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.
I knew a little of the ways of a traveling show.
Despite this elegant explanation, there did not seem to be a single pause or uncertainty in the pace at which I had been brought to her. Her change of mind sounded sincere, but was some other pressure applied? Had she been threatened or paid? And how was my education paid for, and what had Pauline been told of me, other than my needing an education as a Falcon?
I smiled, looking away, and turned my attention to the window.
Baden-Baden itself would not let me stay anxious, however, and had begun to work its magic on me through the air alone, clean and sweet as I breathed it in, a relief after Paris. Against my will, I relaxed. The mountains were the dark green of winter approaching, when the pines are the only trees still dressed. The town itself, visible from the road that led to Pauline’s house, gave the appearance of a village growing a city in its midst. The elegant pale stone buildings of the casinos and baths, covered in grand statues and columns, stood beside the staid older German houses of brick or plaster and made a mix of the grand and the quaint together, their green and red rooftops shining in the afternoon sun. The summer season was more for the gamblers, the tenor had said. By winter Baden-Baden would belong mostly to the patients who came to be cured by the waters. Those who came for music, though, came all year, and the more so now that Pauline lived here—a colony had grown around her, and this was what we entered now.
Beneath my various fears and imaginings, I was aware of a growing anticipation for the teacher herself. While I was still suspicious of her, this news that Pauline had written an opera that was being produced and honored with a command performance was the most interesting detail anyone had ever told me about her, or any woman, for that matter. I had never once heard of a woman composer before this. In every respect she took on the aspect of a creature of myth. And part of the myth, I recalled, was that she was ugly.
The Comtesse had said of her, as we parted ways, She is very quixotic, very whimsical. She may even meet you at the station! You will see her right away, she is famously ugly, but she really is very well dressed.
I’d forgotten this detail until I saw the caricature, and so I asked the tenor, Is she really as ugly as they say?