Mawrdew Czgowchwz (23 page)

Valerio Vortice refused payment for undertaking the design and direction of the work, announcing, “
Prezzo di moneta? Onorario? No. Per l'amore!
”

The vexing question of a theater arose (“But
where
, carissimi, under the big top?”—Czgowchwz, to the Secret Seven and the Countess Madge one lazy afternoon). Central Park was suggested, but flatly dismissed by Creplaczx without any explanation. The contract to begin shooting
Pilgrim Soul
in October had been signed. Heads came together in séance after séance until out of the blue that majestic scheme that created a whole new extravagant dimension in the realm of philanthropic legend was announced. Plans were made, and wheels did turn...

The special on Midsummer Night glorified prime time, its wise novelty the taunting absence of the singing Czgowchwz. For one stunning hour the living, personal Mawrdew Czgowchwz, displayed as she is in life, in perfect relation to that city she had come to cherish, enchanted the nation. Segments shot at Cashel Gueza, at Arpenik's, at the Plaza, at the Old Metropolitan, in the Park, at Magwyck, on St. Marks Place—here and there—captured the “progresses at liberty” (Percase) of the restored diva.

It was, however, some weeks before the telecast, more weeks before the majestic scheme solving the problem of the theater in which to mount Creplaczx's music drama went into effect, months before the filming of
Pilgrim Soul
, and more than a year before the Central Park Handel première that fate at long last dealt Mawrdew Czgowchwz her (over) due—a
life
as distinct from a career.

The lady had begun to prepare Oberon. To sing him, to become him: an intricate business. Her approach to Titania presented no problem (“an unambiguous libidinous hoyden”), but she must conceive
both
roles in order to meet with Laverne and exchange notions. She must capture the scheming Fairy King. She decided she must consult someone. Sybilla.

They worked through the score together one afternoon at Magwyck. Mawrdew Czgowchwz felt a strange, untoward uneasiness. She demanded to know what was wrong. Dame Sybil decreed bluntly: “My darling, you are making him just too butch!”

Mawrdew Czgowchwz guffawed in lusty, frank agreement. “Well, toots, what's a girl to do?”

Dame Sybil thought it all through, methodically. The correct method was, of course, most likely syllogistic, but where to roam to ferret the premises? It was indeed a demanding perplex. Then one afternoon, playing Poulenc's “Mouvements Perpétuels,” she felt it hit her between the ears. Of course! It was so boldly simple! Sybil dashed over to the Plaza. She and Czgowchwz took afternoon cocktails together. The Englishwoman outlined her practical, volatile scheme.

“My darling, there is a boy possessed of a voice of elfin majesty. He arrives tomorrow to debut Tuesday night. The voice! The
voice
! Not more than a scattering of us have heard him. He is the latest Evangeline Tablowe protégé. He is to sing Monteverdi, Byrd, Dowland, and something of Mozart's, I can't discover what. I haven't heard a
word
of advance publicity on Fifty-seventh Street—other than the brochure on the ensemble—which I find ominous.”

“Ominous! I'm curious.”

“Yes. Of course, I feel the omens entirely positive, the portents nervously appetizing. Ah, but then, you see, I've
heard
him!”

“You have some scheme. That's quite clear.”

“Now just listen to me, my darling. The voice contains something of the spattered dazzle of pale moonlight on spreading, undulating glimpses of a worried sea. It is the voice of silver nightshade. And, oh yes—he's a certified warlock.”

Mawrdew Czgowchwz leaned forward. “Then one must go to hear him.”

So fate dealt that on the Whit Tuesday of that original year of her salvaged life, Mawrdew Czgowchwz met her match in Jacob Beltane, oltrano.

When at Town Hall she opened the program of the Aion Music Consort to read “Jacob Beltane,
oltrano
,” she flushed scarlet. (It was trite, but it was true.) Caught unguarded, she felt menaced and compromised. Then the young oltrano began to sing...

Mawrdew Czgowchwz had in her time on this earth heard all the important and spectacular voices of the century, either in the (as it were) flesh or as recorded on cylinder, disc, and tape for (as it may be) posterity. This time she heard Mercury in song. Horripilation occurred, that sensation of being utterly vanquished. The Byrd was predictably dulcet, the Dowland downright unearthly, the Monteverdi seraphic, and the Mozart—Idamante's arias “
Non ho colpa
” and “
No, la morte
,” sung in the intended notation for “the fourth voice”—detonated a furore somewhat less in scale but altogether equal in hysterical intensity to that raised when Mawrdew Czgowchwz sang the
Erwartung
at
her
debut, at Carnegie Hall.

The Secret Seven made immediate, decisive plans. Paranoy proclaimed triumph in the frantic lobby. Creplaczx, hauled out of sulking, restless seclusion by Percase, had listened incredulously and had panicked, stunned out of torpor into a state of exaltation, lust, outrage, and shame, as if life were again at stake. In the airtight silence just before the explosion of thunderous applause, he could be seen by curious hookers lounging outside the Hotel Diplomat, and by first-nighters at the Henry Miller, lunging into a taxi to speed off back down to lower Bank Street—to
compose
. Mawrdew Czgowchwz knew exactly what had happened, to herself as well as to Creplaczx, to the Secret Seven as well as to the town, the night of that sorcerer's debut at Town Hall. She told herself: “
This
is invincible love.”

The curious hookers outside the Hotel Diplomat and the swank first-nighters at the Henry Miller—these fatigued and rather cranky for having been so far obliged in the interests of what they considered chic form to sit through two of the three acts of
Apart from Anything Else
, the latest Thalia Bridgewood vehicle, a whimsical, conversational nothing not destined to be fondly recalled on the Rialto—grew collectively amazed at the uproar across the street. They wondered jealously what they were missing. Then Mawrdew Czgowchwz herself appeared,
bounding
from the auditorium, evidently in some sort of a daze—had she come unstrung again, they wondered—and, surrounded by her stalwarts, similarly struck, led them (the very way her mother, Maev Cohalen, had once in 1916 led a band of roaring Fenians from her lecture at the Gaiety Theatre to Jackie Farrell's pub in the back alley off Grafton Street) around to hail young Jacob Beltane, oltrano indeed!

Jacob Beltane stood trembling, Mawrdew Czgowchwz's brief note clutched in hand, the note of a passionate admirer cordially requesting an interview at his convenience. It was now suddenly far less a question of “his convenience” than of his careening joy. He must contrive to sustain some control. Having taken the appalling risk of announcing himself as “oltrano,” he could not quite believe how that risk had inflamed his singing, how that risk had summoned exalted success. He had leaped beyond himself, there to... He gathered himself to himself, to admit...

Oltrano faced oltrano: singing woman/singing man. (Jameson O'Maurigan saw it happen, like the silent shriek of a fateful recognition scene, and disappeared from town for weeks, retreating, like Tristan felled, up to Jonathan and Lavinia's beach house at Neaport on the island of Manitoy.)

Mawrdew Czgowchwz and Jacob Beltane became friends. They took a loft. Their lives became the one same life. Jacob Beltane began teaching Mawrdew Czgowchwz everything he had so far realized about Oberon—almost more than she was able to take in, but more than enough to assure her a success. All the same while Mawrdew Czgowchwz commenced teaching Jacob Beltane everything
she
had realized about musicry, a project to be considered in terms of the years of their lives rather than in terms of the weeks or months of Jacob's sojourn in New York. They began to scheme their friendly years. Love's intelligence, gathered at leisure, wedded them.

Creplaczx composed in silence, incessantly, incommunicado. He refused Arpenik's food, embracing a diet of Vichy water, his own prune crepes, cabbage boiled in sea-salt water, and pure grain alcohol flavored with orange juice.

Dame Sybil Farewell-Tarnysh, Cassia Verde-Dov'è, Consuelo Gilligan (done up proud in the New Look), and Gaia della Gueza convened once again at the old New Weston for another tactical hat-lunch. A keen observer must discern from the severe angles at which the four hats were worn in that
salle
that afternoon that this party could not be considered composite merely of four modish dames tumbling into cocktails while taking a casual breather from a busy Tuesday ransack of the better shops. They each ordered the same cocktail, an oltrano, for this was a serious moment in a turbulent time.

Cassia pounced, demanding. “
Allora
, Sybil, as the
architectrix
of this farrago perhaps you are privy to where that lofty love nest all Gotham babbles about—to the virtual exclusion of all other constructive speculation—is
perched
. I needn't, I suppose, vow to the several avenging furies and to the sacred muses nine
not
to spill the chick-peas to Dolores!”

Consuelo sat open-mouthed. “V-D, that is more mouth out of you at a single clip than anyone has heard since the election of 1940. You
care
!”

Cassia snorted, insisting.

G-G toasted empty space. “I think the boy sounds fucking divine!”

“I can't say,” Cassia snorted on. “Unhappily I wasn't there and Mawrdew snatched him straight out of circulation. I hear she actually
seized
him—as if he were
just that hat
. As I say, I wasn't there. I was actually across the street, at that god-awful comedy at the Miller—merely out of loyalty. I did witness the Czgowchwz attack, however. She looked like Phèdre lunging, fierce.
Enfin
, La Farewell, how's about some straight answers to some direct, simple questions? First off, where is that love nest? Next, what
is
this paragon and how does he make his noise? I don't know, I wasn't there, but from what sly gossips have certified to me—well, from what I've heard, I hear
most
of the audience spent most of the evening looking—speculatively—at the creature's crotch!”

(A creature less than a lady, eavesdropping from an adjacent table, lost control, choking convulsively on a morsel of white truffle.)

Consuelo felt offended, implicated. “Why not go on talk shows, V-D. Then at least the rest of us would be spared the chagrin of being exposed for what we probably at all events
are
—vicious calumniating old bags!”

“Ladies, ladies, the cocktails!” Sybil composed her reply. “Since you come straight to the usual vulgar query—unfortunate word—that I'm sure persons of the ilk of Dolores and Dolly Farouche and Gloria Gotham and that Bergamot item are cackling about in innuendo all over town, Jacob Beltane is wholly, entirely a
man
!”

G-G toasted empty space. “You always could take the measure of a man, toots.”

“Indeed,” Cassia mewed, “head to foot, shoulder to shoulder, stem to stern, and elsewhere...”

“You
are
a silly old bitch, Cass!”

“Ladies, ladies, the hors d'oeuvres!” Consuelo became fretful.

G-G brought the gavel down at once. “I wouldn't say this inquisition is leading in directions that are either pertinent, entertaining, kind, or in the best taste to pursue. Now that our ‘broken goddess' is restored, let us discuss locations—of various sorts. I think we may safely assume that the objects of Cassia's somewhat
forward
interest hang in their proper location. Okay. From anatomy, let us proceed—as if metaphorically—to geography, in town. Now the question first at hand would seem to be, where in the night, where in relation to the Plaza and the opera house, to Arpenik's, to Cashel Gueza, to Magwyck, to here and there, and to each river—where the
hell
do those two stay?”

Dame Sybil found this approach more apt. “They cohabit in a loft on Twenty-eighth Street, over a flower emporium, on the top floor with a nice southeast view of the East River, and no view at all across the Hudson, which I find is just as well, since views of the Midwest do nothing to settle the taxed mind, whereas views of Brooklyn and the East River are both charming and mysterious. Mawrdew and Jacob are in fact living in Jameson O'Maurigan's loft. She had a gallant note from Jameson. He, by the way, is up at Neaport at that charming beach house where Lavinia's wedding was given—you remember, Mawrdew sang ‘L'Invitation au voyage.' He is waiting there for Mawrdew's prose translation of Miro's music drama.”

G-G toasted empty space. “To the news of the great world.”

Cassia reared up her head, to roar. “Talk to
me
of good and bad taste! Herself breaks a sweet tot's heart and
then
prances off to live with her trick in the same rejected tot's loft—and
you
bitch
me
from bad taste.” She guffawed like a racy old tart.

The foursome wrangled through a long lunch. Dame Sybil, pressed for adjectives to invest Jacob Beltane with some shape beyond that described by the enticing mystery of his tall, dark, otherworldly mien and haunting, aching, florid, protean voice, avowed him: shy, bosky, fervent, blithe, lissome, articulate, and stellar. “In a word,” she summed up, “complex.”

“And what about Creplaczx,” Cassia challenged, defiantly.

“From what I observed that night at Town Hall,” Consuelo advised, “Miro was in his way as taken with the new oltrano as was the vanquished Czgowchwz!”

“You mean that
he too
fell—”

“...!”

Cassia's eyes glistened on.

“What seems to be evident to me,” Sybil interjected soberly, “is that Miro's genius has been extraordinarily affected by Jacob's. I would say affected to the point which in composers may be said to most resemble that state of excitement most often visited upon poets, teachers, fishermen, and lovers. It is altogether evident to me that Miro intends them to sing together in his mysterious new work.”