The White Hotel (22 page)

She went with Lucia—her understudy. This was the girl, a member of the chorus, whose catastrophic failure had been responsible for the urgent telegram to Lisa. A raven-haired Lombard, with full red lips and lustrous dark eyes under long lashes, she had been chosen more for her looks than her voice. No one had expected Serebryakova, who was notoriously as strong as a horse, to miss any performances. But Lucia had had her big
chance, and failed. Her proud parents and six brothers and sisters had been present on the night she was hooted off the stage. Lisa knew what a terrible blow the young woman had suffered, and made it her business to become acquainted with her and try to undo some of the damage to her morale. Fearing to appear condescending, she had at first taken a brisk, professional line, saying she would like to run through some of the arias with her. Understandably the girl had been reserved and a little resentful; but she was passionately fond of music, and found the afternoons in Lisa’s suite, studying the score and practising together, so interesting and instructive that she had shed her unfriendliness. Lisa, for her part, found she enjoyed helping the girl to sort out some of the flaws in her technique; she really had quite a promising voice, and made progress under Lisa’s tuition. If she had to take over again, she could probably now cope reasonably well.

This was important to Lisa, for her attack of breathlessness that first night—fortunately short-lived—confronted her with the possibility that one night she might not be able to go on. So quite apart from the motive of compassion, there were solid professional grounds for trying to help her understudy.

By now they were firm friends: friendship mixed with a good deal of adoration on Lucia’s side, and perhaps of maternal affection on Lisa’s—for Lucia was hardly twenty. Devoutly religious herself, and knowing Turin well, she was delighted to accept when Lisa asked her if she would accompany her on her “pilgrimage.”

Now here they were, gazing, not at the Shroud itself—which, trapped in iron, had stayed hidden from their eyes when they had knelt in Turin Cathedral—but at a full-length replica of it hanging on the wall in the museum, seeing the nail marks, the scourge marks, the very features of Christ. Those marks and features had
appeared, not in Secondo Pia’s photograph of the Shroud, but in the negative. A nun was gazing at the image, tears streaming down her cheeks, making the sign of the cross over and over again, and murmuring, “Terrible! Terrible! Terrible! The wicked men! The wicked, wicked men!” Lisa too felt profoundly moved. That gaunt, tortured, yet dignified face and body—the hands placed becomingly over the genitals. Gazing up at the photographer’s image, she became convinced that this was indeed Jesus.

In the confessional, back at the Cathedral, Lisa told the priest that, having seen a replica of the photograph of the Holy Shroud, she no longer believed in Christ’s resurrection. The priest, after a moment’s thought, said she ought not to judge anything so momentous by a doubtful relic. “We do not claim that it is the Holy Shroud,” he said. “Only that it may be. If you believe it is false, that is no reason for doubting the resurrection.”

“But that is just it, Father,” she said. “I am quite sure the shroud is genuine.”

The priest’s voice was puzzled. “Then why do you say you have lost your faith?”

“Because the man I’ve been looking at is dead. It reminds me of pressed flowers.”

The priest advised her to go home and pray in the quietness of her own room.

Lisa confessed a second time, to Lucia, when they sat on a seat beside the river, taking in the warmth of the sun behind a light veil of cloud, and eating bread and cheese. This time it was a secular confession. She told the girl about some of the disasters in her life: the lack of contact with her father and (of less importance) her brother; her failure in her first choice of career, the ballet, due partly to bad health but mainly to a lack of talent; her annulled marriage—and yet she still had the feeling one was
married for life. She envied Lucia’s large and loving family circle; she envied her youth, with all its prospects of family happiness. And, because of the late start and a long illness, Lisa would never be more than a
good
singer—whereas Lucia could at least
hope
to be great, one day.

“How have you managed—?” The girl dropped her head, blushing at her boldness.

“You mean, without love? Oh, I try not to think of it any more. It’s not been easy. I’m not without—passions, I can assure you. But you can stifle a lot by getting involved in your work.”

“I could never get
that
involved,” said the girl, with a sigh. She glanced slyly at her engagement ring.

“You’re very wise, my dear,” said Lisa.

They fell silent. Lisa was disturbed by the foolish thought that if Christ’s hands had not been placed so tactfully, yet suggestively, the Church would not have been able to display His image.

“It’s a good thing Rome is too far,” she said to Victor. “If I went there I’d become an atheist like you!” He denied being an atheist. You couldn’t be brought up in the Caucasus, and look up at the thousands of pure bright stars at night, without having a glimmer of religious feeling.

His remark made Lisa yearn for the tranquillity of mountains. She could get to Como and back within a day. She asked Victor if he would like to go with her. His eyes lit up, flashed for a moment, through his horn-rimmed glasses, with the snowy peaks of his native Georgia.

On a cloudless June day they drank tea on a hotel terrace, overlooking the sparkling lake and with a backdrop of transparent mountains. She felt light enough to float off the terrace and drift
over the lake. The cool refreshing breeze would carry her. Victor felt happy too, because of the mountains and that morning’s letter from Vera. She was in marvellous spirits, except for missing him. By the same post, Lisa had received a gift from her. It was a print of the Chersonese by Leonid Pasternak. She had mentioned to Vera the Chersonese, as a part of the Black Sea coast dear to her memory. It was a thoughtful, touching gift.

As they sipped their tea, Victor reread his letter, chuckling over the bits he read out to Lisa. “I’ve bought a maternity corset, darling. I’ll be as fat as a sow when you come home.” How overjoyed he was, he said, at having a child, so unexpectedly in the autumn, as it were. How much he missed Vera; and how unbearable it would be without Lisa’s company. His first wife and their ten-year-old son had been killed in the Civil War. A stray shell had fallen on their house. He still couldn’t talk about it. Until he had found Vera he had not expected any more happiness in life.

They went for a ride, up a funicular railway. Still he rattled on, about his wife and coming child, with occasional pauses to point out a fine view. She had never known him so talkative. In fact, without Vera’s presence as mediator, she had not found it easy to communicate with him. He spoke very little except when he was drunk; and his wife had given him strict orders about that. But today, in the mountains, he opened out, even if on a line of thoughts as narrow as the railway. Lisa herself did not feel talkative, and was content to smile and nod, while drinking in the scenery.

It was late afternoon when they came down to the town, and neither of them felt like rushing back to the station. He suggested they try to get rooms at the splendid hotel where they had had tea. “We’re not needed till tomorrow night,” he urged. “Fontini
doesn’t own us—though he thinks he does! And Delorenzi too, the arrogant little runt! I see what you mean about Milan. Awful place! Well, the Devil take them, let’s stay the night!”

Lisa was “game,” after the initial surprise. “Splendid!” he said; and dashed into the hotel. He came out beaming success.

“But I haven’t any things!” she suddenly remembered.

“What do you need?”

She considered. “Well, only a toothbrush and toothpaste, I suppose!”

“You wait here.” In three minutes he was back, with two paper bags. “We’ve got our luggage.” He laughed. “I needed rather more—some shaving gear, too!”

Rising in the lift, they shared their amusement at the suspicious looks the receptionist and the porter had given them. After settling into their rooms, they had a pleasant, leisurely dinner. The dining room was crowded, but so large and high that it invited people to eat in silence, or to converse in low tones. Victor had recovered from his talkative spell; but the silence was companionable, not awkward. They gazed out through the french windows at the still lake, beginning to ripple towards dusk. Afterwards they had a stroll along the shore. The night fell quickly between the mountains, until the peaks could only be “seen” by the absence of stars there, for the open sky was full of stars. Lisa felt the Holy Shroud fall away from her, and faith spring alive again. Trite though it might seem, Victor was right—you could not look up at such stars without believing there was
something
.

Outside her door he surprised her by planting a firm kiss on her lips. “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks!” He chuckled. “They’re so—full and deliciously curved! Vera will forgive me! I hope you didn’t mind? See you in the morning.”

He had never expressed curiosity about her past; but a remark
she threw out at breakfast, about her being “probably half Jewish,” did arouse his interest. She found herself, in the quiet train journey back to Milan, telling him things that she had never told anyone. Not being a good talker, he was a good listener; and it relieved her to be able to talk to someone—someone who was sympathetic and yet not too close. Altogether, the trip to Como was a restorative, refreshing her so that she could cope calmly with the two weeks of the season that remained.

A week before the end, she pretended to have a migraine attack before a matinée. Lucia took her place and successfully surmounted the ordeal. So Lisa let her migraine continue into the evening. Again Lucia sang. Victor—and Signor Fontini, and Delorenzi—were astonished by the understudy’s secret improvement.

2

Victor stayed overnight in Vienna, with Lisa and her aunt, before resuming the long journey to Kiev. He found the old lady charming and cultivated. Indeed, she was not so very old, but painful rheumatism had aged her. Fortunately it had not yet attacked her hands, and she was still able to play the piano, with skill and feeling. She begged them to give her a taste of what she had missed, lamenting that she had not been well enough to go to Milan with her niece. To her vigorous accompaniment, they sang through the closing scene of the opera, with uninhibited verve and a naturalness they had never quite attained on stage. Everything always happened too late!

During the months following her return, and for the first time
for several years, Lisa felt troubled by sexual hungers. One night she was escorted home from a concert by the son of one of her aunt’s friends, an attractive but vain young man, in his early twenties. He persuaded her to have the cab driver drop them at his apartment instead, for a nightcap. She told him she was “unwell,” but he said he had no objections to that, if she did not. Actually she did have objections—such a thing seemed to her ugly and tasteless—but she allowed him to make love. The most that could be said was that it partially relieved her physical cravings, and there were none of the side-effects she had suffered from in former times: no doubt because conception was an impossibility.

But she felt degraded, because she meant nothing to him, except as a conquest and an object of prurient curiosity in letting herself be seduced when she was in that condition. She refused his attentions for a month, and then went to his apartment again. When they had finished, he rudely and unforgivably started to question her about her previous lovers. She said nothing, of course, but after reaching home and checking to see that her aunt was all right, she answered his question, silently, for her own satisfaction, and was appalled by the answer. There was of course Willi, her husband, and Alexei, the student in Petersburg, her first and possibly her only love. But what could she say to justify the others? There was the young officer who had seduced her when she was seventeen, on the train from Odessa to Petersburg. Well, it was partly the fault of the mixed sleeping compartments on Russian trains; her sense of devilment on striking out for independence; the thrill of being borne swiftly through the night; the champagne to which she was not accustomed. Really, though, it was sheer wickedness. Equally brief, meaningless and carnal, and with the added stain of adultery, was the orchestra
player with whom she had spent a night soon after her husband had left for the army. She had bumped into him again several years later, at Bad Gastein, and been too embarrassed to speak to him. And finally this young dandy—meaningless and degrading. Including her husband—five men! How many women in Vienna were so promiscuous, outside the lowest class who sold their favours? She was glad she had stopped feeling the need to go to confession. Well, at any rate there would be no more. For fifteen years she had “sublimated” her desires—until this present shameful episode—and it was much more peaceful to be pure: not to say, neuter.

Fresh from her successful début at La Scala, Lisa found herself much more in demand for operas and recitals, and she threw herself again into music. She heard often from Vera and Victor; and one of their letters brought news that pleased and excited her. Victor wrote that he had been persuaded to sing Boris Godunov next year in Kiev—he was finished as a baritone—this would be his swan-song—and his suggestion that she, Lisa, be invited to sing the role of Marina, the Polish wife of the Pretender, had been enthusiastically agreed to. She could expect an official invitation quite soon. They could not wait to see her again. Vera had drawn an asterisk after the word “swan-song” and scrawled underneath: “A likely story!” followed by a sentence or two saying it was wonderful Lisa would be coming to Kiev, and that she, Vera, was bursting out of all her dresses, but would be slim by the time Lisa came, and nursing a fat baby.

But a month or so later, a letter came which, for all its personal warmth, conveyed somehow a sombre message between the lines. The plans to stage
Boris Godunov
had been shelved, they said, as it was thought too heavy for the public taste. They were very upset by this, and they would still love to see her; but perhaps
it would be better if she waited a while, until the baby was old enough not to need all Vera’s attention. Maybe, by then, the company would decide to put on
Godunov
after all. Though if they did, Victor would not be playing the central role, for he had decided to retire.