Falling in Love (5 page)

Again, Flavia wondered what quality people saw in her that made them want to talk, or was it merely that any sign of interest or curiosity brought forth this torrent of information, regardless of who the listener was?

She smiled and looked at the clock above his desk and gave great evidence of surprise at seeing how late it was. ‘Tell Marina you spoke to me, and I said you can have whichever you like.’

‘Your pianist isn’t here yet, Signora,’ he said as a return courtesy. ‘He lives in Dolo, so he’s late a lot of the time.’

‘But Dolo’s just there,’ she said, making a vague pointing gesture in what she thought was the direction of the mainland.

‘It’s only about twenty kilometres, Signora. But he doesn’t have a car.’

How did she get sucked into these things? ‘But, surely, there’s the train, or a bus.’

‘Of course. But the trains don’t really run much any more, at least not in the morning. And the bus takes more than an hour.’

More than an hour? Had she been transported to Burkina Faso in her sleep? ‘Well, I hope he gets here,’ she said. Pulling free of the conversational quicksand, she turned towards the elevator.

Upstairs, she found one of the cleaners, who told her that most of the flowers and vases had been given away, though two vases were still downstairs in Marina’s locker. Before the cleaner could begin to tell her more, Flavia gave her watch the same wide-eyed glance she’d given to the porter’s clock and said she was late for a meeting with her pianist.

To avoid giving the impression that she was escaping, Flavia walked downstairs slowly, running her memory over the two arias she and the pianist had agreed to work on that day.

From verismo to bel canto in one month. Finish the run here, spend a week on vacation with the kids in Sicily, then to Barcelona to work with a mezzo whom she admired but with whom she had never sung. It would be her first appearance in Spain since her divorce, her ex-husband being Spanish and wealthy but also violent and well-connected. It was only his remarriage and transfer to Argentina that had opened the doors of both the Liceu and the Teatro Real, where she’d be able to sing roles she had longed to sing for years: Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena, both of whom lose their heads, though for different reasons and to different music.

La Fenice had given her a rehearsal room in which to prepare these roles, a generous concession on the part of the theatre, since she’d be singing both parts in another opera house. Her room was the last door along the corridor on the right side.

As she passed the first door, she heard a piano from behind it giving the chirpy introduction to an aria she recognized but could not identify. Plunky, plunky, plunk: it sounded like the cheeriest of airs, yet her musical memory told her it was quite another thing, the light-heartedness entirely false. No sooner came the thought than the music turned ominous. The low female voice entered, singing,
‘Se l’inganno sortisce felice, io detesto per sempre virtù.’
As the singer began to elaborate on that thought, Flavia remembered the aria. What in heaven’s name was Handel, and – even more incredibly – Ariodante’s enemy Polinesso, doing here? The voice soared off into coloratura whirligigs that made Flavia marvel that she was listening to a contralto, for the agility of these leaps by rights should belong to a soprano, but a soprano with a dark, musk-rich bottom register to go home to.

She leaned against the wall of the corridor and closed her eyes. Flavia understood every word: consonants bitten off cleanly, vowels as open as they were meant to be, and no more. ‘If the deception works, I will detest virtue for ever.’ The melody slowed minimally, and Polinesso’s voice grew more menacing:
‘Chi non vuol se non quello, che lice, vive sempre infelice quaggiù.’
Flavia gave herself over to the pleasure of contrast: the melody skipped along, beside itself with joy, as Polinesso declaimed the truth that anyone who always does the right thing will always be unlucky in this world.

Then back to the A section and off she went, coloratura chasing the notes all over the place, laying a light hand upon each one of them, and then again as if in a game of hide-and-seek. Flavia had seen
Ariodante
two years before in Paris, when a friend sang the rather thankless role of Lurcanio: she remembered three of the singers, but not the Polinesso, who could only dream of singing like this. The vocal flourishes grew ever more demented, shooting up only to slip down to the lowest range of the contralto voice. The final sweep up and down the scale left Flavia limp with physical delight and more than a little relieved that she would never have to compete with this singer, whoever she was.

Just as she reached this conclusion, a man’s voice came to her from her right: ‘Flavia, I’m here.’

She turned, but so strong was the spell of the music that it took her a moment to recognize Riccardo, the
ripetitore
with whom she had worked on
Tosca
and who had offered to help her prepare the Donizetti opera. Short, stocky, bearded, nose askew, Riccardo could easily be mistaken for a person given to aggression, and yet his playing was sensitive and luminous, especially in the soft introductions to arias, to which, he insisted, too many singers failed to pay sufficient attention. In the weeks they’d worked on the Puccini opera together, he had shown her more than a few nuances in the music she had not seen when reading the score, nor heard when singing it on her own. His playing had made them audible, halting after passages he thought required dramatic emphasis. It was only after the successful first performance, when his work was effectively over, that he admitted to Flavia how much he disliked
Tosca
. For him, opera had stopped with Mozart.

They kissed, he told her how wonderful her performance had been the night before, but she interrupted him to ask, ‘Do you know who’s in there?’ pointing to the door opposite her.

‘No,’ Riccardo answered. ‘Let’s find out,’ he added and knocked on the door. Flavia was too slow to stop him.

A man’s voice called out ‘
Momento
’, a woman’s voice said something, and then the door was pulled open by a tall man holding a few sheets of music. ‘
Cosa c’è
?’ he said as he stepped into the corridor, but when he recognized his colleague, and then Flavia, he stopped and raised the score in front of his chest as if he wanted to hide behind it.

‘Signora Petrelli,’ he said, unable to contain his surprise, or to say more. Behind him Flavia saw the girl who had waited at the stage door after the performance the night before, the one with the beautiful speaking voice and nervous manner. She looked much better today, hair brushed back from her face and no attempt at makeup. Without the badly chosen lipstick, she had quite a pretty face. She too held sheets of music in her hand, and Flavia saw in her the glow of someone who has just sung well and knows it.

‘They teach you very well in Paris, my dear,’ Flavia said, entering the room without asking permission and walking over to the girl. Flavia leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks, patted her arm, smiled, and patted her arm again. ‘I’m amazed you’d try a role like that.’ Before the girl could speak in defence or explanation, Flavia went on, ‘But you’re perfect for it, even at your age. What else are you preparing?’

The girl opened her mouth to answer but seemed unable to speak. ‘I . . . I . . .’ she began, then flipped the papers and pointed to one.

‘“Ottavia’s Lament”,’ Flavia read. ‘It’s a heartbreaker, isn’t it?’ she asked the girl, who nodded but still proved incapable of speech. ‘I’ve always wanted to sing it, but it’s far too low for me.’

Flavia gave herself a sudden shake and said, addressing both the girl and the pianist, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt.’

‘We were just finishing,’ the man said. ‘The session is an hour, and we’ve been here more than that already.’

Flavia glanced at the girl, who seemed to have calmed down a bit.

‘Did you really like it, Signora?’ she managed to ask.

This time Flavia laughed outright. ‘It was beautifully sung. That’s why I came in: to tell you that.’

The girl’s face flushed again and she bit her lips as if fighting back tears.

‘What’s your name?’ Flavia asked.

‘Francesca Santello,’ she said.

‘She’s my daughter, Signora,’ the piano player said. He stepped forward and offered his hand. ‘Ludovico Santello.’

Flavia shook it and then offered hers formally to the girl. ‘Let me get to work myself,’ she said, smiling at both of them and turning to Riccardo, who stood in the doorway.

Flavia, with a friendly nod to the girl, left the room and walked down the hallway. The door behind them closed and they heard the sound of voices within. A few people, talking among themselves, came down the hall towards them, and as they passed, Flavia said to Riccardo, ‘That girl’s got a marvellous voice. She’s going to be a fine singer, I think.’

Riccardo took the key to the room from his pocket and said, ‘If you’ll permit me to say this, she already is.’ He opened the door and held it for her.

Still speaking, she entered the room. ‘It’s not often that people that young are so . . .’ The sentence was chopped off by the sight of the flowers: a single bouquet of them, in a simple glass vase. They stood on the top of the piano, a small white envelope propped against the vase.

Flavia walked to the piano and picked up the envelope. Without thinking, she handed it to Riccardo, saying, ‘Would you open this and read it to me, please?’

If he found her request strange, he gave no sign of it. He slipped his thumbnail under the flap, opened the envelope, and pulled out a simple white card. Turning to her, he read, ‘I’m disappointed that you gave away the roses. I hope you won’t do it again.’

‘Is there a signature?’ she asked.

Riccardo turned the card over, picked up the envelope and looked at the back; he set them on top of the piano. ‘No. Nothing.’

He glanced at her and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She placed her folder of sheet music on the music stand and took the vase of flowers and put it out in the corridor. ‘I think we were working on the end of the second act,’ she said.

6

Brunetti and Paola talked about the performance on the way home, each having enjoyed it in a different way. Brunetti had seen Flavia sing Violetta only once, and that had been on television, during the years when the producers at RAI still considered opera sufficiently important to merit broadcasting. Since then, it had disappeared from television, as it had from any serious consideration in the press. Of course, the occasional opera-related story did appear, but more space was dedicated to a singer’s marital status, or lack, or substitute, or change thereof than to their work as an artist.

It was impossible to believe that so much time had passed since he had last seen Flavia sing
La Traviata
and watched her die, his heart tight with the desire to step in and save her. He had known then, in the same way he knew that Paolo and Francesca would spend eternity chasing one another through the winds of Hell, that Violetta would cry out her joy at the return of life and vigour and then crash down, dead as only dead can be. It was just a story. So although Tosca had killed Scarpia and was set for the drop, he’d known she’d be back on stage in a matter of minutes, smiling and waving at the audience. But that could not change the reality of the murder or of her suicide. Fact was meaningless: only art was real.

Paola had grown fonder of opera in recent years and had admired Flavia’s performance without reservation, though she judged the plot ridiculous. ‘I’d like to see her in an interesting opera,’ she said, just as they reached the top of the Rialto Bridge.

‘But you told me you liked it.’ He started down the steps, suddenly tired and wanting only to have a drink and go to bed.

‘She was thrilling at times,’ Paola agreed. ‘But I cry when Bambi’s mother is killed: you know that.’ She shrugged.

‘And so?’ he asked.

‘And so I’ll never be carried away by opera the way you are; I’ll always have reservations about how serious it is.’ She patted his arm as she spoke, then latched hers in his as they reached the bottom of the stairs and started along the
riva
. More thoughtfully, she added, ‘Maybe it comes of your reading so much history.’

‘Excuse me?’ he said, completely lost.

‘Most history – at least the sort you read – is filled with lies: Caesar forced to accept power against his will, Nero playing the lyre while Rome burns, Xerxes having the waters of the Hellespont thrashed. So much of what gets passed off as truth in those books is just rumour and gossip.’

Brunetti stopped and turned to face her. ‘I’ve no idea what point you’re trying to make, Paola. I thought we were talking about opera.’

Speaking slowly, she said, ‘I’m merely suggesting that you’ve acquired the gift of listening.’ By the way she slowed both her speech and her pace as she said the last words, Brunetti knew she was not finished with the thought, so he said nothing. ‘In your work, much of what you hear is lies, so you’ve learned to pay attention to everything that’s said to you.’