The Bells (27 page)

X.

A
t last it was September, and the night of Countess Riecher’s engagement. Guadagni dressed me in red velvet with golden lions roaring from my breast.

“Why so anxious?” my mentor asked as we rumbled through the Vienna night in his coach. “They will not ask you to sing.” His face was calm, his clothes refined.

“I’m not anxious,” I said. I twirled a button on my coat. It popped off in my hand.

He shook his head. “Just try not to be such a bore,” he said. “The hunt,
mio fratello
, the hunt is all.”

We passed through the gate into the outer courtyard, and the Riechers’ ogre—who, not two months before, had thrown me in the street and promised to smash my face should we ever meet again—himself opened our carriage door. I was so afraid of him I missed the stair and fell. He caught me in his white-gloved hands. He held me up, our faces as close as lovers’. Recognition, shock. He stifled it. “Sir” was all he said, and set me gently on my feet again.

Guadagni led me into the palace, which made Haus Duft in St. Gall seem like a caveman’s dwelling—walnut floors, red silk-covered walls, every doorframe and table embellished with gold. In the foyer, a grand staircase led up to the higher stories of the house. I lingered there, listening for the sounds I wished to hear, but Guadagni pulled on my sleeve.

I entered the ballroom just behind him. I stumbled into him as he stopped to bow. “You fool,” he hissed through his smile as everyone turned to see us. I smiled and bent slightly at the waist, as if I had a stomachache. Then he began his dance—women giggled as he kissed their hands, men blushed and swallowed when he winked at them.

I stumbled around the room, jostled and elbowed about like a log drifting down a stream. I tried to hear it all. Men’s heels clicked on the hard walnut floor. The white toes of women’s shoes shushed on the frilly hems of gowns. “I can’t bear visiting my estate,” said one prince. “So far from what really
matters.
” “Coal is converted into steam,” described another. “Or is it steam into coal?” I tumbled into a circle of wrinkled widows, who grunted and conveyed me on to a set of ladies with over painted faces. “I don’t understand it,” one of them said. “In the country they have fields, houses, water to clean their children, but they all insist on living
here.
” And then, farther on, were several girls admiring a newly made duke. “Father said the title cost him a fortune,” one whispered, while the others licked their lips. “Oh, but how I’d love to be a duchess.” I glimpsed Countess Riecher sweeping through the crowd—yearning looks followed in her wake. A man with medals on his chest held up a hand and stumbled after her. “Oh, countess,” he said. “Might I just have a minute of—”

My ears strained to hear the voice, or the laugh, or the sigh that matched those stored in the precious recess of my mind. I did not hear them. Twice I ran into a wall, and remained there like an automaton, until I was taken arm-in-arm by some intriguer and led back to my master. He smiled and thanked them, then grumbled at me to go away.

And then, there she was.

In fact, my eyes found her first: her hair tied up in a golden crown. I peered across the ballroom, over all that powdered hair and frilly muslin and coats stuck with golden medals gifted by the empress, all of it swirling like translucent, lifeless fog. My ears strained for her precious sounds, but she stood silently among a group of men at the top of a set of stairs, on a gallery that overlooked the ballroom.

A jeweled hand grabbed my arm, “You’re rather pale,” the woman said, poking her beak up into my face. “Are you ill? Have a sip of wine.” I let her place the glass to my lips and I drank, but then I pushed myself off her arm and took shuffling steps to the stairs as though I walked on ice.

Amalia glowed among those men like a burning coal half-buried in spent ashes. They argued, they gestured, they nodded violently, and though she just gazed past them, unenthralled, it was she they spoke to, she they wished to reach with their words. “Oh, do come,” one fat man said. “Do come. You must.” Another nodded as if this were the greatest wisdom he’d ever heard.
Among us someone is alive!
their hungry gawking said. She smiled politely, her shoulders back, as if she were merely posing for a portrait. Her white gown, tied below the breast with a violet bow, hid all her curves. It was she, and yet something was vastly different. I could not place it.
Speak!
I prayed,
Let me hear you laugh!

I glided up the stairs, masking my sounds as I had when stealing into those St. Gall houses late at night. Her neck was so long. That spot below her ears, where her pinned-up hair terminated in an arrow of soft, blond down, was where I most wished to press my ear.

I circled around behind her, and for a moment we stood just inches apart. I heard her breath—the drawing in deep within her nose, the parting of her lips, the warm exhalation through her mouth, the soft gown against her skin as her shoulders rose and fell.

Then she and a younger man from the group moved down the stairs. He put a hand across her back to guide her: Anton Riecher, I realized, and I found myself admiring even his trimmed eyebrows, the whiteness of his teeth. He was as much a man as I had feared: elegant and tall. His dominant brow and deep-set eyes made him handsome, but also somehow sleepy, as if his soft steps were pointed toward his bed. For several minutes I stalked behind them, my ears tuned to their every sound. When Anton met a guest, he offered his hand as though he merely sought a place to rest it for a while. When spoken to, he gave successive nods that bowed him closer and closer to the speaker’s mouth until he seemed ready to lay himself in their arms. He rose again only when he was ready to speak himself, which he did slowly, with great emphasis. “I have heard so much about you from my mother. How nice it is to finally make your acquaintance,” he said to one officer. “It is fascinating what you say,” to a man of business. “From what I understand, Vienna needs more men just like you.”

He occasionally whispered in Amalia’s ear. “No man has a more beautiful wife in this room than I,” he said. “They are all saying it, you realize.” “Has anyone ever thrown you such a party? All for you,” he said a few minutes later, “and, of course, for me.” She let herself be guided by his hand as if she were a sleepwalker. And while I ached to hear her voice, Amalia never spoke; upon meeting a new guest, the canvas of her face softened slightly, then swiftly returned to a portrait of quiet patience.

I took a glass of champagne and held it before me—a slender sapling to hide behind. I stepped within a few paces of her. I waved the glass back and forth before me and fixed my eyes on her. Her husband was deep in talk, so he did not look in my direction, but finally I managed to distract her. Our eyes met for the first time since we were children. My blood warmed ten degrees.

Her eyes were blank. She did not know me. A stranger stood before her.

But it is I!
I almost yelled.
Your lover of so many nights!
But had I done so I would have lost her once again. Instead, I smiled. I waved. I nodded my head. She blushed and turned away.

“Not that one, you fool.” My teacher was suddenly beside me, whispering in my ear. “That one is reserved for the masters of the hunt. First, you have no hope. Such a woman would not even converse with you. Second,” he murmured, “if the Riecher woman glimpses how your eyes rest on her jewel, she will carve them out.”

I begged my master at least to introduce me, but he shook his head and clucked his tongue. “I must say, at the very least, your eye is good. She is indeed the finest catch in the room. But give it up. She is not for you.” Guadagni smiled again at Amalia. “Though perhaps, when the time is right, I will show you how it would be done. But not now. Now is time to strike elsewhere.”

He swept across the room, and his purposeful glide was enough to signal his intention to the room. The crowd hushed and gathered around the harpsichord at the end of the ballroom. Gluck himself appeared and sat at the keyboard.

The ballroom filled with the sounds of shifting feet, with the rustle of fabric as an audience condensed, with soft cries of “Guadagni! He’s going to sing!” I closed my eyes for a moment to block it out. To me, there was just one person in that ballroom, and she was silent.

As Guadagni began the aria “Armida dispietata!” from
Rinaldo
, I left the stairs and joined the crowd. I pushed through them. I pressed my elbows into ladies’ backs, stood in front of stooping generals, tugged on sleeves. I did not care for these people any more than for trees in a forest.

Then I was behind her once again, so close I could have kissed the down of her neck. Her husband—he was almost as tall as I—stood beside her, but they did not touch. I closed my eyes. In her neck, in the soft hollows behind her jaw, I heard the whispering resonance of Guadagni’s song. It took all of my concentration to hold the sound, and I seized at it, seizing for her.

But then I could not help myself. Guadagni’s voice was too weak. It played that body so inexpertly, and so I opened my throat just a hair; the slightest sound escaped. No one heard my voice above the music, but the faint sound caressed her. It touched the long, narrow muscles on the backs of her arms, and her arms moved slightly outward, like wings awakening. She sighed. For the first time that night, her breath deepened, and I heard that she had awoken to Guadagni’s song. I released her to it. She rang.

But then, she began to cry. A sob escaped with her exhalation. Though she pressed her thumb to her lips, she could not stifle the soft moan, which grabbed my heart and strangled it. The sadness stored inside of her—her body bound up tightly—was released by the music ringing through us. Then, she could take no more. She pushed through the crowd and dashed from the room, limping now.

I looked at Guadagni. The great castrato watched her run, and smiled as he sang, for he had made ten thousand other women cry as well, and here, he thought, was one more soul he owned.

Anton also watched his wife depart, and then, when she was gone, he turned and his gaze alighted on my face. Perhaps I looked alarmed, because he smiled kindly, as if to say,
Oh well, there is indeed sadness in this world. But you and I, at least, are content
.

I saw my chance. I retreated, backing through the crowd.

I followed her.

XI.

I
was that well-trained ghost. My breaths were quiet draughts of air. I listened for advancing feet, but the house was empty; even the servants were listening to Guadagni sing. In the foyer, I looked up the grand staircase. I heard her uneven steps far above, so I began to climb. The thick carpet muted every step. The railing did not creak. Around me, lamps hissed. Up one flight, I paused. There were so many rooms in the house, enough for a Riecher army. Ancient portraits hung on every wall, and I felt the eyes of dead Riechers watching me.

On the top floor, I closed my eyes. I heard muffled sobbing to my left. After several paces, the passage turned. I saw a long wing and knew this must be where Anton and Amalia made their home.

The last door was ajar, and I rushed toward it like a thirsty man for a spring. I would hold her in my arms! But I forced myself to slow—already servants were clunking up the stairs; the brief recital was finished. Reason held me back: I could not startle her; a scream would endanger all my plans. I slipped lightly into her room.

She was lying on her bed, her hand upon her face, her gown spilling across her.

I halted at the threshold. I suddenly comprehended what had changed: the shape of her body. The thin muslin gown lay flat against her now and I saw that her belly curved where once it had been flat.

A sudden heat washed over me, for this was too much to comprehend in an instant: the child growing inside of her, the act that had created it, the future family it represented.
Your body will not let you be a father
, the abbot had said so many years before, and here, now, the evidence of my inadequacy lay before me, so unmistakable. For several seconds I could not breathe. She cried violent sobs into her hands, the sadness pouring out of her now, and gradually my ears overcame my eyes. I recalled that silent woman in the ballroom, as unresponsive as a muffled bell. These tears were for me! This propelled me another silent step into the room. I opened my arms.
But I am alive!
I would exclaim.

But already I had delayed too long. I heard Anton’s slow steps coming up the stairs. He whistled Handel’s aria out of tune. I could not have him find me here. I retreated swiftly into the passage and slipped through the next door, just as his merry whistle rounded the corner.

The door did not lead to an exit, but to another room. It was dark, but I could see I was in a nursery. I looked frantically for another way out, my stomach churning, but I could see that the only other door connected to Amalia’s room.

“What a singer!” I heard Anton shout from the other side of the door. “A voice like sunshine in the summer!”

I heard her rustle on the bed, and was sure she was wiping that beautiful face of tears.

“Feeling ill again, are you?” he said.

“You need not concern yourself.”

“The music?” he asked disbelievingly. “Can it really be the music?”

“I said you need not concern yourself.”

I crept to the door and peered through the keyhole. Anton stood in the middle of the room, as if in front of him was a line he was not permitted to cross—an abyss. He shook his head. “Really, this is something you must overcome.”

“I shall not overcome it,” she said, hotly. “I have told you that before.”

“Amalia, don’t be foolish,” he admonished. “No one hates beautiful music.”

“You cannot change me.”

His eyes hardened, and a smile flashed across his face. Oh, it seemed to say,
I get everything I want. You’ll see
.

“Fine,” he said. “I will not try to change it. Hate every sound you hear if you must. But, Amalia, really, you must be reasonable. One cannot always enjoy oneself. One has responsibilities.”

I heard the sound of her shifting on the bed. Was she sitting up now? “Anton, when you took me from my father’s house,” she said, “do you remember what you said? ‘Anything you want. In Vienna you shall be free.’ ”

“And free you are,” he said, still smiling, but his anger was not far below the surface. “Is there anything I deny you?”

“You deny me the freedom to walk about the city. To take a carriage on my own.”

“Amalia, indeed! You are a lady. A Riecher. We are not in some Swiss mountain village. Look around you! I give you all that you could want. That carriage you complain of is as fine as any prince’s. This house, these clothes! Gaetano Guadagni singing
for you
. And more. At this premiere you will sit before them all, and they—”

“What are you talking about? What premiere?”

Anton flinched. He had misspoken.

“Answer me.” The bed creaked as she stood.

“The new
Orpheus
, of course,” he said flippantly. “Surely you have heard it discussed.”

“But we cannot go.” Her voice was flat, afraid.

“And why not?” An innocent, tender smile.

“Because we are leaving.”

Anton shook his head, the condescending smile grew only wider. “Amalia,” he said.

“You promised me we would leave Vienna!” she shouted with sudden violence. She took several steps toward him, coming into my view. Her eyes were still red from tears, but anger was the dominant emotion now.

He retreated a small step backward. “You are not in a state to travel.”

“Anton! That is why I wished to leave a month ago!” Her hands grasped the fabric of her gown below her breast as if she would tear it.

“In any case, now it is too late.” He tried to take her hands, but she cast him away.

“It is not!” For a moment her face tensed and she fought back tears. “I must get out of this city before the baby comes.” She pointed an accusing finger in his face. “You promised me we would spend the winter in the country.”

“But my mother—”

“Goddamn your mother!”

“Amalia!” He grabbed her arm and shook her violently. He drew his other hand up to his ear, as if about to strike her.

I clutched the door’s handle.
If he dares
, I thought.

But she just looked at his cocked hand. Her eyes were ice.

His body trembled with fury. But he released her. Still, she did not shy away, but stared into his eyes.

“It is not possible to leave just yet,” he said as calmly as he could. “My mother wishes to have us here for several more weeks—”

Amalia enunciated every word. “I will not be her fattened sow to par—”

“Amalia, you are no longer in Saint Gall,” he said censoriously. “This is Vienna. You are a Riecher. You must comprehend your situation. The Riecher family will have
an heir
. This is most evident in your person, and at the premiere the empress will sit opposite our loge. You cannot blame my mother for the fate you have chosen.”

These words seemed to strike her painfully. The ice in her eyes melted into tears.

“No,” she said quietly, shaking her head sadly, biting her lip. “No, I can’t. I have only God to blame for that.”

“If you are unhappy, Amalia,” he said disapprovingly, “search inside your own heart for the cause.”

“I know perfectly well why I am unhappy,” she said, and turned her shoulder to him, her back to me. He watched her with repulsion. But then he mastered himself, and took her hand.

“I have promised my mother that we will attend the premiere in three weeks’ time.”

She pulled back her hand. “You should not have promised her. You know it is torture to me. I will not go.”

“You must,” he said. “If you anger her, she will never allow us to leave.”

She turned to him, now some terror in her eyes. “
Allow us to leave?
Does she rule our lives?”

“Show more respect!” They held each other’s gaze, and again, it was his that faltered. He stared angrily at the wall. She studied him. Finally, she shook her head slightly from side to side.

“If I agree to go,” she said carefully, “we can leave the very next day?”

“Yes, of course,” he said quickly.

“If our things are packed,” she said, “and everything is prepared for our departure, I will go to the premiere, though I will hate every moment. But if I feel I cannot trust your promise, I will complain of cramps.” She walked toward her bed, limping. When his eyes gazed at her uneven hips, I again saw that repulsion on his face.

“Fine,” he said flatly. “I hope you see now that there was no reason to speak to me in such violent tones.”

I heard her whisper then, “I so wish my child’s father were not a sheep.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. You can leave me now.” She waved him off.

“Leave you? I came to fetch you. The concert is finished. You can return.” There was no trace of that condescending smile on his face.

“I do not wish to return,” she said.

“You must.”

She turned to stare him down, but she looked tired now. “I will follow you soon,” she said.

“I will wait.”

Wait he did, until she had cleaned her face of tears and anger. He took her arm gently in his and led her out the door, as if she were blind and he her only eyes.

When I returned downstairs, Guadagni grabbed my hand as soon as I had entered the ballroom. “Where have you been? There are two ladies waiting in the coach,” he whispered in my ear. “I will teach you much tonight.” He pulled me out into the air.

But once in the coach, he placed me on the seat opposite him, so I could observe him between the two rosy ladies. One woman gazed with hungry eyes as he stroked the other’s thigh. He kissed the hungry one on her cheek to calm her, which set the other climbing onto his lap. He pushed her down. “Patience,” he insisted. “Is that any way for a princess to behave?”

When we reached his house, he leaned over and whispered into my ear, “These two will fight like cats tonight. Ride the coach about for a while. Come back when it is light.”

For an hour the coachman drove me around the city, and I mused over my failure. Would I ever have another chance? I cursed myself for being so slow to act. I promised that I would never doubt her love again.

But even as I grew more and more disheartened about my chances of winning her back, there was some flame growing gradually inside of me, until I found myself smiling.

A child! She would have a child!

I had first reacted to this with a jabbing at the deepest center of my shame, but now, as that initial sting receded, this coming life seemed a hopeful omen.

I so wish my child’s father were not a sheep
, she had said.

Finally, I told the coachman to take me to Spittelberg. He took me as far as the Burggasse before he said he would not break a wheel on the pitted street. I descended and walked from there.

In the early morning, the sky was already turning gray. The filthy streets were as silent as I had ever heard them. No ladies beckoned from the windows of the decrepit taverns. In his coffeehouse, Herr Kost slept upon a bench. I did not wake him as I glided up the stairs.

One resident of Spittelberg was awake: Nicolai sat in his chair at an open window. I sat beside him, and we stared together down the Burggasse toward the city. The street’s few remaining cobblestones poked out of the earth like old, crooked teeth. In the taverns, few lamps still burned, and in those windows grime coated the panes like frost.

“I like to sit here and breathe the air,” Nicolai said, “before the sun comes up and hurts my eyes. There are just a few more minutes now. Then I will close the curtains for the day.”

I did not say anything, and so he probed, “Are you out late or up early?”

“Out late.”

“Guadagni take you to a party?”

I nodded. Two dogs moved out of the shadows and poked at the islands of rotting refuse in the street. We sat for several minutes more before I had the courage to speak.

“Nicolai, do you remember when you told me that love was the meeting of two halves?”

Nicolai shrugged. The gentle light of the rising sun made his bulbous face seem even softer, like a mold of warm wax. “Did I say that? I suppose I could have. I’ve certainly said even more foolish things in all these years,” he told the open window. “In any case, it would be so easy if it were true. Love like a meeting of lock and key! No, Moses. Any man who says that is a fool. I found my other half decades ago and look how I have hurt him. I should have left him alone.”

Someone opened a door at one of the taverns and lurched off toward the city. The gray sky now had hints of pink along its surface, like the sheen of oil on a puddle.

“Nicolai,” I said. “I am in love.”

When he regarded me, his dulled eyes squinting in an effort to read my face, there was that astonishment I had so feared to see upon his face. From me, he never expected such a confession. But it did not wound me as I had expected, because with the surprise was also the purest joy.

“In love!” he said.

And so I told him all: of that high-born girl and her dying mother, of the young woman who stole into the abbey, of our nights in that attic room. I told him how she did not know my face, just my voice, how she called me her Orpheus. I told him also of the fool I had been, how I had missed my chance, how she had married the great Anton Riecher of Vienna. How she would soon have a child. I told him how she thought me dead, but loved me still.

“But now you have a second chance!” he said, and his hope was so hot it warmed my own. “Orpheus can save his Eurydice!”

Shamefaced, I told him of my failure at the party, and how I feared that I would never breach that prison of a house again, where she was locked away. How, soon, she would be leaving for the country.

“Then we cannot delay!” he exclaimed. “We will get into that house if we must knock down its walls!”

I thanked him for his courage, though I knew only a fool would try what he suggested. But I had one last idea. “She will be at the premiere of the opera in three weeks. If I could conspire some way to get her a message there, I could tell her to slip away. Perhaps we could escape.” My voice shook as I told my friend of my hope. Would he think it foolish?

“You will steal her at the opera!” he exclaimed and looked so intently into the dawn it was as if he saw a vision of the two of us in the pink swirls of the sky.