The Doctor and the Diva

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

Copyright © Adrienne McDonnell, 2010 All rights reserved

 

A Pamela Dorman Book / Viking

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

McDonnell, Adrienne.

The doctor and the diva : a novel / Adrienne McDonnell.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-19027-2

1. Women singers—Fiction. 2. Opera—Fiction. 3. Obstetricians—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C3877D63 2010

813’.6—dc22 2010003333

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

A Historical Note:
Although few readers may be aware of it, certain fertility procedures now considered “modern” were used by physicians—behind a curtain of secrecy—more than a century ago.

 

 

 

 

D
octor Ravell had already missed the funeral. The body was being carried from the church as he arrived. Many of Boston’s most prominent physicians descended the granite steps in a parade of canes and black silk hats, the modest old man in the casket the most esteemed of them all. Six or seven members of the von Kessler family—all of them doctors—served as pallbearers, and they shouldered the gleaming casket suitable for a king. Ravell wondered how many others, like him, must have deserted patients at their bedsides in order to join the procession.

He heard his name called, a black top hat raised and waved in his direction like a celebratory shout. “Ravell!”

It was Doctor Gerald von Kessler, a homeopath, who greeted him—the nephew of the man they’d come to mourn. His short wife stood beside him, with violets blooming in her hat.

The couple insisted that Ravell ride with them to the cemetery. In the privacy of their carriage, Doctor von Kessler leaned closer to confide.

“Can you help my sister?” von Kessler said. “This is what I am asking.”

“We are afraid,” his wife added, “that she has grown desperate.”

Doctor von Kessler removed his top hat and placed it on the seat. “My sister’s husband has become obsessed. He’s dragged her to physician after physician, put her through every procedure and humiliation so that she can have a child. He won’t relent.”

“I’d be honored to help your sister,” Ravell said, “in any way I can.”

“We heard about your recent triumph in the Hallowell case.” Gerald von Kessler gave Ravell a sharp, congratulatory nod.

“After nineteen years in a barren marriage,” Mrs. von Kessler said, “thanks to you, they had twins!” The violets jiggled in her hat and her eyes shone at Ravell.

“My sister and her husband have wasted too much time consulting the old guard,” Doctor von Kessler said. “They need a younger man—a pioneer in modern techniques, like you.”

At the gravesite Ravell stood next to them, one hand clasped over his opposite wrist. He would never have guessed that before his thirtieth birthday, the von Kessler family would be relying on him. In the distance of a valley below, he noticed skaters skimming along a frozen pond. Cold air filled his lungs and he felt an odd elation—so peculiar to sense at a funeral—the buoyancy of knowing that his reputation was on the rise. Lately his practice had expanded at such a rate that he had been forced to turn patients away.

The last time he had seen the legendary physician they would bury today was at a professional dinner just two months previously. It had been the sort of event where eminent men toasted one another, half in jest; they had planted a crown of laurel leaves on Ravell’s head to welcome him into their midst. That evening the revered old man had turned to Ravell and said, “You’ll be appointed professor of obstetrics at that famous school across the river before we know it. Remember that I made that prediction.”

Now the grand old man in the casket was being borne up and carried above their heads to his grave. Mourners settled into respectful poses—heads bowed, feet slightly apart—yet the minister seemed to be delaying for some reason. While they waited, snow flurries began.

Finally a black motorcar drove into the cemetery grounds. A shining black door opened, and a slender woman in a white ermine fur cape stepped out. Two violinists accompanied her. As she clutched her fur and headed for the gravesite, the crush of onlookers parted, making a wide aisle for her.

The woman in the white cape climbed onto a small platform. Above the congregation, she stood dressed entirely in white, and as she raised her oval face to speak, snow fell faster. Flakes dusted her hat and clung to her dark ringlets.

The deceased had been her uncle, she explained to the mourners. “The aria I am about to sing is not religious,” she said. “But when my uncle heard me sing Paisiello’s ‘Il mio ben quando verrà,’ he said: ‘When they bury me, I want you to send me up to heaven with that song.’ ”

She loosened the white fur from her throat. For a moment she closed her eyes and gathered herself up, and then she sang.

The sounds were unlike any Ravell had ever heard. It was not an earthly voice; it was a
shimmering
. Falling snow melted on her face as he listened. In the valley below, on the distant pond, skaters circled the ice with the
legato
of her phrases. He wanted those ice skaters to keep going, round and round. He wanted the woman’s iridescent voice never to stop.