The White Hotel (20 page)

Fortunately, at the next station, across the Italian border, extra carriages were put on; and the guard came through, ordering the second-class passengers out of the first-class seats. Frau Erdman
breathed a sigh of relief, and spread herself again. She thought she had better go through the whole score—there was plenty of time; but the very first chorus, in which the tired peasants were returning from the harvest fields, brought on a dreamy mood, and she read no more. When the train entered the outskirts of Milan, she felt nervous, and had to fight down her breathlessness. She stood in front of the mirror to comb her hair and refresh her lipstick. She worried that they would suddenly realize she was too old to play the part of a young girl. She pictured their faces falling as they greeted her.

But if the welcoming party had any such feelings, they disguised them well. A tall, stooped, balding man stepped forward with a bow, introducing himself as Signor Fontini, the artistic director. His short, plump, fussily dressed wife dropped a curtsey; and Frau Erdman shook four or five hands, too flustered to take in names. Then she was blinded by flashbulbs, and was half carried by Signor Fontini and the others through a hubbub of reporters flinging questions at her, their notebooks at the ready. In the confusion and excitement of arrival, she had left a piece of luggage on the train, and one of the director’s henchmen had to run back to get it. At last they were outside the station and—an umbrella held over her to protect her from the rain—she was ushered to a limousine and driven away. At her hotel, in the heart of the city, another reception committee awaited her, and a bouquet of flowers was thrust into her arms. But Signor Fontini, anxious not to overstrain his replacement star, cleared a way for her to the lift, and escorted her personally to her suite, on the third floor. A page boy and a porter came behind them, with her luggage. Signor Fontini kissed her hand, saying she must rest now for a couple of hours, and he would call for her to dine at
half-past eight. Left alone in the luxury suite, she collapsed on to the sofa. The airy, ample drawing room was fit for a queen. There were vases of flowers everywhere. She undressed, ran herself a bath; and as she lay in it, feeling extraordinarily pampered and indulged, worried that her performance would never justify such treatment.

Having dressed for dinner, she sat at the writing desk overlooking the busy street, and wrote a postcard to her aunt in Vienna. “Dear Aunt,” she wrote, “it is raining rain outside and flowers in my suite. Yes, suite! I’m overwhelmed by their sense of my importance. I don’t mean the flowers! I shan’t be able to face dinner, let alone tomorrow’s rehearsal—or the actual performance! I am going to fall downstairs and break a leg. Love, Lisa.”

And there, at the dinner table which groaned with flowers, silver and cut glass, was the great Serebryakova, slim, beautiful and elegant, despite having her arm in a sling. One of the world’s great sopranos, and still in her early thirties. She had been booked to return to the Soviet Union yesterday, but had decided to stay to wish her successor well. Lisa was overcome by such kindness from such a star. Madame Serebryakova even claimed to be a fervent admirer of Frau Erdman’s voice: she had heard her, once, in Vienna, singing
La Traviata
. That was on her first tour abroad, when she herself was still unknown.

Her kindness and good humour set Lisa at ease. She was very funny about her fall, down the La Scala steps, and her attempts to carry on with the role. “I realized it was no good,” she said drily, “when the audience started hooting with laughter.” They could not “take” their romantic young heroine, Tatiana, having her arm in a sling throughout the opera, especially as the action covered several years. While complimenting Serebryakova on
her courage, one leading critic had expressed concern at the poor standard of surgery in Tsarist Russia.

“So we tried the understudy,” said Signor Fontini with a sigh, spreading his hands. “Terrible. Within three nights we were playing to an empty house. But we won’t have that problem tomorrow evening, I can promise you. There’s enormous interest in your coming.”

He laboured the point so much, one might have gained the impression that Serebryakova had been very much a second best; the selection committee had
really
wanted Frau Erdman all the time. Lisa took all the flattery with a grain of salt, and a smile; and began to feel, oddly enough, that she
could
sing Tatiana quite as well as Serebryakova. She also stopped worrying about her age; for the fourth member of the dinner party, a Russian baritone previously known to her only as a respected name, proved to be older than she had imagined. Victor Berenstein, who was singing Onegin, had pure white hair and was surely well into his fifties. Running to plumpness, and sallow in complexion, he peered at her through horn-rimmed glasses, amiably sizing up his new leading lady. Lisa observed him too: reflecting that it was a blessing she was only a medium for Tchaikovsky’s music and Pushkin’s words, for in real life she could not conceive of falling in love with this man, friendly and charming though he was. The most attractive thing about him—apart from his voice, naturally—was his hands. They were slenderer than the rest of him, somehow; masculine but tender and expressive. His long slim fingers even cut up his beefsteak tenderly and expressively.

Like Serebryakova, he expressed deep admiration for her voice, and delight that she had been able to undertake the role at a moment’s notice. He had heard her singing Schubert on a crackly
record. But as Lisa had never made a record, and told him so, he blushed with confusion and embarrassment, and became intensely preoccupied with a tough piece of steak.

Both he and Serebryakova (Victor and Vera, as they insisted) were with the Kiev Opera; and Lisa quickly turned the conversation to that beautiful city, where in fact she had been born. The interest aroused by her mentioning this fact, which was not included in her biographical note, allowed Victor to recover his poise. She had been taken from it when she was only a year old, Lisa explained, so she had no experience of it except for a couple of short holiday visits. She liked what she had seen. Her two Russian companions vied with each other in expressing enthusiasm for their city. Of course, conditions had been nightmarish, earlier; but, slowly, things were beginning to get better. Their presence in Milan was an indication of progress; their only previous trips had been in highly regimented teams.

“Don’t you ever feel like coming back?” asked Vera. “Don’t you get homesick?”

Lisa shook her head. “I’m not even sure where home is. I was born in the Ukraine but my mother was Polish. There’s even a trace of Romany, I’m told! I’ve lived in Vienna for nearly twenty years. So you tell
me
what my homeland is!” They nodded their understanding, and said it was almost as hard for them to tell. Vera was from Leningrad, and Victor from Georgia, and they were of course Jewish. “By race not religion,” added Vera hurriedly. Evidently thinking that Signor Fontini might feel left out of this conversation, she asked him what was home to
him
. “La Scala,” he said. Everyone laughed, and Victor offered a toast to their host’s native land, the beautiful La Scala.

There was a great deal of laughter, from then on. Vera had a dry humour, and Lisa surprised herself, and them, by being at
her wittiest. Sparkling from wine and nervous excitement, she had them in stitches with her absurd—but true—anecdotes. Victor Berenstein had a terrible coughing fit when, in the midst of one of Frau Erdman’s stories, his wine went down the wrong way.

Serebryakova warned him not to drink too much, for he would have to sing at rehearsal in the morning and would not want a hangover. “He can get drunk on milk,” she explained to Lisa, while he protested it was all nonsense—he had never been drunk in his life. Vera rolled her eyes heavenwards. “You’re right!” he sighed, pushing away his still half full wine glass; and Serebryakova patted his hand approvingly. He responded by taking her hand in his, and stroking it. They looked full into each other’s eyes, and smiled affectionately. Lisa had already formed the conclusion that there was an intimate relationship between them. At first she thought it might be no more than a friendship, the comradeship of having worked together in the same opera house for several years, and now being in a strange land together. It certainly was not surprising that, when they searched in Russian for the right Italian word or phrase, they used the intimate form of the second person. But as time went on, and Victor became a little tipsy, she could see they were in love. She was slightly aghast that Serebryakova, with her flawless oval face, slanting green eyes, and long blond hair (as silver as her name), should have chosen to fall in love with a man so much older and so unprepossessing. There was no accounting for tastes. The discovery upset her, and she did not know why. It was certainly not prudishness, though she knew Serebryakova was married, and Berenstein showed all the signs of marriage also. Perhaps it was the openness of their behavior. For instance, after they had said goodnight to Signor Fontini and entered the hotel lift, Vera closed her eyes and rested her head on Victor Berenstein’s shoulder; and
only her awkward sling prevented even closer contact. He put his arm round her and stroked her hair. When they stepped off at the second floor, bidding Lisa goodnight, he still kept his arm around her.

Lisa felt lonely and depressed when she was in her silent suite, surrounded by the meaningless flowers. She found yet another wrinkle in her face, as she prepared for bed. She slept little, and was down for breakfast before they had started serving. She was finishing her last cup of coffee when Victor and Vera came in—together.

When Signor Fontini called to take Lisa to the opera house, he pointed to the pile of suitcases and hatboxes waiting in the vestibule. “The diva’s,” he said; “you can see she travels light!” Serebryakova was to leave by the midday train, directly after the rehearsal, which she had begged Lisa to allow her to attend. Lisa, her breast fluttering with nervous excitement, smiled at Signor Fontini’s dry remark. Then she was out into the warm spring sunlight and stepping into the limousine which would take her the two blocks to the opera house. She had forgotten how Tatiana’s opening phrases went, and had to glance at the score to reassure herself.

There were still more flowers in her dressing room. She was rushed straight through into the fitting room, and spent the next hour being adjusted to fit Vera’s dresses—that was how it felt. She was too dazed by the unfamiliar star treatment to utter a word, and just let herself be dragged about and prodded, like a queen bee. The beautiful dresses needed to be shortened, and also let out in various places. Then she was rushed to the make-up room, to have her wrinkles smoothed out into a young girl’s fresh skin, while the seamstresses made the necessary final quick adjustments to her costumes. Coffee was poured down her
throat; she was poured into her dress. They weren’t happy with her long, dull hair, beginning to streak with grey. They were not happy with it at all. By this evening they would find her a wig. The ladies clucked also about her oily skin, because she was beginning to perspire a lot. Embarrassed, she confessed to a greasy complexion and a tendency to sweat, especially when she was nervous.

Then she was out on stage. She was being clapped by the orchestra, members of the chorus, hangers-on, and a scattering of people in the stalls (Serebryakova among them). Lensky, a handsome young Italian, doomed yet again to fall in his duel with Onegin, kissed her hand; as did her doting old husband of the last act, the Prince—a bearded middle-aged Romanian. Signor Fontini introduced her also to the conductor, a wasplike man, of whose reputation for unrelenting energy and unfailing brilliance Lisa stood in awe. Although he himself was past sixty, his manner seemed to be saying, “Why have they burdened me with cripples and old women?” In broken German (for some reason best known to himself), he delivered a few terse words of advice. Lisa went across to shake hands with the leader of the orchestra. Onegin beamed at her. She nodded that she was ready to start. All but her sister Olga and Madame Larina hurried from the stage. The conductor lifted his baton.

And later, when he tapped his music stand to call attention to a mistake, he had harsh words only for the woodwind. To Lisa, he muttered a brief compliment; and Serebryakova, from the stalls, had already given her a nod of appreciation, and a thumbs-up. The rehearsal continued to go well. There were obviously flaws in her performance, but she usually corrected them as soon as they were pointed out. Clearly, too, she would have to learn how to match her movements and gestures to those of the
other performers. “That will come very soon,” said Victor to her, at the end of the morning session. “Anyone can see you’re a born actress. You move like a ballerina. Well, of course, you almost
were
a ballerina! It shows. And the most important thing is—you can
sing!
Thank God you were able to come!” And Vera rushed up on stage, and hugged her exuberantly with her good arm. “
Chudno!
” she said. “Magnificent!” She confessed tears had sprung to her eyes during the Letter Scene. “I was hearing it for the first time!”

Her generous praise moved Lisa so much that she could not even thank her. She had not yet recovered from the moment, near the end, when tears had sprung to
her
eyes. It was when she had to tell the remorseful Onegin that she still loved him, but his response had come too late: she could not betray her marriage vows. At the phrase “Happiness was so possible, so close!” she remembered a student in Petersburg whom she had loved with all her ardent soul, as Tatiana loved Onegin. And, like Onegin, the young man had cast away her love, her generous gift, and suppressed his own noble impulses, for the sake of a dream, an illusion of freedom. Lisa, even while she sang, had been overwhelmed with unaccustomed memories. For a moment they had threatened to get the better of her singing. She felt angry with herself. One wanted the audience to weep, but the singer must stay cold and dry-eyed.