Mephisto Aria (22 page)

Katherina winced at the question. “You’re really getting into this demon thing, aren’t you? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I’m a little more nervous than you because the two of you, for that matter, the whole rest of the cast, are playing sins, witches, and demons. I’m the only one who ends up being dragged off to hell against my will.”

“That’s a small price to pay for having the most glorious aria in the opera. I’d give a testicle to have a solo like that.”

“I admit the aria is fairly exciting. But it’s just Gretchen’s last words in Goethe’s Faust. They don’t even make much sense.”

“Oh, but they’re a wonderful admission that innocence is crap. We’re all going to hell so let’s wallow in it. The idea of surrender is such a turn-on. I’m sure it’ll be a turn-on for the audience too! You’ll be singing your heart out as humankind gives up its soul.” Gustav squinted through red eyes.

“That’s the problem, though. I don’t like being the spokesperson for the human race in damnation. I mean, I prefer to think the human race shouldn’t surrender.”

“That’s what I like about you, my dear.” Sabine laid her other hand on Katherina’s wrist. “You are such a good, sweet person, just begging to be sullied. That is sooo attractive.” She paused for a moment, then seemed to take a cue from her companion. “Listen, Gustav and I have been talking. We both think you are very…appealing. Why don’t you join us in our hotel and have another drink. The three of us can get to know each other better. I mean, you and I kind of know each other already, but there is so much more we can learn. You know that I can make you happy, and Gustav is dying to amuse you in his own special way. Just think of how much fun the three of us can have together.”

Katherina slid her hand out from under Sabine’s and stood up. “Thank you for the invitation. It’s flattering, in a sticky kind of way. Why don’t you ask Radu Gavril to join you? I’m sure he’d be pleased.” The look that Gustav and Sabine exchanged suggested that they were already considering the stage director.

“In any case, I think I’ll hang on a bit longer to what’s left of my innocence, or prudery, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve got a long day tomorrow, we all do, so I’ll say good night now.”

She dropped thirty marks on the table to pay for her dinner and turned away. By the time she was at the door, coat in hand, she realized this was the second time she had gotten up from a table to flee Sabine’s lasciviousness. It had done her little good the first time, though, since she had fallen prey anyhow. The thought sent a wave of excitement up from her groin to her chest, and then to her cheeks. But no, she told herself, she would not become someone’s conquest again.

XXIX
Scherzando

Dress rehearsal began and Katherina stood with the orchestra and the other singers behind the Witches’ Altar. They would perform before a small invited audience of music students brought up with special permission from Drei Annen. The students, who filled only the front half of the audience space, seemed delighted to be part of the artistic experiment.

Katherina had reached a compromise with the stage director regarding her costume so that she wore a flesh-colored bikini top under a loose gauze shirt. The step back from nudity was small, since her breasts were still largely exposed and her nipples visible through the fabric, but the layer of material gave her a sense of protection.

The Sins were costumed in Greek chitons, all carrying objects that marked their identities. Mephisto’s costume, however, stood out from all the others. For anyone with a knowledge of theater, the black tights under a trim black doublet, square cut at the neck and with puffy red satin sleeves, was an homage to the costume Gründgens wore in the famous Hamburg Faust. Gustav had also copied the white pancake makeup garishly offset by extreme V-shaped eyebrows and crimson red lips. His head was covered by a form-fitting black skullcap that reached to the back of his neck and was topped with a narrow curved red feather. He even wore the elevated-heel shoes that Gründgens’ Mephisto had used to add to his height.

In the midst of the rehearsal another detail of his costume caught Katherina’s notice, with such force that she almost missed her cue. His gloves. Black leather, with cuffs reaching halfway up the forearm, they were virtually identical to the gauntlet her father had brought back from Stalingrad.

The orchestra had already begun the overture and on his musical cue, a stagehand ignited the fire in the pit with a pleasant “woooff.” Katherina was relieved to see that it was a rather modest fire, fragrant and warming, not at all threatening to the actors moving around above it. Her fears and anxieties now all seemed foolish.

The Prolog in Heaven went quickly as Gustav sang his bantering with God and wagered for the soul of Woman. The voice of God was disembodied, a recording of a bass voice, projected from above at high volume. Katherina recognized some of the text, phrases taken verbatim from Goethe’s great work. She smiled at Mephisto’s wisecrack-compliment to God for being “mensch” enough to chat with the devil. The audience was attentive and agreeably tense, obviously waiting for the livelier parts they knew were coming.

The first sin, Envy, threaded his way through the audience awkwardly, until the listeners understood that reaction was expected of them. But soon, Katherina’s Woman and her dancer “demon” found willing participants who sang their quickly learned refrain with the verve of children chosen for the school play. On cue, the rest of the audience joined for a final repetition, and the opera moved on swimmingly.

The next chorus began sleepily and then was joined by Katherina and the sin of Sloth, as they swept through the crowd drawing in singers to the main melody. Those who were completely tuneless politely held back, letting the more musical carry the sound. It was becoming fun and the audience began to sway, apparently loving it.

At the third sin of Gluttony, people seemed to not believe their good luck. Katherina and the demon began their duet while the dancers threw out doughnuts and balls of lemon gelatin, trying to elicit a rebellion. The response was playful. The audience seemed anxious to please and did not step far over the line of propriety. It was not so much a food fight as a food disagreement.

Pride worked beyond all Katherina’s expectations. Mephisto and two dancers chose their audience “bodies” very carefully and drew them to the Witches’ Altar. With the pulsing of the woodwinds in the orchestra behind them, they formed their little pyramid with the dancers and Katherina sang her first aria kneeling precariously, but successfully, on their backs.

By the time they arrived at the sin of Greed, Katherina was buoyant. She was embarrassed that she had ever doubted the showmanship of the three men in charge of the production. It was a charming opera, innocent and playful, and the giddy audience obviously thought so too.

Even Wrath, with the huge Finnish bass slapping people around, never moved the audience “victims” beyond faint annoyance. How could she have ever thought it would be otherwise? The raucous, rhythmic music merely stirred the audience to a loud mumbling, as they tried to sing along.

Lust, which had worried her most of all, was no worse than some Salome performances she had seen. She had to feign group sex with some of the demons, but it was all obviously play-acting, and though it was difficult to sing lying down, the scene worked marvelously. Even the audience, caught up in the ritual chanting of the chorus, cheered them on joyfully, but did not try to intrude in the lustful pantomime on the rock. How silly she had been to doubt the good manners and restraint of the German opera public.

Before she knew it, the single-act opera was nearly over. The orchestra struck up the Dies Irae theme, and Mephisto was already leading half of the audience in a snaking line around the periphery of the hall. Everyone was swaying now and clapping their hands in the air. Mephisto handed off his scythe and climbed up behind her, straddling her in his high-heeled boots.

She sang her heart-rending final aria, fighting off the well-rehearsed embrace of Mephisto, and though she did scrape a knee on the rock surface, his manhandling of her was only “stage-rough” and measured. It would make a great show, after all, she thought.

If this was Dionysian opera, she was for it. If all went well, she would have world coverage and a huge fee—while having the time of her life.

“It’s a bloody disaster,” Gregory Raspin said, striking the table with the flat of his hand. “I commissioned a Dionysian sacrifice and you gave me a Volksfest. The audience all but ran out and polka’d.”

“It’s certainly not what we planned,” Radu agreed. “It has no edge to it at all. So, where do we go from here?”

“The audience is the problem,” Diener growled. “They’re like sheep. Bland, dull-witted sheep. There is no blood left in them. What’s happened to the German character? If this whole endeavor isn’t to go down the toilet and make a laughingstock of us all, we have to find a way to set them on fire.”

“I agree. It’s the audience,” Radu added. “The pathetic fools we had yesterday don’t have a single carnal thought.”

“I think I have a remedy. A remarkably obvious one.” Gregory Raspin took out a leather-bound notebook and fountain pen and laid them on the table. “I spent all last night analyzing the problem.” He tapped the notebook, suggesting it was the repository of his ideas.

The other two men looked at him expectantly.

“I had originally thought to bring up an audience from Salzgitter or Nordhausen, with special emphasis on young people. We would give out champagne and schnapps before the performance, to break down their inhibition. I had already agreed with the East German government and the Russians to let some of the border troops attend. I thought it would do no harm. But I was a fool. The solution was right here in front of me. What’s more excitable than a drunken soldier away from home?” Raspin took out a ballpoint pen and jotted a few lines in his notebook.

Radu Gavril nodded. “I see what you mean. As long as they’re not under close supervision, they behave like all young men do when they’re let loose.”

“Exactly. The Russians especially would suit our needs. We saw in 1945 what they’re capable of. We’ll just give them all the liquor they want before the opera starts, and in the Gluttony scene we’ll give them even more.”

Diener looked ceiling ward. “Oh, I like this. They’ll be in a perfect mood for Wrath and Lust. But what about the soloists? Will they go along with it?”

“Most of them will. They’re in this project for the thrill. They’ll go all the way with us, no matter what.”

“And Katherina Marow?” Radu asked. “She’s the one who’ll take the brunt of it, especially at the end.”

“But that’s what we want, isn’t it?” Raspin said softly. “A big climax. We just have to make sure she holds still for it.”

“She won’t like it. And if she has an inkling of how rough it can get, she could ask her manager to release her from the contract.”

Raspin slipped his notebook back into his jacket pocket. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of that.”

Gregory Raspin strode into the Harzwald Hotel at seven in the morning. Without greeting, he asked, “Has Madame Marow gotten any calls in the last few days?”

The night manager peered nervously into Katherina’s mailbox. “Why, yes. She has two messages now, from early this morning. I was about to send them up to her.”

“No, I’ll take them. If her manager calls, please advise her that Madame Marow is not available and then inform me. I will pass on the information to Madame Marow, of course, and will return the calls myself.”

“Uh, yes sir. If you wish.”

“It is very important that you are diligent about this. We have our opening night in less than forty-eight hours and everyone is a bit on edge. This great artist is about to perform a world premiere in a very difficult role, and the last thing she needs is to be disturbed. Particularly her agent should not be bothering her with future engagement details. I will hold you personally responsible for delivering all messages to me. As I said, I will return the calls immediately, so there is no need for you to even mention them to Madame Marow. Do you understand?”

The night manager clasped nervous hands in front of him. “Of course, Herr Raspin. I’m at your service.”

XXX
Molto Agitato

Stabshauptmann Manfred Exner, Commandant of Grenzregiment 6, Brocken Border Control Unit of the German Democratic Republic, buttoned his dark green uniform jacket. Annoyed, he flicked a speck of dirt from the white Grenztruppen DDR lettering around his cuff and prepared to meet his visitor. The call had come from the Ministry of Defense an hour earlier, so he knew the substance of the coming meeting, and he didn’t like it.

While he waited for his lieutenant to bring in the visitor, he glanced around his office. He was acutely aware of how shabby the room, the whole installation, in fact, would look to Western eyes. It put him in a weak position, and it galled him to have to talk to the man at all. Exner was a good communist, but he was not a fool. It was clear to anyone with eyes and a brain that the prosperous West had won the ideological battle with their East German brethren. The world had changed greatly in the decades following the war, and in that time, while the West was thriving, the DDR had not lived up to its promise to create a prosperous workers’ society. The very fact that East Germans had to be blocked from leaving the DDR under penalty of death was evidence enough of the failure. Even for believers like himself, the dream of a just and egalitarian socialist state was receding ever more into the distance. Some time in the past year he had realized that he and his troops were an anachronism and the state they guarded a failure. But Stabshauptmann Exner was a good soldier, and when he was given an order, he obeyed. He had a border to guard, and that is what he would do until he was commanded to stand down.

The lieutenant ushered in the visitor, a slender, well-dressed man in his sixties with a reserved businesslike smile. The handshake told Exner all he needed to know. It was the smooth cool hand of a rich man with the loose grip of one who could not be trusted.