The Doctor and the Diva (57 page)

At last a summons came in the form of a note from Pietro Palladino. He was lunching on
risotto alla certosina
in the Galleria when they arrived. Though they declined his offer to join him for a plate of rice with crayfish, mushrooms, and peas, he insisted that they eat something. His assistants ordered them
panettone
—a fluffy currant cake—and the pair of underlings distanced themselves.

Pietro Palladino turned to Erika in a measured way. “It seems—” he said, “that impresario Lorello and his wife have changed their minds about casting you in
Madama Butterfly
. Instead, they’ve offered you a booking for a recital.” The agent mentioned the sum they planned to pay her—a meager fee.

Erika glanced across the table at Christopher, who pressed the tines of his fork aimlessly against the cake crumbs on his plate, his face devoid of expression. To the agent she said, “So what would you advise me to do? Accept their offer?”

Pietro Palladino sipped his water and patted his moustache with his napkin before answering. “You’re a gifted singer just beginning her career,” he said with great seriousness, “and everything must be handled very carefully.”

Did he honestly admire her voice? Erika wondered. Or had he been fooled by the Lorellos, whose effusions had died the more they heard her sing?

“I suppose I should take it,” she said. “I don’t want to quibble over money.”

The agent nodded. He appeared tired, and his oversize shoulders no longer looked so powerful to her.

He drew a gold watch from his pocket and peered into it like a polished mirror. “The Lorellos will be here in about fifteen minutes to speak with you,” Pietro Palladino said, and stood up. “Unfortunately, I have an appointment myself at the Teatro Lirico. Stay at this table for as long as you like. I’ve reserved it for all of you.”

“What shall I say to Signor and Signora Lorello?” Erika asked.

“Tell them you’ll think about their proposal over the weekend and respond on Monday.”

After the agent departed, she and Christopher remained at the table. The previous day, Christopher had his hair cut. An unskilled barber had left his hair too short, in bludgeoned, uneven shingles. Why did the bad haircut pain her so? With too much hair snipped off, he looked skinnier, weaker. She could hardly bear to look at him.

“Shall I meet you back here in an hour?” Christopher said. “Perhaps you’d like a little privacy with the Lorellos?”

“Don’t leave me alone with them,” she begged.

A slate-gray poodle jumped from Signora Lorello’s arms as she and her husband strode up; the little dog went straight under their table and rested there as though the pet were accustomed to being encircled by people’s shoes. Why had the impresario’s wife brought her pet dog to the Galleria? To relieve the unpleasantness of such a meeting?

“After the way we acted in Montepulciano,” Signora Lorello began, “we find it very difficult to say certain things to you.” Her upper and lower teeth met in a neat, even line, and she smiled so hard her eyes slitted.

“We are candid people,” her husband said. “We must be truthful with you.”

Erika waited, her neck rigid.

“We are concerned,” Signora Lorello said, “that you simply do not have the stamina to endure a long performance.”

Christopher uncrossed his legs. “How can you say such a thing?” he demanded. “You, who heard her vocalize for a whole night straight at Montepulciano?” He moved so suddenly that Signora Lorello’s poodle, which had been resting like a fluffy slipper against his foot, was roused and began to bark.

Signora Lorello gathered the poodle into her lap. Her eyes cut toward Christopher, then away from him.

“You have a lustrous voice,” Signora Lorello assured Erika. “With luck, if we choose your repertoire correctly—you’ll give a nice little recital.”

Did they care for her talent at all anymore, Erika wondered, or had they simply trapped themselves into offering her
something
? Certainly they did not want to appear unreliable in Pietro Palladino’s eyes.

“We’re just as enthusiastic about your future as we were at Montepulciano,” Signora Lorello insisted.

“Are you?” Erika said coldly. It was a bad tone to have used. “What did you think of the Rossini—my version of ‘Una voce poco fa’?”

“It was lovely,” the impresario admitted.

“Certain
passaggio
problems,” his wife added.

“That’s ridiculous,” Christopher said bitterly.

The impresario’s wife cast him a look that begged for a waiter to clear him from their presence like a soiled plate.

“Listen,” she snapped finally at Erika, “do you want to be a singer or not?”

Erika told them she would consider the proposed recital, and let them know her decision on Monday.

By Monday morning Erika had convinced herself that she must be humble and not arrogant; she must do the recital for them, of course. After Christopher had headed off to a
caffè
to enjoy an espresso and a newspaper, she finished her toilette, and prepared to call Pietro Palladino.
Accept their offer,
she would tell him.

Erika had just fastened the last hook of her white dress when she heard a brusque whack on the door. Signora Lorello strode into the hotel suite, and the tails of her sash flew around her like whips. It was the first instance Erika had ever seen her alone.

“Signora von Kessler—” The impresario’s wife’s tone was harsh. “My husband and I have thought about it all weekend, and we do not wish to engage you for any performance. We’re uncomfortable working with a person like you.”

Erika heard a plea escape from her throat. “Please don’t say this. Please! Just listen to me.” She gestured for the impresario’s wife to be seated in a gilded chair carved with cherubim. The woman sat, while Erika took a similar chair nearby.

“I was ill on the day of my audition at your opera house,” Erika said. “Besides, my voice is not suited to Puccini. Believe me, if you hire me to sing the music of a different composer—”

“Your ambitions are far grander than your voice,” the signora said.

“I tell you, I can do better on another day.” Erika knew she had fallen to begging now.

“We don’t wish to work with a singer who brings her silly young boy-friend along to defend her.”

Erika decided to ignore this.

The plump woman slid her hips to the edge of the chair, preparing to leave. When she spoke, her syllables were hard. “You can say what you like, but your voice is not smooth across the three registers. Your top notes are faked, metallic! No amount of study or rehearsals can resolve that.”

Behind this Erika heard the ugly concurrence of a whole committee. She had humiliated the Lorellos before their associates; she saw that in the tiny muscles that tightened bitterly around Signora Lorello’s eyes.

Signora Lorello got up. “I will tell Pietro Palladino.” She announced this as if it were the last dreaded task that remained.

Erika gave a soft wail—a plaintive sound she had not made since she was a child.

The impresario’s wife hastened to the door, pulled it open, and fled.

After she left, Erika dropped onto the divan. Inside her came a hardening. For months, for years now, she had figured: if my
prova
fails, if all my sacrifice and training come to nothing, I will throw myself from a high tower, or the roof of the Duomo.

But now she thought:
Who would commit suicide for the sake of such a flighty, silly woman?

For an hour she remained on the gray divan and waited for the thing that would surely happen next. A messenger from the agent’s office would knock on the door to inform her that the great man had abandoned her, too.

Instead, the telephone rang. Pietro Palladino’s voice came on the line, sounding soothing and assured and paternal. The decency and fairness in his response surprised her. “Well,” he said, “
I
love your voice and
I
want to find a good home for your talent at a fine opera house.”

Over the weekend, the agent confided, he had learned that Erika had not been the first singer to whom Signora Lorello had made extravagant promises that were later forgotten. “Her infatuations,” the agent observed, “extinguish themselves as rapidly as they ignite.

“I’ve already sent my courier to deliver a letter to another impresario,” he added. “We’ll march onward, and arrange other auditions for you.”

But Erika worried that Signora Lorello had spoken the truth. Perhaps her own aspirations reached far beyond where her voice could carry her.

E
veryone in her neighborhood—the fruit vendor at the corner stand, her blind landlady, the new charwoman on the stairs—all of them were curious about what had happened in Milan. Would she now sing from grand stages? Each time Erika shared the disappointing news, she felt even more depressed.

Thus far, her famous agent had found her nothing. He was trying, that she knew, but it was not easy to sell an obscure mezzo-soprano. Opera house managers preferred vocalists whose names were securely familiar. Pietro Palladino had tried a little bargaining with impresarios, telling them that he would let them have a certain well-known baritone they coveted if they would agree to hear his new mezzo-soprano. Auditions were scheduled; Erika traveled to small cities to sing before coveys of men who smelled of cigars and old creased bills passed from wallet to wallet.

In the end, only one hired her—as an understudy for the leading role in
La Cenerentola
. An understudy must be present always—at every rehearsal, every performance, ready to glide onto the stage at any moment. Erika tried not to lurk, and tried to remain unobtrusive, but the prima donna glared at her during rehearsal one day and pointed a finger and shouted, “She’ll bring me bad luck. Get her out of here! I don’t want to lay eyes on her again.” The singer was famous, and she shuddered with such distress that everyone rushed to calm her.

After only three days, Erika was dismissed and sent back to Florence. Sometimes in the streets, or at a
caffè
on the Via Tornabuoni, she encountered one of Maestro Valenti’s other students, who would inevitably inquire if her illustrious Milan agent had yet found her a booking. If she noticed one of these students from afar, she ducked her head over her cappuccino or turned inside a shop to hide.

“You need a vacation from all of this,” Christopher remarked as they were strolling over a bridge that crossed the Arno. “It’s a pity you can’t simply get away.” He sucked the last juicy threads from a peach stone, and with a grunt of satisfaction, he took the clean pit from his mouth and tossed it from the bridge.

To cheer her, Mark and Edmund invited her along to Miss Maude’s English Tea Room. “This is the only place in Florence where scones can be had,” Mark said, opening a menu. “And the equivalent of Devon cream.”

“I never cared much for Devon cream,” Erika said.