A Song for Summer (16 page)

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to get tickets," said the girl. "And if I can they'll be terribly expensive. It's a gala and they always put up the prices for them."

But Kendrick, imagining himself beside his beloved as Seefeld renounced her young lover and sent him into the arms of a foolish young girl, said boldly that money was no object. She was to get tickets at any price and let him know. For the truth was that even if Ellen might prefer to investigate Demels patisserie or the Nash Markt, he himself would do anything to hear Brigitta Seefeld sing. And he would be able to tell Ellen more about the inspiring relationship between the diva and Marcus Altenburg, for he had done a lot of research on the composer's life since he realised that he had been at school with one of the most highly regarded musicians of the day.

He would not raise Ellen's hopes at once: he'd just say he hoped to get tickets for the opera. Or should he say nothing about it at all and give her a wonderful surprise?

Standing on the pavement, jostled by the passers-by, Kendrick sighed with anticipation, and blushed, for he had just remembered that the prelude of Rosenkavalier was supposed to depict, in music, the act of love.

Was this something he should explain--but very delicately of course--to Ellen? She listened so nicely when he told her things, her head on one side, her lids drooping a little over her gentle eyes. Sometimes he felt that that was what he had been born for--explaining things to the girl he loved so much.

The Viennese afternoon was warm and mellow. The sun shone down on the green and golden roofs of the churches, warmed the stone archdukes and marble composers in the parks; touched the courtyards of the Hofburg, which had once been the home of emperors and now housed government ministries, Lipizzaner horses, and a few selected citizens who had been given grace-and-favour apartments by the state.

Among whom was Vienna's favourite diva, Brigitta Seefeld, who now woke in her famous Swan Bed, stretched her plump arms and demanded (but in a whisper for she never spoke on the day of a performance), "Where are my eggs?"'

Ufra shrugged. Her eggs were where they always were, in a bowl on the dressing table, fresh that morning from the market. An ugly black-haired Armenian in her fifties, she had worked for Brigitta for fifteen years and knew that today there would be trouble. Brigitta was singing Mimi in La Boh@eme and they had brought in a new Musetta from Hamburg who was said to be both excellent and young. And tonight too Benny Feldmann was due back from America, and if he hadn't found Marcus von Altenburg, thought Ufra, God help us all.

Brigitta rose, put on her peignoir and descended from her dais. On the walls of her bedroom, as on all the walls of her sumptuous apartment, with its inlaid floors and porcelain stoves, hung portraits of her in her most famous roles: as the Countess in Figaro ... as Violetta in La Traviata ... as a pig-tailed Marguerite in Gounod's

Faust.

Reaching the dressing table, she broke the first egg and tipped it down her throat. A second egg followed; then came the exercises. "Mi, mi, mi," sang Brigitta, her hand on her diaphragm--and outside in the street, the porters looked up and grinned and the grooms leading the Lipizzaners to their stables nodded to each other, for Brigitta Seefeld's voice exercises were as much a part of Vienna as the bells of St Stephen's or the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs.

At four-thirty, Ufra admitted the masseuse and after her came Herr K@oenig, the leader of Brigitta's claque.

Marcus had disapproved of claques. "You don't need them," he'd raged. "It lowers you, paying for applause."

How idealistic he'd been, that wild boy who'd come to her dressing room with an entire tree, and into her life. But what did he know about anything, with his tempestuous youth and his talent? It was all very well for him; he could afford to go slumming in the suburbs, conducting working men's choirs and writing pieces for tubercular schoolchildren to play. He wasn't dependent on an arbitrary collection of cords and tendons which could fail at any moment. A head cold, a chest infection, an impending nodule on her larynx would leave her defenceless, a prey to her rivals, her status threatened. No wonder she found it necessary to cultivate those who could help her.

Herr K@oenig came forward to kiss her plump, soft hand--possibly the most kissed hand in Vienna--and was informed that Brigitta expected not less than twelve curtain calls, and for herself alone--not the beanpole from Hamburg who was singing Musetta.

Herr K@oenig blanched. Twelve curtain calls, yes--but for her alone? The soprano from Hamburg was said to be very good. On the other hand, Seefeld was not singing again till her Rosenkavalier at the gala in four weeks' time. For the ordinary Viennese who could not afford gala prices, tonight was effectively her last appearance of the season. Looking into the diva's appealing blue eyes, he was driven to rashness.

"You shall have them," he declared grandly--and could be seen, as he reached the street, striking his forehead

and cursing his stupidity.

At five-thirty, Ufra prepared the dog. Combing the long, silky hair of the little Tibetan terrier, binding his topknot up in scarlet ribbon, took almost as long as dressing Brigitta's golden curls, but the public expected Puppchen on his red lead, as they expected the sable stoles, the jewels, the famous smile.

"In Armenia we would have eaten you," said Ufra as he wriggled and moaned.

At six-thirty the procession set off down the Augustinerstrasse watched by the shopkeepers, the man in the tobacco kiosk and those fortunate tourists who had been tipped off that Seefeld was en route to the evening's performance.

Arriving at the stage door, Brigitta was extremely gracious to the doorman, considerably less gracious to the tenor who was singing Rodolfo, and not gracious at all to the beanpole from Hamburg who should have stayed where she was even if she did happen to be married to a Jew.

But the performance went well. The voice--that capricious Gestalt almost as external to herself as the tiresome little dog that Marcus had given her-- had behaved itself, and Herr K@oenig had kept his word.

There were twelve curtain calls, and the other singers, relieved that Brigitta would be absent now for nearly a month, allowed her to take a substantial number of these alone.

Afterwards there was another smattering of applause as she crossed from the opera house to Sacher's, the hotel where she was accustomed to dine after a performance. There were roses on the table especially kept for her, and more hand-kissing, more bowing as she was greeted by the ma@itre d'h@otel and her dinner companions rose to their feet.

"You were superb, Liebchen," said Count Stallenbach, her current "protector", a man sufficiently stricken in years to make few demands on her person.

Julius Staub, extinguishing his cigarette, added his congratulations. A pale playwright with an enormous forehead, who wandered about in a pall of cigarette ash like an extinct volcano, he had written the libretto of an opera about Helen of Troy which only lacked a composer to be a perfect vehicle for Seefeld.

But the man she most wanted to see had not yet

arrived: Benny Feldmann, her agent and business manager, who had just returned from the United States.

"He phoned to say he'd be along in half an hour. The train was delayed and he's just gone home to change."

Brigitta nodded, but as she chose her dishes and sipped her champagne, she could hardly conceal her impatience.

It had begun over a year ago, her desire to find Marcus von Altenburg again. She had been furious with him when he withdrew his violin concerto in that melodramatic way. To lose the chance of a Berlin premiere for a little Jew like Meierwitz was absurd, and she had written to tell him so. Music was above politics.

But if Marcus had been labelled as a person not welcome in the Third Reich, there were other countries, seemingly, which did want him. The French had just performed his First Symphony, the Songs for Summer had been recorded in London, and the Americans had invited him back on generous terms to conduct. He was rumoured to be over there now, negotiating.

"He hasn't been so stupid," Benny Feldmann had told her before he left for the States. "The future is over there, Brigitta. More and more people are going."

Brigitta had no intention of leaving Vienna; she was Viennese through and through. But the news from Germany was bad: more and more Wagner operas staged for the F@uhrer, more and more influence exerted by the Bayreuth clique. She was a lyric soprano: Wagner did not suit her voice.

If Hitler's hand of friendship to Austria became a takeover, might it be wise to consider alternatives?

"Why don't you get Altenburg to write an opera for you? You'd be welcome anywhere in the world then,"

Feldmann had said, as he was leaving. He was half joking. Men like Altenburg did not write operas for people--they wrote them or not.

But Brigitta had leapt at the idea. Altenburg understood her as no one had ever done. He had a devilish temper and had never quite lost his air of emerging from a forest in a bearskin, but the time she had spent with him had been like no other. It was he who had persuaded her to take on the role that had become her most famous one: that of the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier--the lovely, worldly aristocrat who gives up her young lover to an ingenue of his own age.

"I'm too young," she'd said--and so she had been then: thirty-two to his twenty.

"But that's the point don't you see, to make the sacrifice while you are at the height of your beauty--

Strauss wrote it like that. It's not about some middle-aged woman making the best of a bad job; it's a supreme act of wisdom and renunciation."

The boy had been right. She had been sensational in the role; her performance in what Richard Strauss called his "Mozart Opera" had become legendary. It was because of Marcus that she was singing in four weeks' time before the President and the crowned heads of several European states.

And that was the trouble--that was why she was so desperate to find him now. The opera could wait, but not the gala. It was three years since she had sung the Marschallin: her fortieth birthday was behind her--

rather more behind her than she admitted--and she felt suddenly terrified and stale. There were things badly wrong with the production, and Feuerbach, who was conducting, lacked the authority and presence to impose his will on the orchestra. Some of his tempi were absurd; she couldn't take the Act One monologue at that speed, and the girl who was singing Sophie lost no opportunity to put herself forward.

It had all been so different when she was with Marcus. He had been an amazing r@ep@etiteur and coach, and the orchestra listened to him. Even when he was twenty they had listened, and now ... Marcus could make Feuerbach see sense, she was sure of it. There would be people at the gala longing to find fault with her--rival divas from Berlin and Paris; officials from the Met.

"Here he is!" said Staub as Benny came towards them, his black eyes lively in spite of the long journey.

Brigitta could only just give him time to sit down before she began: "Well, what's the news? Did you find him?"'

Benny shook his head. "No I didn't.

No one in Philadelphia had any idea where he was. The Director of the Sinfonia's been trying to get hold of him but he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. They thought he was in that place of his in the forest but letters haven't been answered."

"But that's absurd. He must be somewhere."

Staub cleared his throat. His libretto was without doubt the best thing he had written. Seen from the point of view of a Greek soldier disgorged from the wooden horse who encounters the fabled Helen, huddled in a doorway of the burning city, it should interest Altenburg with his well-known concern for the common man. And Marcus might persuade Brigitta to huddle--a thing that he himself did not feel equal to.

Now he said: "I think perhaps he may be here. In Austria, I mean. Brenner said he saw him down in Carinthia, driving with Professor Steiner. He didn't see him clearly but he's pretty sure it was Altenburg."

"Steiner? That old folk song collector?"'

"Yes. I thought he must be mistaken because Marcus was in America but now I wonder. He and Steiner were friends, if you remember; Marcus stayed with him in Berlin."

Brigitta frowned. The professor belonged to that group of musicians--Meierwitz was another one--who had allowed themselves to become entangled in politics.

"But what could he possibly be doing down there? And why hasn't he been in touch?"'

Staub shrugged. "Brenner may be wrong but he was quite close to him; the van stopped at a level crossing and he tried to wave but Altenburg just stared him down."

What could it mean? thought Brigitta. Was he hiding himself away to work? And if so ... if he was writing music for someone else? A rival? Oh, why did I send him away? she thought. I must have been mad.

He'd said he wouldn't come back, and he hadn't, except as an acquaintance when their paths happened to cross. She'd only wanted a few months to sort out her affairs and really it was his fault, refusing to sell his wretched trees to pay for the sables she'd set her heart on.

"Where in Carinthia? Where did Brenner see him?"'

"Hallendorf. They were driving away from the lake."

"Hallendorf?"' she repeated. "Of course, that's the place with that dreadful school." The headmaster had had the nerve to write to her

asking her to attend some musical performance of the children's a couple of years ago. She hadn't even answered ... but might it do as an excuse to make enquiries?

"Is there anywhere decent to stay down there?"' she asked. "Why don't we go and look for him?"'

Staub agreed at once but Benny hesitated. He had not yet told Brigitta, but he had decided to emigrate and was going to transfer his business to New York. If Brigitta did choose to follow him, there was little he could do for her: America was flooded with Lieder singers escaping Hitler, and the Met had their own stable of sopranos.

But Altenburg was a different matter; Benny had been surprised at the high value the Americans put on him. If Brigitta could really get Altenburg to write an opera with a part for her, the combination could be sensational. The old "affaire" might be over, but a little carefully placed gossip could add savour, and where better to put that about--if Marcus could be persuaded to attend--than at the gala?