Die Upon a Kiss

by Barbara Hambly

  So perhaps the Parisians hadn’t so much to boast of after all.

  The pit, by contrast, was a shoulder-to-shoulder mob, men and women both, the smell of them thick in the air: wool too seldom washed, bear-grease pomade, sweat, spit tobacco. Trappers in buckskin elbowed trades-men in corduroy and shopgirls in flowered calicoes. Women edged among them, selling pralines, oranges, gingerbread, lemonade. Above the third tier of boxes, where the rising heat from the gasoliers collected under the ceiling, the gallery was aswim with faces, pale on the right side, dark on the left, and spotted with bright tignons like blossoms lost in shadow. An occasional, broken pea-nut hull would drift down, catching the gaslight like errant snow. The rougher patois of slaves mingled with rough English, rough Spanish, rough French. Happy voices, anticipatory laughter.

  They were here to be pleased, thought January. And why not? Beauty like this was like walking in a garden of roses. If the songs had been sung in French, or in English for that matter, half these people would still only follow the action, marvel at the beauty of the sets and the ballet between acts. They came to hear music, to see love and kisses. . . .

  A black man’s kisses, on a white woman’s lips?

  Was that it? he wondered. Whoever wrote that heart-shaking music, it was Belaggio who was insisting on having Othello performed next month. Was it really Incantobelli, maddened with this final insult, who was taking out his fury and spite on the company, on the production itself?

  Or was there someone in one of those boxes—or in the gloom at the back of the gallery, where the white flicker of the auditorium’s gasoliers didn’t reach—or somewhere in the maze of catwalks among the flats and flies and the corridors and stairs leading to boxes, galleries, dressing-rooms, prop-vaults—waiting with a rifle? It wouldn’t be difficult to smuggle such a thing into the theater, despite James Caldwell’s stricture on the inhabitants of the pit leaving their weaponry at the door. If I wanted to stop Othello being performed, thought January, it’s what I’d do.

  Shoot Belaggio in the one place—the conductor’s stand—where he can’t run away.

  Or, if I didn’t want to chance being convicted of shooting a white man, warn him: shoot one of the orchestra, with the implication, You’re next.

  Not a comforting thought.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” The flames on the gasoliers dimmed, the footlights brightened behind their wall of tin reflectors as Mr. Russell worked the valves of the gas-table in the wings. Resplendent in evening dress, James Caldwell stepped through the curtain with uplifted hands. “Welcome to the first season of the New Orleans Opera at the American Theater.”

  Someone spit tobacco against the dark drapery that concealed the orchestra from the pit. Someone else, by the smell of it, started peeling an orange. Here near the footlights the stink of the burning gas nearly drowned out other odors, and the heat was like being trapped in a crowded room too near the hearth. Around him, January heard the rustle of music being ranged on desks, the scrape of chairs. Candles like stars. Hannibal’s stifled cough.

  Murder and mayhem, and Marguerite cold and still—maybe dying . . . Hate like a malevolent ghost watching from the shadows . . .

  Still, there was no moment quite like this.

  “I believe we can promise you the finest performances, the most beautiful spectacles, the best and greatest singers this city has ever seen. Tonight the season will open with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. . . .”

  “I wanna kiss the bride!” trumpeted a voice from the pit.

  “Friday night we will present The Mute Girl of Portici, a stirring drama of love and liberty. . . .”

  Fitzhugh Trulove leapt to his feet and applauded madly, nearly falling over the rail of his stage-side box. To judge by her expression, Anne Trulove was considering pushing him. Caldwell beamed. January thought about John Davis opening the same opera on the following night at his own theater to half-filled boxes and a pocketful of debts.

  “. . . La Dame Blanche, followed by Rossini’s master-piece Cinderella. Then we will have a new opera, the United States premiere of Lorenzo Belaggio’s Othello, a most masterful tragedy based upon the work of Mr. William Shakespeare, and the season will conclude with von Weber’s astounding work The Magical Marksman.”

  More applause. Just what we need, thought January: someone on-stage with a rifle. In the Viellard box, Chloë St. Chinian fanned herself, looking bored. Henri cast a glance up at the latticed boxes opposite and above, reflected footlights making hard gold squares of the lenses of his spectacles, a fireburst of the stickpin in his cravat.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Marriage of Figaro!”

  “Betcha Figaro’s been waitin’ harder’n us!”

  Had Drusilla d’Isola not spent most of the afternoon vomiting, January supposed she might have sung better— but probably not very much. He’d heard her in rehearsal.

  Still, she was on-stage, chalky beneath her make-up and operating, as many artists can, strictly on learned technique: a gesture, an angle of the head, a flourish on the end of a cabaletta, an ornamental trill. Automatic responses, like a well-bred hostess trading commonplaces with morning-visitors while planning the menu for next week’s dinner for twelve. The simpler popular songs, if somewhat mispronounced, required nothing in the way of skill and were easily within her range.

  At least she didn’t forget her lines, though she came close to doing so in the third act. She opened the desk-drawer to get out paper and pen for the Letter Duet— January’s favorite piece of the show—and gagged, stammered, jerked her hand back. . . .

  Somebody put something in the drawer, thought January, between annoyance and resignation. The favorite was a dead rat, though in other performances of Nozze he’d also encountered a live rat, the biggest spider obtainable by the diva’s rival, and any number of obscene drawings designed to reduce the heroine to blushes, giggles, or aphasia at the start of this critical piece. At the Paris Odéon once, a rival had tried to introduce a turd into the drawer, but the smell had tipped off the stage-hands, resulting in a great deal of ribald speculation backstage.

  Whatever was in the drawer, d’Isola simply closed it, took a much smaller scrap from the top of the desk, and settled down with her pen. She certainly sang no worse for it. Though it would be difficult, reflected January sadly, for her to sing worse than she already was.

  Montero would have been ten times better.

  But it didn’t matter. D’Isola was exquisite, the music was beautiful, and though the wealthy patrons in the boxes (and quite a few of the slaves in the gallery, who had seen enough opera to tell good from mediocre) might sniff, the pit was ravished. Thunderous applause greeted Susanna’s musical duels with Almaviva and his scheming minions; whoops and hollers encouraged Cherubino’s leap from the balcony; boos and hisses excoriated the lustful Count’s advances. The scantly-draped ballet performed between acts and, in greater strength, in Acts Three and Four to yells of approval and delight— “Cherry-Cheeked Patty” notwithstanding—and everyone had a marvelous time.

  Only afterward did January learn what was in the drawer.

  Mr. Trulove had spoken no more than the truth about the promised feast. Cold ham, champagne, foie gras, and pastries loaded down the trestle table that had been set up in the green room. Early strawberries and hothouse grapes blazed like jewels. A second table provided cakes and lemonade for the musicians. It was an arrangement January had encountered in Europe on those occasions at which the boxholders’ associations deigned to include the musicians at all. The difference in America was that a third table, pushed up against the footslopes of Vesuvius, provided gaufres, fruit, and oysters for the white members of the stage crew, and for the little rats, most of whom had access to the green room anyway at the invitation of various gentlemen whose friendships they’d secured in their days in town.

  Not that it mattered, of course. The green room was so small, and the Members and Cast collation so ostentatiously
splendid, the principals’ table filled most of the limited space and those who had sought to preserve their exclusivity were quickly driven out into the backstage among the riffraff in order to eat without crashing elbows.

  “. . . A splendid choice,” Trulove enthused, extricating himself from the press and casting an ardent glance at Oona Flaherty, her mouth full of strawberries and pâté. “Since dance is truly the universal language, freed of all concerns about French or Italian, I cannot imagine a better or more expressive work to perform. . . .”

  “But surely controversial?” Trulove’s wife, holding close to his side, raised her pale brows. “There were riots when La Muette was first performed in Brussels. . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t think we need worry ourselves over that.” Caldwell cleared his throat uncomfortably, aware of being on equivocal ground. “America is a democracy, after all. The sentiments expressed—Masaniello’s courageous battle for liberty from the Spanish oppressors—should strike a chord of sympathy. If you look at the struggles for liberty in New Grenada, in Bolivia and Brazil and in Mexico, to free themselves from the tyranny of Spain . . .”

  “As if the average American even knows of Mexico’s liberty,” muttered Cavallo—fortunately in Italian—to Herr Smith.

  Marsan, who appeared to have sent away his women-folk as soon as the final curtain rang down, stood beside the green-room door until the press had eased somewhat and the danger of spilling something on his sable waistcoat had receded. Only then did he fetch lemonade, a vol-au-vent, and a morsel of pâté to carry to La d’Isola, who still looked waxy and ill. Belaggio, rather than abandon his position in Madame Redfern’s orbit, merely steered the soprano around so that he stood between her and Marsan.

  “You look pale, querida,” crooned Madame Montero, gowned—or almost gowned—in a dress strongly reminiscent of the décolleté in Paris in the days of the Directorate. “Perhaps you’d feel better if you sat down?” She indicated the Almavivas’ drawing-room sofa, about thirty feet away in the shadows.

  “She’s well where she is,” snapped Belaggio, tightening his grip on d’Isola’s elbow and glaring at the hovering Marsan.

  And La d’Isola whispered, “I’m well where I am.”

  “If women dueled, I’d put my money on them rather than into the pool for a Davis-Belaggio match.” Hannibal propped himself discreetly at January’s side and poured laudanum into his punch. “Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received / From him that fled some strange indignity / Which patience could not pass. . . .”

  “I think we’ve seen the opening round.” During the romping in the Almaviva garden in Act Four, the villainess Marcellina had showed a distressing tendency to trip and fall whenever she got anywhere near the chorus of shepherds and milkmaids, once executing a full-out pratfall on her posterior and another time plunging headlong into the shrubbery, to the joyful howls and whistles of the pit. If looks could maim, Bruno Ponte would have been carried off the stage on a plank. “If that’s what’s going on.”

  Twice during the performance January had glimpsed the lanky shadow of Abishag Shaw, once at the rail of one of the empty boxes, looking down into the pit, and once in the demi-porte that led from the orchestra to the backstage. Olympe had told him earlier that Shaw had visited her house on Rue Douane but had not questioned the dressings wrapped close around Marguerite’s bruised throat. It was as possible, January supposed, that a potential killer could have deliberately run a woman down in a carriage as it was that he’d lured her into the dark of the cipriere and strangled her. In any case, Shaw seemed disposed to take seriously the threat of further mayhem.

  “. . . so much prettier,” Mrs. Redfern declared in her hard, over-loud voice, and sipped her negus. In the white-touched black of second mourning she resembled nothing so much as a jeweler’s display stand, the little square red hands in their lace mitts flashing with diamond fire. “Of course I can’t understand a word they’re singing either way. Why, I never knew Mr. Mozart wrote, ‘Soft as the Falling Dews of Night’! It’s my favorite tune! Is there any chance Miss d’Isola could sing it again in the next opera?”

  “But of course! The very thing!” Belaggio smiled warmly down at the widow. He’d resumed his black silk arm-sling for the performance, and winced in agony whenever he moved his arm and remembered to do so. “If I may say so, I have always been struck by your keen judgment of artistic matters. Davis—well, I will not say anything of his jealousy, nor his malice toward me. I am large-minded enough to deal with whatever small peril there may be. But I think his hatred stems from his realization that the Italian style is so much more beautiful than the French.” He gestured grandly with his glass of champagne. “Mr. Caldwell and I can present what is new, what is fresh. . . .”

  “New is one thing.” Mrs. Redfern nodded judiciously, her little square mouth pursed. “And yet, I feel I must speak to you tonight, sir, regarding this new opera you announced—this Othello ?” And she held out her hand, into which Caldwell hastily placed the green-bound libretto. “I hardly like to speak of the matter, sir, but I feel in all honesty that I must. Surely you are not going to put this on the stage?”

  Dr. Ker, the slim, gray-haired Head Surgeon at Charity Hospital, opened his mouth in protest, but young Harry Fry hastened to step in with “I couldn’t agree more. Othello is a most unsuitable choice. Not a subject at all that is pleasant for the fair sex.” And he bowed deeply to Mrs. Redfern as if she were the only woman in the room, and the only one he’d ever seen in his life.

  Mrs. Redfern drew herself up with the air of one prepared to fight for her prejudices, but without a breath or a blink, Belaggio cried as one suddenly enlightened, “È vero, you are right! I said myself to Signor Caldwell, I said, I have my doubts about this opera. . . .” He took the libretto, held it folded against his chest. “Did I not, Signor Caldwell? Most unsuitable to present to ladies?”

  “Eh?” Caldwell caught one glance from the Widow Redfern and nodded vigorously. “And I agreed with you on that, sir.” He took charge of the offending text. Tapping the green leather binding with one forefinger, he went on oratorically. “What is right for a European audience is sometimes lost on—or completely inappropriate for—the new-forged civilization of America. It is exactly what I was considering myself, only do you know, I never put it as succinctly as you have, Madame.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Dr. Ker. “What on earth is wrong with Othello? It’s one of the great tragedies of literature, one of the great tales of love and jealousy—”

  “I did not find it so,” replied Mrs. Redfern. “Merely an unpleasant tale of a savage behaving disgracefully. Now, if Mr. Othello were perhaps—well—made to be a European gentleman, it would not only be more realistic, but more tolerable.”

  “It is Shakespeare!” cried Ker, horrified, as Belaggio opened his mouth to consent to this last-minute revision. “You can’t rewrite Shakespeare!”

  “Might I suggest Mr. Bellini’s The Sleepwalker?” Caldwell plucked another glass of negus from the table to replace the empty one in Mrs. Redfern’s hand. “Much simpler, don’t you agree, Signor Belaggio?”

  “It would not be difficult to re-write,” argued Belaggio, at the same time shifting Drusilla d’Isola around so that she was on the inside of the group rather than the outside, where Marsan was idling over toward them. “Since the bella Signora wishes it, I could do it in a matter of a few days merely. . . .”

  But as a former actor, Caldwell had his limits. “Best we simply substitute the one for the other, don’t you think?” he said, and Ker, exasperated, flung up his hands. “The other is, as you said, Madame, of an unpleasant nature. . . .”

  “The Sleepwalker is new,” agreed Belaggio. “I believe Signor Cavallo has sung Elvino before. My lovely d’Isola”—here he tugged her gently to the fore, her face gray and strained in the harsh light—“can learn the part of the lovely Amina to perfection, can you not, bellissima?”

  The girl tore her gaze from Marsan’s, smiled tr
emulously as Belaggio repeated the question in Italian, replied, “Of course. Of a certainty.” She tried to tug away in the direction of the couch, but Belaggio’s grip was relentless.

  “. . . Sleepwalker might not be quite right.” Ludmilla Burton detached herself from the lively discussion of servants with the Granvilles and came over with her ears almost visibly pricked like a gun-dog’s. “It just struck me that another of Mr. Bellini’s excellent works might be performed, that wonderful Roman opera, Norma? The one about the two druidesses in love with the Roman soldier? I realize you don’t have children in your company, Mr. Belaggio, but it so happens that my niece Ursula—a more beautiful child you’ll never see—has the most exquisite voice. She and her sister Violet have both been praised for their adorable ways in the private theatricals we hold every Christmas. I’m sure that they would be perfect as the two little girls. . . .”

  “I’ll bet they can sing ‘Cherry-Cheeked Patty,’ too,” murmured Hannibal, as Mrs. Redfern loudly proclaimed her desire to see druidesses and Belaggio began eager inquiries as to how many of his principals had appeared in provincial performances of one of the most staggering operas ever written. “So much for a man risking death for the sake of his art.” He added another dollop of laudanum to the dregs of his punch-cup. “Rather like seeing Esmeralda hop into Claude Frollo’s bed for the price of a glass of beer, isn’t it?”

  “I give up.” January set down his empty plate. He felt suddenly drained, exhausted by the events of the past six hours and as disgusted with his own earlier emotions as a man who discovers his love-poems being used for curling-papers. “Let Belaggio be murdered. Let them put on whatever they want and stick as many Grand Marches and choruses of ‘Bonny Dundee’ as they want into it. Beauty and integrity and courage and liberty are obviously none of my business. I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow at rehearsal.”