The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (16 page)

B
efore that first day at Sole Manner Farm, Noah Canto-Sagas had exactly three friends. One was Marie, the little girl who lived in the flat below in Place d’léna in Paris, France. Noah had lived there for four months when he was about six. The little girl had spoken no English, and Noah had spoken little French. Still, they became friends, and would play at the Trocadéro together. By the end of their time in Paris, Noah’s French was excellent, and Marie spoke English rather well.

Noah had given one of her broken dolls new life. Opening it up, he’d inserted a simple mechanism that allowed its head to turn and its legs to move. Using the battery he built, even the tiny spring-loaded eyelids opened and closed, and the left eye winked independently.

Noah and the little girl had exchanged letters for about a year, but when Marie moved to Belgium and Noah moved about twenty times, they lost touch.

Noah’s second friend was Zeke, the man who sold newspapers outside their flat in New York City. Whenever they went back to New York, Noah would visit the newspaper vendor. Zeke was
about ninety years old, and almost blind. He told Noah funny stories about New York in the old days. He would always let Noah have free chocolate when Noah was sad about his mother being away. Noah would sometimes sit with Zeke on warm afternoons and hand out magazines and newspapers to the people who came to buy them.

Noah’s third friend was Ralph. Ralph was really his best friend. They were inseparable.

“People are going to get us mixed up for one another,” he once told Ralph. “That’s what happens when guys spend a lot of time together.”

But, in truth, Noah and Ralph didn’t look much alike at all. Ralph had rather wiry mottled hair instead of fair hair like Noah’s. And one of his ears was longer than the other. He also had a funny little beard that made him look a bit like one of the three musketeers. And Ralph had wide-set ears, a very long tail, and four very stubby legs.

Ralph was a dog. And, to be polite, he was a dog of mixed heritage.

Ralph was quite a small dog, like Fifi, the poodle who belonged to Noah’s mother. Unlike Fifi, Ralph never snapped at ankles, growled at people, or urinated on the upholstery. Fifi had always been very unfriendly to Ralph. When Noah’s mother was in town, Noah had to keep Ralph in the kitchen.

At twelve years old, Noah Canto-Sagas had probably lived in more places than everyone else he knew put together. He once
counted. He had lived in fourteen different places before he was seven years old, and probably at least that many since. In cities where his mother often performed, like London, Paris, and New York City, they kept small houses or flats. With his father, a prominent scientist, often on the lecture circuit, Noah was also familiar with hotels throughout Europe and North America. And in some cities, they had still other accommodations. Before his father had given up full-time research and taken a permanent position at the University of Toronto, and while his mother was on a regular touring circuit, Noah was dragged all around the world, living here and there, but always returning to Toronto in the fall to their beautiful bay-and-gable home in Hoggs Hollow.

Like Jasper and Lucy, and unlike Faye, Noah had gone to school. In fact, he had gone to lots of schools. He had been to schools in every city where they had moved, with two exceptions. One was when they lived in Vienna the winter he was five. It was there that he learned how to play the violin. The other time was a year later when they lived in Tokyo for seven months. In both places, he was tutored at home.

Noah’s mother was Ariana Canto-Sagas. The famous, glamorous, glorious Ariana Canto-Sagas. The incomparable, regal, Italian-Scottish-French-Albanian diva Ariana Canto-Sagas, whose great-grandmother had been an Egyptian queen. Everyone in the world of opera knew her name. She was strikingly beautiful—tall and shapely, with cascades of thick, deep red hair falling over her shoulders and down her back. Her voice was compared to “the heavenly sound that could only come from the throats of celestial angels” by a reviewer from
The London Times.
She was the world’s greatest living soprano, he wrote.
Rodin had sculpted her. Tchaikovsky had been inspired by her. Even Gustav Klimt, it was rumored, had designed and created the simple but utterly elegant platinum necklace she wore day and night. When she toured, the newspapers almost always mentioned her “platinum throat.” The necklace that adorned it was never removed.

Because she was so famous, she was constantly in demand. This meant that she was almost never at home. She traveled the world with an entourage of assistants, coaches, and Fifi. When at home, she was there sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, but rarely longer. Noah was not sure he had ever seen his mother for more than seven days in a row.

“Nonsense,” she once insisted. “Why, not long ago, I was home with you for almost a month.”

“Are you sure I was there? When was it? I don’t remember,” said Noah.

“Why, of course you don’t, silly,” she had said. “It was when you were born.”

Noah had seen his mother perform, on stage, bathed in light, in front of her audience, exactly once. Noah was seven. His father had to be in London and his mother had to perform at Toronto’s Grand Opera House. Glenda, the woman who cooked and took care of the house and garden when the family was abroad, was unavailable that one night until after eleven o’clock. Because there had been no other choice, Noah got to go to his mother’s performance.

“It should be fine, Clarence,” Ariana told her husband. “It’s Verdi’s
Aida,
which can be a bit emotional, and it would be better if it was something silly like
Falstaff,
although there would certainly be no role for me, but never you mind, gentlemen, it will be fine.” She turned to Noah and brushed his forehead with her lips. “After all, Noah has already been to a performance of
Roméo et Juliette.”

“I don’t remember,” said Noah, who tried to recall the event but could not.

“Well, you could not have been more than a couple months old,” said Ariana. “Perhaps you weren’t there and we left you home. Ah, but I was there and it was marvelous. And I was about your age when I first saw Célestine Galli-Marié play Carmen in Vienna. Utterly moving,” she said. “And it was fabulous. Simply fabulous.”

Ariana was herself fabulous. The whole performance was fabulous. Noah’s mother was radiant, as much a princess in her own right as the princess she portrayed onstage. It was as if she was born to do this, as if her very essence consisted of the music she sang, and everyone in the audience, a full house of thirteen hundred, was mesmerized. Noah knew that, had the Grand Opera House been the size it was before the great fire in 1879, she would have filled that, too. She could have filled five houses and left standing room only.

Opera-goers showered her with flowers and she blew kisses to the audience. Then, looking right up to Noah, she blew a kiss especially for him. He had wished that night would never end.

But it did. A beautiful carriage took Noah home. It belonged to the visiting British minister of culture, who had planned to
join the ambassador from France for a champagne-fest backstage in honor of Ariana. Noah had been hustled into the carriage. He thought his mother had waved to him from the middle of the crowd, but he could not be sure.

Glenda had arrived at the house not long before Noah. She greeted Noah as he emerged from the beautiful gold carriage. Noah’s mother, meanwhile, had left the opera house with the governor general, the Earl of Minto, to attend a fabulous gala event hosted by Prime Minister Laurier. He had been desperate for Ariana to sing at the Olympics in Paris, because it would be the first year the Canadians would compete.

After making Noah a cup of hot cocoa, Glenda went to bed herself. Noah said goodnight and went to his room to dress for bed, but instead of going to sleep, he took out his violin. He was much too excited for sleep. He tiptoed into the salon and searched among the pages inside the piano bench. He found the sheet music to Verdi’s
Aida
and began to teach himself one of the arias so he could play it for his mother as a surprise. He practiced until he fell asleep, only just before dawn. When he awoke, Noah ran into his mother’s room to play for her, but she wasn’t there. She had left straight from the show for an engagement in Milan.

By the time Ariana returned from Italy, Noah had not only taught himself the entire opera, but perfected the arias. The morning she arrived at Hoggs Hollow, Noah met her at the door, violin in hand. Before she could unpack, he played her “Ritorna vincitor” from the first act, and she immediately fell into voice. The two of them played together for hours until the carriage came to take her away again that afternoon. It had been bliss. Then, and for the rest of his life, Noah could hear no Verdi compositions
without visions of Ariana bathed in light, applauded by her beloved fans.

Playing together at home was magic in its own right, but it was different. Sometimes, Noah accompanied his mother on the violin, and they would perform for his father, Ralph, and Glenda, but it was not like seeing her in lights, larger than life. At home, his time with her was always colored by the knowledge that she belonged to the world and not to him. The world could snatch her away at any moment. He would always have to share her, and often get the smallest part. But when he was in the audience, when he was one of those for whom she glowed, she was his as much as she belonged to anyone else.

For Noah, the week before the morning when his whole world changed had been one of the best of his life. Not only was it the longest he could remember ever having been with his mother in one solid block of time, but it was the only time he could remember, the only time in his life, perhaps, that his whole family—his mother, his father, Noah, and Ralph—were together in their own home for so many days in a row.

Noah could not help himself—he was overcome with joy when he heard the news.

“Your mother has a very sore throat. She is not able to sing,” his father explained. As it turned out, Ariana had to cancel all of her performances and stay in bed, drinking black cherry cider and puree of plum with brandy. She spent that whole week in her coziest nightdresses, with silk scarves wrapped around her
neck to keep it warm. Not once in all those days did she put on normal day clothes. Instead, she surrounded herself with pillows and flowers and chocolate bonbons. Because it was Noah’s school holiday, he, too, spent the week in his nightclothes, surrounded by pillows and flowers, and munching on bonbons with his mother. Fifi, at the beauty salon for dogs, was nowhere to be seen. Ariana even let Ralph sleep on Fifi’s pillow at the bottom of the bed, but only after Noah and Glenda gave him a serious scrub. Ralph seemed quite pleased with himself. Smelling of rosewater and lavender, he was shockingly fluffy.

Glenda baked all of their favorite treats and served the two bonbon-eaters as if they were royalty. They feasted on savory pies, roast sweet potatoes, and iced lemon cakes right there on Ariana’s bed. Noah’s father was not teaching that week, and though he was holed up in his laboratory most of the time, he would come up and join them for treats when he needed a break. They were all together, but most of all, Noah had his mother, and no one would take her away.