There it was before us: five chairs made up the front row of the box, and our task seemed to be to take the gently entangled strands of the various relationships and smooth them out according to the positions of these chairs.
Of course, in situations like this it's always the rawest impulses that go into action: self-interest sets the true proportions of feelings for others, sets the sounds of raw feelings ringing out under the silly cover of "consideration," and sets the center of those feelings around the dominant victorious persons: from our cautious and polite movements two deliberate signals emerged, two brief phrases with the appropriate gestures to go with them: Come on! Melchior said in French to his friend, who until then had been watching the awkward byplay like a neutral bystander, Yes, please, please, an annoyed Thea said coolly to me.
And now it was perfectly clear that as much as Melchior might have objected to this meeting, Thea was right, after all, or more precisely, her sixth sense did not fail her when she had insisted on it, for she could insist only on something that Melchior must also have wanted.
It wasn't out of politeness or thoughtful consideration for Thea that Melchior so quickly and unceremoniously gave up being close to his friend but because he was attracted to her; he had to choose, and in choosing he was guided by the realization that he and Thea were the dominant persons here, the rulers, meant to be at each other's side, belonging together.
Thea also had designs on me, romantic ones with the intent of possession; we were both constantly aware of the other, but what between us remained only groping and sniffing teetered on the verge of fulfillment between the two of them; their relationship was by no means as one-sided as Frau Kühnert would have liked me to believe, not to mention that the age difference between them was not twenty years, as she would have it, but no more than ten, which made them a strange couple but not a ridiculous one; either way, the moment they made their decision, it became clear that to their ruling duet we provided only a royal escort and nothing could make me forget this, not even the pleasant discovery that in the ceremonial lineup I was assigned a slightly better position than the Frenchman.
Since I wasn't particularly adept at perceiving the subtler signals sent out by another male, I may have been led astray by Frau Kühnert's emotional revelations, and those streams of attraction I seemed to have sensed with and in my shoulders may have been not for me at all but emanations of Melchior's feelings for Thea; we were both in the same orbit around her.
This is how we finally took our places: the Frenchman, now locked in his silence, took the inside seat, I sat down next to him, with Melchior on my right, then came Thea, followed by Frau Kühnert, who, by the way, was the only one to get everything she wanted.
I was careful not to touch even accidentally Melchior's elbow on the armrest we shared; however, as befits wise rulers, he sensed right away that I was ill at ease in the seat he graciously yielded to me, that depriving the Frenchman of his rightful place gave me no satisfaction, and that I also felt the sting of jealousy on account of Thea; it seemed I laid claim to someone who not only wasn't mine but whom I did not even desire as far as I was consciously aware, yet here I was feeling hurt and jealous, I didn't want to lose her yet I was losing her, she was being snatched from me before my very eyes, and I'd have to compete for her with another man; as if wanting to complicate the already painful situation further, Melchior placed his hand on my knee and, smiling, looked into my eyes for a brief second, during which our shoulders touched, then made a face, withdrew his hand, and, as if nothing had happened, rearranged his smile and quickly turned back to Thea.
With that smile stirring on his lips he was apologizing to me for the unpleasantness of what had just taken place, and this was only an introduction to a deeper meaning of his smile, for he drew me into his huge blue eyes where the smile opened up even more and conveyed to me that the man he was parading here as his friend, his alibi, his protective shield, so he shouldn't be completely at Thea's mercy, that man meant, well, something to him, but nothing serious, I needn't worry or make much of it, and let's consider it settled between us; in other words, with that smile he betrayed his friend, abandoned him, yet managed to dig into me even more deeply, his grimace clearly implying that I should rest assured, yes, this woman was clever and manipulative, she was crazy about him and he found her irresistible, too, when she was being her foxy self, yes, by puckering her shapely lips she was mocking the situation no less than herself, which made her charmingly supercilious, but no reason to get excited about that, either, since he had no intention of seducing her, and let that be settled between us, too, between two men.
Neither his gesture nor his expression could remain unnoticed by the people they were meant for; all the same, his unabashed openness and falseness — because more than at any other later time when lulling my own jealousy I would believe him, at this moment I felt his confession was false — his brusqueness, crude interference, and betrayal made a very unfavorable impression, yet strangely I had neither the strength nor the emotional wherewithal to reject his unbecoming and unethical confidence but I sat there numb and rigid, disgusted by my position, pretending to be looking at the stage but in fact glancing to the left and to the right, like a thief, to see how much of this the others might have noticed, yet truth to tell, enjoying the riskiness of our situation.
My guilty conscience was whispering to me that were I to take seriously his silent communication I'd be stealing him from two people, from someone I didn't know and from someone I'd be deceiving despicably in the process, and my anxiety swelled into alarm — needless, because the Frenchman couldn't have noticed anything, he was leaning forward with his chin on the velvet-covered banister, watching the noisy audience below, and as for Thea, even if she did see Melchior's hand on my knee, she couldn't have found it significant; only Frau Kühnert's look issued a kind of warning: I could go ahead and do what I would, there was no way to escape her watchful eyes, she was there to protect Thea's interests.
Traces of Melchior's smile and grimace stayed with me while I also leaned forward in my chair, wanting to move away from both of them, and put my elbow on the banister; I didn't want to feel the emotional confusion radiating from the warmth of his body, to think he had addressed me with real words in a real voice; his voice seemed to be lost in some echoing space, swirling in a vast, dark, empty hall.
The applause first broke out in the upper gallery, then directly above us, and became thunderous when the conductor appeared in the little door leading to the orchestra pit, sweeping over the orchestra seats, reaching all the rows, and just then the lights went out in the huge crystal chandelier hanging from the heavily ornamented domed ceiling.
His voice was familiar, warm and deep, suggesting strength and self-confidence but also knowing not to take itself seriously, to be playful— not for the purpose of putting on a false front, but to keep a sensible distance — deepening to a good-natured growl; I had no idea where I knew that voice from, and I didn't bother to search my memory or explain why it felt so familiar and close, yet it kept streaming and swirling inside me, ringing, rising, grumbling as if testing its pitch and various ranges within, trying to find its place in the grooves of my brain, looking for the very spot, the nerve cells, the tiny space where its previous utterances were stored, a carefully sealed and, for the moment, inaccessible compartment.