Dr. Miracle, followed by Crespel, exits into the wings with his bottles clanking. Chaliapin’s evil expression disappears and he resumes his normal face. “Your turn to go out and howl a bit,” he tells Herma as he brushes past her.
Hoffmann is alone on the stage. “To sing no more!” he laments. “Alas! how can I obtain from her such a sacrifice?”
On “sacrifice” Herma pushes the curtain aside and comes out into the glare of the footlights with a sad little smile. “Well! What did my father say?”
But he will tell her nothing; only begs her not to sing. “Later you will know all … love beckons us both!”
Vladi takes her hand. There is a little twist in his smile—a private irony for her, for Herma and not for Antonia. Isn’t this ridiculous, the smile says. Antonia promises Hoffmann to sing no more. They part; Hoffmann exits to the left, and the bothersome Dr. Miracle enters again from the right and steals up behind her. He has weighty things to say, in his sinister and measured basso.
“You will sing no more? Do you know what sacrifice
you are imposing on your youth?
Have you measured it?
Grace, beauty, talent, a sacred gift,
all these goods that Heaven has shared with you,
will you now flee from them
into the shadow …?”
Herma feels all at once the little hollow place in her chest. Almost a panic. She recovers quickly and tells Miracle to go about his business. But this is his business; to tempt her into song and destroy her. He stretches an arm and points at the portrait on the wall. “Listen!”
Out of the corner of her eye Herma can see Maggie Teyte, in the wings, standing before a kind of mahogany sounding box intended to give her voice an eerie and ghostlike effect. This contrivance is mounted on a scaffold to reach to the height of her mouth. Since she is a little shorter than the average soprano, however, she has to stand almost on tiptoe to sing into it. “Antonia!” she intones.
ANTONIA: “O Heavens!”
MIRACLE: “Listen!”
VOICE: “Antonia!”
ANTONIA: “O God! My mother! my mother!”
And the trio begins. Herma sings to the portrait, Teyte sings into the wooden box. Antonia grows constantly more hysterical. Miracle urges and eggs her on.
ANTONIA: “Ah! c’est ma mère, c’est elle!
Son âme m’appelle!”
MIRACLE: “C’est sa voix, l’entends-tu!
Sa voix, meilleure conseillère,
qui te legue un talent que le monde a perdu!”
VOICE: “Antonia!”
The music mounts, mounts, and with it the emotion. It is as though Antonia and her mother were winding up a tapered hill of Purgatory, on separate paths but entwined together, with the basso following two octaves below. Now is the time for the little valve; the tears well forth.
VOICE: “Chère enfant! que j’appelle
comme autrefois,
e’est ta mère, c’est elle!
Entends sa voix!”
MIRACLE: “Écoute!”
ANTONIA: “Son âme, son âme m’appelle!
Ma mère! ma mère! ma mère!”
The trio continues its fatal ascent. Beginning with a B natural in the middle of the register, it climbs, falls back, climbs again, the daughter’s voice urged constantly higher by the mother’s, both encouraged by Miracle who gets out his violin and begins playing madly, up and up, past the high C sharp which is the top for most sopranos and on into the region of rarefied air, of nothingness, where only the violin can follow and even the mother is left behind—toward that final piercing E natural, that gathering to a last strained point of the larynx, that is Death.
Chaliapin has stalked after her this way now for three acts: first as Coppelius, then as Dapertutto, now as Dr. Miracle. She still doesn’t care for him. He is feline, slinky, in spite of his massive chest and the great low voice that shakes the floorboards: a lion. Sing! sing! sing again! he snarls in a low C sharp at the dying Antonia. And then, singing, she remembers: it wasn’t Papa who was the basso in Santa Ana, it was Dr. Violet. And he clanked the same way, with his pockets full of medical instruments. No Dr. Violet can save Antonia; it is that other sinister physician, Dr. Miracle, who drives her relentlessly into the shadow.
Crespel hangs anxiously over her. “C’est ma mère, ma mère qui m’appelle!” she sings to him in a voice still piercingly high but wasted away now to a thread. It is almost the end for Antonia. Hoffmann rushes in followed by Nicklausse. She falls onto the couch, her arm dangling. There is silence, then the moving soft strains of the trio begin again from the orchestra. This resolves, through a miracle of harmony as simple and natural as it is unexpected, into the love duet of Hoffmann and Antonia. Lying on the couch with her eyes fixed on Hoffmann, she sings it in mezza voce, breaking out into full voice only on that magnificent single note, with its long tremolo, on the last word.
“Triste ou folle …
Ah—C’est une chanson d’amour!”
She closes her eyes. As from a great distance she hears Crespel singing his grief, Hoffmann calling for a doctor, Miracle appearing with a mocking cry of “Présent!” and lifting her lifeless wrist, and Hoffmann’s final anguished cry of “Antonia …!” The orchestra crashes out the finale. There is a moment of silence, then a great roar of applause from the audience. The pink glow through her closed eyelids grows dim; the curtain has fallen.
She gets up quickly and takes Vladi’s hand. The stage is suddenly full of people behind the closed curtain. The stage manager is just at one side. “Hoffmann and Antonia first!” he calls out.
The chorus master holds the curtain apart, and Herma slips out onto the forestage pulling Vladi after her. The roar of clapping rises to a din. Smiling, she and Vladi bow, and turn left and right. Then, still hand in hand, they retreat behind the curtain again.
“Nicklausse and Miracle!”
Teyte and Chaliapin go out. The clapping rises a little, but not as much as for Herma and Vladi. There are a few bravos, but no bravas. Even though Teyte is a prima donna in London, tonight she is only Nicklausse and nobody notices her. Probably only a few in the audience know that she sang the voice of the portrait. Chaliapin pulls her back in, smiling broadly.
“Everybody out! All principals!”
They go out in a line, hand in hand: Chaliapin, Teyte, Vladi, Herma, and the Crespel whose name she can never remember. And an unexpected thing happens that shakes Herma at the center of her viscera, like a low note from a basso. The long roar of applause continues, but as she herself passes out through the curtain it rises to a bellow like that of a great animal, to subside again as Crespel comes out behind her and they stand in a line, smiling over the footlights.
“Bravo!” “Brava!” “Bravi tutti!”
After a minute or more of this they retreat. The applause continues. Prom the other side of the curtain a chant begins, gradually rising until it is clearly audible over the general rattle of clapping.
“Her! ma!”
“Her! ma!”
“Her! ma!”
“Her! ma!”
“Her! ma!”
The stage manager looks around, locates Herma, and stretches out his arm to her. Nodding, he beckons with his uplifted hand. The curtain is held open again, and she slips out before the sea of white faces, black dinner jackets, and pastel gowns of the ladies. A jewel somewhere up in the boxes catches the light and sparkles. Turning to the left, she notices again the quiet person occupying the box in the second tier—the Persian Prince with his short black beard and dark eyes. His fur coat is like Dr. Miracle’s, it now occurs to her, except that he is not sinister, only odd and a little fané, as though he were not well. The others in his box are clapping but he is not; he is simply watching with his penetrating expression that somehow has a faint touch of amusement about it. He is looking at her—not at Antonia, but at Herma. He turns to say something to the person next to him, and Herma looks away.
A b
ouquet sails up over the footlights to land on the stage, and then another. There are more bravas. Some of them are shouting “Brava L’Erma!” When Fred hired the claque he could at least have found some who knew how to pronounce an H. After the third and fourth bouquet the Niagara of the applause begins to diminish a little.
“Bien. C’est fini,” says the low voice of the stage manager behind her. Still smiling and bowing, she retreats back through the held-open curtain. Chaliapin is making a “Whew!” gesture and rubbing his face. Vladi, as they move away into the shadows of the wings, clasps her neck and kisses her on the cheek.
A few voices out in the theater are still calling “Herma!” but the applause has almost stopped. Herma goes down the iron spiral staircase to the corridor leading to the dressing rooms. Just before the door of her room she encounters Maggie Teyte in the corridor. They exchange a long look. Then Teyte says in English, simply, and without the least trace of malice, “You did beautifully on the trio, my dear.”
Herma pushes in through the door of her dressing room. It is jammed full of people. Lloiseaux is there, smiling. He pats her on the head as though she were a child. There are porters carrying flowers, her dresser, the makeup girl, people from the chorus who want to hug her. The cork comes out of a champagne bottle with a pop. Lloiseaux holds out a bubbling glass to her. She shakes her head. All this goes on for five minutes or so.
“Everybody out of here,” says Lloiseaux. “Let her change.”
He goes out, carrying the bottle of champagne in one hand and his glass in the other. The others follow him out. Even one of the porters has procured a glass of champagne and is carrying it with him as he goes out the door.
It is suddenly quiet. She sits before the mirror while the dresser pulls off her Antonia wig. Teyte, it now occurs to her, congratulated her on the trio but said nothing about the Tourterelle song, which is her own specialty. An invisible little thrust of the needle. Still, she behaved with perfect correctness. Watching as the dresser fluffs out her short hair, Herma thinks, that is what it is to be a professional.
4.
And so it happened. She did it, the thing that everyone said couldn’t be done. And they had chanted her name—her name—until she had to go out alone and take that last long curtain call. Trampling the others underfoot, trampling over Maggie Teyte, she stood on top of the heap. “My name is Herma and I am going to be an opera star,” she had told Madame Modjeska. And what was it like? Was she different, somehow, now that it had happened? What she felt at the moment was only a little twinge of regret. There would never be another evening like this one, she knew. She might do things that were bigger and better, there might be even more curtain calls and more flowers, but this one evening could never take place again. It was tonight that it had happened—and after tonight there would be—tomorrow and … other evenings. It was better not to think about time too much. It made you unhappy, it was even a little frightening. Madame Moellendorf … Her thoughts strayed, then trailed away entirely until she didn’t think at all.
There was a knock on the door. The dresser went on working on her hair. Herma said, “Entrez.”
The door opened. A smiling olive-faced young man appeared.
“In the words of the Prologo in I Pagliacci, ‘Si puo?’ Excuse me. I am no baritone …”
She looked around, then turned back to her mirror.
“You’re Reynaldo Hahn.”
“Ah, you know me?”
“You’re the music critic of the Figaro, I believe.”
He made a mock face of disappointment. “I write for several papers. But in my pride I like to believe I am a musician and composer.”
She turned and examined him more carefully. He had a neat mustache and a small clipped beard. He was elegantly clad except that he was wearing a kind of velvet smoking jacket instead of evening dress. He held a cigarette which he nervously put to his lips now and then. She recognized him now as one of the four men who had been in the box of the Persian Prince. He had been sitting to the rear, behind the old gentleman with the mane of white hair, and she hadn’t been able to make him out clearly from the stage. But at close range she had recognized him immediately. He was a familiar figure in Maxim’s and the cafés around the Opéra quarter, and his appearance was unmistakable—he was handsome but not conventionally so. There was something dark and Mediterranean about him—quick dramatic gestures, a slightly flamboyant manner—perhaps he was Spanish or Italian.
“How did you get in?”
“I have a pass from Monsieur Meyner.”
He smiled again at this and puffed his cigarette. He seemed perfectly at ease in the dressing room. He settled into a chair and crossed his legs. Obviously he was enjoying himself.
“If you want to write your review, there’s no point in your watching the dresser comb my hair. You might as well go back to the Figaro and write it.”
“Ah! But it’s not for that.”
“What’s it for then?”
“It’s on account of Marcel.”
“Marcel?”
“You don’t know who Marcel is?”
Without turning from the mirror she said, “No.” But she had already guessed it was the Persian Prince.
This too delighted him. He seemed pleased at every turn of the conversation. “Ah. Fantastic! Here you are, you live in Paris and you are a prima donna of the Opéra, and you don’t know who Marcel is. Well, you must come down and meet him. That’s what I’ve come for.”
The dresser had finished her hair now. Herma began removing her makeup with a towel and a little cold cream.
“Why doesn’t he come here?”
“Well, he doesn’t do that sort of thing, you see. For one thing he can’t climb stairs.” Hahn took a puff at his cigarette. “Anyhow it’s not his custom to come to dressing rooms,” he went on. “He’s waiting in the car.”
“The car?”
“Yes. It’s perfectly innocent. The car is parked in rue Scribe and Marcel is waiting in it.”
This was an odd arrangement. Herma went on working with the towel, wiping carefully along her brow near the hairline, while she thought. “If he’s so unwell why does he come to operas?”
“Oh, so many questions.” He pawed the air with his free hand. He had a number of slightly effeminate gestures. “They will all be answered of themselves, if you’ll only come down. How soon will you be finished?”
“Aren’t you impatient though.” She finished her face and began applying lip rouge with a little brush, removing all but a trace afterward with the towel. “Perhaps he’ll kidnap me and take me to his seraglio in Persia.”
Hahn wrinkled his brow, still smiling. “Persia?”
It seemed like a very indiscreet sort of escapade. She had no idea who any of these people were, except that Hahn was said to lead a rather free life.
“Who was the elderly gentleman who was in the box with you?”
“Who? Oh, that was just Gaby.”
This was getting her nowhere. On impulse she said, “Go on out and shut the door, and I’ll put a dress on.”
“Triumph!” He threw his cigarette onto the floor, crushed it with his immaculate patent-leather slipper, and went out.
Perhaps they would kidnap her into a seraglio, Herma thought, But the old gentleman would serve as duenna, and Hahn seemed more reckless and insouciant than sinister. And it would do no harm (the Fred inside her whispered) to become better acquainted with the Figaro critic. She put on a Vionnet gown, a long affair in gray moiré that ended just above her ankles, and threw a cloak around her shoulders. No scent—a faint hint of Fabergé still clung in the gown.
“Mademoiselle’s bag,” the dresser reminded her. “And—ah.” She added a pearl choker around Herma’s neck, and a bracelet with a single pearl dangling from it to match. “Have a pleasant evening, Mademoiselle.”
“Do you know who Marcel is?”
“No, Mademoiselle.”
With a last fleeting glance at the mirror she went
out.
The car waiting in rue Scribe was an old Hispano-Suiza tourer, royal blue in color and fitted with window screens even though it was a mild evening. Hahn opened the door on the sidewalk side. Nothing could be seen in the darkness inside the car. “It’s Marcel and Gaby. All perfectly innocent,” he said, still apparently pondering the remark about the seraglio.
Herma got in. The Persian Prince in his fur coat smiled wanly at her. She sat next to him, and Hahn and the old gentleman were installed on the jump seats facing to the rear. The chauffeur in the front seat had evidently been the fourth person in the box. He was a dark, rather plump young man with a pleasant manner. They were an odd lot of people. Herma had imagined that she was to sit in the car for a few moments while the Persian Prince talked to her. But the chauffeur started the motor and drew away along rue Scribe. The car circled around the place de L’Opéra and turned off it into rue de la Paix. No one said anything. Finally the Persian Prince, almost invisible in the darkness, said quietly, “It was nice of you to come.”
Herma sat rather stiffly, watching the hotels and shops go by behind the transparent and slightly wavy window screen. Across from her Hahn lit another cigarette. The car had polished brass handles and fittings, and it was upholstered in gray glove leather. She now recognized the old gentleman with the mane of white hair. It was Gabriel Fauré. She had seen his picture in L’lllustration. Surely nothing unseemly would happen in the presence of an eminent composer. The street widened out into place Vendôme. The car drew up in front of the Ritz and stopped.
Herma Page 49
