Mephisto Aria

by Justine Saracen

  “My finest work,” he announced, resting his open hand on one hip, then sighed. “I’ve always wished I could sing Queen of the Night,” he confided “Can you imagine?”

  Katherina knew he was serious and didn’t laugh. “Think you could do the high notes?”

  “F above high C? Guess not. But, when you’re young, you have your little fantasies, and she was mine.”

  “Mine too, actually,” Katherina confessed. “I saw Magic Flute about fifteen years ago. Ruth Welting sang her. This black mountain rolled in from the rear of the stage. There she was on the top, all sparkling with an enormous diadem of diamonds radiating out against the blackness. When she started singing I dissolved into a pool of longing.”

  He removed the Sophie wig and held it up like a puppet on the fingertips of one hand.

  “Don’t you hate that they made her the villain? I mean, it’s…I don’t know…like a big lie. Something beautiful and natural portrayed as evil, while Sarastro, the kidnapper, for God’s sake, is Mr. Benevolent. I wanted to sing the Queen just to be able to tell him where he could stick his magic flute.”

  Katherina laughed. “Actually, I wanted to be her daughter Pamina. I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than having her as my mother.” She stroked one of the sparkling curls.

  “I had just lost my own mother, you see. To illness. So I was…” She shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you my life story.”

  “Oh no, dear. It’s a beautiful story.” He nodded sympathetically. “And believe me, I know all about longing.” He pressed a fingertip on his lips, as if formulating something.

  “Opera is a wonderful place to escape a cruel world, isn’t it? That’s why there are so many people like me in it. In opera everything happens—great love, horrible deaths, tragic sacrifices, terrible crimes—and the music purifies it all.”

  She smiled up at his melancholic expression. “A little like being intoxicated, isn’t it?”

  “Oh more than a little! It’s a big emotional orgy. And we do it. The singers, musicians, wigmakers, we get a thousand people drunk for the night.”

  She giggled. “You make us sound immoral.”

  Detlev pursed his lips. “Well, we are. Maybe that’s why Mozart made the Queen of the Night into the villain. On the other hand, she has the best costume and the best aria. And let’s face it, she’s the one everyone wants to hear. Who would you rather go home with after the party, a smug-face, rule-enforcing patriarch, or the Empress of the sparkly Night?” He pirouetted, holding the wig over his own head.

  “I’m guessing not the patriarch.”

  “No, the Queen!” Detlev retrieved his wig dummy and danced gracefully toward the display shelves. “Long live the Queen. Long live the Night!”

  “Long live the night?” a voice in the doorway said. “That sounds ominous.”

  XIV

  Capriccioso

  “Maestro.” Katherina felt like a truant, caught out of school. “I thought everyone had left the theater.”

  “Everyone has. We’re the last.” Joachim von Hausen took her cape from her hand and draped it over her shoulders. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your hotel, if you don’t mind making a slight detour to pick up my wife. I’ll give you a little tour on the way.”

  Emerging from the subterranean halls, they went through the glass doors of the Grosses Festspielhaus into the frigid evening air. Katherina wrapped her scarf once more around her throat and chin.

  Von Hausen began his tour, sweeping his arm in an arc across the square. “This, as you know, is the Max Reinhardtplatz. Did you know that he was one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival? The Austrians thanked him for it by forcing him into exile in 1938. He made a big career in the U.S., though, and after the war, they forgave him for being Jewish and named this square after him.”

  “Do I detect a hint of cynicism?” Katherina decided she liked this man.

  “Cynical? Me? Just because Salzburg is a blend of museum and toy shop that makes an industry out of Mozart, whom they practically expelled, and whose main products are concerts, kitsch, and chocolate?”

  “Aren’t you being a bit harsh? Salzburg is the biggest musical scene in Europe. The public gets to hear some of the best opera, and thousands of musicians and theater people have work.”

  “Yes, they do, I admit it. I am one of them. I’m just not enchanted by the city the same way the tourists are. It’s one great big anachronism, and too cute by half.”

  They had reached the archway to the St. Peter’s Church courtyard. “My wife, however, is far less critical. She adores Baroque art, and for her Salzburg is heaven. Particularly the Peterskirche. Are you familiar with it? So Baroque, it will give you a headache.” He swung open the heavy wooden door to the sanctuary and they walked side by side down the center aisle.

  Piers on both sides of the aisle held murals of saints flanked by faux Baroque columns and fronted by a line of fir trees glittering with tiny yellow lights. Von Hausen was right. The combination of excessive ornament and extreme piety was overwhelming. Presumably, that was the point.

  At the last pier to the right side of the altar, a woman stood with a sketchpad.

  “Ah, there she is. My lovely wife.”

  The woman turned as they approached and smiled recognition. She closed her sketchbook and tucked it under her arm.

  “Katherina, this is my wife Magda. Schatz, this is Katherina Marow, our Sophie.”

  Magda wiped her charcoal-smudged fingertips on a handkerchief, then offered her hand. “Pleased to meet you.” Katherina set her shoulder bag on the arm of the pew and accepted the handshake.

  Magda von Hausen was an attractive, well-kept woman a few centimeters taller than her husband. Her perfectly coiffed hair was artfully blonded to conceal her fifty-something age, and her makeup was flawless. The look of a woman married to a famous man. For all that, her manner seemed sincere, her handshake firm.

  Von Hausen turned to a white-haired gentleman who had stood up in the meantime. Katherina had not noticed him. “And I believe you know Mr. Raspin, one of the festival patrons.”

  “Yes, of course I remember you. From the Carmina Burana reception.” She recalled his flattery and his mysterious remark, “I support such music—in my way.”

  One of the festival patrons. Now it made sense. Her face warmed at her misjudgment and condescension. He was a financier of the festival. He paid her salary.

  “How nice to see you again,” she managed, offering her hand. His handshake was the same as before, a tight grasp with cold fingers. She resolved to show more interest in him this time.

  “I ran into Madame von Hausen in the square and kept her company while she sketched,” Raspin explained to the conductor, although it did not seem necessary. Von Hausen had opened his wife’s sketchbook and was looking at the most recent drawing. It was a rather good replica of the oil painting over the church shrine. “Who is that?” Katherina asked.

  Magda laughed, as she collected her charcoal pencils into a box and dropped it into a shoulder bag. “You’d better not let anyone hear you ask that. It’s Saint Rupert, the patron saint of this city.”

  Katherina sat down on the pew and pressed a fingertip on the edge of the sketchbook. “May I take a look?”

  “If you like.” Magda drew on a fur coat over the already thick sweater she wore. “I make them just for myself, not to show.”

  Katherina turned the pages respectfully. A mixture of very skillful charcoal sketches, sepia drawings, and the occasional watercolor. Fountains and gates, a dozing Salzburg coachman, the glass tomb in one of the churches with its prelate’s cadaver displayed in ecclesiastical regalia and, on the last page, a man with a fur-covered body and a red-painted, horn-topped head.

  “Is this also something from Salzburg?”

  It was Raspin who answered. “That’s from Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann. Have you ever seen Salzburg’s annual morality play, Fräulein Marow? It’s performed in summer in front of the cathedra
l in the medieval tradition.”

  Katherina shook her head, still studying the curious facial expression on the figure. It was rather soft, almost beguiling.

  “Probably not what Hofsmannsthal had in mind, but I don’t care.” Magda took the sketchbook gently from Katherina’s hand. “It’s his play, but my picture, right?” She slipped the volume into her bag next to the pencil box. “In any case, I’m glad you’re here. My fingers are like ice.”

  Her attention still on Magda, Katherina reached for her shoulder bag that lay on the armrest of the pew and knocked it over. It dropped with a soft thud and its contents spilled out onto the church floor: rehearsal notes, sheet music for the Rosenkavalier duets, a handful of pencils, and the journal, which fell open as it hit the marble.

  Before Katherina could kneel down and gather her scattered belongings, Gregory Raspin was on one knee and already had everything in hand. He shuffled the notes and sheet music back into the canvas bag, then with particular care picked up the battered journal. Closing it gently, he held it out to Katherina. “You keep a journal, Madame Marow?”

  “It’s my father’s,” she replied, taking it from him. Embarrassed, she dropped it quickly into the bag, which she hooked over her shoulder. Von Hausen, meanwhile, had collected the loose pencils.

  The two men were standing now and brushing dust from their knees. The crash had momentarily ended the banter and so, without speaking, the four of them made their way along the center aisle of the sanctuary.

  Stopping just before the narthex of the church, von Hausen took a final look backward, drawing everyone’s attention to the twinkling of the Christmas trees that added to the visual density of the Rococo church. “See what I mean?” he said. “Like marzipan. Too much gives you a headache.”

  Outside the night air was bitter cold again as the four of them strolled along the Getreidegasse. The sense of group gave the illusion of a sphere of warmth against the icy air. Most of the shops were closed, and only the soft yellow streetlights presented a brave front to the evening desolation.

  They wound their way through narrow passages and ornate archways, and reached the Domplatz. Magda brought them to a halt at the center of the plaza before the Salzburg cathedral. Wide stone steps led to the arches of the façade and to the four colossal statues of saints. In the near darkness of the plaza, they rose up, blue-gray, and seemed ominous. “Here is where they perform Jedermann,” she said. She pointed toward one of the towers, now black against the cobalt sky. “The angels ‘fly’ down from there on wires, and heavenly voices call out from as far away as the Peterskirche. The devil, on the other hand, simply strolls in from the street. Very medieval.”

  Von Hausen shook his head. “Yes, in a city full of anachronisms, a medieval morality play is the biggest one of all. Though, in fact, it’s not medieval at all. It was written in 1911.”

  He looked up at one of the massive saints, as if disputing him. “You should read Jedermann, for laughs, Katherina. The devil’s the only one who speaks the truth.”

  Magda linked her arm in that of her husband. “Joachim has always had a place in his heart for the devil. That’s why I married him. Besides, everyone knows that evil is nothing but sex. Nicht wahr, Joachim?”

  Gregory Raspin came alongside the couple “A common practice, to equate sex with the devil, encouraged by religions that seem to care an awful lot about the subject. But sex is just one of the avenues toward perdition.”

  “And what might the others be, Mr. Raspin?” Magda asked.

  Raspin gestured toward the Festspielhaus. “Music, for one. Even Plato thought so. Mob activity, for another. And for a third, simple intoxication. All those things can unleash the demon. Or liberate the true vitality of the human being. We are, after all, a bundle of wants and urges, held in check by guilt and good manners.”

  “What a pessimist you are,” Magda chided.

  Katherina was not sure she liked the direction the conversation was taking, but by then they had reached the Salzach River. Streetlights glowing along both riverbanks gave slight comfort, while in the middle, the rapidly flowing Salzach was dark and menacing.

  Gregory Raspin halted at the corner. “Alas, this is the street to my hotel. Much as I have enjoyed our little theological chat, I must leave you now.” He took the women’s hands one by one and pressed a cavalier kiss to the backs of their gloves. “Good evening, ladies.” He hinted at a bow and turned away from them, quickening his step.

  Katherina glanced back toward the bridge and the Pension Stein, and remembered now what had made her want to hurry. Magda was talking about painting the cityscape from the perspective of the Salzach bank, but Katherina was scarcely listening. She looked for a light in Anastasia’s window and wondered if it was too late to suggest dinner.

  Then she saw them. Anastasia and a man—a great bear of a man—emerged from the narrow Steingasse and walked toward a waiting taxi. The bear opened the car door, waited as Anastasia entered, then doubled over and got in after her.

  Von Hausen saw where Katherina looked. “Ah, it appears Madame Ivanova is going out for the evening.”

  “Who do you suppose the man is?’ Katherina asked lightly.

  “Her husband, it looks like. Boris is his name, I believe. A big executive in Deutsche Grammophon. Yes, that was definitely Boris Reichmann.”

  XV

  Mesto

  Inexplicably depressed, Katherina climbed the stone steps to the pension in the dark. She was in Salzburg, she reminded herself, the opera capital of Europe, in a starring role. Everything she ever craved. Why wasn’t she euphoric?

  She was tired, of course, after a day of rehearsing, and the steps seemed steeper than usual. She panted, and inside her thick scarf her exhalations came back moist, warmed with her own heat.

  Mercifully, the heavy oak door of the pension was unlocked so she did not have to fumble for the key. At the sound of the front door closing, Frau Semmel appeared in the entrance to her office holding a long white box. She was beaming.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? These arrived just a little while ago. You have an admirer, dear.”

  “An admirer?” Katherina repeated, dumbfounded. Her heart pounded. For the minutest fraction of a second, she hoped it might be from… No. She had just met the woman. But no one else seemed likely. Her manager never made such gestures, she had no family, and no one in the general public knew where she was staying.

  Baffled, she unfastened the ribbon and opened the carton.

  “White roses!” Frau Semmel exclaimed, hovering next to her. “And even before opening night. Romantic, nicht wahr?”

  Tied to one of the stems was a little white envelope. The card inside was succinct. Frau Semmel read it out loud over Katherina’s shoulder, as if to assist her.

  “Sorry they are not silver. Yours truly, Gregory Raspin.”

  Her room seemed smaller than before, the crucifix over the headboard larger. She sat down on the edge of the bed, confused.

  She’d gotten flowers many times before—but never before a performance. It was a good sign, probably, that her career was advancing toward stardom. Performance offers, quality roles, fervent fans. Everything was falling into place. So what was causing her vague malaise?

  Katherina stared at the white roses, still in their box at the foot of her bed. That was the answer. Gregory Raspin was paying court to her in the guise of the rose cavalier, if only for the length of a metaphor. He had stepped into the role that belonged to Anastasia. Dignified and debonair as he was, the thought of him wooing her in place of Anastasia was—distasteful.

  She plucked one of the roses from its box, holding it by its head, velvety and fragrant and fraught with suggestion. She recalled the rose duet she had rehearsed that morning. The weaving of her voice with Anastasia’s, not in banal and comfortable harmonies, but in a complicated back and forth through subtle dissonances. How skillfully Strauss suggested resolution, tantalizingly brief, before he pulled them apart again, leaving them to strain to b
e reunited until the whole duet climaxed in unbearable sweetness. Like courtship itself was supposed to be.

  But Strauss, for whatever reason, had intended his rose cavalier to be sung by a woman. For a man to presume the role was, ironically, a travesty. Or at least the travesty of a travesty.

  Detlev was right. Opera was its own world. Everything was allowed, as long as it was beautiful. She got up from the bed and stared out the window at the dark Salzach below.

  Thoughts turned in her head like sea birds. Morality plays, the devil as sex, flirtation, identity, Raspin’s reduction of the human being to a bundle of urges. She wasn’t sure what it was, the discussion, the unwanted sight of Anastasia’s husband, the unwelcome flowers, but she was morose. Her vision clouded and the spark of a dreadful memory glowed brighter—of the last night of her childhood.

  She turned from the window and swept her eyes across the room to her canvas shoulder bag where the journal lay. Had her father recalled that night as well? Had he recorded it?

  She fished the journal from the bag and leafed through it, skipping the entire 1950s. An important decade for Germany, she knew, but she would read those pages later. Finally she found the entries for the terrible week that had destroyed her childhood. They were all brief, scarcely a paragraph each, but their very brevity seared her.

  May 14, 1960

  Two new private patients this week. A sign of the times, that people now can afford the luxury of dermatology.

  Katya’s birthday is tomorrow. We offered to have a party for her but she said she’d rather we took her to the opera. Strange taste for an eleven-year-old, but she’s been obsessed with singing since we took her to see Figaro last winter at the Staatsoper. The only tickets available on short notice were for Gounod’s Faust, the one opera I would have preferred not to see. I explained the story of Faust to her, but she’s too young to know what that means in real life. So I simply told her that all good fortune is paid for in the end. I don’t think she understood.