As Klara gazed into his intense and penetrating gray eyes, the coldly precise mask her patron had always worn seemed to mellow in a way which made her deeply uneasy. Although she was physically innocent, she was no longer unsophisticated. No one had had the temerity to approach her at the opera house, but during the last two years she'd had ample opportunity to observe divas at the game of love, playing off husbands, noble patrons, and lovers.
In the next moment her benefactor had seized her hand, and, in a gallant rush, kissed it. What a strange feeling swept through her, as, for the first time ever, that silver head lowered itself humbly. It was as if the world had suddenly turned upside down! How many times in the last five years had she gone to her knees before him to kiss the rings upon that extended, powerful hand? How many times had she thanked him from the bottom of her heart for all his generosity?
"It was partly your most beautiful voice, Nightingale," Maximilian said. The words were soft; the salutation intimate. “And partly…." A muscular arm came to enclose her slender waist, to draw her close, "because I have for years been wishing to experiment with the notion that the most satisfactory mistress of all will be a young woman who has been tenderly raised for the position."
He pulled her into his lap and kissed her, on the lips, and man to woman. She had not resisted, had not known how to resist, what speedily followed. The Count was vastly experienced, and although the hair beneath his elegant wig had was cropped short and gray, his body, hard and trim with long bouts of real soldiering, pressed against her young body with ardor.
"Sir," she'd gasped when he let her mouth go, "please, sir, this is not right."
Klara had been frightened and surprised, but she had also been schooled to absolute obedience. So, in spite of a thousand warnings from the Sisters chanting in her head, there were powerful counter forces at work. Her patron's long, powerful jaw and blue eyes mirrored the faces of the Habsburg emperors whose heads adorned every coin she'd ever seen. He was of the bluest blood. He was her master! Were there not stories in holy writ about lords exercising this right over their female servants – and with God's blessing?
Oettingen had picked her up, as easily as if she were a doll, and had carried her out of the great room decorated with stag's heads into a small windowless antechamber, the door to which lay hidden behind a tapestry. The face of the liveried valet who pulled back the curtain so that his master and the slight young burden he carried could pass through was like a blind man's, unseeing, expressionless.
It was in this secret room, already prepared with the glow of candles, all reflecting in mirrored tiles, upon a silken bed, where all of Klara's senses were first seared by the cold fire of her count's experience. Her lips whispered ‘no’ but from the first skillful passages of his hands, her young body, hungry for experience, had begun to betray her. Maximilian, sure of his ultimate victory, had approached his goal slowly, imaginatively, using all his expertise. Klara had been pushed from intimacy to intimacy, until, with luxurious finality, Maximilian's strong, hard body had claimed the ultimate favor.
She'd wept afterwards, for although this first experience had been carefully orchestrated, there throbbed a confused understanding that love was a gift freely given, not a treasure which could be stolen! Dimly understood, painfully felt, her body and heart had been forced, for the first time ever, apart. Oh, Max had given a long lesson in pleasure, such as only a practiced sensualist can give, but even as Klara's body responded, her heart had remained quite still.
"Damned nuns." Max had held her tenderly against his broad chest and stroked her wealth of loose auburn hair. "I didn't get you away from them quite soon enough, did I?"
"Oh, sir Count….”
"At this moment I am not your master, little one. In fact, I shall now commit the supreme folly of telling you that it is quite the other way round. 'Max' will do when we are in bed." Tenderly, he’d tilted her chin. "Please don't cry! And don't worry about anything, either. I swear upon my honor that no matter what happens in this ugly and capricious world of ours, I mean to always take perfect care of you, my beautiful Maria Klara."
"This is mortal sin!" She’d sobbed the words.
"The sin," he'd responded, his proud face as grave and humble as she'd ever seen it, "I claim here and now as mine. You are only a little white ewe lamb who has gone where she was led. Besides, it may be a sin in the eyes of the priests, but experience of this kind of love is a requirement of your art. A virgin would never be able to discover the emotion that is required to sing the great arias. And I," he continued, his gray eyes fierce, "intend to have the joy of hearing you sing all of them."
There were other occasions in the next three weeks in which he took her to bed. With the same thorough attention he had given to other aspects of her education, he'd taught her about pleasure. Then he'd gone with his troops to battles with the Turks and had stayed away for almost six months. Klara remained in the townhouse going to lessons just as if she were still the same girl as before, although it was during this time that she was offered her first solo roles. In fact, a great triumph came to her in Maximilian's absence. The old Empress honored her by allowing Klara to kiss her cheek and then commented sentimentally upon her beauty in the presence of the assembled court. After that high mark of imperial favor, Klara's fortune was made. Every impresario the Court employed begged the talented beauty to sing for him.
Klara was still called upon to perform privately for the Oettingen family. Feeling terribly guilty and frightened, she'd sung at house-parties given by her lover's wife. One great ball at which she performed in front of the assembled nobility celebrated the marriage of one of Maximilian's daughters, a tall blonde who had her father's cold gray eyes, a girl who was younger than Klara.
Although she was awarded a good salary at the opera house, more money than she had ever dreamed of earning, Maximilian continued as her advisor. He saw that she took the greater part of her new wealth and put it with a banker. He himself took drove her to the haughtiest dressmakers and jewelers.
"Always use restraint, Klara." Oettingen waved away a brilliant red satin that the shopkeeper had offered. "Too much and too gaudy is for noblewomen who have more money than taste or for courtesans. Remember that neither your beautiful body nor your beautiful voice will last forever. What will you do if you have spent all you earn on trinkets? It's easy to get used to comfort, my dear, and a wretched business to give it up."
In those early days she'd imagined she was in love with him. After all, she must be! How else could she experience such pleasure in his embrace? She worried when the Empress repeatedly dispatched him to the eternal border wars. Impatiently, she awaited his return from military duties, or from long visits to his country estates.
Once she expressed jealousy of his wife when he had just returned from several months in the country. Max had laughed at her. "It has been awhile since there was much love lost there! Perhaps, little one, when I'm in the country it isn't my wife of whom you should be jealous."
She'd looked puzzled and Max, an ironic look in his eye, hadn't hesitated to explain. "My peasants always seem to have a pretty daughter or two, just grown to the right age. I must say those fellows understand how to offer their lord hospitality."
Klara, cut to the quick, had leapt out of bed they'd been sharing.
"Blessed Holy Mother! Why – why! You're no better than a heathen Turk!"
"All men are Turks, little one." Max had come after her, laughing. "Were you imagining something else?"
"And is that what I am? A diversion while you are in Vienna?"
"Not at all, Klara!" He'd chuckled, capturing her in his big hands. Although she'd struggled, tried to slap him, he'd unceremoniously carried her back to his bed. "You and those peasant girls have a certain sweet thing in common, but your talent sets you apart. Why, every connoisseur in Vienna is wild with envy that such a treasure belongs to me."
It was the first time she'd ever attempted to deny him. Even though Max was a big m
an, powerful enough to force her, not even on this night when she had been so humiliated did he have to resort to that. Max's force, Klara realized bitterly when she was alone again, was more sophisticated, a kind which did not leave bruises.
The grinding formality of their relations in public was often humiliating too. For all her successes at the opera, she was a dependant, a servant, one who could be summoned to play the harpsichord or to sing at the snap of his, or his wife's, fingers.
The only others who knew the secret was her woman servant, Liese, and the Count's personal valet, both of whom maintained a tomb-like silence. Still, somehow, his wife found out. During one of her husband's absences, her servants came and ejected Klara from the townhouse.
"But where shall I go?" She’d pleaded with the imperious man who'd pushed her out the door into the snow.
"To the nearest whorehouse, where you belong!” He gave Liese the scornful kick he didn't quite dare to bestow upon Klara.
When the Count's bailiff found out what had happened and came to her rescue a few days later, he discovered Klara ensconced in a modest few rooms in a respectable building which her banker owned. She'd appealed to him, and with her saved money and Liese's help, she had set up housekeeping. Saying nothing to anyone about what had gone on, she held her head high and had kept up her performing schedule.
After all was said and done, Klara was reimbursed for the clothes and jewels which the Countess had spitefully removed. Something, however, was lost which could not be replaced, her reputation. Overnight the eyes of men grew bold. The aristocratic rakes who hung around the opera house were the first to step forward.
"Drop the old man! The blind fool didn't even think far enough ahead to protect you from his Countess!"
"To go with you? You who are at the feet of a new lady as soon as the last one's belly shows?" By this time Klara knew their ways all too well.
And it was not only the rakes young and old, but musicians, other singers and orchestra members who now looked at her differently. Here, she soon understood, was where the real danger lay. Mutual admiration among comrades in a shared discipline, comrades who also worshipped the Divinity of Music, could be a powerful aphrodisiac.
Klara stayed in her modest apartment, among furnishings and a few servants, the kind suited to a bourgeois existence even after the Count's return. After a little argument, he’d acquiesced to her desire to be, at least apparently, independent of him.
Still, Maximilian suspected what must happen as soon as he allowed his caged bird a little more freedom. During his next prolonged absence, Klara fell in love for the first time. Her idol was a young Italian, a talented tenor, whose glorious voice had sent him in one leap from chorus to hero. That winter Klara and Giovanni sang the parts of lovers, ridden the always thrilling skyrocket of success together. It wasn't long before Klara believed she was in love with him.
Overflowing with self-confidence, black-eyed and darkly handsome, Giovanni Lugiati filled her heart and mind for the better part of a whirlwind three months. She prepared herself to tell her patron that she and Giovanni were to be wed, had happily been thinking ahead to a glorious future of shared music and love, when one day she woke up to discover that during the night her lover had precipitously left for Milan.
***
"I thought Giovanni and I would marry and leave Vienna," Klara whispered against Akos’ cheek, "but then, Max came back."
One morning, when she'd gone joyously to see Giovanni, his landlady met her at the door, saying he'd decamped in the middle of the night, leaving no forwarding address. An hour later, while she was lying prostrate upon her bed in a pool of tears, Max had come marching in.
"All this over a florin a dozen Italian tenor!” He sat down beside her and roughly turned her over, pushing the ruddy dark hair from her face.
Of course, that had been provocation sufficient to rouse. Maximilian let her slap him once, then he'd simply engulfed her little hand in his big one.
"Basta! Enough! And I really don't deserve it!"
"Oh yes you do! You have driven my darling Giovanni away!"
"Yes. Aside from the fact that you are mine, a small fact which you seem to have forgotten, that arrogant brown cockerel was a disaster, not half good enough for my Maria Klara!"
"I don't love you. I know that now. You are the vilest kind of aristocrat! One who has used his power to force himself upon a helpless dependent! You've done your worst, now let me go! I'm not your slave! I shall follow Giovanni."
"You and I, Maria Klara, will be done with each other when I say so and not a moment sooner." The Count was entirely calm, as if his words were sweet reason. "As for your Italian cockerel, well, some day you will thank me for running him off. What do you know of men, little bird? Jealous of your freedom, your voice, that prancing fool would have filled you with baby after baby, out of a weak need to assure himself he owned you. He would have destroyed your talent. "
"Dreck!" Klara screamed, spitting. "Dreck! Dreck! Dreck!"
She’d stared up into those cold, considering eyes and watched, mesmerized, as her contempt dripped from his proud hawk's face.
"The sad truth is that forty ducats and the promise of a primo role in Milan was all it took to get rid of Giovanni Lugiati, Klara," Max had said, getting out a handkerchief to wipe his face. "All things considered, I'm wondering if I’ve let him off too lightly." His pale eyes, which she'd seen full of desire as he moved passionately above her, seemed as cold as the frozen Danube, as cruel as those of his favorite falcon.
"Sir," she'd whispered, heart in her throat, "please, oh please, do not hurt Giovanni."
"I did not have to hurt him, Klara. I confess that I longed to crush his throat … I confess that I told him that I would do exactly that, but Signor Lugiati's greed and good sense prevented such wanton destruction of what even I must admit is a lovely instrument. I wish you could have seen how quickly and gratefully Bellisimo Giovanni Lugiati took the forty ducats and my letter of recommendation to Count Pallavicini in Milan."
When she began to sob bitterly, the Count released her.
"Imagine," Klara sobbed, "when you took me away from Saint Cecelia’s I thought I was so lucky, that my life was to be a fairy tale! What would the good Mother Superior have thought if she had known that you only meant to make me your whore?"
"Ridiculous! You can't really believe that. Why, even with your talent, don't you realize that without me you'd still be in the chorus?" He’d tried to stroke her, but she had furiously pushed his hand away. "Never mind," he grumbled, humbly accepting her rebuff. "You'll soon forget the greasy fool."
"I'll never forget my darling Giovanni and and his love. You may force me, but you will never again be able to compel my affection."
"Proud words, but still so naïve." Max had suddenly smiled, so fierce and knowing, that Klara had thrown herself at him again in redoubled rage. Without much trouble he caught her wrists and tossed her back down upon the bed.
"Let me suggest," he said, getting to his feet and assuming the calm attitude of a schoolmaster giving a lesson, "that you do not yet understand your own warm female nature. What happened is that I was gone for too long and the strutting fool dared to caress you. Cosi fan tutte! Women are not called the weaker sex for nothing. My only prayer is that you be spared any lasting memento of this foolish and dangerous escapade."
"I hope I am carrying his child." She’d not bothered to deny that she'd given herself to Giovanni. "I pray that I am! All of Vienna will laugh at you and will know that for a moment a slave tasted freedom."
"Some dreck of your own, sweetheart." Max was dismissive. He turned on his heel and strode to the door, shaking his gray head wearily. "You have absolutely no idea of the hell you are wishing upon yourself."
Klara had raised her head, feeling only satisfaction. Something she'd said had finally hurt him!
"Once and for all, both presumptuous musicians and young rakes alike have been put on notice that Prima Donna Silber is firmly in
the protection of Maximilian von Oettingen."
"By the Blessed Mother, I shall not be your slave forever. I swear it."
Max stopped at the door, one powerful hand resting on the high door latch, gazing back at her.
"The day will come when I will relinquish you to whatever fate devises," he replied evenly, as if this, too, were an outcome he would control. "But, Klara, haven't your teachers explained that words should be chosen precisely? You are not my slave. A more perfect metaphor would be that of a little brown nightingale kept in a fine and luxurious cage for her own good."
"Your pet!"
"My sweet, sweet songbird." Tenderness, for the first time in this encounter, entered his voice. "My beautiful and wonderfully talented Nightingale."
When she began to weep hopelessly he’d said, "Now listen to me, Maria Klara and listen well! I charge you to always remember, I am the one who holds the key to your cage."
Klara, raising a tear-stained face, caught a glimpse of something Max had certainly had not wanted her to see. The cruel self-confidence of his words did not match his expression. He seemed drained, for the first time ever in her eyes, like an old man.
***
"When he took me from Saint Cecilia's, I thought I might be a love child of his." Klara could feel confession coming, a torrential wave pouring from her soul. For the last hour she had been trying to swallow the past and its attendant sorrow back, but it was like a huge lump she couldn't close her throat around. Besides, his eyes seemed to demand nothing less than honesty.
"Count Oettingen?"
"Yes, but I’ve since learned that he he always has a singer." Miserably Klara raised the towel and blew her nose. "He had me educated like a lady, gave me the finest teachers. He opened the door for me at the Court theater, and I thought he was the kindest man in the world – I loved him like a good father! And then he, then he….”
Akos nodded, his eyes darkening with sympathy.
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