Ring of Truth (18 page)

Then again...

Divas were supposed to be high-strung and emotional and impetuous. Sometimes the biggest stars were unbelievably histrionic, worse off the stage than on. It was even true that the bigger the tantrum a diva threw, the greater the awe she could inspire in directors and conductors, who seemed to believe that raging melodrama was the hallmark of only the most talented souls. More than once Veronica had been astounded at what directors and conductors put up with from their superstars. Yet they seemed to accept those tempests as the price they had to pay for working with artistic genius.

Again Veronica twisted the ring.
Be brave!—for the ring of truth will test you.

She stepped back on her heels, imbued with an audacity she had never felt before in the presence of a director. “Fine!” She threw out her arms in a theatrical gesture. “Let Carina rehearse! She can sing Leonora from the moment the sun rises until the moment it sets but never will she sing Leonora like I sing Leonora!”

Veronica flung her words at Rinaldo as if they were daggers. He stepped away from her with astonishment on his face. Even though her heart was pounding, some part of her enjoyed his stunned expression.

“Let her sing Leonora!” Veronica repeated, her voice a shriek that bounced off the walls of the opera house. “While I hold vigil beside my dying Russian mother!”

Rinaldo recoiled, but this time, Veronica knew, it wasn't because he was shocked at what she was saying. He was shocked at himself for forgetting why it was that Veronica wanted to embark on this headstrong journey in the first place.

He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and put his hands together in front of his face as if he were praying. “
Bella
,” he murmured, “
tua mamma
.”

At that mention of her birth mother, Veronica burst into tears. And not even by design.

This time it was Rinaldo who bundled her into his arms; this time it was his turtleneck she mussed with mascara and lipstick. “Of course you must go. It is your mother. My God. Forgive me.”

He had caved. She had won. If this was the ring in action, she'd take it. “I will still be your Leonora,” she insisted through her tears.

“Of course you will. There will be no other.” He paused. “Carina will rehearse, because I must have her rehearse, but you will be my Leonora.”

Veronica could only hope that Carina was not some modern-day Maria Callas who would take Leonora to heights no one had ever dreamed of before.

“I'll be back Wednesday night,” she told Rinaldo. “As soon as I'm off the plane I'll sing for you again.”

“
Bella
, you will sing for me today only a little. Then you will rest. You will need all your strength for your journey.”

Veronica had known it would be cold in Moscow in December but she had never guessed the snow would be so very deep.

It lay unbelievably thick upon the ground, and in such high drifts she feared she would suffocate if she lost her footing and fell. Above her head the sky wasn't blue but gray, heavy with clouds that sagged so low she believed she might actually touch them if only she reached up an arm. The light was milky, too, milky and wan, and already fading.

That thought made her heart thump in her chest. She had to keep searching. She had to find the grave before it got dark.

Up ahead, in front of a stand of leafless trees, was a church. It was almost entirely white, like the rest of this all-white world of snow and sky and gravestones, but its onion dome was a gentle blue, the color of a robin's egg.

Maybe someone there could help her.

She tried to move her legs faster but the snow did its best to hinder her. With every step it became more difficult to make progress. By now her heart was pounding, and despite the iciness of the air a trickle of sweat shivered down the back of her neck and disappeared beneath the collar of her fur coat.

For a moment she was surprised she was wearing fur. Then she remembered. Her name was Veronika and she was Russian. Russian women wore fur, fur coats and fur hats. It was the only way to keep warm in this frigid land.

She halted to listen to the bell-like tinkle of a wind chime. She wanted to reach out to steady herself by grabbing onto a headstone but that seemed disrespectful. She allowed only her gaze to settle on a nearby grave but that made her even more confused. If she was Russian, why didn't she understand the names on these grave markers? They were inscribed in an alphabet she recognized but couldn't read.

And the crosses atop the graves were strange as well. They had a low horizontal bar that angled down from right to left. She thought she'd seen such crosses before but didn't understand why that bar was there. What did it mean?

Nothing she saw made any sense. Which meant it would be impossible for her to find the grave in time...

“Miss? Miss?”

Veronica jolted awake. The female flight attendant was shaking her by the shoulder.

“You must put your seat in the upright position,” the attendant ordered, then pressed the button to do it herself when Veronica, groggy from sleep, was too slow to react. “We're about to land in Moscow,” she added before bustling away.

Indeed, there came the noise and the shudder of the landing gear deploying.

The dream fled Veronica's mind, replaced by a realization that hit her as sharply as a slap. She, born in Russia but quickly whisked away, was about to set foot on her native soil for the first time since she was a baby.

She'd imagined this scene so many times but now it was actually happening.

In her spun scenarios, she was never alone as she made this journey. She was with her parents, or her mother at least, conspirators as they retraced steps taken almost thirty-five years before. Yet now she felt like a traitor to her parents. For the first time in her life, she hadn't told them she was leaving one country for another. Not only that, the previous night she had lied in reply to an email from her father, writing that they had done this and that in rehearsal that day and would do this and that tomorrow. She had even concocted what she'd eaten for dinner, creating a sumptuous Italian meal that bore no relation to the fast food she'd scarfed at the airport in Rome during her stopover. She'd had a nightmarish fantasy that the plane to Moscow would crash and her parents would be informed that their daughter had perished on a flight they hadn't even known she was taking, a flight that was meant to land in a country from which they'd delivered her years before.

They would never understand. They would die not understanding.

The wheels of the plane touched down, lifted, touched down again for good. Veronica's torso strained against the seat belt as the pilot applied the brakes. She had arrived safely. She was in Russia.

Outside the plane's windows, the sky was so black it might as well have been the middle of the night. Yet it was morning, getting on toward six a.m. local time.

It wasn't until Veronica was standing in the interminable line for foreign arrivals that she remembered the dream. She closed her eyes against the sterile, fluorescent surroundings and allowed different images to fill her mind.

Snow. Sky. Odd white crosses.

Yes. Russian Orthodox crosses. She'd learned about those in her girlhood, when she'd steeped herself in Russian culture.

She knew whose grave she'd been searching for.

Behind her eyelids tears pricked. Maybe, as fast as she'd gotten here, she hadn't been fast enough. Maybe she should have come straight to Moscow from San Francisco, not bothered to go to Florence. She could have saved so much time. But instead she had put her opera career ahead of her birth mother.

Behind her someone coughed. Someone nudged their suitcase forward so that it collided with her legs. She snapped her eyes open and closed the distance that had opened between her and the traveler ahead of her.

She glanced at her right hand, adorned with the ring. She was wearing it for a crazy brew of reasons. For one, she had come to enjoy its magnificence on her finger. If she obeyed its rules, she would have to give it up soon enough. Better to enjoy it while she could. And it was far too extraordinary to leave behind in her random Florentine guesthouse, where it might not be safe (from Carina or anyone else). Then there was the bizarre courage the ring seemed to give her, which might or might not be imaginary. Still, she would grab courage wherever she could find it in the coming days.

Now it troubled her, though, that according to the note in the box the ring was supposedly the “ring of truth.” Was it trying to share its so-called “wisdom” when she'd fallen asleep on the flight? That was the first time she had slept wearing the ring. Had it taken that opportunity to send her a message via a dream?

Yet Veronica had no doubt the ring had helped catapult her to Moscow. Why do that if her birth mother would die while Veronica made the trip?

Or had Veronica missed her chance by making a selfish stop in Florence?

Finally it was her turn to face the stern immigration clerk, who was displeased by her hastily organized visa. He grudgingly allowed her through, thanks to the arrangements previously made by her agent, who knew how to pull a string or two in every country where there stood an opera house. He had made abundantly clear to Veronica that he wasn't happy to grease the wheels of this trip. But still he did it, and here she was.

As her agent instructed her, she took an express train, then the metro to reach the place he had booked for her to stay. She couldn't miss it, he'd told her, and he hadn't lied.

The Kudrinskaya Building proved to be a massive Stalinist pile with a Gothic flair, complete with forbidding sculptures topping its five towers and a spire crowned by an enormous gold star. It turned out that Russia had its own “Seven Sisters,” built after World War Two when Stalin lamented the absence of skyscrapers in Moscow compared to “capitalist cities” and so ordered seven of these monoliths to be constructed. This one was centrally located, with embassies nearby, she was told, and bars and restaurants. In its own formidable way the building was quite beautiful, its lobby ornamented by high arched ceilings, Corinthian columns sculpted of marble, and gorgeous mosaic floors.

Veronica's apartment was on the eighth floor, with white walls, a parquet floor, and sweeping views of the river and numerous landmarks. Not that she could see any of them, as the sun still hadn't risen. She had read that at this time of year the sun would put in an appearance after nine and disappear by three.

No wonder the Russian spirit was different from that of, say, the Italians.

At that moment, though, Veronica didn't need sunlight or bars or restaurants. What she needed was sleep. It wouldn't do to exhaust herself and it was still several hours until she was to meet her longtime contact at the orphanage. From there they would continue on to the home of her birth mother.

How she was to sleep with that agenda for the day, Veronica had no idea.

Yet sleep she did, a few hours at least, after which she showered and went in search of coffee and something to eat. Here, with no kind proprietress to anticipate her needs, she had to venture boldly forth.

Now the sun was up, though it managed only a meek display, and the ice-cold streets were busy. Given her opera career Veronica was a world traveler, used to unfamiliar places, so it was easy to find what she needed, especially in this neighborhood, which did seem to cater to an embassy crowd. A tiny part of her was irrationally disappointed that Moscow seemed so strange and foreign. Yes, it was a majestic European city like others she had known, but she didn't feel a kinship with the people around her, bundled against the biting wind; nor did her rudimentary understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet help her much when it came to reading the offerings in the coffee shop. And she had to stare for a long time before she understood what was being sold at the standing-room-only kiosk on the street: vodka, apparently for a late-morning pick-me-up. She had hoped that being here in Moscow she might feel a primal echo deep in her soul assuring her that
yes, yes, this is where you come from. You're one of us.
But even in these hours before she was to meet her birth mother, Veronica felt even more adrift than usual in a foreign land.

In the end she had to force herself back on the metro to make the trip to the orphanage. And every time the train stopped at a station, bringing her that much closer to her destination, she felt a wild impulse to bolt from her seat and get on the train across the platform, the one headed in the direction she had just come.

Veronica didn't think of herself as weak or timid. Yet her mouth was dry and her heart beat a staccato rhythm in her chest. It wasn't really that she feared her birth mother had just died. More, it was that Veronica feared she was still alive.

Soon, so soon, would come the moment when she would meet her birth mother for the first time. She would no longer be a mirage, a fantasy, but flesh and blood, maybe not beautiful, maybe not talented, maybe not particularly loving. It occurred to Veronica that over the years her birth mother might not have thought about her much. Maybe she'd been too busy caring for the babies she had kept. Maybe there
was
something cynical and grasping about her desire to meet Veronica now at the end of her life, as Dominik had warned and Veronica herself had feared.

The train slowed as it approached Veronica's destination. People gathered at each set of doors, preparing to exit. Veronica remained in her seat, acutely conscious of the ring on her right ring finger. It felt oddly weighty.

Even though she'd come so far, she wondered what to do.
Stay on or get off?

The train screeched to a stop. The doors slid open.

Get off.

Veronica obeyed, though she wasn't even sure from where the instruction had come, her own mind or the ring's will or her innate refusal to be a coward. She rose and leaped out onto the platform a second before the train's doors swished shut, almost but not quite nabbing the flying wool fabric of her coat.

She glanced down at the ring. It was having one of its opalescent moments.

Did this ring just give an order? Did I just obey?

All Veronica knew was that the ring was certain she had done the right thing.