Mozart’s Blood (9 page)

Octavia heard Russell's slight sigh of irritation. She avoided looking at him. She picked up her water glass and drained it.

 

Octavia was not in the next scene, and she had been scheduled for a costume fitting. Giuditta came to guide her to the costume shop, where the gown for Donna Anna hung on its dress form, an elaborate creation in the
robe à la française
style. Octavia smiled over its silver floral brocade and emerald green silk taffeta. The stomacher was an embroidered panel of silver satin, and as the seamstress fitted it around her, she murmured approval. The whalebone stays and busks of the past were long gone and unlamented. This costume, though it would be hot under the lights, was easy to slip into and would be light to wear.

The seamstress and the designer walked around her, pinching seams here, lifting hems there, chattering about alterations.

“You are so slender, Signorina,” the designer said. “You will look like a dream. Over there is your mourning dress, but it's not yet ready to try on. It's been cut, but not sewn.”

Octavia glanced over at the costume. It hung in disjointed layers of black velvet, black silk, and a rich plum brocade.

“Everything's beautiful,” Octavia told him. “I love the colors.”

He held up a hooded cloak of green velvet so dark it was almost black. “A domino,” he said. “For the second act.”

Octavia smoothed the material with her hand. She looked around at the dress forms holding other gowns, at the men's suits, the racks of choristers' costumes, all in jewel tones. The fabrics simulated the costumes of the late eighteenth century to perfection. “The whole production looks marvelous,” she said. “I loved the sketches.”

He smiled and bowed his thanks. The seamstress helped her out of the gown and back into her sweater and slacks, whispering admiration of the labels. By the time Octavia had brushed her hair and tied it back, and followed Giuditta back to the rehearsal room, Brenda and Nick and Richard had finished the second scene and were taking a break.

Brenda sat in a chair that barely accommodated her wide hips, fanning herself with her hand. Her round face was red, and her mascara had run, flecking her cheeks with black. Richard was at the Steinway, leaning over the pianist for a closer look at the score. Nick, with a white towel slung around his neck, lounged against one wall, while Massimo Luca and Marie Charles conferred with the director about their first entrance.

Russell laid his baton on his stand and beckoned to Octavia. When she came close, he said, “You can go home if you like. We won't get past the next scene, and you look a bit tired. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “Although if you don't need me, I will go and rest. The costumes are gorgeous, by the way.”

“Oh, good.” He looked up at Massimo and Marie, and said, “Excuse me. I think they're ready.” He lifted his baton, and the pianist struck the chords of Zerlina's and Masetto's entrance. Octavia stepped back, out of the sight line. Nick walked past her to join Richard for his entrance, but as he passed, he touched her shoulder with his palm.

She shuddered and pulled away. He gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “My, my,” he said in an undertone. “A little jumpy, aren't you?”

“Sorry,” she whispered back. “I didn't know you were there.”

He had no chance to respond. The director beckoned to him and to Richard and began walking about the set, pointing to their marks, posing to show them what he wanted.

Octavia turned away, resisting an urge to rub away the touch on her shoulder. It had been a silly reaction. Nick wasn't attractive, but he was hardly disgusting. There was no reason she should shiver at his touch. No reason at all.

 

Octavia stood once more in the window of her suite, gazing out into the heavy darkness. The rain had stopped, but beyond the tall windows of Il Principe the city streets still gleamed with it. Despite the warmth of the suite, Octavia felt she had never known Milan to be so cold. She tried to convince herself to eat something. She had eaten very little all day, and she would lose weight she couldn't spare.

Ugo, Ugo, dove sei?
She rubbed her temples with icy fingers and stared down at the boulevards leading away from the Piazza della Repubblica. A chilling truth washed over her, insistent as the rain. If Ugo didn't come back soon, she would have to go into the streets, or…She shook her head and turned away from the window. She couldn't bring herself to consider the consequences.

 

She had first met Ugo on a dark, foggy night in San Francisco when her thirst had driven her into the streets.

She left the Palace Hotel very late at night, avoiding chance meetings with Caruso and Fremstad and her other colleagues who were staying in the same hotel. She prowled down Market Street toward the Embarcadero, hunting. It was late, and the streets were empty, but she knew there would be a few people in the Ferry Building, or in the plaza. She pressed on toward the docks.

Her very first sight of him had been on the footbridge spanning the Embarcadero between Market Street and the Ferry Building plaza. He was a slight, dark figure appearing out of the mist. His shoulders were narrow, and he was no taller than she. He looked vulnerable.

She wore a heavy scarf tied under her chin that night, hiding her bright hair from anyone who might recognize her from the
Carmen
rehearsals. She was singing the rôle of Micaëla, and her name was Hélène Singher, a young soprano from a French village so small no one could find it on a map. After endless auditions and multiple disappointments, Hélène had won a post with the Metropolitan Opera's touring company, and she had been so relieved that she hadn't considered how she would manage in the western territories of America.

It was to be a fabulous production. Caruso was the Don José, and the great contralto Olive Fremstad would sing the vixen, Carmen.

But rehearsals were going badly. Caruso resented being sent to a place he considered primitive and dangerous, and had complained incessantly on the long train journey from New York. In San Francisco, he and Fremstad had screaming arguments. She was a two-hundred-pound Wagnerian, and Caruso stood no more than five foot eight. Their backstage clashes were as dramatic as any staged before their audiences. The contralto's great bosom thrust at Caruso's livid face as if she could crush the fire of his temper with her flesh. The barnlike Grand Opera House reverberated with their big, angry voices.

Hélène had left the train in Chicago, driven by a desperate thirst. By the time she returned to the station, her train had departed for the West without her. She caught another train, but she was a day late arriving in San Francisco, and she missed the first rehearsal.

She found the entire company on edge. Their first production,
The Queen of Sheba,
had been excoriated by the press. Caruso, already upset by the recent eruption of Vesuvius and the rumored destruction of his native Naples, swore he would abandon the cast if the quality of its performances did not improve. The company argued and fought its way through every rehearsal.

In the midst of this turmoil, neither conductor nor colleagues had any forgiveness for a young, unknown soprano. Everyone treated Hélène as if she were still a
comprimario,
as if she had been handed the plum of Micaëla by default. She felt thwarted at every turn.

Hélène had heard Bizet play the tunes of his opera in a
salon
in Paris. She knew what he intended in Micaëla's aria, but though she argued every point with all her energy, the conductor wouldn't listen to her.

Her costume, too, was a disaster, a concoction of gathered, printed cotton that turned her slim body into that of a dumpy Spanish peasant. The costume designer, like everyone else in the production, paid no attention to Hélène's pleas, and Hélène had no doubt that the diva had her thick-fingered hand in the matter. Fremstad's broad figure was impossible to disguise as the seductress Carmen. The contrast between her ample outlines and Hélène's slenderness would be anything but flattering.

A heavy silver fog had rolled in from the sea to obscure the waters of the bay. The stars disappeared behind it. The fog bell tolled every few minutes from Alcatraz Island, its deep gong slicing through the mist to reverberate off the bricks and cobblestones of the city streets. Hélène crept along the footbridge, hardly able to see where she put her feet. A gaslight at the end, where the stairs led down to the Ferry Building plaza, gave her a goal. There were always people in the plaza, even on a foggy midnight. She would find someone there who could slake her thirst, and then dash back to the Palace, hoping against hope that no one would see the young singer returning unescorted at an unsuitable hour.

The slender young man was leaning against the railing, looking out into the curling fog. His black hair, half hidden by a flat cap of gray twill, gleamed beneath the gaslight. He wore a well-cut jacket and slim trousers, with heeled boots. He seemed out of place in the midnight darkness of the Embarcadero. He looked like a schoolboy who had escaped his chaperone in search of some deviltry.

She stepped softly as she approached, thinking to surprise him.

When she was within five steps of him, he lifted his head and smiled at her. Even in the dim light, she could see that his eyes were as black as coal, and his features narrow and delicate. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her and allowed her lips to curl at the corners. Inevitably, such men surmised that an unescorted woman, late at night, was a streetwalker. For her, it was a useful assumption.

“Buona sera, signorina,”
the young man said softly.

Startled, she almost responded in the same language. She blinked and caught herself.
“Bon soir,”
she breathed, with her close-lipped smile.

“Ah,” the young man exclaimed. “French, not Italian. Forgive me.”

“De rien,”
she said. She came closer. This one, so slight and young, should be easy. The bandanna of silk he wore around his neck was loosely tied, and his collar fell open beneath it, baring his throat as if in invitation.

“You're out late, mademoiselle,” he said. His wide smile showed very white teeth.

“Indeed,” she murmured, moving closer to him. “The hour is far gone, isn't it? Perhaps you would like to escort me to the Ferry Building.”

“Ah. Headed for Oakland, are you?” The fog bell tolled again, a deep, resonant tone that seemed magnified by the fog. The young man put out his arm for Hélène to take, and when she put her fingers on it, she felt thin, corded muscle through the gray worsted of his coat. A man in a tall hat and a long fur-collared overcoat came up the wooden stairs from the plaza just as they were going down. He eyed them disapprovingly, and pulled the hem of his coat away so Hélène's cloak would not touch it.

“You see,” the young man said to Hélène, snugging her hand tighter beneath his arm. “That gentleman is convinced you're a soiled dove.”

She tucked her chin so she could look up at him. “And what do you think, sir?” she asked demurely.

They had reached the plaza. Drifts of fog swirled beneath the gaslights, and the damp air carried the tang of salt and fish. Subtly, Hélène guided her companion to the left, into the shadows beneath the footbridge.

He followed her lead, but he chuckled as they stepped into the darkness. “What I think,” he said lightly, “is that you look too clean and healthy to be a whore.”

“Vraiment,”
she answered, her tone as light as his. “Are whores always dirty?”

“In my experience they are.”

“Perhaps you need to widen your experience, sir.” She released his arm and turned to face him, standing very close so that her breasts touched his chest. The thirst was on her, driving her. Her lips felt hot, and her belly clenched with need. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and put her face close to his.

He said, “You're wasting your time, mademoiselle.”

“Why?” Her voice was throaty, throbbing.

“I have no money.”

“Ah.” She let her fingers trail across his open collar, linger on his throat, just where the jugular vein throbbed its little endless dance beneath the fragile skin. He smelled deliciously of verbena and soap and tender, unspoiled flesh.

“Ah, but it's not money I need, young sir.” Her voice was throaty, and her breath came quickly. Her upper lip swelled and began to retract. She couldn't stop it. She opened her cloak and moved in, pressing her body against his, putting her hand on the back of his head to bring his throat to her lips. She dared not wait any longer. She would lose control, drink too much…. And she had sworn to herself she would never do that again.

Her breath hissed in her throat as she bared her teeth.

The sound that came from him was no longer a laugh, but a growl, deep in his throat. His hand came up, slender but devastatingly strong. His fingers were hard as iron as he caught her throat just beneath her jaw. He thrust her back and held her at arm's length.

She felt the cold air on her teeth and knew that he must see them, the long, gleaming canines ivory pale in the darkness, their tips razor sharp.

His hand squeezed her throat, shutting off her air. That didn't matter. She could manage without air for quite a long time. But his other hand was drawing up her skirts, scratching at her cotton stocking, searching for that place…that one vulnerable place…digging in with sharp nails, tearing the fabric, probing for the artery's pulse.

She realized, with a shock, that he knew.

Desperate now, she gripped the back of his head with her hand and pulled at his hair, forcing his neck back, loosening his grip on her throat. The growling deepened. She pulled harder and felt that lethal claw against her skin.

With a strangled cry, using every bit of her considerable strength, she tore herself free. She stumbled back a step, and another one, one hand held out before her as if that would stop him. With her other hand she palmed her upper lip, forcing it down over her teeth. Her skirts, of their own weight, fell back over her torn stocking. She stared at him in horror.