Prima Donna at Large (41 page)

Pasquale Amato was not thinking of the chorus; he was thinking of what an incredibly lucky man Antonio Scotti was. They'd both been singing for over a quarter of a century, but Amato had never had a beautiful soprano buy
him
a fur coat for Christmas.

“Turn around,” Geraldine Farrar commanded.

He turned slowly, letting her examine every inch of the expensive mink coat he was modeling. “It is loose in the shoulders,” he complained.

“That's all right, Toto is bigger through the shoulders than you are.” She flashed him a smile to let him know she wasn't being critical. “What do you think, Pasquale? Do you think he would like this one?”

Amato stroked the fur lapel sensuously. “He is fool not to like it, Gerry. It is lovely present.”

“Mmm.” She didn't look convinced. They were at Revillon Frères on Fifth Avenue; Gerry had warned Amato that she expected him to devote all of Saturday afternoon to helping her find just the right coat for Scotti's Christmas present. “I wonder if the belted style is right for him? He
is
getting a bit thick around the middle, you know.”

“Toto loathes the coats that hang straight down.”

“I know. Perhaps one of those with the indented waistline but without the belt?” She motioned to one of the three clerks hovering nearby. “You know the ones I mean?”

The clerk assured her he did indeed know the ones she meant. He disappeared momentarily and came back carrying three coats. Gerry selected one and Amato slipped it on. “I think I like this one best,” he volunteered. He was getting a little tired of modeling.

Gerry squinted her eyes, trying to visualize what Scotti would look like in the coat. Another clerk came forward expectantly, holding out a chestnut-colored coat. Gerry waved him away. “Wrong color. It has to be black.”

“
This
one is black,” Amato said pointedly, holding out both arms to illustrate.

She laughed. “Another minute.” The baritone and the three clerks all kept quiet while she tried to make up her mind. “I just don't know,” she finally said. The four men sighed.

Gerry asked the clerks to put the coat aside for a few days, just long enough for her to think about it. The two singers left and paused for a moment outside. Fifth Avenue's wide sidewalks seemed more crowded than usual. The air was crisp and smelled good; the afternoon light was beginning to fail and the electric streetlights would be coming on soon. Reluctant to call it a day just yet, Gerry took Amato's arm and started to stroll unhurriedly up the avenue.

They looked in store windows that displayed their wares among carefully arranged wreaths of holly and big red bow ribbons and cornucopias spilling out oranges and pears and walnuts. One store window had a mannequin of Saint Nicholas, complete with long-stemmed pipe and cape, standing beside an open burlap bag bursting with toys—a puppet, a toy drum, a bright yellow wooden horse. Two boys pressed up against the window, their noses flattened against the glass.

Amato made a
tsk
ing sound. “The Christmas shopping—every year, it starts a little earlier.”

Gerry smiled. “It can't start early enough for me. I love Christmas.”

“I must buy new
galosce
,” he muttered. Overshoes. “Before the New York snow starts to cover us up.”

“Oh, good heavens!” Gerry stopped in her tracks. “You've just reminded me, Pasquale. I left my new boots in my dressing room.” She looked up at the darkening sky. “Do you think it will snow this weekend?”

“
Senza dubbio
,” he said fatalistically. “Always it snows when one leaves the boots in the dressing room.”

“That settles it, then. We'll have to stop by and pick them up.”

“Can you not send the maid?”

“
Nobody
gets the key to my dressing room.” Geraldine Farrar was the only singer at the Metropolitan with her own private dressing room; she'd guarded the only key jealously for over ten years now. “I wonder if the matinee performance is over yet.”

Amato had to unbutton his overcoat to get to the watch in his vest pocket. “I think so. They all go home by now. The smart ones, they go home at end of first act.” That Saturday afternoon's opera was
Oberon
, not one of Amato's favorites.

Gerry's chauffeur and limousine were waiting for them on East Thirty-fourth Street by Altman's. They drove west past the Waldorf-Astoria to Herald Square and turned up Broadway the few remaining blocks to the Metropolitan Opera. The two singers slipped in quietly through the Fortieth Street entrance, in case any of the audience were still lingering out front.

The backstage hustle and bustle that normally characterized the changing of stage sets between matinee and evening performances were missing; that evening's performance was being staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of several so scheduled during the season. The opera was
L'Elisir d'Amore
, one of Caruso's vehicles—not one of his best, some of his friends thought. The unusual late afternoon quiet gave the Metropolitan's backstage area an eerie quality—so both Gerry and Amato jumped when two policemen stepped out of the shadows and blocked their way.

Gerry gasped. “Good Lord—something else has happened?”

The Met's doorkeeper hastened to assure her that the afternoon's performance had been uneventful, and that the policemen were there to make sure no more ‘accidents' took place. The doorkeeper identified both singers for the police, who memorized their faces and then nodded.

“Locking the barn door after the horse is stolen,” Gerry muttered as the policemen moved aside to let her pass. Amato busied himself asking them questions while Gerry hurried up to her dressing room.

She found her boots and was on her way back when she heard a light hissing sound. She stopped; so did the sound. She started walking; she heard it again. Only this time the hissing said her name.

“Pssst! Gerry!” Rosa Ponselle was peeking around a corner of the corridor.

“Rosa! What are you doing …
lurking
there like that?”

“Are they gone?”

“Are who gone? There's no one downstairs except Pasquale and the doorkeeper. And the police.”

A big sigh of relief. “I s'pose it's all right, then.” She joined Gerry at the top of the stairs. “I wanted to make sure they'd all left before I came out.”

“Make sure
who
had left? What are you talking about, Rosa?”

“The chorus. Our wonderful, professional, warmhearted, and helpful chorus.”

Gerry looked at her sympathetically. “They did it again?”

“Did they ever. The audience had to keep consulting their programs to find out who was singing the female lead today—they certainly couldn't tell by looking at the stage. The chorus blocked me out every chance they got.”

“Oh, Rosa—I'm sorry. Really, Setti must not allow this to continue.”

“Setti can't control them. Gerry, today one of them tried to trip me! They hate me.”

“Oh, that's inexcusable! Do you know which one? You can have him dismissed … or ‘her'?”

“That's just the problem—I don't know which one it was! And it's happened before … I couldn't be sure then, but there was no mistaking it this time. They really hate me. They're even spreading rumors about me now—they're saying I'm having an affair with Caruso!”

Gerry had heard that nasty little story. “You must go over Setti's head. See Gatti.”

“I've already done that. All he did was sit me down and give me a lot of fatherly advice I didn't want.” Rosa was angry. “Don't you see, Gerry? Mr. Gatti doesn't dare crack the whip now, not with all these terrible things happening to them. He's afraid more of them will quit. And they know that. They're just going to keep on and on until one day they pick me up and throw me into the orchestra pit and I end up in the bassoon player's lap.” Rosa made a face. “Look at me!
Hiding
from the chorus! I sang the lead role at the Metropolitan Opera this afternoon! Why should
I
have to hide from a bunch of second-rank musicians who're so jealous they can't see straight?”

“Ger-ee!” a baritone voice floated up from below. “Do you stay up there until Christmas?”

“Coming!” she sang back. “Rosa, listen. It's not just you. The chorus has been nothing but trouble this entire season. They're doing the same thing to the new tenor—”

“Oh, they're just needling Gigli because he thinks he's the next Caruso. They'd do that to anybody who wanted to take Rico's place.” Rosa's anger had died away. “Besides, what they do to him isn't nearly as
nasty
as what they do to me. Gigli's paid his dues, you see. He came to the Met the way you're supposed to come … from other opera houses, from working his way up—not from vaudeville, the way I came. They resent me, Gerry. They resent me because I didn't go through all the lessons and training and work they went through. Gerry, did you know I'd seen only two operas in my
life
before I made my début?”

“No … only two? Ever?” Gerry knew Rosa didn't have the background the rest of them had, but to have seen only two operas in her entire life … Gerry thought what that meant. To have stepped out on that huge Metropolitan stage, to have faced that glittering audience that had heard every great voice of the times—what courage that must have taken! “I didn't realize,” she said faintly.

“Do you know what the first one I saw was?” Rosa mused. “
Tosca
. You and Caruso and Scotti were singing. Gerry, it was as if I'd been sleeping all my life up to that night. Then sometime during the second act I woke up to the fact that it was
that
kind of singing I ought to be doing. I became an opera singer because of you, Gerry.”

That came as a shock. Gerry knew she should feel flattered and did manage to murmur something by way of gracious acknowledgment. But she felt history was repeating itself; and this time around, it hurt. She too had decided to become a singer because of the first performance of an opera she'd attended as a girl, in her case, Emma Calvé's
Carmen
. And now here was …
the next generation
telling her
she
had been a similar source of inspiration. Gerry suddenly felt a hundred years old.

“Ger-
ee
!” Amato called. “Perhaps I come help you down the stairs?”

Not quite yet
, she thought, straightening her shoulders. “We'll be right there!”

“‘We'?”

Gerry had invited Amato to dinner; the cook could stretch it to include one more. “Rosa, come dine with Pasquale and me. Unless you have plans?”

“No plans. Thanks, Gerry—I really don't want to go home.”

Gerry had thought not. “Let's go before Pasquale has a fit. My limousine is on Fortieth. You didn't ride your bicycle to a performance, did you?” The younger woman shook her head. “Come along, then.”

Amato's face broke into a broad smile when he saw he would have the company of
two
beautiful sopranos at dinner that evening.

Mrs. Bukaitis had turned in her mop and pail early, collected her day's pay, and left. The fancy folks wouldn't be using their opera house that night.

She headed east on Thirty-ninth Street, taking no pleasure from the store window displays she passed. These Americans, how they wasted money! They had no sense of proportion. And there was no making them understand the war was not really over.

A man with a red mustache tried to sell her a roasted chestnut from his cart; she ignored him, in spite of being tempted by the smell. That was the trouble with New York City: too many temptations. How easy it would be, to give in to capitalistic self-pampering and forget about those at home. Mrs. Bukaitis was disgusted with herself.

The Third Avenue line had recently added an express track to its elevated train; Mrs. Bukaitis boarded and took a seat among a crowd of talkative and laughing passengers. She hadn't completely gotten over her nervousness at riding the el. It wasn't the noise and the speed—that was something you adjusted to quickly in New York. But it just didn't seem natural to be riding in a train way up there above street level. But then, nothing about this country was what you would call
natural
.

She stared out of the window, trying to shut out the loud voices around her as well as the
clang-rattle-screech-thunk
of the train itself. Mrs. Bukaitis let herself slip into a favorite fantasy: What if an elevated train ran right through the center of Vilnius? How startled and amazed everyone would be! It might even scare those accursed Poles right out of the city.

This would be Mrs. Bukaitis' third Christmas away from Lithuania's capital city. Mrs. Bukaitis and her husband had had to leave first the city and then the country, only a few steps ahead of their pursuers all the way. Mr. Bukaitis had openly opposed the foreign occupation of Vilnius, derailing trains and raiding arsenals and doing anything else he could think of to make clear his disapproval. Then someone in their little band of saboteurs had betrayed them, and the Bukaitises had had to flee for their lives. Their second day in America, Mr. Bukaitis had fallen off the roof of their tenement building and broken his neck. It was sheer carelessness; he had leaned out too far, trying to see all of New York at once.

The farther downtown the el traveled, the less English Mrs. Bukaitis heard spoken around her. Now the voices were talking in Russian and Polish and Italian and Yiddish. The train screeched to a halt at the station built in the middle of the Bowery at the corner of Canal Street. Mrs. Bukaitis got off and walked back uptown one block to Hester Street, then west one more block to Elizabeth.

She passed the corner saloon (now closed) and the Elizabeth Street Pawnshop and entered the third building. Up five flights … not easy after a day spent on the knees scrubbing floors. Mrs. Bukaitis was short of breath, but not just from climbing the stairs. She was excited. She was excited because Antanas had promised the man would be there to talk to them this time.