The Vampire Tapestry (27 page)

He wished he’d stayed with fine silver, turquoise, and Pueblo pottery.

* * *

Jean and Elmo strolled around and around the fountain in the opera-house patio.

“Opera can really shake you up,” Elmo ventured, troubled.

Jean nodded fervently. “Especially on a night like this, when the performers are going all out. And a responsive audience throws the excitement right back at them so it keeps on building.”

“But why does the bad guy get such great music?”

“Listen, Elmo, do you read science fiction? Tolkien? Fantasy stories?”

“A little.”

“Sometimes those stories tell about what they call
wild magic
—magic powers not subject to books or spells, powers you can’t really use because they’re not good or bad or anything to do with morality at all; they just
are
, uncontrollable and irresistible. I think this music tonight is like that—deep and strong and nothing to do with right or wrong.”

Elmo didn’t answer. That kind of talk reminded him of his wife’s relatives over near Las Vegas, New Mexico, who sometimes reported great leaping wheels of witch-fire flying about in the mountains at night.

* * *

Soldiers assembled in the trap under the stage. When the third act opened, they would mount onto the platform of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, where Cavaradossi was being held for execution. The dummy of the suicide Angelotti was prepared for them to lug onstage and hang from the castle wall according to Scarpia’s Act Two orders.

Behind the set of the platform wall, the crew chief oversaw the placement of the landing pad on which the dummy, heaved over the wall with a noose around its neck, would arrive. The pad was two stacks of mattresses roped together side by side, twenty in all to cushion the fall not of the dummy but of Tosca, when she leaped off the battlement in the end.

* * *

Weyland came out of the men’s room having cleaned up as thoroughly and unobtrusively as possible. At his seat down in front he put on the raincoat he had left folded there. The coat would conceal the split in the shoulder seam of his jacket and any stains or rips he might have missed. Both terror and exhilaration had left him. He was overcome by lethargy, but he no longer felt ill; his hunting frenzy had burned all that away. A mood of grim pleasure filled him. It was good to know that living among soft people in a soft time had not weakened him; that adapting enough to pass for one of them had not damaged his essential lionlike, night-hunter nature. Even a flagrant misstep need not be fatal, for his ancient cunning and ferocity had not deserted him. He felt restored. These thoughts passed and sank, leaving him spent and peaceful.

* * *

Rosemary Ridgeway took off the brunette wig, rumpled from her scuffle with Scarpia, and set it on its Styrofoam head to be combed out afresh. How absurd to try to become the libretto’s dark beauty of whom Cavaradossi had sung so meltingly in the first act:
“Tosca ha l’occhio nero.”
Rosemary’s eyes were blue, and she couldn’t tolerate contact lenses to change them. On the other hand, she didn’t quite have the nerve—or the force and reputation—to emulate the great Jeritza who, libretto be damned, had played the role blonde.

Rosemary knew she was young to sing Tosca. Yet tonight her voice had acquired maturity and control, as if all of Marwitz’s encouragement and advice had suddenly begun to work at once. If only the miracle would last until the end!

She sat gathering strength for the final act and scratching at her scalp, which already itched in anticipation of the beastly brown wig.

* * *

Just before the house lights went down, the woman in snakeskin glanced nervously at the man beside her. She had hoped that he wouldn’t return; he’d been so caught up in the second act that he’d scared her. You were supposed to appreciate the opera, not join in.

Now he seemed freed of his earlier agitation, and she saw with surprise that he was really a fine-looking man, with the strong, springing profile of an explorer, or an emperor on an ancient coin. Though he did not appear what she would call old, maturity had scored his cheeks and forehead, and he sat as if pressed under a weight of long thought.

He seemed not to notice her covert scrutiny. The curve of his upturned coat collar was like a symbolic shield, signaling a wish to be left alone.

She hesitated. Then it was too late for a conversational gambit; the last act had begun.

* * *

A horn called. Slowly, to the lighting-board operator’s counts in the booth, the lights grew infinitesimally stronger, simulating the approach of a Roman dawn over the Castel Sant’ Angelo. Usually, once the Angelotti dummy had been flung over the wall and disposed of, the assistant technical director and his stagehand companion would stretch out on the mattresses and doze. The sound of shots—the firing squad executing Cavaradossi—would rouse them for the flying arrival of Tosca, leaping to her death.

Tonight these two technicians stayed awake and listened.

* * *

Tosca recounted to her condemned lover Cavaradossi the events that had led to her stabbing of Scarpia. At the swift reprise of the murder music, the woman in snakeskin felt the man beside her stir in his seat. But he didn’t leap up and bolt this time.
A sensitive soul
, she thought, observing that he listened with closed eyes as if he wanted nothing to distract him from the music; perhaps a musician himself, a pianist or a violinist? She looked at his fine, long-fingered hands.

Holding Tosca’s hands in his, Cavaradossi sang in a caressing tone,
O sweet, pure hands that have
dealt a just, victorious death...

* *

Elmo, appalled, felt tears run down his cheeks. He didn’t dare blot them for fear of calling attention to them. The doomed lovers were so sure the execution would be make-believe and then they would escape together. They sang with such tender feeling for each other, so much hope and joy. How frightening his tears, how strange the pleasure of his tears.

* *

The execution squad fired. Cavaradossi flung himself backward into the air, slapping a little plastic bag of stage blood against his chest. Red drops spattered on musicians in the pit below.

* *

At the crack of the guns the tall man grunted, and the woman in snakeskin saw that his eyes had flicked open. He stared about for a moment, then shut them again.

For God’s sake, the wretched philistine had been sleeping!

* *

The opera was over, the singers took their bows. Rosemary, high on triumph, wanted no one to miss out. Fumbling for Marwitz’s fingers in the fall of lace at his cuff, she said, “Where’s Jerry Tremain? Isn’t he going to take his bow?”

Amid a barrage of applause they all walked forward together on the stage, joined hands upraised. There were many curtain calls. Tremain did not come. No one knew where he was.

* *

The ticket gate was jammed with slowly moving people still chattering excitedly or, like Elmo who made his way among them silently with Jean, trying to hang on to memories of the music. Dr. Weyland was outside already, waiting by the ticket office.

He looked sort of rumpled. Elmo spotted a clutch of burrs stuck to the professor’s trouser leg and a long scrape across the back of his hand. He heard Jean’s quick intake of breath as she noticed, too.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously. “It looks as if you’ve hurt yourself.”

Dr. Weyland put his injured hand into his pocket. “I walked a little beyond the lights during intermission,”

he admitted. “I tripped in the dark.”

“You should have come and told me,” Jean said. “I could have run you back into Santa Fe.”

“It’s only a scrape.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry—I hope this hasn’t spoiled your enjoyment of the opera. It was such a wonderful performance tonight.” Her dismay made Elmo want to hug her.

Dr. Weyland cleared his throat. “I assure you, I found the opera very impressive.”

Elmo caught an undertone of strain in the professor’s voice. He was relieved, glad that he himself was not the only man to have been moved by the experience.

Maybe being moved was good; maybe some paintings would come out of it.

* * *

While waiting for the parking lot to clear they picnicked on fruit and cheese laid out on the trunk of Jean’s car.

“This is what opera old-timers do,” McGrath said. He passed around cups of wine. “Here’s a drink to get us started; I’ve lined up something special for us—a big party in town. Lots of Santa Fe people and some of the opera singers will be there. Jean, you just follow that blue Porsche over there—that’s our ride, Elmo and me—and drop the professor off at the party with us. We’ll find him someplace to bunk for tonight and bring him back down to Albuquerque with us tomorrow.”

“No, thank you,” said Dr. Weyland, turning away the wine in favor of water. “I’m tired. I understand Miss Gray is returning to Albuquerque immediately, and I’d prefer to go with her.”

McGrath said heartily, “But people are waiting to meet you! I already told everybody I was bringing a famous Eastern professor with me. We don’t want to disappoint folks.”

Dr. Weyland drank. “Another time,” he said.

“There won’t be another time,” McGrath insisted. “Not like this party. You don’t want to turn your back on old-fashioned Western hospitality.”

Dr. Weyland deposited his empty cup in the garbage bag. He said, “Good night, Mr. McGrath,” and he got into the passenger seat of the car and shut the door.

“Well, up yours too, fella,” said McGrath, throwing his own cup under the car. He wheeled toward the blue Porsche, snapping over his shoulder, “Come on, Elmo, folks are waiting!”

* * *

Driving down, Jean found her memory playing over and over the final thunderous chords after Tosca’s suicide. They were from Cavaradossi’s farewell aria in Act Three, the melody of
“O dolci baci, o
languide carezze.”
Sweet kisses, languid caresses. Puccini’s closing musical comment, perhaps, on the destructiveness of outsized passions.

In fact, Scarpia himself had remarked in Act Two that great love brings great misery. That was just before his paean to the superior joys of selfish appetite. Yet he had been destroyed by his lust for Tosca, surely a passion in itself? How to distinguish appetite from passion? Or did art raise appetite to the level of passion, so that they became indistinguishable?

Had Dr. Weyland been more accessible, she would have loved to discuss this with him on the way home. She wondered whether he was lonely behind his façade.

* * *

Moon-flooded countryside flowed past. On either hand the rolling plateau was adrift with blunt constructions that dawn would show as mountains. Weyland did not miss his old car now, his whispering Mercedes. He was tired and glad not to be driving under that immense, glossy sky; better to be free to look out. The scenery was silver with reflected moonlight. The cool wind brought fresh night smells of earth, water, brush, cattle drowsing at the fences.

The woman spoke, breaking his mood. She said hesitantly, “Dr. Weyland, I wonder if you realize you’ve made an enemy tonight. McGrath wanted to show you off at that party. He’ll take your refusal as a spit in the eye of his beloved Western hospitality.”

Weyland shrugged.

“I suppose you can afford to be offhand about it,” she said, sounding resentful. “Not all of us can. Elmo will bear the brunt of McGrath’s bruised feelings tonight. My turn will come tomorrow when they get back. McGrath can’t hurt you, so he’ll hit out at anyone within his reach. You haven’t made things any easier for me.”

His voice crackled with irritation: “Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you, Miss Gray, that I’m not interested in your problems. My own are sufficient.”

* * *

Marwitz and Rosemary lay curled close, too tired for sex, too happy for sleep. They dozed on and off while shadows of moonlight inched across the flagstones outside the French doors. She murmured, “When the water pitcher fell I was sure Act Two would end in disaster.”

“I would wish many more such disasters for us both,” he said. Silence fell. Too soon the season would end and they would go their separate ways.

At length he said, “I wonder what happened to young Tremain. How unlike him, to miss his bow and a party after.”

Rosemary yawned and wiggled closer against his warm middle. “Maybe he came later, after we left.”

“Which we did indecently early.” He nuzzled her ear. “Surely everyone noticed.”

Rosemary guffawed. “Anybody who hasn’t noticed by now has got to be as stupid as a clam!”

Marwitz sat up. “Come, we have wine left—let’s go out and drink in the moonlight.”

They wrapped themselves in the bedspread and padded outside, arguing amiably about just how stupid a clam might accurately be said to be.

* * *

Weyland got out of the car. He said, “Thank you for bringing me back. I regret my ill temper.” He didn’t, but neither did he care to make another unnecessary enemy.

The woman smiled a tired smile. “Don’t give it a thought,” she said. The car withWALKING RIVER

GALLERY stenciled on its side pulled away.

When it was out of sight, Weyland walked. The pavement was lit by the late-risen moon. No dogs were left out at night on this street, so he could stroll in peace. He needed the exercise; his muscles were stiff from exertion followed by long immobility. A walk would help, and then perhaps a hot soak in his host’s old-fashioned tub.

Walking eastward on a hill-climbing street, he watched a mountain rise ahead of him like a harshly eroded wall. Its ruggedness pleased him—an angular outline stark against the night and unmuted by vegetation. He could feel the centuries lying thick over this country—perhaps a factor contributing, along with his physical indisposition, to that headlong tumble tonight through his own personal timescape. The kill itself had been good—a purging of anxiety and weakness. Catharsis, he supposed; wasn’t that the intended effect of art?

But the tension leading up to the kill—memory made him shudder. The opera had broken his moorings to the present and launched him into something akin to madness. Human music, human drama, vibrant human voices passionately raised, had impelled him to fly from among his despised victims as they sat listening. He feared and resented that these kine on whom he fed could stir him so deeply, all unaware of what they did; that their art could strike depths in him untouched in them. Where did it come from, this perilous new pattern of recognizing aspects of himself in the creations of his human livestock? Such mirrorings were obviously unintentional. His basic likeness to humanity was the explanation—a necessary likeness, since without being similar to them he could not hope to hunt them. But was he growing more like them, that their works had begun to reach him and shake him? Had he been somehow irrevocably opened to the power of their art?