Snores punctuated the drab air of the room above the city where Maria lay in a half sleep. Beyond the blanket partition, Herbert coughed once, lying on his narrow cot in his own little area of the room. Maria’s mother, sleeping on the couch, did not move at all, lying as if she had suddenly fallen, startled, amid a heap of sheets.
In the first circle of the orchestra at the Vienna State Opera, Herbert regarded his wife’s sleek shoulders beside him, her smooth hair as she bent her head to the program in her lap. The lights shone about them like beacons, shedding amber on the red velvet interior. All was muted and golden. Onstage, the musicians were tuning up behind their curtain: the crisp sounds of the A from the concertmaster, a spark in the thin air, and then the answering calls of the other instruments as they responded to the tuning note of A taken up from the first violin section. The instruments mooed and lowed in their preparations.
Herbert put his hand on his wife’s, and she looked up at him and smiled. “Are you happy, my dear?” he asked her.
“Yes, my darling,” she replied, squeezing his hand in return. She leaned her head briefly against his shoulder.
Herbert had heard that Adeline was in love with Herr Mahler, who would be conducting tonight. But he discarded that rumor. Mahler was, of course, a genius. Who wouldn’t be attracted to his eccentric power? Herbert himself was one of Mahler’s benefactors, even though he found that actually listening to Mahler’s music was an ordeal. There was too much pain in that strange music, too much the outraged groan of the outsider. Yes, thought Herbert, too much pain.
He looked at Adeline fondly.
“The children, they were wonderful tonight, weren’t they?” she said to him, smiling.
“Yes, but, my dear, you really favor Michael too much,” Herbert replied, thinking of the little imp. “You let him stay up too long. He got much too excited.”
“But he wants so much to be like his brother. Anyway, what’s the harm in letting him stay up with us?”
Herbert sighed. The evening meal had ended with Michael’s protesting shrieks as their nursemaid ushered the two boys upstairs.
“No, Mama!” Michael howled, flinging himself against Adeline’s knees and holding on. Herbert and David regarded the scene with quiet eyes, though they exchanged a hidden smile. David was prim and full of virtue next to his younger brother.
“Hush,” said Adeline, patting the younger boy. “I’ll come up and say good night before we go out.”
“I want you to stay with me,” protested the child, clinging to his mother even more forcefully.
“Come, Michael,” exhorted David. “We’ll play with the soldiers.” At the thought of being allowed to touch David’s precious toy soldier collection, Michael disengaged himself in a hurry.
“I’ll come soon, my darling,” Adeline said regally to Michael as David scurried upstairs behind his brother. She dismissed them, though David continued to follow his mother’s beauty with a pleading glance.
“Good night, boys.” Herbert watched them approvingly. Adeline smoothed her skirt. From the rooms upstairs Herbert could hear the treble exclamations of the younger boy, and, from time to time, the lower notes of David’s voice, calming him. Herbert turned his attention away from them. He was waiting for something else.
“Papageno, Papageno, Papageno!” sang the figure onstage. A waiting body leaped forward onto the apron of the stage and danced to the edge. A glance passed between the figure onstage and Herbert, who watched from the second row of the orchestra seats of the Opera. How had the setting changed so fast? The music was satisfying, harmonious. The figure shook its headdress of tatters and bells and danced away. Herbert could no longer see him in the crowd of figures that swirled onto the stage now, singing as they danced. They carried trees aloft, peeping through the leaves at the conductor. The dancing figure of Papageno reappeared, casting one backward glance at Herbert as he was once more lost in the swirl of the opera production.
With a start, Herbert recalled himself and reached for Adeline’s hand. But all he grasped was the rough wool of the blanket that covered him where he lay on a narrow cot in his son’s cold-water flat in New York. “Adeline!” Painfully, Herbert remembered where he had left her. He coughed. His lungs hurt, his body, too. Carefully, so as not to wake the children, the Rat, and Ilse, David’s overworked wife, he shifted position on the cot. The gray light of dawn was coming in beyond his clothesline partition. It was bleak, and the chill in the room was a dirty one.
Herbert closed his eyes once more and tried to remember Herr Mahler. And Adeline’s wild passion for him—a passion that had made her sob each afternoon alone in her dressing room, her hair in disarray, eyes glittering. A passion he, Herbert, had pretended not to notice, even when, at the end of each day, he entered the silenced house, a house shuttered against the mourning animal upstairs. Herbert had pretended he did not see Mahler’s rejection of his lovely wife, even while he comforted her through it. “Shh, my darling.” And while he held her, her hot face against his waistcoat and asked, “Why are you crying so?” He made a sign behind her back to Papageno. “Leave us for the moment.” Papageno obeyed, and with a small answering gesture of the hand, almost imperceptible, he disappeared.
Herbert dressed quickly in the half-light, trying not to cough as he pulled on the garments, stiff with cold.
“My dearest Herr Professor,” Mahler had written long ago. “It is only you who can help us now. My wife and I implore you on this most urgent matter. The situation can only get worse, as you, of course, do not need to be told. If you could only be so kind? I realize, of course, that a man in your position…I would be so grateful….”