Giulia had relinquished me, off speaking now to someone else, and the tenor appeared at my side, smiling as he gave me his arm. Do you feel honored yet? he asked, and I said I did. This might be all I ever thought to dream of, he said, and as I took his arm, he planted a single kiss on my cheek. The warmth from it stayed there at least half the way to the other house.
The entire performance had moved me deeply, from the well-mannered, beautiful voices of Pauline’s children to Pauline’s continued command of the entire night and, it seemed, the world around her. The story struck me as quite clever, the music also. One thing troubled me: I knew from the expressions of dismay visible on some of the royals around me during the performance that as Turgenev played the sorcerer in his decline on the stage they felt it beneath him. Another decline happening in front of them. This saddened me. I already felt protective of him and thought of him as my friend.
Pauline and he and the rest of the troupe were still in costume, walking just ahead of us, and in the dark garden, they looked as if the opera would now continue to a new chapter, as if we were on our way to the castle to see the wedding of the prince and Stella.
This was the first opera with a happy ending I’d ever seen, and despite the contrivances of Fate at work in it, this one I could see staying inside of, as they did now. We entered the Viardot villa to find Pauline’s real husband, Louis, at the table, smiling genially. He was introduced and apologized for being late. He had been feeling poorly but was now a little better. He was quite small in stature by comparison to Turgenev, who kissed him on both cheeks—Louis looked a bit like an old fox in evening dress, his whiskers and sharp eyes quizzical as he took me in—all of his weight was in his eyes, his gaze—all of his body raised up so he might see. I had no sooner finished our pleasantries than Turgenev appeared at my side, picking at the sleeves of his sorcerer robes, rolling them back so he might eat.
La Lapinard, he said, smiling. How did you enjoy your show?
An enormous pleasure, I said, thrilled to be reminded of my new title. Your soprano voice was a miracle of tone.
Indeed, I thought much the same, he said, and laughed. She is wonderful. I look forward to when you join us there. Which can only be soon, I’m sure.
We looked to Louis then, who was smiling at Turgenev with real affection. He drew back a chair and sat down and urged us to the buffet. The true dernier sorcier, then, I understood, here, setting his napkin into his lap, at home in the castle with the two lovers.
§
Dinner was cold hams and a salad of potatoes the tenor told me was traditional to Germany served with a cool red wine. Seating was informal, in Pauline’s salon, with small tables set throughout with candles and crystal. Giulia reappeared to sit with me at one of them, gossiping about how the imposing woman speaking to Pauline, strangely anxious to be at her ease, was Queen Augusta of Prussia, there unofficially, now a patroness of Pauline’s. She has just commissioned an opera from her, Giulia said.
I tried to be interested, but instead I could only watch as Maxine sat beside the tenor at the table and did the same with the tenor as she had with me, going through her questions as if she were at a briefing. She was interested in him differently, more intensely than the other girls, who had only wanted to flirt. The effect for me was like watching a mouse dance in front of a cat, thinking it was the cat. The prospect of their pairing amused me such that I smiled, and Maxine noticed this and this confused her—her confidence dimmed. The tenor noticed and looked to see the source of her discomfort.
I nodded. He grinned back and took her hand, holding it up.
I smiled at this, and he laughed and turned back to her as she struggled to regain her previous air. Giulia smiled also and we resumed our conversation.
I understood that to Maxine I was already living the life of dramatic love and connection she and the other students hoped for after they finished their education, but it would be some time before I understood that my apparent indifference to losing the tenor passed as confidence, or sophistication, and urged Maxine to greater lengths. I had not yet learned to be possessive of a lover I did not love. Instead, whenever I thought of it or noticed her at her game, the absurdity of it would freeze me in place with the same mix of fear and hope each time.
Maxine would never quite believe I was who I said I was, and at times she treated her mission of seducing the tenor as a kind of rescue of him, as if he’d been led astray by a pretender. She would try to captivate him for a very long time after that night. And one day, many years from now, she would succeed a little because I allowed it.
Until that time, when I thought of Maxine, I mostly would hear her say that strange greeting of hers from our first meeting. It would stay with me for years.
Tragedy belongs to you.
Soon I would say it to myself.
Tragedy belongs to you.
Two