Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (3 page)

What was this man before me made of? Alive to every second of cascading sound, I reviewed what I’d managed to glean: he’d been a child prodigy, born to simple Hungarian parents; had played every day of his life from the age of three or something astonishing; he’d performed before royalty many times. As a child, he’d even met Beethoven, when the composer was ill, deaf and about to die. Liszt had begun touring extensively in recent years, some papers reporting that it was to escape from a souring relationship with the mother of his children, Countess Marie d’Agoult. They were not married; this was a well-known source of scandal, but an old tale by now. Other reports claimed that Liszt gave many of his phenomenal earnings to various charities in the cities in which he played. Why on earth would he do that, I asked myself? Men, it’s true, have a longer shelf life—they can go on with their art form even if their attractiveness in body and face has left them. In our day and age, women are not generally granted such leniency.

As the music’s intensity increased, Liszt threw his mane of fair hair back with a swift lift and twist of his chin. He appeared to be in his early thirties, though his face was careworn and full of lines across the brow.

In order to examine him more closely, I wiggled my chair slightly further to the left, bumping it up against that of a crusty-looking dowager with large brown eyes, who raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. I smiled at her, then pinned my gaze back to the elevated platform and its two pianos.

The room we were in was pretty, decorated in pale pinks and ivories; the management must have squeezed over four hundred of these chairs into the place, and there were also men standing at the back, mashed in tightly together—perhaps another fifty or sixty. I’d been lucky to talk my way in, for this concert had been oversold for the past week, almost as soon as the announcement had been made. I’d begged and pleaded, telling anyone who would listen that I’d dropped everything to be here, spent a small fortune in travel, and so on and so on, whereupon a kind gentleman waiting in line and now standing at the back had taken pity upon me, allowing me to occupy his seat. Lovely stranger! I’d given him a very thankful kiss upon the cheek, which sent him away blushing and embarrassed, but also rather proud of himself.

For this final selection, Liszt had moved back to the nearer piano, which, luckily, was exactly opposite me. He’d gone back and forth between the two instruments during the whole concert; at first I’d thought it was so that each side of the room could see him from different angles, but during the previous piece, his roar of sound had actually snapped a piano wire. So here he was, directly before me.

Such rapturous notes, rippling and frothing, and sometimes shocking the heart rate. This is it, I told myself, this must be it! I couldn’t afford to lose my concentration! I sat up very straight, willing it to happen: something had to happen, I had to
make
it happen. The music was nearing a crescendo. Liszt’s hands were flying—sustained, crashing waves of sound—and then it came. He looked up, for one second. His eyes fell upon me, mine upon his. I felt the jolt of lightning contact, the explosive flash as our gaze connected. I was sure he’d felt it, too, for his hands raised suddenly above the keyboard for one brief hesitation—hardly noticeable, but I sensed it—before he plunged on into the finale. The woman beside me looked over and I could feel her gaze move up and down me, from hairline to toes. I ignored it in case the pianist would look up to see me again. But no. He finished, rose, bowed and exited! Immediately, three women in the front row leapt towards the platform, snatching up the white gloves he’d thrown under the piano before he’d started to play. They began squabbling, tearing the gloves to shreds in their frenzy to possess a piece of the god of music.

Had I missed my chance? Was it all over? I couldn’t believe it had come to an end so quickly, and that he’d disappeared.

“Who are you, my dear?” the dowager beside me asked, touching me on the knee with her closed fan.

“My name is Lola Montez,” I said, craning to see which exit Liszt had taken and not sure because of the sea of bodies, now standing and chattering. “I am a dancer.”

“Ah, indeed.” A smile crossed her lips. “Do you know our great friend?”

“Franz Liszt?”

“That’s who I mean, yes.”

“No, to my regret, I do not. Or—not yet.” I was still craning my neck, and it just slipped out.

“I see.” Would this sad-eyed woman now berate me for voicing what so many other young women probably said? Was I just another fool of a girl, trying to horn her way in to a world that’s beyond her? I raised my chin and looked at the woman defiantly.

“I wish to meet him. What’s wrong with that?”

The woman’s mouth pursed again, and then another cat-like curl moved across it. “Not a thing. It’s the most natural reaction to genius, isn’t it? We wish to touch it, to be part of it. Though,” she said, and she looked at me piercingly, “I do not think it would be good for him.”

Who was she to make such a pronouncement? I rose to my feet—I had to try to find him, and she was preventing it—but she took hold of my wrist as I turned to move away. “Wait.” She dug adeptly into her reticule and, to my surprise, brought forth a nib and a small bottle of ink. “I will take a note backstage. I won’t read it, I promise. I know what you will likely say.” Now her lips were openly smiling. I suppose I looked confused, so she added, “I am his friend. I am going there now, to raise a glass with him as he recovers, but they won’t let you come too. So why not trust me?”

I didn’t know what to think. This middle-aged person (not perhaps as old as I’d originally assumed) with the large brown eyes of a Guernsey cow, sitting there, speaking with a kind of complacent superiority—was I losing my best chance of meeting the man I had come so far to see?

“I am Countess Dudevant,” the woman said, putting the ink and nib upon my chair and pulling out a thick ivory calling card. “Write on the back of this, dear.” She folded her hands in her lap, the card upon the chair. Should I believe her? This aristocratic stranger? Would she not simply tear it up, or make a joke of me to her great acquaintance? Just another fanatically emotional young woman, trying to touch the hem of fame. “Though friends call me George,” the woman added, a twinkle and a question in her eyes.

What a strange name for a countess, I thought, glancing down at the card. But then returned to the crucial matter in hand—what to say? I mused for a second, nibbling the pen’s tip, before dipping it in the ink and writing, “Our eyes met. Please call on me, so that we may unite our artistic paths. Lola Montez.” I scribbled the name of my hotel on the bottom, then folded the card in half.

The mysterious friend of Liszt held out her gloved hand, took it, rose and made her way out of the rapidly emptying concert hall. I was broken-hearted—I’d missed my best chance, I was sure, by allowing her to distract me!

I trailed disconsolately off to my hotel, deflated and anxious. Oh, God, now what? What was I doing there? What was I doing anywhere? My most fervent desire was to be an independent woman who could earn her own money and rely strictly upon herself—so why did it seem so damned difficult?

I climbed up to my little rented room on the third floor, a dark, dank space with a mattress that sagged depressingly in the middle. How many sad and damaged lives had spent a night there? I didn’t wish to know. Undressing, and slipping beneath the covers, a correspondingly sad thought assailed me: a brief note I’d received from my mother, a missive that had caught up with me before I’d left Warsaw a few months earlier: ‘Craigie dead at forty-four. Nowhere to turn. Where are you, so that I may join you?’

Craigie was my stepfather, a great and kind man who had loved me as a little girl in India, head-strong though I was, and then loved and cared for me from afar when I’d gotten into terrible trouble at fourteen, at my detested boarding school in Bath. I’d had a baby—little Emma—and my mother never knew. She would have had a fit; neither Craigie nor I would ever have heard the end of the martyred punishment she’d have inflicted upon us. Emma was with Craigie’s sister Catherine and her husband Herbert, in England, being raised as their beloved daughter, and Emma knew nothing of me except as a mysterious relative that she’d never met. I’d held her—once—but I loved her, dearly. She’d be nine years old now… God, oh God… I still couldn’t believe dear Craigie was dead—I hoped he hadn’t suffered—and that my mother was once again a widow. And looking for me? Only fourteen when she’d had me, she’d be thirty-eight now, and I would never—
never
! Oh, it didn’t bear thinking about. I was lonely and sorrowful, yes, but I would never submit to the kind of misery that she could inflict, or else I would be truly lost.

I buried my head beneath the flaccid pillow, trying to silence the jangling chords that were drowning out Liszt’s masterful ones.

*

The following morning, just after ten o’clock, there was a knock on my door. When I opened, the maid curtsied and told me that a gentleman had called for me and was in the waiting room downstairs. Did I know, right away? Of course I hoped. Certainly the news sent me into a frenzy of rushing about, wondering whether I’d chosen my best dress, trying to pile my long black tresses even higher, pinching my cheeks and biting my lips to make them full of colour.

I rifled through my portmanteau, then wrapped myself in my most picturesque Spanish shawl. It had silken fringes that were over a foot in length and swished about my legs with excellent seductiveness. Skewering my twisted-up hair with a gaily-painted comb, a small black lace mantilla was thereby attached. I must look every inch the Spanish lady, I told myself, and ensure that my intonations are full of the sibilances of Andalusia, whatever language I attempt when speaking with Herr Liszt. Nobody knows me or can denounce me here; no one must ever be able to discern my Irish roots. “I repudiate them utterly,” I said aloud, glaring at myself in the mirror that sat above the room’s small mantel. That face stared back, chin lifted and eyes blazing. Deep inside those eyes, the rebellious girl that I had been—kicking and flailing out against my mother, eloping with one of her admirers in order to escape an arranged marriage she’d cooked up for me—that girl was still there, still wild. Somewhat trampled and mangled, perhaps, but still wild. “Never let them know you’re afraid,” I told my reflection. These were the words of my Spanish lover, my darling, dashing General Diego de Léon. He had recognized and celebrated the wildness in me, and urged me to step fully into the woman I wished to become. Play hard, without fear,
Bandida:
this was Diego’s gambling credo, and now it was mine. I am Doña Maria Dolores de Porris y Montez!

Courage, Lola, and shuffle the cards.

Downstairs I went, and there he was: Franz Liszt. A quizzical grin bloomed upon his gaunt face as he saw me enter in my high Spanish shoes. He stood and took a step towards me. There were a number of other guests and hotel people in the room, and I was aware of their curiosity, so I approached the great man very demurely. We stood facing each other, about five feet apart. I was pleased to sense that everyone knew who he was and wondered what he was doing here. I knew I must proceed carefully.

“Good morning, Herr Liszt,” I said in my halting German. “I am most pleased that you have called upon me.”

“Would you prefer to speak in French?” he asked me in that language. “I do not know Spanish, alas, but French is a tongue that I am very comfortable with. And perhaps it is not so well known—by
everyone
in this room,
ja
?”

We smiled at each other, very easily. “
Bien sûr, monsieur.”

“Come, let’s take a turn about the garden,” and he held out his arm for me. The whispering began even before we were out of the room; I saw that one of the younger women seemed to be having palpitations from the way her companions were administering to her.

Liszt’s arm was thin and taut, like piano wire encased in flesh. He really
was
tall, towering at least a foot above me, and I am above average in height. His fair hair glowed in the sunshine; he flung it often, with that sideways motion of the head, away from his brow. We conversed gently about the flowers we were passing but my heart was beginning to beat quite quickly—from fear, from anticipation? Fear of failure, or…? Fear of the man’s undoubted grandeur? Would I know what to say? Would his discourse be of politics, and make me look like a fool? Or of musical complexities, compositional perplexities or mathematical equations? What do geniuses talk about?

He glanced down, and through my colly-wobbles, I did appreciate the smile he bestowed upon me, as well as the sparkle of interest in his sea green eyes. “Now, Mademoiselle Montez, what exactly did you mean by uniting our artistic paths?”

I laughed; a foolish thing to do, I suppose, but I was unusually nervous. “Rather bold, I’m afraid.”

“Not at all. That is what made me curious enough to come. Believe me, I don’t usually respond to admirers’ notes, that would be far too exhausting. But this one made me sit up and take notice.”

“I am very glad of that.” I couldn’t seem to speak; my tongue was cloth.

“And George told me that you were exquisitely beautiful, with your dark black hair, your deep blue eyes and kissable lips. And so they are.” Still smiling, he looked up and all about to see whether we were quite alone. Sadly, we were not—several people from the waiting room had followed us out into the garden and had their eyes fixed upon us. He lowered his voice. “So, I have called upon you, as you requested. My suggestion now is that I hail a cab this very moment, and that you come with me. I hope I haven’t shocked you.”

I shook my head, no. “I’ll come, yes. This very moment.”

We walked the pebble path around the side of the hotel and out towards the street. The others from the waiting room were following, and as Liszt hailed a cab, flinging out his long arm to do so, one of the women plucked up her courage and rushed over. “Please,” she begged. “Please sign my book, Herr Liszt?” as she thrust it out and into his face. “I love your music, you are so wonderful! I’ve been reading about you for years, and always hoped you would come to our small city. I was there last night at the concert and—” She burbled on and on while Liszt signed her little book, then passed it back. She hugged it to her bosom and turned bright red. The cab was waiting, and Liszt now turned to help me inside. As he bent to climb in, the woman grabbed at his coat-tails. He reached behind to whisk them out of her grasp, then closed the carriage door. Nodding out the window, “Fräulein,” he banged the ceiling of the carriage with his walking stick and the driver took us away.