Gramercy Park
Upton slides his hand along the wall until his fingers come into contact with a recessed button, which he pushes. The sound of a click in the darkness is the only response.
“Mr. Slade was one of the first to install an electrical system in his house,” he says, “but it has evidently been turned off for safety’s sake. Shall we move on? We can open the curtains in the other rooms.”
The house agent’s voice is low, out of respect for whatever lurks just beyond the borders of hearing in silent, shut-up houses, but even so it fills the air with rustling echoes. Alfieri follows him through the doorway on the left, into the first of the house’s two drawing rooms, a chamber so vast that its far end is barely visible in the half-light. The furniture, in muslin shrouds, looks humped and unnatural; what can be seen of it is in a style current twenty years ago. Upton pulls aside the heavy drapery, and colors—ivory woodwork limned in gold, dadoes and friezes of Pompeian red—leap from the walls, only to retreat again into shades of gray as the curtain falls back into place.
Two massive sliding doors lead from there into the library and the adjacent picture gallery. Upton pulls aside a crimson plush curtain, revealing walls covered in gold and green silk above ebony bookcases filled with rare volumes. A pair of slender marble columns frames the entrance to the picture gallery. The works of art are gone from their places; they rest, instead, on the floor, carefully swathed in muslin and ranged against the sides of the chamber. Lighter patches on the silk walls show where they were accustomed to hang.
“Would you care to see more, signore?”
The signore does not answer. He stands in the center of the darkened room, a vaguely distracted expression on his face, as if trying to recall something that remains just out of reach of his memory.
“Signore?”
Alfieri rouses. “Yes, I would care to see more, Mr. Upton, but some light to see it by would be most welcome.”
“Then allow me to leave you for a few moments to find the footman—I know he must be around somewhere. There is a private generator, and if he can turn it on we shall have the whole place as bright as day. Don’t wait for me, signore. Feel free to explore more of the house while I’m gone, if you’d like. I’ll find you, never fear.”
But fear is not what Alfieri feels. The great house holds no terrors for him, despite the darkness; there is a sense, instead, of something almost remembered, like an old, familiar melody, just beyond hearing, that he cannot place.
With Upton gone in search of the generator, Alfieri retraces his steps to the front hall. The music room has been on his mind since Upton’s first mention of it, and he is understandably eager to see it. Florentine by birth, the son of a physician, his great gift had become evident at the age of four, when, seating himself at the piano, he had played, flawlessly, three exercises from The Well-tempered Clavier, learned solely from listening to the efforts of his mother, a talented amateur who was accustomed to practice the piano while her little son amused himself with his toys in the corner of the parlor. His lessons had begun immediately, and, when he was old enough, singing in his church choir had augmented his other musical studies.
When he was fourteen his voice changed.
For no reason which, in later years, he is ever able to explain, except that this is the right way, he climbs the alabaster stairs to the floor above. The darkness here is almost total, for the walls are no longer pale marble, reflecting whatever faint light may exist, but smooth wood, or so his fingers tell him; and all the doors on either side of the broad landing are shut.
He has never been in this house before today. For that matter, until one week ago he has never been in this city, or on this continent. And yet he gropes his way directly to the second door on the left, and enters. This room, too, is enormous and very dim, its drapes drawn against the glory of the spring noon. But after the oppressive darkness he has just left, his eyes easily take in his surroundings.
The music room.
Here, again, the ubiquitous muslin shrouds the furniture, and the many-armed and -globed chandelier, swathed in netting, blooms downward from the high, coved ceiling like a monstrous wasps’ nest. The pale Aubusson carpet, however, still covers the floor, and deadens his footsteps as he crosses to the grand piano between the windows, dropping his hat on a table as he goes. He seats himself at the instrument, raises the cover of the keyboard, and plays a few exploratory chords. The piano’s keys are stiff, at first, and the sound tentative, as a voice would be that had not been used in a great while, but it mellows and grows full and sonorous as he continues to play.
After a few minutes, he begins to sing. “Una furtiva lagrima negl’occhi suoi spuntò …” Sweet and beautiful: Donizetti’s Nemorino, telling of his beloved, and the secret tear that spills from her eye …
Downstairs, at the back of the house, Upton stands by the generator, listening to the distant music, and he gapes, just a little. He is a house agent, not a poet, and not particularly gifted with words. He would not be able to describe the sound of the voice he is hearing if someone were to ask him. But others have described it for him.
It is honey, and cream, and gold. It is dark velvet and sunlight. It is incomparable. For as long as it lasts, Upton stands immobile, forgetting time, forgetting his work, forgetting everything but the sound of that voice. When it stops, finally, he stands dazed, and sighs as the everyday world settles around him once more; and as he bends to help the footman, there are tears in his eyes.
Chapter Two
ALFIERI KNOWS NOTHING of Upton’s tears, nor would he care greatly if he did. Twenty years of singing before audiences all across Europe have accustomed him to that phenomenon, and left him largely indifferent to the power he has to make men weep. Audiences themselves are of negligible importance; they provide an excuse for him to sing, and enable him to spend his life doing what he desires by rewarding him prodigiously well for it, but they are not the reason he sings.
They are, however, the reason he is here. Paris has named him “Le Rossignol,” the nightingale; London knows him as “the Lord of Song”; to all of Italy he is “Maestro Orfeo.” His fame has become such that walking unmolested in the street—any street, in any city in Europe which boasts an opera house, and in many which do not—has become a near impossibility for him. He has left Europe to regain, for a while at least, his own soul; and Upton’s tears, did he but know of them, would be of infinitely less moment to him than what he will have for dinner.
Rising at last from the piano, more satisfied with the sound of his voice than he has been in months, he flings the curtains wide, noting with approval that the room faces onto Gramercy Park itself. The trees dance in the May wind, beckoning and abundantly green, and he unfastens the latch on one of the tall French windows and pushes the double panes outward. The fresh air, rushing into the long shut-up room, smells the color of the leaves, and all but sparkles in its clarity.
He breathes it in deeply, hands resting on either side of the window, idly watching a couple walk arm in arm in the park while two small girls chase each other in and out of the trees, and he suddenly realizes that he is happy—truly happy—with the sheer, effervescent happiness of youth; happier, in this house, than he has been in years. The very walls seem to greet him kindly, and to embrace him, as if they have been waiting for him for a long, long time.
No one lies in wait for him here, just outside the door. No one clamors for him, clutches at him, prays to him, leaves gifts for him, or flowers, or notes. If he must be lonely—God!—then let him be alone. He has not known such relief as this, such lightness of heart, for twenty years. He can be solitary in this house, and happy, the vast walls around him forming an impenetrable shell. Until he returns to Europe, he will revel in this solitude, wallow in it, free of hangers-on, of the endless crush of people that surrounds him always: smiling, weeping, fawning; ready to sell themselves at a moment’s notice, to trade their husbands or wives, sons or daughters for the slightest hint of stature, power, influence, fame … eager to suck the very breath from his lungs, or the soul from his body if he will only let them …
The breeze blows, cooling his face again, carrying music with it from the other side of the park … the raucous, lighthearted sound of a hurdy-gurdy, drifting on the air. He listens … “Libiam’,” it pulses, “ne’ dolci fremiti, che suscita l’amore …” the brilliant brindisi in waltz time from La Traviata. “Let’s drink to love’s sweet tremors,” it says, “to those eyes that pierce the heart …”
Verdi, wafting in from a New York street … the melody a reply to his own music at the piano. He is not one to ignore omens: the welcoming house and its grateful solitude, the sense of remembering what he cannot possibly know, his discovery of the music room, the arias, statement and answer: it all means a successful stay in America. He needs to see no more … he and the house have clearly chosen each other, and his possession of it will begin, appropriately, here. With both hands he seizes the sheet which drapes the piano, snatches it off and tosses it to the floor, then moves on, stripping the cover from each chair and table in his progress around the room.
The open window does not illumine the farthest corners, which remain lost in shadow, but Alfieri does not even notice; his mind is too full of his newfound elation, and his own momentum carries him along with no slackening of pace until, turning to wrest the cover from an armchair backed against a distant wall, he stops with a quick intake of breath.
Something—someone—is curled within it.
Except for Upton, somewhere in the bowels of the house, he should be completely alone, and so for several heartbeats he only stares in disbelieving silence. The figure does not vanish from beneath his gaze; it merely huddles deeper into the cushions, moving Alfieri to confirm the evidence of his eyes. As he stretches out his hand to touch what he knows cannot be there, the figure puts its hand out to ward off his, and Alfieri finds himself grasping the fingers of …
A child. A little, pale, sad-eyed child clothed in black, more like the ghost of a child than a living one … except that its fingers are real, small and very cold, and the nails are ragged and bitten. The child raises its head—her head—and meets his eyes for one moment only, then looks away.
It is long enough.
Her face glimmers white in the gloom, and he can see the marks of illness plain upon it. A hint of freckles once dusted her cheeks; they have faded now, with the rest of her, and the blue hollows beneath her eyes look like old, old bruises. The eyes themselves, gray-green and very clear, are even older: windows onto some ancient, bottomless grief; haunting, in the face of a child.
His own joy of a moment ago is dwarfed by the magnitude of this pain. He covers her hand with his own, speechless in the presence of such sorrow, and raises it to his lips.
The shadowy room, the silent house, the young girl with her old eyes: there is a dreamlike quality to them all, as if Alfieri has stepped out of the stream of time into a moment which has been there always, waiting for him, and which he has always known would come. He will never entirely leave it again; for the rest of his life a part of him will be there still, in the dusky room, at the instant she raises her eyes, with his lips against her hand.
The moment passes; the child lowers her eyes, her hand slips from his; the spell is broken. Time takes up where it had left off: the wind stirs the curtains, the sound of a passing carriage rises from the street below. Nothing has happened at all, except that Alfieri’s life has changed forever, and that he knows it.
“Who are you?” he says, when he can speak again. “How did you come here?”
“I live here.” She speaks with her head down, and directs her words to the fingers clenched in her lap.
“Here? But this is an empty house.”
“It’s not empty. I live here.”
“With the furniture all covered over and no light? How do you live in this place? Are you alone?”
“Two of the servants have stayed on. There are candles for the evening.” Her words, almost inaudible, are disjointed and utterly incomprehensible to him. “Don’t look at me, please. Just let me go away again. This is the closed part of the house, and I mustn’t be found here. I was walking for my exercise, but I became tired and fell asleep. The music woke me.”
“You are not one of the servants. That is not possible.”
The wan cheeks flush an imperceptible pink as she draws herself up in the depths of the chair and lifts her chin for the first time. “This is my guardian’s house.”
“Truly? I was told that the owner of this house had died.”
The momentary bravado fades; she droops again and her small voice falters. “He did. But he was still my guardian.”
He looks at her bowed head. “My dear, I am so sorry. I was not thinking …” She does not move.
“What is your name?” he says gently.
“Clara. Clara Adler,” is the whispered reply.
“Then, Miss Adler, as there is no one to introduce us properly, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mario Alfieri.”
“How do you do, Mr. Alfieri.”
“Well, thank you. Very well. And how do you do, Miss Adler?”
“Better,” she says. “I am better, now. I have been ill.” Her own words suddenly recall her to herself. “Oh, but you mustn’t look at me,” she says, shrinking further into her chair.
“Why?”
“My hair …” At her words he realizes, with a small jolt, that it has been cut pitifully close, like a boy’s. Unable to hide the disgrace of her shorn head with her hands, she covers her face, instead. “Please don’t look at me.”
“And if I told you,” he says, “that until this very minute, when you brought it to my attention, I had not noticed your hair, would you believe me?” He touches her sleeve. “I promise you it is true.”
“How can that be?” she says through her hands. “I am so ugly.”
“Not ugly. Never ugly. Only recovering from an illness. Your hair will grow back.”
“Not for years.”
He laughs. “Do you wish to know why I did not notice your hair? I was looking too much at your lovely eyes.”
She lowers her hands. Those eyes are spilling slow tears, which she wipes with the handkerchief he offers her. “I am sorry,” she says. “Please don’t think badly of me.”
“Badly? Of you?” He shakes his head. “You are still weak and you have had a shock, which is my fault. I do not wonder at those tears. Are you strong enough to return to … where do you live in this great house?”
“My rooms are on the next floor. I will be all right. I am stronger than I look.”
“The stairs will not be too much for you? Let me help you.”
He takes her hand again and helps her to rise. Her head, with its ragged, dark curls, reaches no higher than the middle of his chest.
“You needn’t,” she says. “I can get there by myself.”
“No gentleman,” he replies, “would ever permit a lady of his acquaintance to return home unescorted. Now that we have been introduced, I must see you safely home.”
They climb the stairs together, stopping every four or five steps to allow her to catch her breath and rest.
“You are so kind,” she says. “I hope it didn’t frighten you too much to find me there.”
“Oh, after the initial shock I bore up quite well. I must admit that, at the very first instant, I did think that I had stumbled upon a ghost—which would have been most interesting, for I do not believe in them—and for a few moments I thought that I would have to rethink all my most deeply held philosophies. But it is you who are truly brave. To wake and find a total stranger in your house, tearing the covers from the furniture? How I must have frightened you!”
“No,” she says. “I heard you singing. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”
When they reach their destination, Alfieri opens the door for her and stands aside to let her pass.
She hesitates, not knowing what etiquette might demand in such a situation. To remain alone with a stranger cannot be proper; but he has been so kind that, surely, it would be terribly rude simply to send him away. “Would you like to come in?” she says shyly. “Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?”
Alfieri loathes tea. A true son of his country, his beverage is coffee: thick, strong, and taken black.
“I would love a cup of tea,” he says.
HOME” CONSISTS of two rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room, facing south and east over the garden at the back of the huge house. The sitting room is a pleasant, airy chamber, with sunlight falling like water through curtains of lace, and its bright comforts seem touched with some kindly magic, permitting it alone to escape the dark spell which has plunged the rest of the house into profound sleep. Adding to the feeling of enchantment is a table before one window, set with covered dishes, a cup and saucer, a round blue teapot, and a small kettle which steams cheerfully above a spirit lamp, as if invisible hands had been there only moments before. While Clara busies herself with the tea things, taking for her own use a glass tumbler fetched from the table beside her bed, Alfieri examines his surroundings.
His eyes travel from the soft rugs on the floor to the books piled on the tables, to the hoop of half-finished embroidery lying on the window seat, to the mantelpiece, which is white marble carved with swags of roses. Upon it sits a vase filled with tulips and anemones, a fountain of bright reds, blues, and yellows; on the wall above hangs a portrait of a girl with long chestnut hair tumbling about her shoulders, looking like a flower herself in a pale blue gown. The artist, with masterly hand and eye, had captured his subject at a magical time—no longer a child, not quite a woman—and Alfieri stares at it, once more feeling something that he cannot explain … the tilt of the head, the slant of the eyes, the oddly knowing expression, smiling and infinitely sad … all achingly familiar—and then he is back, and realizing that the wan little creature now pouring out tea is the faded shadow of the portrait’s original.
“My guardian had me sit for it, two years ago,” Clara says, following his gaze. “I was very young then.”
“So I see. How young, if I might be permitted to ask?”
“Seventeen.”
“Why then you are very old now,” he says gravely, and is rewarded by one of her rare smiles.
“Sometimes I feel very old. I tire so quickly.”
“You must give it time.”
“It’s taking so long.”
“I know. But you will grow well and strong. If you do not believe me, I will show you.” He takes the teacup she has handed him and quickly drinks off its contents, leaving a small amount in the bottom. Swirling the remaining liquid around, he pours it out into his saucer and holds the empty cup out for her inspection.
She peers into it. “Do you read tea leaves?”
“I am famous for it. In my family I am the only one permitted to read them. It is a rule.”
“Whom do you read them for?”
“My brothers and sisters and their children.”
“Does what you read always come true?”
“Always.”
“What do you see there?”
He holds the cup to the light and rotates it between his hands. “I see a very beautiful young lady—radiant with health, and with long, chestnut hair—in a park. Not a little park, like the one outside here, but a big one, like the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. See this?” He points to a smudge of tea leaves inside the cup.
“What is it?”
“A ship. And here are waves and seabirds.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means that you will grow well and strong, and travel across the sea.”
“You are very kind,” she says, looking away. “But I think not. Not I.”
“Miss Adler, do you doubt me? You do me an injustice. I have predicted it, and, as my family will tell you, my predictions are never wrong.”
“But …” She stops, puzzled by a new thought. “Mr. Alfieri, forgive me, but I fear you’ve made a mistake.”
“Never. Not with tea leaves. It cannot be done.”
“But that is your teacup. You would need to read my glass to tell my fortune, wouldn’t you? That was your own fortune you just read.”
Alfieri smiles gently and puts down the cup.
Chapter Three
LIKE JUNO ON MOUNT OLYMPUS, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor stands at the pinnacle of New York society. From her exalted vantage point, with its commanding views, Mrs. Astor single-handedly metes out the fate of those would-be immortals who everlastingly strive for a place on the holy mount. The self-appointed arbiter of worth in her rarefied universe, Mrs. Astor admits only the most deserving to the ranks of the blessed. In all such matters her power is absolute, and her word, law.
In consequence of such toilsome efforts to organize society into a finely measured hierarchy, and to elevate it to ever new levels of distinction, Mrs. Astor’s life had been measured not in days or weeks or months, but in cotillions and balls and levées. For twenty years, newcomers worthy of a foothold on the lower rungs of the celestial ladder might have been invited to an afternoon reception, one of the lesser observances in Mrs. Astor’s ritual; only for those in the preeminent ranks of the pantheon would there have been an invitation to one of her weekly dinner parties.
But alas for New York! The goddess’s consort is two years dead. While Mr. Astor lived, Mrs. Astor’s year would begin in the autumn, when the elite, after the summer’s diaspora, were gathered once more in the city; would build momentum through the fall and early winter with patriarchs’ balls, assembly balls, family circle dancing classes, Monday nights at the opera, and a hundred exquisite suppers at Delmonico’s; would whirl past Christmas and the New Year; and would achieve its culmination at her annual ball, held on the third Monday of each January—the single most sacred occasion of the social year. Since Mr. Astor’s translation to an even higher sphere, however, his widow has ceased to entertain. For two years, no events have breathed life into the great crimson and gold ballroom in Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue mansion.
Until tonight.
Tonight is a supreme occasion, in every respect worthy of bringing society’s queen out of mourning: not merely an amusement, but a portent of glories to come … a ball to welcome Maestro Mario Alfieri, primo tenore assoluto, to New York. Moreover, it is a radical departure for the fastidious Mrs. Astor, an anomaly that in itself would be enough to bring society snapping to attention. Mrs. Astor has long held that artists of any ilk—painters, authors, actors, and the like—merit no recognition unless safely dead, and that meeting them risks both needless mental fatigue and the possibility of social contamination.
But Mario Alfieri is no ordinary artist. The reigning god of Europe’s opera stages for as long as Mrs. Astor has been the reigning goddess of New York society, he is still bettering his art, going from strength to strength, and triumph to triumph. What is more, he is said to be able to trace his ancestry back, in an unbroken line, for five hundred years, a feat that dazzles in a country where four generations of known ancestry constitute an aristocracy. Lastly, and providing the absolute gilding on the lily, is the fact that he dines regularly with the Prince of Wales. Alfieri is notorious, in fact, for having certain tastes in common with His Royal Highness that cannot be mentioned in polite society, and it is widely rumored that the two have been known, on numerous occasions, to cap their dinners with visits to certain private establishments where exquisite young women use astonishing skills to gratify quite other kinds of appetites.