Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘In Mozart’s day it was fashionable to be late and not stay the course,’ said Clive as he locked the car doors. ‘The Kings and Princes of Prague used to make a quick exit from the royal box down those,’ he pointed to an outside staircase, ‘so they could rush off to their fancy pieces.’

  Helen looked bootfaced. Clive was far too familiar. Then they both jumped at a deafening machine-gun rattle coming from the auditorium: the traditional applause for the conductor at the beginning of the last act.

  ‘Shit,’ muttered Clive.

  Only by brandishing his identity card as Rannaldini’s minion, did he manage to smuggle Helen past the doorman, who had had death threats not to admit latecomers.

  ‘Does Signor Rannaldini know I’ve arrived?’ asked Helen as they belted up the wide spiral staircase.

  ‘No,’ lied Clive. ‘Once an opera starts Rannaldini cannot be disturbed. He hates to lose the mood. He paces the conductor’s room like The Prince of Darkness. Sometimes in the interval he has a shower and changes his shirt in a trance, not realizing it.’

  ‘There are moments when art transcends everything,’ panted Helen.

  But, as Clive smuggled her into a box overlooking the pit, the door banged and, in her nervousness, Helen dropped her bag with a clatter. There was a horrified silence. Bows stopped moving, wind and brass players stopped breathing. Rannaldini whipped round in a fury, he was known to scream at late-comers, or worse still, hurl down his baton and storm out.

  But, as he caught sight of Helen, huge-eyed in the half-light, diamonds glittering at her graceful neck like the Pleiades, he gave a wonderfully theatrical start and stopped conducting. Donna Elvira languishing on her balcony, Don Giovanni and Leporello swapping clothes in the shadowy garden and all the musicians looked at him incredulously as though a metronome had broken down.

  Rannaldini gazed at Helen. Then a smile of such rare sweetness and joy spread across his face that a ripple of laughter went through the orchestra and the nearby boxes and everyone was desperately craning round and leaping to their feet to see the beauty who had stopped the great Maestro in his course.

  Hastily Rannaldini pulled himself together.

  ‘I am sorry.’ Briefly he turned to the audience then back to the musicians and singers, ‘We begin the trio again. Taci injusti core.’

  The exquisite music started, Don Giovanni resumed his amorous escapades. Helen was overwhelmed. Clearly, even for Rannaldini, there were times when love was much more important than art. Clive was grinning broadly when, during an exuberant tutti, he slid back into the box bearing a bottle of champagne, a glass and a plate of caviar.

  ‘With the Maestro’s compliments,’ he whispered. ‘He was worried this afternoon that you might not have had time to eat.’

  The toast was still warm – like Rannaldini’s hands. Helen quivered with excitement. Marcus had so misjudged him. She must eat a little but she mustn’t crunch too loudly.

  In the dim light she admired Mozart’s theatre. Gold tiers decorated with plump white cherubs rose up and up to a huge unlit chandelier. Oblong gilt mirrors on the inside of each slate-blue velvet box, huge gold tassels on the midnight-blue curtains on either side of the stage, the musicians’ instruments all added to the subdued glitter.

  Below her, in a pit bigger than one of the Czech Grand National’s fearsome ditches, the musicians played as if their lives depended on it.

  It was also a mark of Rannaldini’s genius that after such an interruption, he immediately got his glamorous cast of unknown singers back on course without any slackening of tension. It was also obvious, except to a dazzled Helen, that after her arrival both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira sang of the pangs of love with even more tearful conviction. Zerlina, exuding snapping sloe-eyed sexiness in a cherry-red peasant’s dress, on the other hand, was glaring at Rannaldini as she defiantly flashed soft white thighs and black stockings, held up by one red and one purple garter, at her stodgy lover, Masetto.

  But Helen had only eyes for Rannaldini, bewildered that such energy should come out of such stillness. His hardly moving stick twitched like a cat’s tail. His hair, now raven-black with sweat, was the only evidence of expended energy.

  They were into the moonlit graveyard now. As Giovanni vaulted over the wall to boast of more conquests to a terrified Leporello, Helen thought once again, with the anger of too much champagne, how like Rupert he was.

  Then she gasped in terror as the gaunt grey statue of the Commendatore on his stone horse came to life and to the doom-laden accompaniment of the trombones uttered the first dreadful greeting to the Don.

  ‘Your laughter will be silenced before morning.’

  ‘Who goes there?’ undaunted by any ghost, Giovanni swung his machine-gun round the tombstones.

  As the sepulchral voice rang out again ordering him to leave the dead in peace, Helen’s blood ran even colder. The statue looked so like Malise on his deathbed. Malise had rescued her from Rupert, now he seemed to be warning her from the grave to stay away from Rannaldini.

  But Helen was most unnerved by the lascivious halfsmile on Rannaldini’s face as the handsome young Don, still raging and unrepentant, was finally sucked down into a quicksand of leaping flame.

  ‘A-a-a-h!’

  It was like watching a great aeroplane crash. The Prussian-blue curtains closed like the gates of hell. There was a stunned pause as the audience realized Rannaldini had scrapped the last moralizing chorus. Then followed a deafening roar of applause. As the lights went up and the vast chandelier glittered like a huge thistle overhead, Helen could see the full beauty of the theatre, its soft blues and golds like a sunlit day at sea. But loveliest to Helen were the tier upon tier of ecstatically cheering people.

  Down below the musicians were shaking hands and hugging each other in delight, as the cast trooped onto the stage, elated but slightly bewildered at such an ovation. How pretty the girls were, strong-featured, red-lipped, lusty and displaying such full white breasts as they bent to gather up the carnations raining down.

  Rannaldini got the greatest cheer of all. For a man who’d been conducting for two hours forty minutes, who was black under the eyes and whose suntan had faded, he looked magnificent, smaller than any of the men but dwarfing them with his personality. Donna Elvira and Donna Anna, on either side of him, had kicked off their high heels and the audience cheered even louder as he kissed their hands and then reached out for the hand of Zerlina who was sulking down the row.

  Then the chorus returned and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in Czech and Donna Elvira presented Rannaldini with pink roses and a bust of Mozart.

  Helen was in despair. Surrounded by such youth and vitality, how could he bother with a scraggy wrinkly like herself? Grabbing her bag she frantically applied blusher then jumped as Clive banged on the door.

  ‘Time to congratulate the Maestro.’

  As he led her down into the dingy catacombs behind the stage, she was reminded of Dante’s Inferno, but was reassured by a glimpse of the Commendatore. Having removed his grey make-up and his white wig to reveal a ruddy complexion and wavy yellow hair, he was now putting on bicycle clips and eating a sausage sandwich.

  The conductor’s room was pandemonium. The screaming matches, the fearful bullying had been forgotten in the euphoria of an historic performance. Cast and musicians alike were pouring in to thank Rannaldini, bringing him hastily written cards with their addresses on. Rannaldini, because he could see Helen working her way down the long queue, and he wanted to create an impression of amiability, bothered for once to shake hands with everyone and promised to return as soon as possible.

  Still in his tails, he had only had time to remove his white tie and gardenia. He was burning hot, yet wringing with sweat, as he took Helen in his arms.

  ‘My beautiful child, I ’ave longed for this moment,’ he murmured in English, too fast for the Czechs to understand, then sotto voce to Clive, ‘Get rid of everybody at once.’

  ‘You will come on to our par
ty, won’t you, Maestro?’ pleaded Donna Elvira.

  ‘I bake birthday cake for you,’ whispered Donna Anna, pocketing his discarded gardenia.

  ‘I must have shower, I will see you later,’ said Rannaldini.

  Zerlina said nothing, but her mascara was streaked with tears as Clive frogmarched her without any gentleness down the passage.

  The moment they had gone Rannaldini locked the door.

  ‘That was a most exciting p-p-erformance,’ stammered Helen.

  Rannaldini smiled evilly.

  ‘You wait till later, my angel.’

  Helen blushed. ‘It was far more erotic without nudity.’

  ‘I leesten to you,’ said Rannaldini gravely.

  ‘Oh, if I was some small help,’ Helen was in heaven. ‘And the way you control them all with this tiny stick.’ She picked up his baton, ‘It’s a magic wand.’

  ‘I weesh I could transform thees room into a bower of bliss,’ said Rannaldini fretfully.

  Nothing could have been less seductive than the fluorescent lighting, the ugly brown carpet, the repro desk and hard chair, the fitted cupboards, the pedal dustbin, the fridge and shower behind a dingy beige plastic curtain.

  ‘You should see my room in New York,’ Rannaldini hastily kicked a purple garter under the desk.

  ‘But enduring art, not surroundings, are what matters,’ said Helen earnestly. ‘And thank you so much for this wonderful dress, Roberto, and the flowers, and the caviar and champagne and these beautiful diamonds. But it’s not my birthday.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Cutting short her thanks, Rannaldini lifted the diamonds and slowly kissed her collar bone, caressing it with his tongue until she was squirming with desire.

  ‘I must be the one person in the world who didn’t know it was your birthday,’ she whispered. ‘The only thing I brought you was a first edition of Malise’s book, but it’s at the hotel.’

  ‘That ees the present I want second most in the world,’ said a delighted Rannaldini. ‘Now I feel Malise geeve us his blessing.’ As he gently fingered her ribs, the ball of his thumb was pressing against the underside of her breast.

  ‘The present I want you to geeve me most ees yourself.’

  But, as he moved into the attack, Helen leapt away.

  ‘We can’t, people know we’re in here, you ought to change, you’ll catch your death.’

  Rannaldini deliberated. Many women were desperately turned on by a burning, sweating après-concert body. Helen was probably too fastidious. The elm is a patient tree. Rannaldini got a bottle of white out of the fridge and filled two glasses.

  ‘Will you wait while I have a shower?’

  Embarrassingly aware, a few seconds later, of Rannaldini naked behind the shower curtain, Helen said she would put his roses in water.

  ‘They droop already, unlike me,’ Rannaldini shouted over the gush of water. ‘I am so pleased you are here. Kiri and Placido say the same. Everyone pours in and kisses you, saying how wonderful it was, then they drift away.’

  ‘None of those young women wanted to drift away this evening.’ Helen was unable to keep the edge out of her voice. ‘I am sure everyone felt you should have played the Don. That boy was much too young for the part.’

  ‘The libretto describe Giovanni as a licentious young nobleman,’ protested Rannaldini. ‘I am neither young nor noble.’

  ‘Any moment you are going to be ennobled, Sir Roberto,’ said Helen archly, then as Rannaldini emerged from the shower, his sleek still brown body as smooth as butterscotch, a big white towel slung around his hips, she caught her breath.

  ‘And after Malise,’ she faltered, ‘you seem very, very young to me.’

  ‘That is kind.’ Rannaldini turned back to the basin to clean his teeth.

  ‘As I was saying, people drift away after a concert theenking you have more important people to see, so you go back to your hotel, hyped up, totally alone, and you ring home and say, “The applause went on for fifteen minutes,” and they say, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got this ghastly problem with the deesh washer.”’

  ‘I’d never bother, I mean, genius should never be bothered with problems like that,’ said Helen aghast, totally forgetting how often she moaned to Rupert when he was show-jumping in the old days.

  Rannaldini turned, flashing beautiful clean teeth at her.

  ‘Come here my darling, stop playing games.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go to your birthday party?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ There would be far too many recently pleasured members of the cast wanting repeat feels.

  Sliding into a splendid red silk Turnbull and Asser dressing gown, he picked up the bottle and glasses and sang in a rich baritone:

  ‘You lay your hands in mine, dear

  Softly you’ll whisper, yes

  Tis not so far to go, dear

  Your heart is mine, confess.’

  ‘You sing beautifully,’ sighed Helen, taking his hand.

  ‘Come, let me show you Mozart’s theatre.’

  ‘Where is everyone?’ quavered Helen as he led her up and down steps along pitch-black passages.

  ‘Gone home,’ said Rannaldini, who’d tipped the night porter more than he earned in a year. ‘Wait ’ere, don’t move.’ He let go of her hand.

  Helen was petrified, the darkness was strangling her. Then she heard footsteps.

  ‘Rannaldini?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Don’t play games with me.’

  Suddenly she saw a flicker ahead, oh thank God, Rannaldini was lighting candles. Stumbling forward she gave a piercing shriek as she found herself looking up into the livid face of the Commendatore’s horse.

  ‘Over here. You must not be so jumpy.’ Rannaldini drew her over some cables to where candles were flickering merrily on either side of a vast carved bed hung with turquoise-and-white striped curtains and foaming with white linen sheets and laced pillows.

  ‘Who’s this for?’

  ‘Giovanni chase Zerlina round eet in Act One. Let’s have some moonlight.’ Rannaldini tugged down the moon from Act Two so it shone dimly into the four-poster.

  But as he drew her towards the bed, Helen began to tremble violently.

  ‘Come.’ Rannaldini stooped to pull her dress over her head. ‘It is time for the butterfly to emerge from her chrysalis.’

  Helen burst into tears; it was the same trick she had used to halt the Rake’s progress of Rupert twenty years ago. Rannaldini, too, was all contrition.

  ‘What ees eet, my darling?’

  ‘Malise was just so like the Commendatore. Tonight’s our wedding-anniversary, I feel he was trying to warn me off. All those young women drooling over you this evening. Marcus told me you were dreadfully promiscuous.’

  ‘A good boy to protect his mother,’ said Rannaldini smoothly, vowing to sabotage Marcus’s piano career at the first opportunity.

  ‘And why didn’t you call me for two weeks?’

  Rannaldini sunk to his knees, burying his face in her concave belly.

  ‘Because I knew I was unworthy. You are so lovely you would have stopped both Casanova and Giovanni on their road to ruin. I, too, have been wicked. Oh Helen, save me from the flames.’

  Rannaldini was gratified to feel tears dropping on his forehead. Gotcha!

  Leaping to his feet he pushed her back on to the bed.

  ‘I’m so scared, Rannaldini.’

  ‘Do not be, we play little game.

  Behold, your faithful lover

  Lives for you alone,’

  sang Rannaldini, really straining to reach the top notes.

  ‘Think no longer on that appalling moment.

  Your father and your husband shall I be.

  ‘You felt safe with Malise,’ he went on, ‘because he was both father and lover to you, and made you feel like a little girl. Tonight, let us pretend this little girl has sunk into a decline, because she is so sad. Her family is worried so they invite important doctor from London to see her.�
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  Sitting on the bed, Helen felt a squirming excitement.

  ‘The doctor geeves her medicine,’ Rannaldini raised a glass of wine to Helen’s lips, stroking her hair with his other hand.

  ‘Now she must undress —’ very slowly he drew the brown dress over her head – ‘so the doctor can examine her all over.’

  Gently he began to stroke Helen’s freckled shoulders and arms.

  ‘She is lovely but much too thin.’ Rannaldini peeled off her grey silk petticoat. The next moment her grey silk bra had followed slithering suit.

  ‘Ah, how sweet.’ In delight Rannaldini gently massaged her breasts. ‘How small they are, but the kind doctor will prescribe injections and a diet to make them full and beautiful again. Look how the nipples shoot out like sycamore buds. The leetle patient is very, very excited,’ he went on, ‘but she is frightened, her mother is downstairs and the doctor seem to be taking a leetle too long. Now he has peeled off her very clean knickers.’

  Helen gave a moan of helpless excitement.

  ‘Look at her little bush, like a damp fox, naughty excited leetle girl.’

  Rannaldini’s smile was satanic. The concentration in the heavy-lidded eyes was total. His voice was deep, slow, hypnotic.

  ‘Eef the doctor suggest an operation, he would have to shave her so she is even more like leetle girl.’

  ‘That’s perverted.’ Helen leapt to her feet in agitation.

  But Rannaldini’s great strength pushed her back.

  ‘Every bit of her body must be explored.’ He drew a magnifying glass out from under the pile of pillows. ‘See she has sweet little clitoris, quite beeg enough for pleasure, the doctor stroke it to see ifit is in good working order. And it is, see how easily he slides his fingers in, one finger, now two, good little girl.’

  Helen arched and groaned too excited to care any more, buckling against the relentlessly stabbing fingers, writhing beneath the delicately stroking thumb.

  ‘The doctor is excited, too, he knows with loving he can cure all her seekness.’

  Just for a moment his fingers emerged and trailed downwards.

  ‘Shall the doctor examine his little patient in an even more shaming and private place? She will find it so naughty and exciting, she will beg and beg for more.’