I had given no further thought as to who I was—it was easy to forget that it even mattered. But the question had returned just before this luncheon, in the form of the conductor, who appeared at the door to our compartment asking for our papers. The tenor had supplied them immediately and did not look at me once, and neither did the conductor, who examined them and then bid us a good day.
This had been the most telling detail to me. The woman who had left him, that woman was still legally dead and could not be resurrected without questions neither he nor I wanted answered. And she had no papers, could cross no borders on a train. I had papers, however. Or rather, the tenor had them, and he returned them to his coat. I thought to concoct ruses in order to read them. What did they say? What name was there? When he would introduce me to Pauline, what name would he use?—but I would know then, it seemed to me. And perhaps it was better, quieter, to wait. The thought of asking what my name was now seemed likely to pull this little world asunder.
After the conductor left, I understood I was still waiting for the tenor to show some sign that it was all just a game, that he would return to our old ways, but the longer he did not, and the more he continued to be tender to me, and kind, the more curious I became.
This would be easier if I could love him, I thought, as we finished our luncheon, stood, and returned to our cabin to prepare to disembark. And could I love him or grow to love him? He was handsome, devoted to me, willing to spend a considerable sum of money on me and even to forgive that I had run from him as I had twice now. He had made a case for me with this foreign voice teacher and was now accompanying me to her side.
But I did not love him as I did not love him.
This was the gift I had asked the Comtesse for, the last test of my apprenticeship to her. But how to have it?
As I contemplated his back as he spoke to the porters, and thought of the packet of papers I now knew to be hidden in his breast pocket, the Comtesse’s description of the secret to La Pa?va’s success seemed instructive in that moment.
Favors? Favors are nothing to this.
The details of who I was now mattered less than who he believed he was now with me, someone he’d longed to be all this time. A world he’d waited for to be born came into being with my return to him, and I was now the source of it. I mattered more than I ever had, lost to him twice, now his again by choice, the tragic soprano perfectly matched to his tragic tenor. As long as I was this woman, all would be well. And as to who this woman was, I had but one clear answer.
I was his partner in tragedy.
§
How I congratulate you on your triumph in Il Trovatore and devoutly wish I could have seen it. I have heard nothing but elated reports of your performances, and so we will greet you and your Leonora with all due glory and celebrations here in our Gypsy camp in the mountains when you arrive. And you must, you must come at once.
We were in a carriage hired at the station, riding up a hill just outside of Baden-Baden toward Pauline’s villa. The tenor read to me from a letter from her and occasionally interjected, a startling affection in his face as he did so. He was merry, like someone on holiday. I’d never seen him so gay.
You may have heard that I am a Gypsy; my father did not know his father, this is true; and he is from that part of Seville where the Gypsy blood is strong, though it distressed my dear mother to no end whenever we made light of this.
He stopped reading and laughed, and then held out the letter to me, smiling. She’s really quite clever at these, he said.
I assumed he was showing me proof of her compliment to him, but I stared in amazement instead to see a caricature she’d drawn of herself as Azucena the Gypsy in Il Trovatore. She stood next to a cauldron, a shawl over her head, and had written Azucena implores the spirits to reveal her new student’s fate!
She plays a game you will like, where you must draw a face, and then all present invent ideas for the character’s name, identity, and destiny, the tenor said.
I laughed. Of course, I thought, chilled even as I laughed. If I was to be his Leonora, we would need an Azucena. Pauline’s joke but Fate’s as well.
If before this I felt abandoned by Fate, now I feared that I had Fate’s full attention.
Pauline was a true Gypsy’s daughter, though she did not, I think, plot revenge there in Baden-Baden, only operas—operas and her students’ careers. Her father, as she explained beneath her caricature, was Manuel García, a Spanish Gypsy tenor and one of the world’s most famous singers, as the tenor noted. With her mother, the soprano Joaquina Sitchez, he raised the García children in what resembled a traveling circus family, but devoted to opera. The García family had toured America and Mexico throughout Pauline’s early childhood, performing a repertoire of Italian operas and García’s own original compositions. García, his wife, his oldest daughter, Maria, and his son, also named Manuel, performed the major roles while Pauline, the youngest, looked on from the wings.
Pauline’s letter explained she had nearly put me off until the following spring as she would spend much of the winter between Karlsruhe and Weimar, at work on the production of an opera she’d written as well as planning a command performance of this opera the following April in honor of the birthday of the Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. She had changed her mind, however, as she feared treating me too daintily. As this opera of hers was something she’d written to give her students to practice with, much as her father had done with his own students, and as they had performed it originally in her Haustheater in Baden-Baden to audiences in her salon, and as this, in turn, led to its current successes, she had decided she would bring her students in Baden-Baden with her to Karlsruhe and Weimar, and one of them might even perform in the formal production. And as she had been educated amid tours and productions, so then would I begin my education in the wings.
Think of it as a García tradition, then, if you will, to bring her into this circus now. I can understand that you might fear she would be overlooked in the tumult, but please accept my reassurances. My own education began as we toured and continued no matter if we had been feted with all due glory the night previous or robbed by Mexican brigands—the next day my father sat me at the piano again wherever we were. He wrote airs for me to practice that I still know and occasionally sing, written just for my voice. In this way, he has remained with me despite his death when I was still quite young, and so I have lived most of my life feeling both as if I never knew him and that he is always with me. You know how strong is the force of my will; you know I will keep after her. She will have the chance to witness the various demands, successes, and failures of this life firsthand, as all my students will, all at once. They are my good luck charms, even this young woman I have not met. I feel certain this will toughen her in the best way—you see my own upbringing has not failed me. After all, once her career begins, it will be one of constant travel, so her education may as well include accommodating herself to it. So, please, come at once, without delay, with your Falcon. Join us in Baden-Baden and follow us on to wherever we go next.
The tenor smiled at the last page and then looked up. You meet Madame Viardot-García at an extraordinary time, he said, folding the letter and shaking it at me. But she promises to make the most of it and you. In fact, it seems she is set on making a García of you.
I smiled and turned my attention back to the window.
On the train I’d made a little picture of the misery I was sure awaited me here, imagining days spent in a small room like the one in Paris, with lessons of some kind, unimaginable to me. I’d hoped at least for something like the pleasures of gin and cards, which I already missed dearly. I had added to this imaginary scene with each detail the tenor offered previously, but the letter extinguished all of this and even strangely reassured me.