on the wooden panel. There is no sound within. The box she is holding is like a grand dish brought from a restaurant kitchen to a table vacated by customers.

Then she remembers. She knocks again just as Audran had done. The door is unlocked, as if the man inside has been standing close by, listening. Puccini is unshaven and holds a cigarette in his left hand. He is in his shirtsleeves; his collar is unbuttoned. His red-rimmed eyes scan the figure before him. When he recognises Bess his expression lightens.

‘Ah,’ he says, opening the door and standing to one side. ‘Forgive me – I have been told I must be careful. And thought it might be someone else.’

‘I was hoping you might help me with this,’ she says, holding up the box. ‘I need your technical expertise.’

‘Today I am not feeling much expertise,’ the composer replies as Bess enters his room, head down. ‘My work is not coming on so well, you see. Even an early walk could not get things moving. As you see.’

He gestures towards the piano, where she observes a mess of papers and an overflowing ashtray. They stand on either side of the piano-stool with the box between them. Strangers on a platform waiting for the same train. Then Puccini reaches into the carton and removes the metal horn.

‘I recalled you have a phonograph. Hoped you might assemble this.’

‘Ah, a practical task,’ says Puccini. He has placed the burning cigarette between his lips so he can use both hands to remove parts from the carton. ‘A practical task for an impractical man. More satisfying for me this morning than further scribbling on paper.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘This is my great pleasure. A different kind of music making. Now, you must sit.’ He gestures behind him. It seems improper to rest on his bed, the covers of which are rumpled, but it strikes her as even less appropriate to seat herself at the piano. So she sits at the end of his bed, watching him.

He lays out the pieces one by one on the side table alongside his Edison machine, which he pushes away to make more space. The smaller pieces are unwrapped then gently placed, one by one, on the smoothed-out paper. He removes the packet of recordings, acknowledges what it is, then replaces it in the carton. Instructions are quickly scanned, then put aside.

‘You don’t need them?’

The composer glances up before returning his attention to the parts.

‘This is not so different to the machine I have – a turning-table for the discs rather than a cylinder, but the rest is of a similar design. I have a mind for mechanical things. In my home-town I was the first to own an automobile. And I have hunting guns to take apart and assemble again. Music is like a mistress that can never be touched. I need to feel things with my fingers to understand them, to know how they come together.’

He grunts with satisfaction as the crank-handle slots into a hole in the side of the main apparatus and clicks home. Bess resolves to say no more until the job is completed. A tingling sensation is creeping over her. She knows this feeling: it comes upon her whenever she sees someone expertly performing a methodical task; doing something well. She first experienced this sensation as a young girl shopping with her mother at a store on Flatbush Avenue, when a shop-assistant wrapped a length of cloth in brown paper. Bess slipped into a kind of ecstatic trance watching the way this woman sliced the paper with one sweeping motion of her open scissors, turned over each corner neatly, then secured the package with a criss-crossed pattern of twine. She wished for her mother to buy something else – anything. But she didn’t. Walking away felt like breaking a spell.

Bess has also known this feeling watching her husband familiarise himself with a new type of handcuffs: sensing the weak spot in the mechanism; probing with a slim metal pick to find the trigger-point for the spring release; slipping them over his knuckles like a fine new pair of gloves. And she felt it one night on the Malwa, eating alone in the ship’s dining-room because her husband was seasick again, when a waiter prepared crepe suzette at her table. She was left weak with pleasure by the way he had briskly whisked the batter with a fork in a metal bowl, tipped it into a dainty pan over a single blue flame, then lit the brandy-soaked sauce with a match that hissed and turned orange when he placed it in the fire.

Now she experiences the same sensation as Puccini assembles the phonograph. She knows she must neither speak nor move to prolong this moment. He works, deep in concentration, cigarette between his lips. Only when a drooping column of grey ash threatens to fall into the machine does he even seem to notice it. He works like a painter considering colours on his palette before applying them to the canvas: picking up a part; turning it over in his fingers to assess where it should go and how it will fit in; closing his eyes slightly if something seems to puzzle him. Just twice – first when securing the horn to the apparatus, then with a round piece in his hand that he finally fits to an arm connected to the horn – does he study either the instructions or his Edison machine for guidance.

She doesn’t know how long it takes. Time has been suspended. Then all that is left on the table is a small metal box. He opens the lid, careful not to disturb the contents.

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I know these. The pins that find the music.’ And he places one in the disc at the end of the arm. It resembles a pared-down toothpick.

‘Now, let us see,’ he says, looking directly at Bess for the first time since he began his task. He places his left hand on the machine, using his other hand to turn the handle quickly three, four, five times. He releases the handle then slides a lever to the left. There is a whirring sound. The circular top starts to spin. Puccini gently brushes his thumb against the sharpened piece on the arm. A scratching sound is heard through the horn.

‘So,’ he says with a satisfied smile. ‘We have something to play?’

The tingling sensation is ebbing away. ‘The package inside,’ Bess says.

‘Of course,’ the composer replies, retrieving it from the carton near his feet. He lets the three recordings slide out; holds them at arm’s length so he can read the labels. He flips over the first two without comment. The third, the one with the crimson label, causes him to stop.

‘This is yours?’

‘These recordings all came together as you saw them.’

‘Your husband gave them to you?’

‘It’s puzzling. The carton was in the room when I woke up.’

‘Another Houdini box mystery,’ Puccini replies. ‘Like your performance yesterday: something where there was nothing before. But here it is.’

‘Your music.’

‘With the words by Giacosa and Illica, whom I angered with my many changes. Made into something magical by Caruso and Madame.’ He studies the disc again. ‘It is strange, this recording being here. I told Mr Audran I did not have a copy myself. Perhaps he is the one responsible.’

The composer fiddles with the Champion’s controls again and gives the handle two more turns. But he does not put the recording with the crimson label on the turntable. He selects one of the other discs. The lever is slipped on, the end of the arm is lowered on to the spinning black circle. Puccini steps back as the sound of a piano is heard, louder than expected. Then they both hear a male voice, somewhat out of tune:

‘When you and I were young, my dear,

‘When you and I were young …’

Puccini lifts the arm off, causing an ugly screeching noise.

‘That is enough of you, Henry Burr,’ he says. ‘The machine is working.’

Bess is still seated on the bed. The composer stands close to the table. After he changes the record and starts the Champion again, he pulls a slim metal case out of a pocket in his trousers and extracts another cigarette. But he doesn’t light it, for the music starts playing and Puccini barely moves.

There is a very brief piano introduction. Then Caruso is singing, his tone rich but plaintive.

‘O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso di mite circonfuso alba lunar …’

Bess does not understand the words. She does not need to. The sound and emotion are all that matter. There is another voice – no, it is an instrument, a woodwind. Then Melba joins in, her voice coming over the top of Caruso’s, yet fitting in perfectly. The two become one. Bess finds herself staring at the opening to the metal horn, from which the music is escaping. There is a rhythmic scratching, as if something is not quite right with the machine or the recording. But these are no more distracting than muffled coughs in an opera audience. Caruso pauses; Melba sings alone for a little while. As long as the disc spins their voices are separate, yet entwined. After a brief harp interlude the voices merge again. They surge and swell and conclude with Melba sounding a note, high and clear and pure as the freshest water, that pierces the air in the room and makes Bess shiver. She must close her eyes for a few moments. When she opens them again she hears the scratching sound. The music has finished but the record continues to revolve. Then she sees that Puccini is still standing; his cigarette unlit. He is facing her, weeping. There is no sobbing, no shuddering, no noise at all. But both cheeks are lined with tears welling over from his eyes.

He attends to the machine but does not remove the record. When he turns to Bess his expression is still anguished.

‘Forgive me,’ he says softly. ‘I had almost forgotten. This is not mine, you see. The music these two have made is far beyond me. More than human, I would say. Something miraculous.’

He rubs his left hand against his eyes, searches for a handkerchief.

‘Please,’ she says, getting up and approaching him. ‘Let me.’

She reaches up and uses the frilled ends of her sleeves to wipe one cheek, then the other. He allows her to do this, docile as a child. But when she is about to let her right hand fall, he reaches up, places her fingers against his lips, then places the fingertips inside his mouth.

She feels as she did when the duet was playing: as if something is happening outside herself. But this time she is watching rather than listening. Watching as he leans down to kiss her, and she sees that she is allowing this, although it might be someone else tasting the tobacco and stale wine and longing. Someone else savouring the contrasts, the edges of his teeth and the warm wetness of his tongue, the roughness of his stubble and the softness of the skin under his eyes. Someone else moving with him to the unmade bed on which she was sitting only minutes earlier.

If it is someone else, it cannot be wrong.

It is like the duet on the phonograph: two people coming together.

Then silence and deep stillness.