"We have to have coffee and cake."
"But first let us show you the surprise. Come this way." Lucrece beckoned. I knew.
I knew as we went past the old carved wood bar and down the passage. I heard the huge engines.
"These run the cooling and the heating for the building," she said. "They are very old."
"God, there's a bad smell here," said Katrinka.
Then I heard nothing. I saw the white tile; we passed the metal lockers. We walked round the big engines with their giant old-fashioned screws like the engines of the old ships; we walked on and on, and the talk was soft and agreeable around us.
I saw the gate.
"Our secret," said Mariana. "It is an underground tunnel!"
I laughed with appreciative delight. "Really? It is truly that? Where does it go?" I drew near the gates. My soul ached. Darkness back there, beyond these rusted spokes of iron on which I laid my right hand, getting it filthy, filthy.
Water gleamed on the cement floor.
"To the palace, you see, the palace is just across the street and in the old days, when the Opera house was first built, they could come and go through the secret tunnel."
I pressed my forehead against the pickets.
"I adore this, I'm not going home," said Roz. "Nobody's going to make me go home. Triana, I want the money to stay here."
Glenn smiled and shook his head.
"You can have it, Roz," I said.
I stared into the darkness.
"What do you see there?" I asked.
"I don't know!" said Katrinka.
"Well, it is wet and damp, and there is something leaking there. . ." said Lucrece.
So none of them saw the man lying with his eyes open, and the blood pouring from his wrists, and the tall black-haired phantom, arms folded, leaning against the dark wall, glaring at us?
No one saw this but mad Triana Becker?
Go on. Go ahead. Go on the stage tonight. Play my Violin. Display your wicked witchery.
The dying man climbed to his knees, confounded, fuddled, blood streaming on the tile. He rose to his feet to join his companion, the ghost who'd driven him mad, driven out his music, just before coming to me, with these vivid memories his soul, this ghost, his tissue-thin soul that overflowed with all this, unwillingly.
No. It had a hint of panic.
The others talked. There was time for cake and coffee and rest.
Blood. It ran from the dead man's wrists. It ran down his pants as he staggered towards me.
No one else saw.
I looked beyond this stumbling corpse. I looked at the agony in the face of Stefan.
So young, so lost, so desperate. So afraid of utter defeat again.
Chapter 19
I was always quiet right before the concert. So no one noticed. No one said a word. There was so much kindness and richness here-old dressing rooms, baths of handsome Art Deco tile, murals and names to be explained-the others were gently borne away.
A stillness came down on me. In the great impossible palace of marble, I sat with the violin. I waited. I heard the great theater begin to fill. Soft thunder on the stairs.
The rising hum of voices.
There came the thump of my vain and eager heart-to play.
And what will you do here? What can you do, I thought. And then again there came that thought, that image that perhaps I could lock in my mind, lock as one locks upon a Mystery of the Rosary, to fight him off -The Crowning with Thorns-and nothing he could do could weaken me, but what was this terrible, aching love for him, this terrible sorrow, this pain for him that was as deep and bad as any pain for Lev or Karl, or any of them?
I lay my head back in the velvet chair, let my neck roll on the wooden frame, held the violin in its sack, gestured No to water and coffee and things to eat.
The auditorium was now filled, said Lucrece. "We have received many donations."
"And you'll receive more," I said. "It is a magnificent place; it must never be allowed to fa,l into decay. Not this, not this creation."
On and on Glenn and Roz talked, in their soft muted compatible voices about the mingling of the tropical color and the Baroque scale, the fleeting sophisticated European nymphs combined with a forbidden indulgence in the range of stones and patterns and floors of parquet.
"I love your. . . velvet clothes, what you wear," said kind Lucrece, "this is pretty velvet that you wear, this poncho and skirt, Miss Becker."
I nodded and whispered thanks.
It was time now to walk across the immense dark shadowy rear of the stage. It was time to hear our feet clopping on the boards and look up, up, into the ropes and pulleys, the curtains high above, the ramps, and the men peering down, and children, yes, even children up there, as if they had been sneaked into the place, and to the right and left the awesome wings full of great operatic scenery. Painted columns. All that one could see, for real and true in stone, painted again.
And so the sea is green when the wave curls, and the balustrade of marble looks like the green sea, and there is painted the green balustrade.
I peered through the curtain.
The first floor was filled, each red velvet armchair held its eager occupant.Programs... mere notes on how no one knew what I would play or how or just when I would stop and all that... fluttered in the air, and jewels caught the light of the chandelier, and three great balconies rose one atop the other, each overflowing with figures struggling to their seats.
There were those in formal black, and gay gowns, and others high up in workinan's clothes.
In the boxes to the left and right of the stage sat the officials to whom I had been presented, never remembering a single name, never having anymore to remember, never expected to do more than what I meant to do, and what I alone could do: Play the music. Play it for one hour.
Give them that, and then into the mezzanine they'll pour, talking about the "savant sophisticate," as I had come to be known, or the American Naif, or the dumpy woman who looked too much like a prematurely aged child in flaring velvet, scratching at the strings as if she fought with the music she played.
No hint before of a theme. No hint of a direction. Only that thought in my mind, a thought begun somewhere else in music.
And the admission in my secret self that it was scattered within me, the Rosary Beads of my life, the splinters of death and guilt and anger and rage; it was in broken glass I lay down each night, and waked with cut hands, and these months of music making had been a dreamlike respite that no human being could ever expect to last, that no human being had any right to expect of Heaven.
Fate, fortune, fame, destiny.
From behind the edge of the huge stage curtain, I stared at the faces in the first row.
"And those velvet shoes, those pointed shoes, don't they hurt?" asked Lucrece.
"It's a hell of a time to mention that," said Martin.
"No, it's only an hour," I said.
The roar of the house swallowed our voices.
"Give them forty-five minutes," said Martin, "and they'll be delighted. All the money is going to the foundation for this place."
"Boy, Triana," said easygoing Glenn, "you sure do get a lot of advice."
"Tell me about it, brother," I laughed softly.
Martin hadn't heard. It was all right. Katrinka was always shaking at this moment.
Roz had settled back in the wings, straddling a chair like a cowboy, with the back in front of her, her legs spread comfortably in her black pants, her arms folded on the back of the chair, so she could watch. The family receded into the shadows.
It seemed a calmness had settled over the technicians.
I felt the cooling driven by the engines far below.