“DAD, WHAT I HAVE to ask you may sound strange.”
“Ask it.”
“After you left Ariana, what were your feelings toward music?”
“Music?” The bishop inhaled deeply. “I felt music had taken her from me. For ten horrible years I hated it. Vocal music enraged me. Opera…destroyed me. I wanted to kick down the sets and throttle the singers.”
For an instant there was not a breath of air in the study, and then a soft wind sighed through the curtains.
“And now?”
“Now?” The bishop smiled a smile touched with pain long dead. “Now I’m as musical as the next prelate.”
“You can go to concerts?”
“Certainly.”
“Opera?”
“I go now and then if I’m invited.”
“And you’ve stopped hating?”
“I had no choice. There’s an awful lot of Bach in my business.”
“How did you manage to change?”
“I prayed for the strength. I built up a tolerance, listened to records, made myself go to symphonies. One day I went to a vocal recital. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t kill me. And then I took a real plunge and went to the opera. It hurt, but I survived.”
Ames couldn’t help but feel admiration for his father, this man who might have been a stockbroker but who had kicked over the traces and put on a clerical collar and cantered so far from Wall Street, who had faced disappointment and broken himself of it as one would a bad habit. “Did you ever go to any of her performances again?”
The bishop exhaled. “Only…in my mind. But I bought all her recordings. Sometimes…I play them.”
Late that night, Ames walked around the edge of the woods and down to the water. Cool foam lapped at his bare feet.
A car engine growled. A moment later, up where the beach threaded into the dunes, Vanessa’s shape was moving toward him. They kissed. He asked about her performance.
“Ames, I’m sorry—”
“Hey, don’t be sorry. Work’s work. Did you knock ’em dead?”
She smiled. “I knocked ’em dead.”
They strolled a moment. She asked about his day.
“Know something funny? My day was goddamned wonderful.” For three days longer they were happy.
And then Camilla phoned Vanessa in tears over pans she’d gotten from the critics for a Pagliacci in Philadelphia.
Vanessa made reassuring sounds (“No one can sing that role two days out of the hospital”), but the conversation left her feeling it was her fault, that if she would only lead Camilla through the score point by point all would be well.
For two days guilt obsessed her. Finally she phoned Richard Schiller. “I’ve got to take next week off.”
“You can’t. You’re singing in San Francisco.”
“You have to get me out of it.”
“Why?”
What could she tell him? That she felt a compulsion to give lessons to her pupil? “I feel queasy. Jinxed.”
“Let’s have lunch. You can tell me about it.”
They had lunch at a quiet corner table in the little French place down Fifty-fifth Street from the agency. Richard listened to her.
“You’re not Camilla’s mother. Her performances are her responsibility, not yours.”
“She’s my pupil. She helped me.”
“She helped you? This I’d like to hear.”
“She let me teach her.”
Richard’s eyebrows arched. “She let you teach her?”
“Yes, let me. And then I dropped her.”
He shook his head. “So? If it’s that important you’ll teach her after San Francisco.” He reached across the tablecloth to squeeze her hand. “Relax, will you? You’re happily married, you’re in perfect health, you’re in the best voice you’ve ever been, you’ll be carried by satellite and two hundred million people will be watching and do you know what that will do to your record sales?”
“Then why do I feel so rotten?”
“Artists are supposed to feel rotten. Now eat your vichyssoise. It’s getting warm.”
Four days later, despite misgivings, Vanessa yielded to her agent’s advice and boarded Eastern Airlines Flight 309 from New York to San Francisco.
A ghostly voice was talking in the empty office. “Mark Ames Rutherford the Third, trailblazing author of The Fortress, is the first writer to explore the hidden and insidious links behind the vaults of Chase Manhattan and the Trevantine marble walls at Lincoln Center.”
The sound was coming from the phone-answering machine and it very much resembled Dill Switt in one of his antic moods.
Ames couldn’t resist lifting the receiver. “Hidden, insidious? I do believe you’re a little bit high, Dill.”
“Looped is the polite word. I’ve been sitting in the Lion’s Head drinking chilled Beaujolais with a young lady who happens to be an ace reporter for the Wall Street Journal and, here’s the interesting part, an opera buff. Now pay close heed. The price of a glass of chilled Beaujolais just dropped thirty percent. And why did the price just drop? Because the French devalued the franc ten days ago. And why did they do that? Because of the collaboration, witting or un-, of well-intentioned solid citizens like your lovely wife the songbird with international sleaze like Niko the Greeko.”
“Dill, I’d rather you didn’t make jokes like that.”
“Who’s joking? You gotta know that Nikos Stratiotis uses his dollar holdings as margin to speculate against European currencies.”
“So does every bank in New York City and Zurich.”
“But Stratiotis hasn’t paid a cent in American corporate taxes in twenty years. He has charitable foundations to offset income.”
“That happens to be how the big boys do it.”
“The other big boys don’t do it with Stratiotis’s flair. To quote from a program of the Chicago Opera: ‘This production of Il Trovatore was made possible by the deeply appreciated generosity of the Stratiotis Foundation for the Fine Arts.’ I translate freely from a recent program of the Paris Opéra: ‘The management wishes to acknowledge the extraordinary generosity of the Foundation Stratiotis in the preparation of this production of Romeo et Juliette.’”
“Okay,” Ames conceded. “Some men back horses. Stratiotis backs opera. What’s your point?”
“Stratiotis backs your wife’s productions, dumbo. Hers and hers alone.”
Ames fought to muster disbelief. I’m not hearing this. Dill’s lying. No, not lying. Mistaken. An honest mistake.
“That’s not true,” he heard himself saying. “Vanessa hasn’t had anything to do with Stratiotis for over a year.”
“Oh, no? Look at the programs of the Barcelona Lyric, Teatro Colón, La Scala. Look at last week’s program at the New York Metropolitan, for God’s sake. ‘The Metropolitan Opera wishes to acknowledge—’”
Ames tried to blot out the words, tried to concentrate on the waves breaking softly forty feet from the house. But something twisted in him and then collapsed. “I want to meet your friend from the Wall Street Journal. I want to see these programs.”
“Lisa and I are having dinner at Carnaby’s at eight-thirty. The table can seat three.”
Ames met them at the restaurant, the newest, innest dining spot in SoHo. He studied five opera programs while Dill and his date shared a rack of lamb. The programs were all recent, in different languages but with two things in common: Billings singing, Stratiotis funding.
“I have others at home,” the girl said. “Cartons full. He’s been backing her for years.”
Ames decided to speak to Stratiotis directly. He phoned the Wall Street office and, using a forgivable bit of subterfuge, identified himself as Stan Billings, Vanessa’s father.
The secretary’s voice suddenly glowed with pleasantness. “You can reach Mr. Stratiotis in San Francisco, sir. I’ll give you his number.”
The flight across the continent was a dark, dreamlike glide of six hours, and then the buildings and streets of San Francisco were moving past the taxi window like unreal shadows on glass.
A spring rain was slanting down and it was 7:55 when Ames arrived at the opera house, a small jewel of a building on Van Ness. He threaded his way through streams of opera patrons. An usher handed him his program and showed him his seat. He sat and opened the program. Please, God, let me be wrong. Let it all be my paranoid imagination.
His eye skimmed quickly down the names of the performers.
And there it was, the small italicized mention at the bottom of the page. This performance of La Traviata is made possible by a deeply appreciated grant from the Stratiotis Foundation for the Fine Arts.
In her dressing room, Vanessa felt uneasy, curiously remote, her eyelids shut down over a foreboding she couldn’t quite articulate.
The makeup woman daubed with a powder puff at her forehead.
And suddenly Vanessa knew. “He’s here. He’s in the house…”
The dresser threw her a startled glance before tilting her chin up and correcting the shading of her brow. “Yes indeed, ma’am, Callas used to feel just like that before she sang Violetta.”
Ames shifted in his seat, glanced at his watch. The second hand seemed to crawl. All right, so Stratiotis happens to be in the same city where she’s singing a performance. What does that prove?
Finally the houselights dimmed. From the orchestra pit came soft rustlings. An oboe chirped. There was applause as the conductor entered the pit.
Ames made a deeply concentrated effort to listen.
So he happens to be in the same city where she’s singing a performance he happened to finance. So maybe he’s been in a few cities where she’s been singing performances he happened to finance. Maybe quite a few cities. What does that prove?
He was suffocating. He couldn’t endure not moving.
I don’t want to see this.
Vanessa’s hands made a protective circle around the locket, drawing strength from it. The premonition lifted, leaving a merciful blank. She couldn’t even remember what had been bothering her—something frightening and fantastic and foolish.
A knock came at the door and the cry, “Places, Miss Billings!”
Vanessa rose. With a smile, the dresser pulled the door open.
Impulsively, Vanessa kissed her.
Ames drank three double martinis. The bartender had a bushy mustache and the bar had a rich mahogany glow.
Every now and then a door opened and her voice rocketed through the silence, soaring so lightly, so swiftly that Ames’s ear could hardly follow its flight.
The performance ended. Applause broke like a storm. Vanessa’s tenor took her hand and led her through the curtain.
For a moment the whole world blazed up into glory. She stood in the spotlight with the applause and torn programs and tossed flowers raining down. With a smile she acknowledged the deafening acclamation and made a deep curtsy.
Ames could hear the crowd calling her name like wind in a forest. He stretched a twenty-dollar bill out flat on the bar and snapped a finger to catch the bartender’s attention.
“How do I get backstage?”
The air in the corridor pressed down heavy and stagnant. Ames found the door. He raised his hand and gave two knocks, and it was opened by a little gray-haired woman.
“Yes, sir?”
Behind her he could see Vanessa relaxing in an armchair, still in costume. And then she saw him.
For a split second she stared in open horror and then she stretched out a hand and attempted a smile. “Ames.”
In the instant that she moved toward him he was aware of the other presence in the room, the tall figure in a dark suit waiting near the dimly lit window.
Nikos Stratiotis turned to face him. Their eyes locked.
“I understand,” Ames said quietly. “I finally understand.”
“Ames,” Vanessa whispered, “no!”
Nikos moved a three-legged stool toward him. “You don’t understand anything. Sit down.”
Ames swiped the stool aside. It fell with a sideways crash to the floor. “Do you know how lonely and empty I felt when you were with him? I knew there had to be a reason you didn’t want me at your performances, but I never dreamed it was Stratiotis!”
Terror splashed Vanessa’s face. “Ames, you’re wrong.”
“And drunk,” Nikos said. “A pity you can’t keep your mouth as closed as your mind for ten seconds and let us explain—”
Ames whirled on him. “I wanted this woman, I loved her, and unlike you I married her!”
Vanessa reached out. “Ames, I swear!”
“You swore to love, honor, and cherish me—me, not him! What the hell did you want me for, a false front?”
“Ames, you have it all wrong!”
She tried to explain, but he strode from the dressing room and didn’t even bother slamming the door behind him.
It seemed an eternity later that the knocking came.
“Miss Billings.” The assistant stage manager had an apologetic expression. “We’ve raised the houselights, but they’re still applauding. Would you mind one more curtain call?”
Nikos interposed himself. “Miss Billings is exhausted.”
“It’s all right, Nikos.” She moved past him. “They’re my friends. I owe them this.”
He couldn’t read her intention, but he felt something in her, firm and formed and secret.
“You go on to the party,” she said. “Sally will help me change.”
The dresser smiled, liking to be needed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Vanessa kissed Nikos lightly. “I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”
The opera house roared. Rising to their feet, the cheering, glittering crowd gave her three more curtain calls.
It had been the most brilliant performance of a brilliant career: a faultless Traviata. They knew it; she knew it.
At that instant she was, arguably, what half the critics in the world called her: the greatest soprano of the day.
Vanessa hurried back to her dressing room. She leaned a moment against the shut door and closed her eyes. Her knees began to buckle. She held the back of a chair an instant before sitting.
Sally brought a glass of warm milk flavored with molasses. Vanessa sipped. Sally watched with a satisfied look and took the glass.
“Shall I draw your bath?” Sally offered.
“No, thanks, I’ll do it. I’d like to be by myself for a while.”
Alone, Vanessa began undressing. Her movements were automatic, the unthinking reflex of a singer protecting her costume and at the same time divesting herself of what she had been onstage.
She unhooked the thin gold chain from around her neck and let it slide through her fingers. The locket slipped down onto the dressing table. She lost her eyes a moment in it. The tiny gems gleamed back at her, hard and unyielding as justice without mercy.
A last sickening conviction settled itself onto her mind. I can never have both. It will always be music or life. Never both.
She knew what had to be done. There was nothing to be gained by delay.
With a quick swipe of her arm she swept the locket aside. It thudded lightly against the carpet.
She ripped a piece of paper from the notepad on the dresser.
She scrawled three words.
Forgive me, Ariana.
She drew a hot bath and sprinkled the tub with a handful of verbena salts. It was like a scene in an opera in which she was performer and audience at the same time. She observed her actions with detachment and a strange sense of completion.
She took a tape cassette from the dressing table. She did not look at herself in the mirror. She slid the cassette into the player and pressed a button.
A moment later a pure soprano voice filled the room like a soft fountain of prayer.
The bathroom was misty, like early morning. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the tub. The air was laden with the fragrance of verbena. The temperature was like a caress.
She took a razor blade from the cabinet.
Hesitation suddenly gripped her. She caught the edge of the commode. The smell of bath salts tightened sharp around her, like arms strengthening her.
She stepped into the tub and lay back. She shut her eyes and pressed close to Verdi’s music.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. …Give them eternal rest, Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.
She lifted the razor blade.
It wasn’t hard to do. It was as though life were a fabric and she were slipping through a secret opening in it. She had done the same thing a thousand times when she stepped out onto the stage. This time it was a different stage, that was all.
A half-hour later, Sally knocked. There was no answer. She tried the door. It was locked. The wood felt hot to her touch. She called for the security guard to bring a passkey.
The room was filled with steam.
Vanessa lay in the tub, surrounded by pink foam. She looked waxen, lifeless. Her eyes were closed.
Sally screamed.
It was Charley Zymanowski, the security guard, who phoned for the ambulance. He had been with the San Francisco Opera for over twenty years and he had never seen anything like this.
A team of emergency medics from San Francisco General rushed Vanessa Billings out on a stretcher. Charley stayed behind. He told Sally he’d clean up.
Ten minutes later he found a scrawled note on the dressing table and a locket on the floor.
Nikos did not bother to use the house phone. He paid the night manager of the St. Francis $100 to let him into Ames’s room.
Ames was sitting in his shirt sleeves by the window, staring down at the park.
“I have one question to ask you,” Nikos said. “Do you want her?”
Ames turned slowly. “Butt out, Croesus.”
Nikos felt a hot flash down his back, the same flash he got when it was deciding point in a squash match or when he was closing a long and arduous deal. “You’ll be proud to know she attempted suicide after your little discussion.”
Ames rose unsteadily from his chair.
“She’ll recover,” Nikos said. “But she’s going to need care. I’ve made arrangements for her to go to a clinic in New Jersey.”
“Decent of you.”
“She flies east tomorrow. One of us is going to be on that plane with her. And that’s the last choice in her life I’ll ever give you.”
Ames was on the plane with her. He was hungover and shaky and filled with a million stinging repentances, but he was with her, holding her hand for six hours and three thousand miles.