As he reached her, his eyes peered out from beneath the brim of his hat.
Teresa had just begun to breathe again, thinking she was out of danger, when the man’s lips parted and he smiled.
It was the briefest of smiles, a slight curling of the corners of the mouth, pleasant lines carved into lean cheeks. But he showed her—with evident deliberation—his canines. They were brilliantly white in the shadow of the hat brim, and extraordinarily long and pointed. Teresa’s heart faltered, and she fell back against the wall so that the rough bricks caught at her hair.
As he strode past her, his lips folded over those fearsome teeth, hiding them from view. He nodded, and was gone, leaving her panting in horror.
“Why, it’s our little piatto saporito!”
Teresa whirled and found Zdenka Milosch at her shoulder.
The older woman’s lips curled, rather as the man’s had, but the Countess kept her mouth closed as she smiled, and her cheeks barely moved. Her dark eyes had a flat look, as if no light reflected in them. “So, my dear,” she said. “I expect you’re feeling better today.”
Teresa didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until it suddenly hissed in her throat. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the Countess Milosch. “What have you done to me?”
The Countess’s slim shoulders lifted. “Two great gifts,” she said. Her tone and her expression were careless, as if Teresa’s feelings didn’t matter in the least.
“Gifts,” Teresa snapped. “A thirst so terrible someone had to die?”
Zdenka smiled again, and this time, for just a moment, she allowed her teeth to show. They were even longer than the man’s had been, with wicked tips. Teresa’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. She resisted a sudden urge to feel her own teeth with her fingers, to see if they had changed. To stop herself, she crossed her arms, pressing her fingers into her ribs.
“My, my,” Zdenka said. “So fierce.” Her upper lip pulled down again. “But I suppose you must be, to succeed as you have at such a young age. To impress Mozart, and da Ponte.”
“My voice impresses Mozart,” Teresa said.
Again, the negligent shrug. “Perhaps,” the Countess said. “But it may be your figure, after all.” Her eyes shifted to the vista of the sun, as if she were growing bored with the conversation. “I think your voice is a little thin, myself. A voce bianca, they call it, don’t they? A white voice.”
Teresa’s cheeks burned with sudden resentment. It was just what the director at La Scala sometimes complained of, that her range was marvelous, but her voice was white. Again, Teresa demanded, “What have you done to me, Countess Milosch?”
The Countess’s eyes came to back to hers. A sort of cool amusement lifted the corners of her mouth, though her eyes were still opaque. “Signorina.” She dipped thin white fingers into the small string purse that hung at her waist and brought out an exquisite little mirror with initials chased on its silver case. “Look.” She held the mirror up to Teresa’s face.
Despite herself, Teresa looked into the mirror. She saw her own familiar features, her cheeks flushed with anger, but her eyes sparkling with energy and life.
“You are lovely,” the Countess said, as casually as if she were commenting on the weather. “There is good reason for them to call you the tasty little dish. And imagine, my dear.” She smiled again, that close-lipped, protective smile. “You will look just like this for a very, very long time.”
Teresa looked away from her reflection and into the Countess’s cold eyes. “What do you mean?” she whispered, suddenly as chilled as she had been hot a moment before. “A long time?”
Zdenka chuckled, a sound as devoid of mirth as a sob might have been. “Unlike most people, you now have control over life—and death.”
“You—you know what happened last night.”
“I’ve been expecting it.”
“How? How could you know?”
Zdenka gave an impatient sigh, closed the mirror with a click, and tucked it into her bag. “It’s been ten days since the premiere,” she said shortly. “Since you were so fortunate as to share the bite with Mozart. It was time.”
“And why did you—you sent this man to—”
“You’ll learn all of this,” Zdenka said, gathering her skirts up and turning toward the street. “But next time, please don’t leave your rubbish for someone else to pick up.”
She stepped off the sidewalk, but Teresa followed her. “He was a man,” she said weakly.
Zdenka started across the street, but she spoke over her shoulder. “Precisely. Merely a human. He was insignificant in life, and we certainly don’t want him acquiring significance in death.”
She was gone a moment later, striding away with a strong step, her skirts swirling with the speed of her passage. Teresa stood in the middle of the street, staring after her. Zdenka had spoken of two gifts, but had neglected to tell her about the second.
Teresa wandered through the Old Town Square, bemused and shaken. The lovely buildings of Prague were dim behind the images that still filled her vision: the man lying so still in the corridor of the theater, the bloodstains on her mouth, the ruined dress—and Zdenka Milosch’s long, sharp teeth. Around her traffic increased, with carriages and handcarts rattling over the cobbled streets, vendors crying their wares, and the bells from the cathedral ringing out across the river.
Those bells sent a chill through Teresa’s body. She stopped, hardly knowing where her feet had carried her, and looked up.
She found herself standing before the soaring white façade of St. Nicholas Church. The morning sun gleamed on its sculpted towers, and the bells were ringing, calling the faithful to morning Mass. People passed Teresa, smiling, nodding to her as they made their way into the church.
With a pang, Teresa realized she had not been to Mass in weeks. She suddenly longed for the anonymity of the confessional screen, and the reward afterward of Holy Communion. She would savor the taste of the dry, sweet wafer on her tongue. Surely a sip of sacramental wine would wash away the taint of blood in her mouth. And in the familiar rituals before the altar, she could find herself again, think this through, find the reason for what had happened.
She picked up her skirts and hurried up the stone steps.
Delicate stucco carvings graced the interior of St. Nicholas. Its walls bore deeply colored frescoes, and sunlight slanted through a great oculus Dei to gleam on the marble floors and statues. Teresa looked about for the font and hurried toward it, reaching out to dip her fingers, to bless herself.
When her fingertips touched the holy water, she gasped so loudly that people nearby turned to see what was wrong.
Teresa pulled back her hand and thrust it under her opposite arm. She wanted to suck on her burned fingers, but she didn’t dare. She backed away a step and watched with growing dismay as an elderly woman in a black scarf dipped her fingers and crossed herself, followed by a middle-aged woman wrapped in a knitted shawl, and then a man in a frock coat. A youth with un-powdered hair curling over his high collar touched the water with his fingers, crossed himself, and genuflected.
None of them cried out or winced away from the touch of the blessed water. But it had scalded Teresa’s fingertips.
She took another backward step and bumped into someone. She couldn’t pull herself together enough to apologize, but whirled to blunder back toward the square, heedless of the little crowd of people trying to come in through the doors. She stumbled over the lintel, and then stood outside on the steps in the bright sunshine. Now she did put her fingers in her mouth to soothe them, while tears coursed down her cheeks. Her tears were warm against her cold skin, but they were not so hot as the water in the font had been. It had neither steamed nor bubbled, but it had burned her as surely as if she had put her hand into a boiling pot.
On the next night of Don Giovanni, Teresa arrived early at the Nostitz Theater. She checked that her costumes were in order, that her props were in their proper place, before she wen
t down the cramped corridor to the conductor’s dressing room. She knocked, and when there was no answer, she opened the door and slipped into the darkened space.
It was hardly more than a closet. A powdered wig hung on the high back of a wooden chair, glowing faintly in the darkness. Her ghostly reflection shone in a dim mirror. She bent toward it and lifted her upper lip to inspect her teeth. There was something bothering her about her teeth, although she felt certain they looked no different. She ran her finger across them, measuring them, wondering. Was the tip of her right canine perhaps a little sharper than it had been yesterday? She took her finger away and turned from the mirror.
A frock coat hung from a hook beside the door. Teresa put out her hand and stroked it, imagining it invested with Mozart’s warmth.
An image suddenly rose before her eyes, as clear as if she were looking at a painting. She snatched her hand back, but the image did not fade. She saw Constanze, plump and petite, brushing the frock coat, scolding gently as she worked the brush over the sleeves and skirts, turning to shake her forefinger at…at Mozart.
Teresa blinked, and shook her head. What nonsense was this? Why should she have Constanze in her mind’s eye, as if she had in reality seen Mozart’s wife brushing his coat, upbraiding him for some offense? It was as if she had been there, when of course she had not.
Her heart thumped in her ears, and she leaned against the wall, wondering what was happening to her. It was not the first time she had imagined a memory that was not her own. In the past days, she had remembered a letter from Leopold Mozart, though she had never met him. She had imagined that she remembered a concert, an organist playing some composition of Bach, a concert and a piece she had never heard. And now Mozart’s wife…
She heard voices rise in the corridor, the singers arriving, the stagehands cursing and laughing together, the dressers chattering among themselves. Teresa stood very still, twining her fingers tightly together. She heard him coming, his voice calling out to someone about a violin part, and then a complaint about a cadence in the overture. He didn’t sound like himself, she thought, but perhaps she imagined that because she no longer felt like herself.
They had shared the bite, Zdenka said. Two great gifts.
The door opened, and he came in with a little rush of cold air. He closed it behind him and bent to put a match to the candle. When it flared, he straightened, pulled off his overcoat, and turned to the hook beside the door.
He saw her and froze.
Swiftly, she breathed, “Maestro. I have to speak with you!”
They were so close she could feel the heat of his body and smell the scent of bay rum on his cheeks. For a moment she thought he might order her out of the dressing room. His dark eyes looked fierce and hard. But as he put up a hand to run it through his already tousled hair, she saw that they were neither. They were brilliant, as if with fever. Or with fear.
“What do you want?” he said hoarsely. “I have to think of the performance.”
“So do I,” she said, with a spark of resentment. “But I need to know what has happened to us!”
He dropped his hand, and stared at her. “Us?” he said, so softly that if she had not been watching his face, she could not have been certain he spoke the word.
She stared back at him. “We can’t avoid it, sir,” she said. “Something has happened, and we need to understand it.”
He turned abruptly away from her and picked up the wig. “I have to change.”
“Herr Mozart,” she said, in a sharp tone. She saw his back stiffen, but he didn’t turn back to face her. “Wolfgang,” she said more gently. “Have you been thirsty?”
A silence stretched in the cramped room. She heard him breathe, in, out, in, out. When he swung round at last, his features were etched with misery. His full lips, those lips she longed to kiss again, trembled. “I went across the river in the middle of the night,” he said. “To an inn just by St. Vitus. My throat burned so, and I thought—I thought a glass of beer might—” He dropped his eyes.
Teresa said, “Who was it, Wolfgang?”
His eyes fixed on the floor. “I don’t know. A woman. A whore.”
“Did she die?”
He managed a hollow chuckle, a pale specter of his usual merry laughter. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes, I do think she died.”
“And did you—did you leave her there?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t—I don’t—understand anything! She came up to me in an alley behind the cathedral, and I just—I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” Teresa said quietly. She put her hand on his arm and felt him trembling.
He blurted, suddenly speaking quickly, “It was—it was like the Commendatore in scene one, lying on the stage as still and empty as an old sack. It always gives me chills, the Commendatore lying there dead while everyone sings over his head. And now I think, I fear, that I will end up like Giovanni, sucked down into hell to live with the devil!”
Teresa gripped his arm with her fingers. “Stop,” she said firmly. “Stop it, Wolfgang. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t mine. The Countess made this happen.”
A knock at the door made them both jump. “Fifteen minutes, Maestro,” someone called.
Mozart’s eyes flew to the door, and then up to Teresa’s face, pleading, helpless.
“Answer,” she whispered.
“Ja,” Mozart croaked. “Danke.”
“I spoke to her,” Teresa said in an undertone. “To Countess Milosch. She said there were two great gifts.”
“Gifts!” Mozart spat. “Curses.”
“She said I wouldn’t age,” Teresa said hastily. “At least not for a long time.” She had to hurry, she knew. She could barely dress and get into makeup in fifteen minutes. “Do you know what the second one is?”
Mozart began to shrug out of his street coat. “Tell me,” he said. His voice was bitter. “Did you live beside the water? Was your mother a singer?”
It was Teresa’s turn to stare. Shocked, she managed to say, “Yes. I’m from Limone, a village on Lake Garda.”
“Ja,” Mozart snapped. He pulled on the powdered wig and adjusted it with his fingers, tucking the long curls of his own hair under its net base. “Ja, I remember that.”
“You can’t remember. I never told you.”
Mozart pulled the frock coat off its hook and put it on. “Nein, you never told me. But since that night, I remember it just the same.” He pulled at his lapels and fluffed the dangling locks of the wig over his shoulders. His eyes had gone bleak. “I know your father cried when you left home. I know your house was full of people the night your mother died.”
Teresa sagged back against the wall, one hand to her throat. “Gran Dio,” she breathed.
“Or diavolo.” He put his hand on the latch of the door. “I don’t want your memories, Teresa. My own are more than I can bear.”
“It isn’t my fault, Wolfgang.”
“No. But it is no gift to me.”
He didn’t look at her again. He opened the door and stalked out, leaving the door ajar behind him. Teresa followed, turning toward her own dressing room, heart-bruised and shocked.
And still, despite everything, her mind turned toward the opera ahead.
Caterina Bondini and Caterina Micelli, the Elvira and Zerlina, were already fully made up. They paced the end of the dressing room, vocalizing, and both eyed Teresa suspiciously. She hurried to strip off her street dress and begin powdering her cheeks and her throat. She hummed as she did her eyes and her lips, and began to run her scales as she tugged on the towering edifice of her wig. When the five-minute call came, she jumped up and began tying on her petticoat. Signora Bondini, with a reproachful twist of her lips, went to the door to call a dresser to help her with her stays and panniers. When the first strains of the overture sounded, Teresa pulled away from the dresser, though the top buttons of her bodice were not yet fastened, and hurried toward the stage.
She had not had enough tim
e to warm up. Usually she vocalized for twenty minutes before even coming to the theater, and sang for another twenty after her makeup was finished and her costume secure. And this rôle, with its fearsome intervals and rapid coloratura, had always meant extra time to prepare her voice.
A flutter of nerves quivered under her breastbone as she took her place for the opening scene. She had not felt so nervous since that first day on the stage in Milano. She wondered if there was any voice in her throat at all.
The opening bars sounded, and Leporello began his complaint about the hardships of serving his master Don Giovanni. Teresa stood beside Luigi Bassi, ready to make the entrance for the opening trio. As she came into the lights of the stage, she began to sing:
“Non sperar, se non m’uccidi,
Ch’io ti lasci fuggir mai…”
Her voice had never felt so flexible, so strong. She dragged at the Don while he tried to hide his face. She swore he would have to kill her to get away without being exposed, while he sang his avowal that she would never discover his name, and Leporello laughed at the commotion.
When the trio came to its end and Teresa ran offstage, she felt a wave of relief. She knew she had sung well. She had felt no stiffness in her voice, no dryness in her tone. She waited eagerly by the set machinery for her next entrance.
Antonio Baglioni, the Don Ottavio, appeared at her side just as the music for their entrance sounded. Teresa ran ahead of him to the stage to lament over the body of her fallen father, the poor Commendatore. She began her song of blood and death:
“Quel sangue…quella piaga…”
As she gripped Baglioni’s arm, she saw him wince under the fierce strength of her fingers. At that moment the memory of Mozart writing the music appeared in her mind. She had a jarring feeling of recognition, of puzzle pieces falling into place, so that she couldn’t understand how she had not seen it before. She saw the notes on the page, as she always had, but she also felt, in her being, the shape of the music as he had intended it. The curve of the phrases crystallized. The meaning of the swells and diminuendi deepened. She sang on.
Mozart’s Blood Page 15
