And so my tenor and I had found ourselves to be in quite another story from the one we believed we were in. A story begun when the Comtesse arrived at her first ball in Paris, and the music stopped, and the Emperor and Empress stopped their conversations to see what had happened.
Only I knew this to be true, however. He never knew. Just as I never knew what, if anything, Pauline had been told of my situation when we first met. Her mock hurt at the thought the tenor and I might marry and not announce the news to her in person told me she still believed the tenor and I might still be the happy lovers she met when we went to her in those last days of autumn in 1868. Yes, if we were to marry after all this time, she would have to be included in some important way. And certainly, the tenor believed in our love then, and so why wouldn’t she?
I never once suspected her as having a role in the events surrounding me now because she was too good to me, too purely my teacher—my only good teacher—to concoct schemes of that kind. And she would never endanger even one of us for fear of losing even the smallest piece of what remained of our time there.
But, certainly, I suspected her then.
It amuses me to remember how suspicious I was of her, just as I was suspicious of all I saw, convinced I moved through a country populated entirely by the Comtesse’s plan for me. From the train to Baden-Baden, as I watched through the window, this country seemed made of an unbroken forest braced for the coming winter, bordered by meadows with the grass gone brown and wet from the rain. Baden-Baden, the tenor assured me, sat at the edge of the Black Forest, just over the border from France, in Germany, in a valley of extraordinary beauty and mild climate.
He had been speaking of Baden-Baden until then and describing its various virtues and history, but these had slid across me like the rain on the window at my side.
We were at luncheon, nearly at our destination, seated in a luxury dining car at the table assigned to us for the trip. I was afraid and also afraid I could not hide this fear; I had the feeling of riding an angry horse indifferent to its rider. Behind the tenor was a mirror set into the wall, and so when I did not look out the window to the landscape during our meals, I used the mirror to help me modulate my expressions so as to better perform the part of his interested fellow traveler—our meals on the train like rehearsals for the days ahead.
I was almost accustomed to him again. He had changed during our time apart. His beard had darkened and grown longer, though his hair was still golden, still worn past his ears and swept back with pomade. He still wore evening dress often, though not for this trip—he had dressed the part of a proper Prussian gentleman in a beautiful traveling suit of a dark blue wool and a waistcoat embroidered with flowers. This drew attention to how he had thickened as well, but it suited him. He seemed less a former soldier and more of a tenor.
All of this activity with the mirror, to which he seemed oblivious, sometimes distracted me from his actual conversation, and so I found I had not been listening carefully to the description of Germany, and this was in part because I was indifferent to its details for not having chosen to come—it was the same as any other confinement to me. With some surprise, then, I understood he had finished speaking to me of Germany and Baden-Baden, and turned to the subject of me.
When you died, or when I believed you’d died, he said, I couldn’t tell anyone. So I invented a story that you’d gone to Baden-Baden, to study with Pauline Viardot-García. I’m so happy I can make this true.
He said this ruefully, quietly—we were surrounded by fellow travelers—and pushed at his wine glass.
Neither of us said anything more for a moment. I sat back again. There was only the unearthly sound of the crystal and silver set on all the tables ringing as we went, as if the train were a mystical bell of many parts. This strange concert was oddly comforting.
The instinct I’d had to simply act with him as I once had, to resume our easy banter and nicknames, was more difficult as time went on. Sustaining it meant some part of me had already papered over the rupture, but at moments like this, scenes from that other time intruded, alien and alarming, which chilled me, though I knew he meant his remarks to please me.
Grateful but contrite happiness, I told my face in the mirror, as if I were again in Delsarte’s classroom and he was pointing to my next expression. Though I was well past his room of portraits, deep inside my own. I reached for the tenor’s hand. Please forgive me, I said.
I have, he said. And I hope you also will forgive me. Madame Viardot-García is the greatest voice teacher in all of Europe, you see, he said. I have sung with her informally and learned something even just in singing across from her. I hope, in introducing you to her, she will make up for the mistakes I made earlier with your training. Also, she is not so concerned as to whether you have a proper French education; and she has room for you and was moved to hear of your situation.
What is my situation? I asked, and smiled as our soups were set down in front of us.