Vienna Nocturne (8 page)

He was an ass, and a weak-willed ass at that. He finished his breakfast and went out to read the papers in a café. He tried not to do much talking on days he had to sing.

He had not returned her letter. She looked inquiringly and hopefully into his eyes, but he looked away. Then he looked back again, as if in apology. She noticed herself talking quickly, her tone high and thin.

It was as though her heart were cascading down a series of ledges into a pit. With each drop it paused a moment for her to hope again, then slipped away until it struck the next marker. And again and again unto the depths.

She knew him too well. He was off; he hardly knew what to do with himself; he could hardly speak like a normal person.

After the performance she knocked on his dressing room door. He shared it with Stefano Mandini and Michael Kelly, and all three were in semiundress.

“My dear,” said Michael in surprise, “you were wonderful tonight. I’m sure I never saw you so fiery or so bright.”

“Indeed,” said Mandini. “That Durazzo will be pleased.”

“
Hang
Durazzo,” Anna said.

“I don’t think he’d be pleased with that,” said Michael anxiously. “Look here, Mandini, shall we step out for a moment and make sure he’s not skulking at doorways?”

Mandini glanced around, took up his jacket, and ducked out after Michael.

Benucci had been removing his makeup. He wiped his forehead with a rag and drew it down the side of his cheek to reveal a stripe of his natural skin, then set the rag in a basin of water.

“I don’t love you, Anna,” he said. “I never will. I don’t want to marry. I’m sorry.”

“Ah,” she said, staggering.

“I don’t love you, Anna.”

She fled him then. Someone said that Count Durazzo was looking for her but she would see no one. Poor Lidia did not know what to do. She was afraid her mistress would become ill.

“What’s the matter with you?” Anna’s mother demanded. “What have you done?”

Anna said she had a sore throat and only needed some rest. She spent a day in bed and the next evening was back at the theater.

Every object, every corner, she had blessed with the name of Francesco Benucci. Every note of the opera had been sung and heard to the syllables of
Fran-ces-co
. The language she spoke and heard and in which she sang was the language that now stabbed her heart. Her hands, her legs, her breast, belly, neck, eyes, cheek—had been his. He had kissed her wrists, her feet, her hair. He had held her as though she belonged, tucked there, in his long arms. He had sung to her more beautifully and sincerely than any man on earth. Her body had been his, her mind, her voice, her heart. He had taken possession of her breath. She could not look at her hands without pain. She could not remember anything without pain and yet remembrances were everywhere. And still she must sing with him, must pretend to make love with him.

If she could have run away, if she had had anywhere to go, she would have done so on the instant.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. “They said you were ill.”

She could not look at him. This would be a problem when they were on stage. “Please burn my letter,” she said in a quiet voice.

He hesitated. “I already did.”

This, strangely, was a fresh pain. He had probably burned it as soon as he’d read it. She swallowed and gave a stilted kind of bow.

She saw, from his face, how unwell she must look. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My God, I’m sorry.”

He tried to take her arms, but she pulled away, her lips twisting. “We mustn’t speak,” she said. “We must only pretend.”

The cast perceived there had been a rift—Anna, at the intermission, retired to her dressing room to weep. But the audience knew nothing. And there, at least, showed the extent of Anna and Benucci’s skill, the depth of their training, the core of their strength and ambition. On stage they were still the happiest, the most blessed lovers who ever had been born. They bantered and chirped. They had amusing spats and made up with a kiss. They pined for and adored each other. Their voices were true and firm, their movements elegant and lively. They were not themselves, even as they were most themselves. They were Anna and Benucci—confused, rueful, hurt—safely enwrapped in the trials and rewards of Dorina and Titta.

But not so safely, no, for all that, for his hands were still upon her, his eyes still smiling into her own, his voice like beautiful thunder in her ear, and it was hard to believe that he did not love her, that they were not still in perfect happiness. Then the moment of remembrance would come and she would have to steady herself so as to keep going.

She was shamed, she was chastened. She had believed in something that did not exist, trusted in what was daydreams and air.

Joseph II, emperor over most of the civilized world, had to be kept rich in chocolate drops or he lost his optimism. Lost his cheery yet exacting personal fortitude, his relaxed and progressive outlook of can-do and savoir faire. Vienna had some of the finest chocolate anywhere, and Joseph, despite his disdain for extravagance, wished it no other way. He had hot, melted chocolate every morning for breakfast, brought to him in a teacup so thin that when placed, trembling, on his broad mahogany desktop, the chocolate inside showed like yolk through a shell. By that time Joseph would have been up for hours, writing, pondering, and the rich, extravagant liquid, like an embodiment of heaven, would warm and revive him.

In a way chocolates counterbalanced the other austerities of his life. The emperor wore the brown clothes of a layman, worked long hours, and aspired to reform all the excesses of his relatives and ancestors. He shut down churches and opened hospitals. He fired useless members of his court, no matter their birth or heritage. He bolstered all kinds of music-making. Even his new opera company
was for the people. Anyone, after all, could buy tickets. When the hall wasn’t in use he let it out for pennies to the musicians and composers he favored. In music, he felt, lived the soul of humanity. He played chamber music every day, and frequently and unaffectedly visited musical salons. He often said that if people around him forgot he was the emperor, he had done his duty.

He carried chocolate drops in his waistcoat pockets, wrapped like jewels in brightly colored tissue paper, and ate them at all moments—when taking exercise among his subjects in the Prater, when consulting with his ministers, when pacing with his pet beagle down the lawn or attending Shakespearean tragedies at the theater.

The audience at his royal opera house were nothing near as raucous nor demonstrative as those in the theaters of the Italian states. Beneath the music, beneath the soft murmur of gossip, beneath the pad of slippers on bare wood and the sigh and rustle of silk frock coats and full muslin underskirts, one might have heard the neat unwrapping of the emperor’s chocolates, the smacking of his full, placid lips, as pink as if they’d been painted, as he sucked and chewed. His appetite for chocolate reflected his interest in the performance. Anything over twenty drops meant the opera was a winner. On April 22, 1783, a Tuesday, on the occasion of the debut of the new Italian opera troupe with a comedy by Salieri, the emperor consumed twenty-six chocolates before the end of the first act.

Anna, on stage, heard none of the sighing of muslin, so discreet and well mannered were these operagoers. After Italy, it was like being in a deserted church. Nobody called out to her, nor applauded in the middle of her aria, nor threw food nor spat on the floor. Even the theater was austere, a white box with understated decorations, no gilt or frescoes anywhere, and so small and intimate that it was like performing in the emperor’s private salon.

The Italian company had been brought intact from Venice to Vienna: Bussani, Mandini, and their wives; and Benucci, Michael Kelly, and Anna. They were to replace the disbanded German-language
singspiel company, which had flourished briefly and then fallen into disregard.

In Vienna there were no street singers. There was no shouting. The side streets were paved with stones that seemed hewn, on purpose, to cause one to fall; the main roads were laid with white gravel that lifted up clouds of dust whenever anyone walked or rode on them. In summer the air became thick with dust and everyone had to cover their mouths with handkerchiefs. Outside of town, though, the air was fresh and clean. The inner city was flanked by a swath of green commons, the Prater, where Viennese of every class would go to recreate, listen to concerts, picnic, and dance. The Viennese loved to dance as much the Venetians had loved to sing.