by Rex Baron
“Where did you get this piece of information? I've never heard anything like it,” Lucy asked a bit surprised.
“A book, I suppose. I read all sorts of things.”
“Evidently.”
“I only thought, since you were so accomplished in music, that you might have heard it... the sound I mean, in the cathedrals. Most people can't actually hear it, but I thought you might,” the younger woman enquired earnestly.
Lucy shook her head. She applied makeup to her face in silence, sorry that she had disappointed the girl, wondering to herself how she had fallen short.
Chosen among women, her mother's words came back to her, but this was obviously one gift that she had not been given. She had told her dresser, Miss Auriel, that their solitary lives had much in common. She knew, better than anyone, what part of life she had sacrificed for her singing, and what experiences she had never known. She had never been on what one referred to these days as a date. At any rate, there had been no gentlemen callers to come courting or even to accompany her on a bicycle ride or a walk. She had virtually no “young” friends, only business colleagues and interested patrons who might ask her to dine with them or sponsor a benefit to showcase her talents. But in her entire young life, she, like the birdlike little Miss Auriel, had not done much that was exciting or fun. She had traveled extensively and seen much of Europe, but it was always from within the confinement of a hotel dining room or backstage at a theater. She had never been free to wander the streets or explore the cafes and nightspots with others her age. That was why she cut her hair, to exercise the only small freedom she could, and to remind herself that she was still young.
She finished dressing and sat down on the divan, leaving the headpiece covered in pearls on the wig stand until they called her first cue.
This was not a performance, but merely an interview for the press, an excuse to have a photographer present amidst the noisy hubbub, more suited to a carnival than the opera. Yet, the Americans seemed to love such divertissement, and Lucy felt she could not deny her impresario his publicity.
David stepped into a small spotlight and gestured with his arm to the edge of the stage.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, what you have all been waiting for,” he said with quiet triumph in his voice. “Let me introduce Miss Margarit von Dorfen, or Lucy, as she is affectionately known by all of us and her many fans.”
A second spotlight illuminated a space on the stage. Lucy stood frozen in a long and languishing pose, swathed in a length of white chiffon held at the throat by a collar of elaborate gold. The cap of pearls on her head trailed down in strands and attached to her wrists by jeweled cuffs. She stepped forward, surrounded by applause and the questioning began.
David slipped into the wings as Lucy answered one predetermined question after another. He lit a cigarette and watched. He felt a hand slip around from behind him, working its way toward his breast pocket. It was Molly. He took her by the wrist and turned around sharply.
“Well you might have offered me one,” she said sulkily. “Since you didn't, I thought I'd just have to get it myself.”
“An entirely inappropriate idea I'm afraid, and hardly the time or place for one of your little offerings of affection, as charming as they may be.”
“I just wanted you to realize how grateful I am for the opportunity to design the costumes for your next opera. If you keep your word on that, I'll have every reason to think you will help me set up my design house as promised.”
She tried to run her hand along the front of his lapel, but his annoyed fingers grabbed it and moved it discreetly away.
“You will find that in spite of everything, I am a man of my word,” he said sternly. “And although I often dabble in deceit, like with you my dear, I never lie and can always be taken for what I say.”
“Then you do love me?” she whispered.
“I don't believe those words have ever crossed my lips. I care for you and your needs, and quite possibly even about you, but I never said I loved you.”
Molly pulled away abruptly.
“Oh don't mistake me,” David continued coolly. “It's not to your discredit that I say this, but because I'm incapable of such an emotion.” He laughed. “Many believe that the emotion you call love comes in the same parcel when one is given good looks or genius, but it's hardly the case. Often talent is awarded at a great price, and so I fear, it is with me. I have relinquished the luxury of petty emotions for...”
Molly broke into David's soliloquy. “I've heard this speech before, when a man is disinclined to leave his wife,” she said angrily.
“I'm sure you have. But then again, I've made myself clear, being a man of my word, that I have no intention of leaving my wife. We amuse each other, you and I, and provide each other with certain romantic necessities. You provide me with a physical distraction and I supply you with money. What could be simpler?”
•••
When Lucy returned to the apartment, Celia was out. It was a small relief to be able to dress for an evening out, without being under the watchful eye of the older woman. There had been a tension between them of late, not only the disapproval of her interest in the occult, but something more, a general coldness, sometimes giving way to a glimpse of contempt.
She had often caught Celia staring at her from across the room with a hurt expression on her face and a hardness about the mouth, unsettling enough for her to have asked what the trouble was. Celia would invariably lighten up and go back to her magazine, insisting that she was merely daydreaming.
Lucy decided that the welcoming arms of her American patrons were weary from reaching out, and it was time to think about changing her living situation.
She filled the bathtub and looked forward to a long soak. She slipped into the warm water and let her head fall back against a small bath cushion. Without realizing it she drifted into sleep.
The water turned cold. She was floating in a shapeless black void with the night sky separated from the depth of water only by the sound of the waves lapping gently on its surface. She was clinging to a table, no a cabinet, floating in the blackness. At first she was unable to see anything, then she could almost perceive lights in the distance. They were small boats, filled with people wrapped in blankets, like the people in the photographs from the Titanic.
She called to them, but they were all singing and did not hear her. When she turned her attention back to the cabinet, she found it had grown larger, and her mother and grandmother along with several other women all clung to the same unlikely raft.
Her hands slipped on the wet surface and she slid under the waves. Fighting for breath, she shot to the surface to find her companions barely touching the buoyant wooden cabinet that kept them afloat. A cool and eerie colored light seemed to radiate from underneath, slowly engulfing them, outlining each silhouette against the darkness of the sea and sky with a halo of purest white.
Her grandmother smiled at her, and although she did not speak, communicated that they must go. The entire company rose effortlessly out of the water, like a host of angels and stood for an instant, poised on its icy surface, before ascending into the blackness above. Her mother held out her hand to Lucy, inviting her to join them. Lucy struggled against the weight of the cabinet, clawing at its surface to try and raise herself up. Her hands kept slipping. Her fingernails broke with the fury of her attempts.
“I can't,” she screamed. “I don't know how. You never showed me how.”
Her mother's angelic face placidly turned to join the flight of the others and ascended overhead until her glowing presence had disappeared, mingling with the countless stars in the night sky.
“Help me,” Lucy screamed. “I can't do it on my own.”
Her fingers ached from struggling to hold on, but she could not. Her hands skidded down the slick surface and she plunged into the cold water. She felt her lungs fill with icy pain as she screamed for them to return.
Lucy coughed out the water in her mouth. She had slipped down in the tub while she slept.
“I could have drowned taking a bath,” she said aloud, still shaking from the horror of her dream. The absurdity of the idea made her laugh, yet , she was angry and frightened, remembering the dream. It was too clear to be an ordinary dream. It was one of the other kind, filled with symbols and truths.
The truth was that her mother and grandmother and all the other women in her family had the gifts of the Kraft. They were truly chosen among women, but she was not.
When she was at an age that her singing voice had been discovered, Lucy was called into an audience with her grandmother. She was given the choice of a life dedicated to developing her worldly talent or to join with the other noble women of her bloodline in pursuing the ancient wisdom of the “Kraft.” Lucy stared down at the tip of her patent leather shoes, not understanding the ramifications of what she was asked.
She remembered that she had wanted to sing because it always gave her father such pleasure. He would pick her up and swing her in his arms, holding her tight. Then, he would demand a song as ransom for her release. At that decisive moment, when her grandmother asked, she chose to sing.
“Very well then,” the elder had said, rising from her chair, a clear signal that the interview was over. “The theater is far too public a life, held up to constant scrutiny,” she had said. They could not risk being discovered. For this reason, Lucy would not be taken into the sisterhood of the Kraft.
In spite of Lucy's protest, her mother had nodded silently and that had been the end of it. She had never learned the “ways” from her grandmother, and yet, she had always known the powers were there inside her. There had been dreams that showed her what was in the minds of others, or those that foretold the future. At first they were harmless, the dreams of children, a preview of a Christmas toy or a glimpse of a conversation. At age nine, she foresaw the death of her father in a stable fire.
She had told no one of the dream, and yet, within a month it happened, just as she had seen it. She stood at the nursery window and watched the flames casting a glow against the summer sky as she clapped her hands to her ears to close out the screams of the burning horses.
Her father had been her greatest fan and her champion against the women in her family who wanted her to choose the other path. She chose him because she loved him... and then he died. But, by then it was too late, and there was no going back. She was not permitted to choose again, so she was left in a solitary world of music, isolated from the rest of the world, as she practiced. She developed her lovely voice by painstaking study, and felt abandoned by her mother and the Chosen women, who had cast her out and left her alone.
But the power was still her birthright. Perhaps it was for all women of all time, the energy of the goddess that society had carefully cloaked in weakness, corseting the flow of energy through once powerful limbs, clouding the purposeful mind with etiquette and conventions. Her worldly gift of singing had denied her the other gift, this birthright, the mysteries of the black book wrapped in white cloth and the unseen rituals behind the closed door of the lunarium. She was destined to spend long hours vocalizing, behind her own closed door, while her grandmother lay in what she called her healing sleep.
The leader of the Chosen would lie in her bedroom for days on end, without food, undisturbed by any in the household, then would awaken refreshed and excited, as if returning from a holiday. She would sit at breakfast and speak of far away places and people. Lucy's mother would inquire after the health of some person or other and laugh at recounted conversations as if hearing the news from a great journey.
Sometimes Lucy would sneak into the bedroom to see the pale old woman laid out on her satin bed covers, motionless and placid, as in death. Her breathing was imperceptible and left no sign of life when held up to a mirror. Lucy would sit for hours watching, imagining that the chest rose and fell, waiting for some vestige of life, the slightest movement, a hint of existence, but there was none.
The girl would secretly handle the special objects of metal and glass and wood carefully placed about the room, innocently mingled with those of no importance. She would hold each one, trying to deduce its meaning. Sometimes it was a rod of wood, or a glass animal, a unicorn or a lion from the animal collection arranged on the shelves. Sometimes it was a tiny bell or a metal figure made from an alloy of copper, mercury, silver, or any of the seven metals that corresponded to the planets in the solar system.
Like her, these innocent objects also waited silently for some signal from the old woman. On a special equinox night, a festival day, or in time of need, her grandmother would collect them from all over the house and retreat into her lunarium. Lucy knew there was a strength within each object that she too could unleash, if she were only given the knowledge.
These things she knew from her early days before her instruction had stopped. She knew that objects representing the four elements, or the four winds, or the four Archangels, or any number of mathematical formulae possessing magical properties, lay about the room disguised as a simple statuette, or a bowl filled with rose water, or a decorative six-pointed star.
Only the painted mural over the bed, dominated by an oversized representation of the full moon, drew questionable attention to itself. It was painted with silver paint that seemed to glow with a whitish luminescence as twilight fell, altering the seemingly innocent objects of the room, calling forth their true purpose as their time of darkness and power drew near.
Lucy would never remain in the bedroom as the light faded. An ominous horned figure would appear stretched out across the carpet, a shadow created from the bedposts, but complete and threatening as it grew in the waning light.
She wanted to shake her grandmother to bring her back, to tell her that she wanted to learn, to belong. But she dared not. She remembered stealing up to the bedside and softly touching the old woman's wrinkled lips with her own. The mouth was cold. There was no one there.
Lucy got out of her bath and wrapped herself in a towel as she hummed to herself an ancient tune with words that she had learned in a childhood rhyme.
Born in the bowels of the hills,
Evil ones, sower of ills.
Setters of unseen snares
Deaf to all pity, all prayers.
Male they are not
Female they are not.
No wives have they known
No children begot.
The fiends they are seven
Disturbers of heaven.
They are seven, they are seven- seven they are.
She went to bed, deciding to forego the frivolity of an evening out. She wanted to try her own healing sleep, to mend the frayed nerves and clear her head of these morbid thoughts.
CHAPTER NINE
1921 New York
Lucy was awakened in the morning by the telephone. It was Paulo. He told her that he would be leaving in a day or two, and asked if she might meet him for a morning ride on the Bridle Path in Central Park. Lucy pulled on her jodhpurs and a bright colored sweater, and hurried to meet him at the stables by nine o’clock.
She did not even have to tell the taxi driver where she was going. He took one look at her high shiny black boots and drove her straight to the park’s Bridle Path entrance, where Paulo stood waiting with two chestnut mares.
They rode for a quarter-hour in silence. Paulo was dressed all in white and seemed somber in spite of his friendly smiles and flashing eyes.
Lucy found the quietness and tree-filled wildness of the park strange, in sharp contrast to the mountainous concrete buildings that bordered them on every side. Still, the pine needles covering the floor of the forest and the morning light on the dirt road had within them some small elements of a familiar landscape in Germany, on the other side of the world both in time and space.
Paulo dismounted and led his horse to the side of the trail. Lucy followed, tying her horse's bridle to the limb of a maple tree,
then settled herself on a fallen trunk that partially obstructed the way. She dug in the mud with a stick.
“I've been meaning to ask you,” she said, “what you think of all the publicity we two seem to have attracted of late?”
“What publicity?” Paulo asked without looking at her.
“You know perfectly well what publicity. If you don't, you don't read any of the papers. It links us, you and I together.”
Paulo hesitated. “Of course I know of this. It's only that I thought you might be offended by the presumption of it. I did not know what to say to you. I was afraid you would become angry and pull away. I should not like for that to happen.”
Lucy jammed the stick firmly into the ground.
“I shouldn't like that either. I do wish they would stop and just leave us alone.”
“Oh, you mustn't say that,” Paulo turned to her abruptly, his face animated. “The press is the life's blood of the theater, at least my sort of theater anyway. It is what makes a career.”
“You sound like David on the subject of publicity.” Lucy sighed. “How did you come to know David?” she asked. “It's always interesting how different people come to meet.”
“You mean that you are surprised that David and I are at all acquainted. We are not at all alike.”
Lucy did not answer.
“He and I belong to a club here in the city. It is meant to be a club for sport, but the men... they only gather to drink and talk. It would be considered common and vulgar to actually engage in a game. So I seldom go there. My English is not as good as it should be and I...” He stopped himself, redirecting where the conversation was taking them. He did not want to appear weak or stupid. “At any rate, David is just the sort of man who belongs in a club like that. He can make everyone laugh. They all seem to like him quite a lot.”
