Nightingale

by Juliet Waldron

  "Hush, angel. Why shouldn't loving you be everything? It's all I want to do, now, or ever. Oh, don't cry, my Klara! Love shall conquer All, I know it."

  They embraced, there in the dim room. Nearby, they could hear a swell of voices, the Prince’s guests. Slowly, Klara grew calmer, here in the strong arms of her love. Soon, a clavier began to play, a song that danced and rippled like a bright wind across the serene face of a summer lake.

  "Mozart!" In spite of their fear, they began to listen, arms around each other. The opening allegro was so filled with joy that they began to feel hope in spite of themselves. Almassy’s hand gently traced the outline of Klara's cheek, while they gazed into each other's eyes.

  As long as the music lasted, they were suspended, out of time. Then, in the polite patter of applause which followed, the magical moment ended.

  "If Orpheus himself played in their midst, would they recognize him?”

  Klara leaned back against him. "It sounded,” she said, “as if heaven and earth were kissing."

  "That boy makes me so jealous. I strive to compose … I sweat and slave over every note, while you and I both know that Mozart probably tossed this piece off in the last few days after he received the Prince’s invitation. I’m afraid I shall never be more than Concertmaster, Klara."

  "You are far more than that, dear Almassy," she whispered. "So many more things than I ever imagined one man could be.”

  ***

  "Well, young sir," said the Prince, “come and tell me more about this business."

  At long last, the afternoon party over. Now only the Prince and Akos remained. Klara had been kept in the other room, where she was now attended by one of the housemaids.

  "Perhaps I shouldn't have listened to young Herr Mozart's music." Vehnsky allowed himself a guarded smile. "I feel in a rather softer mood than when I left you."

  "Then I am glad that you did, honored sir."

  "The problem is, as you very well know, that Count von Oettingen is a powerful and influential man, one whom I often find myself aligned against. Now, when the old empress is resigning so much business to the Crown Prince, things at court are in a fluid state. What is good policy to the Habsburgs may not always seem so to those of us who hold the eastern border."

  "But surely, sir, this is simply a matter…."

  "Not simple at all, young man!” The Prince regarded his grandson sternly. “However, I am somewhat inclined to support your view. Still, let me ask you a question. That Fraulein Silber has a glorious voice and is a lovely young woman is not in dispute. However, her parentage is a mystery."

  "You mean that because she came from a nightingale cage she is probably illegitimate. What of it?"

  "I mean that you are who you are, young man! There are wider possibilities for you than you might imagine. For instance, Widow von Kemeny has made it clear that….” Vehnsky let his voice trail away.

  "I have no wish, sir, to marry for position or money."

  "I could command you to do as I say."

  "With respect, sir, I don't believe you would."

  "And why not?"

  "Because it would mean that you would openly acknowledge who I am."

  "Don't be impudent, young man! You have been treated well, and with affection."

  "Yes, sir, you have always been most kind and generous, but is it always impudent to speak the truth?"

  "You are my blood, Akos Almassy. Must I consent to a union with a young woman who has lost her honor?"

  "She has had it stolen from her, sir. I wish to return it." It wasn't easy for Akos to contain his temper, but he knew he must.

  "A noble gesture, but admit to me that your truest passion is for her voice. And that voice, as you well know, will not last. You have been down this road before, sir, and your passion did not last.” Before Almassy could protest, his grandfather continued. “Isn't it true that you, exactly like Count Oettingen, wish to cage a songbird? Are you prepared for her body to outlast her gift?"

  "Maria Klara Silber is the mistress of my soul, sir. When the bouquets of dead flowers come, I shall hold her safe in my arms and tell her a thousand times over that I still love her, that I shall never let her go until death takes me."

  The Prince sighed, fixed Almassy with his hooded black eyes.

  "I begin to think that life is strange beyond all imagining. I will probably live to regret this, but I shall accede to your wishes. You may marry the young woman and I will give you my blessing and my protection."

  "Sir!" Akos went to his knee.

  "You may stay in my service if you wish, but with such a wife you may need to secure her happiness by seeking your fortune elsewhere. If that is the case, I shall release you."

  "I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Your Highness."

  "Time will tell whether I have done you a favor or hung a millstone around your neck, my boy. I have certainly placed you in grave danger by consenting. For your mother's sake, though in defiance of the wishes of your grandfather Almassy, I have had you educated like a gentleman. Now, perhaps, I wish I had not. From the moment Count Oettingen knows of this marriage, I caution you, be on your guard."

  "I have met his men in the dark once already."

  "Indeed? And they failed?"

  When Akos nodded, the Prince said gravely: "Then my advice is even more pertinent. The Count himself may be your assailant the next time."

  ***

  "Shall I cast you a horoscope?"

  She was in her teacher’s music room, at the terminator between the window light and that place where darkness began. It was on the dark side that Manzoli was seated, at the table. A single candle glowed atop the old yellowed skull.

  His suggestion surprised, for Manzoli had never before offered such a thing. He’d always warned that to look into the future was a dangerous business, not to be undertaken lightly.

  "You know that I believe this is no game," her teacher said. "Nor is the future always something we truly want to see." He'd sighed deeply, made one of those effeminate gestures in which his long nailed fingers lingered upon his face.

  "I don't think I do, Signor. Haven’t you always advised against it?"

  "In your youthful moments of levity, I have," he replied. "But we have reached a rather perilous juncture in your life, have we not? Besides, Klara, rather than examine your chart, I think it would be more interesting to examine the charts of your – lovers."

  Klara startled. Manzoli had never used that word before, and certainly not when speaking of Max.

  "You have already drawn them up." Slowly, Klara approached him. There was a sheaf of paper which, she realized, had been laid out upon the table when she'd arrived.

  How purposeful this display, how directed….

  "Yes."

  "Why? Why now?"

  "A good question." he remarked. He brushed a gray cat from the chair. “Shoo, Hermes! Klara, do come and sit down.”

  "Signor, you mystify me."

  She drew closer, but she did not take the offered chair. The charts, meticulously drawn, were webbed with colored inks denoting relationships and planetary signs. As she gazed into his collapsed melon of a face, she had a rush of feeling she had not experienced for years, a sense of his otherness, of the betwixt and between of him.

  Neither fish nor fowl….

  "You are choosing one man over another, are you not?" Agate eyes regarded her. When Klara did not answer, Manzoli simply tapped the chair again with his claws. "Always look before you leap."

  "Whose side are you on?"

  "Yours, Klara! Always, and above everything, yours."

  "Max says that too."

  "And it is also what Herr Concertmaster Almassy says. The question is, who do you believe?

  "There is no question. I am only important to Max in the same sense that his paintings by Botticelli and Rembrandt are.”

  "How can you be so sure?" Manzoli tapped the charts, gave one of his mysterious blackened smiles. "Did you know," he said, gazing up at her
, "that Akos Almassy and Maximillian von Oettingen were born on the same day?"

  He reached for her hands and drew her, now unresisting, to sit beside him. Klara's mind spun. Akos had never told her his birthday, although she had asked.

  "Of course, as you know, sharing a sun sign or even birthday does not really mean so very much, for there is also where the sun stands at the moment of birth, as well as the position of the moon and the planets. So many years between those two gentlemen, but so many curious similarities! Look here, Klara."

  The charts lay before her, unequally sliced pies, dotted with the planetary symbols and webbed with the angles of relationship.

  "They share their three primary indicators in an interesting way. Both show Scorpio repeatedly. And you know how problematic that sign is. Scorpio is strongly sexed, dominating, and possessive."

  "How can you know this about Akos? He said he isn't certain when he was born. His mother had a bad time bearing him and was ill for a long time afterward."

  "Yes, he would say that."

  "Why should he lie about such a thing?"

  "His mother, I understand, was truly sick unto death, but what Herr Almassy has done is to evade your question. What do you suppose his reason for that may be, a man like him?"

  Klara said nothing. She could see differences in the charts, certainly, but what struck her most were the correspondences. Although she had only a nodding acquaintance with the geometrical details, she saw the patterns at once.

  "The Count is a Scorpio of the first Decan. He is powerful, vengeful, demanding, strongly sexed, and dominating. In his chart Aries rises, and there is a Scorpio moon, doubling the force of his sun sign. Herr Almassy, too, is such a Scorpio. As I said earlier, both men were born on Saint Wolfgang's day, a kind of portent in itself, but Almassy has a Sagittarius rising, between his Scorpio sun and moon. The Count is typical of Scorpio with Aries rising: fair, aggressive, and physical, while Herr Almassy's rising sign makes him dark, but bestows an equally fiery nature. Outwardly, Almassy is more charming than your Count, with a gentler manner towards women. They are two most formidable, and, I might add, dangerous, suitors for the hand of a gentle and ambivalent Piscean lady."

  "I am not ambivalent. I loathe Max, and you, sir, may tell him so."

  Manzoli's only response was to lift a penciled brow.

  "In order to calculate a rising sign, you must have a time of birth. How could you possibly know Herr Almassy's?"

  "There are ways, Nightingale, to find out anything.”

  Well, Klara thought, that might have come straight from the mouth of Max himself….

  "Did Count von Oettingen put you up to this?"

  "You are too intelligent for me to deny it, Klara, but this information came from Madame Wranitzsky. She gathered all the pertinent dates and times some years ago, because of her personal interest in your young gentleman. Truly, Leo women can never admit they've been abandoned. Madame W is no exception.""

  "I once thought you cared about me, Signor, that you were my friend."

  "I do. But it seems only proper that you should be in possession of all the facts, especially in the situation you are in."

  Klara stared silently at the two charts, saw where the lines and shapes were mirrors.

  "They share other positions that are important to you," Manzoli said. He appeared anxious, but determined to persist. "For instance, look here. All the Count's important planets, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, are in Scorpio, which makes him a nearly invincible opponent. His love is naturally dominating, ruthless, and his expression of that emotion – well, perhaps I should refrain from saying perverse. But, look here. Herr Almassy's Mars and Jupiter also sit in Scorpio. Both are ruled by the manipulative and bloody-minded Scorpion, who may destroy an object of desire, simply to keep it away from rival the hands."

  "If you intend to frighten me, Signor, you are doing an excellent job."

  "That is good."

  Klara looked up into the face of this man who had been her teacher, and, for so many years, her heart’s confidante.

  Was Manzoli yet another corrupt father, bent upon a kind of incest with his talented and lovely “daughter”?

  "Why frighten me now? You are the one who suggested that we employ Mozart, that we perform this opera. You were the one who suggested throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the Prince."

  "Because now I have seen Herr Almassy's horoscope." One long nail tapped the paper. "You are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, Fraulein Silber. And into a fire which can do substantially more harm than good, simply because we live in a material world."

  "Stick with the rich man, then, is your considered advice?"

  "And abjure the adventurer, who, despite of his musicality and youthful charm, is inclined to most of the same sins as Oettingen. All I see ahead for you with Herr Almassy is the same trouble with none of the advantages."

  When Klara stood and swept away, not out of the room, but only to the bright side window, Manzoli kept silent. He could wait.

  ***

  When she turns back, Manzoli thought, I shall show her the way out of the trap. Perhaps she wants it now. After all, she has always listened to me before, and his renewed affair with La Diva Wranitzsky has most certainly unnerved her….

  "And what do you suggest?" Finally, Klara spoke, just as he'd known she would. She did not turn to face him, though. Perfectly erect, she continued to gaze out the window, at the noon-time bustle below in the street.

  "Tomorrow is the opera. Perform it as you planned. Have a great triumph as you deserve, my darling Klara! But when you kneel before the Count, swear your allegiance to him."

  "And throw over Herr Almassy in public?"

  "Only that will do."

  "And how do you know?"

  ***

  Klara turned to face him, this man she'd thought of until a few minutes ago as her friend. His round face was pale, though it always was, yet something else underlay today’s pallor, a real fear. She could scent it.

  "You are Count Oettingen's messenger?"

  "Yes." His gaze did not flinch, yet, she could sense his anguish.

  "You have betrayed me, haven't you?"

  When he didn't reply, Klara spoke bitterly. "You have never been my friend, have you, sir?"

  "Absolutely untrue! I am, and always have been, your friend. Even now, though you do not seem to believe it."

  "You are protecting me from myself, from what you see as folly."

  "A great prima donna certainly may indulge a folly or two – that I understand. Even Count Oettingen sees it as simply the way of things. So, my angel, apologize and return. All will be forgiven."

  "And then go with him to his villa? Be part of the entertainment in that glorified brothel he keeps there?"

  "A leading role in anything is never entirely disagreeable."

  Klara stared at him in disbelief, wanting to scream that at last she knew he was every bit as horrible as he looked. Instead, she withdrew behind a formal barrier.

  "That, Signor, is deeply offensive."

  "Not really. Sexual expression is a supremely flexible business, no allusion to actual practice intended." Manzoli wore a ghost of a smile.

  "So I'm to lie down and let him and his friends watch while whoever he favors impregnates me? For my own good?"

  "During the time to which you allude, I believe he intended to teach you a lesson about the weaknesses of the body inside which we all reside. I'm sure that if you would prefer privacy, asking will secure it."

  "I am not a mare to be bred like his noble kinswomen!”

  Manzoli was unimpressed by her rage.

  "You are female, my dear, and women need children. Now would be a good time to conceive."

  "And I suppose you carry this message, too?"

  "Yes, I do, and I'm not ashamed to do it. Klara, my angel, a baby will finish your voice. You do not have to be troubled with caring for the thing."

  "Into a handy Nightingale Cage?"

&n
bsp; "Why not? It is only birth that is wanted to add the final touch of richness to your magnificent voice."

  "What if I miscarry? What if I die birthing? That happens, you know. It is supposed to have happened to my mother."

  "The search for perfection always entails risks, but Herr Doctor Hundchowsky says you are well formed for bearing."

  Klara knotted her fists. "Have you been nothing all these years but Max's paltry little echo?"

  "I think you should realize," Manzoli retorted, while slowly getting to his feet, "that Count Oettingen's peccadillos are a small price to pay for his support. How many artists never reach their potential because they cannot find a suitable patron, because they have to scrimp, to work when they are exhausted, to marry in the ordinary way and take chances with their health? You are not among the common herd, Maria Klara, and you never have been. You have never had to claw your way out of the chorus; or suffer from greedy kinfolk who wish to capitalize upon your talent. I'd think over what you are about to do very carefully. You could also die, you know, bearing Herr Almassy's children. More likely, in that case, considering the circumstances you will find yourself in once you have left Count Oettingen's protection and left this Imperial Court which worships your talent, not to mention all your oldest and most faithful friends."

  How had she ever imagined that he cared about her? Suddenly he appeared monstrous: gross, fat, effeminate, his bald pate, fine features and those lashless and browless blue-glass eyes! Evil pander!

  "Well, yes, here we come at last to the truth of it. If I leave with Herr Almassy, I will be leaving you, won't I, Signor?"

  "Yes, Klara. It is not only upon the Count's behalf that I plead, but upon my own. The thought of you far away, where I can never hear you sing again, devastates me." He gazed at her miserably, suddenly as deflated as a leaking bladder. Klara folded her hands, and hoped to keep her expression as blank as his had been at the beginning of this travesty.

  Any game, Max always said, is better with several players….

  "I shall consider your advice, Signor. In times past, you have always had my best interest at heart. Perhaps I shall do as you suggest and remain where I have always been so well cared for, with my generous benefactor, and my excellent teacher. I fear, as I now consider it, that it might break my heart to leave Vienna."