The Metropolis (11 page)

She went to school the next day accompanied by dreams of triumph, but as the minutes ticked by, she began to wonder if perhaps she wasn’t so musical after all, since with the unhappy exception of Sister Mary Michael’s seventh-grade class, she had never sung for anyone outside her family. It took every ounce of willpower just to walk,
one painful step at a time, to the chorus room, where she could not even bring herself to look at Kathy. The bell rang to signal the start of class, and as Kathy stepped onto a small platform with an upright piano to take attendance, Maria felt the dread of impending execution as she listened to the names being called. When hers arrived, it was all she could do to raise her hand six inches off the desk and respond, “Yeah.”

As Maria spoke, one of the junior varsity football players elbowed his friend and muttered, “Morticia has big ones,” which caused some snickering among his jockstrap friends, who had signed up thanks to a general consensus that Ms. Warren was the hottest teacher in the history of Castle Shannon High.

Kathy stepped out from behind the piano to address directly the offending parties. “I don’t know what you jag-offs are laughing at,” she said, employing her native Pittsburgh vernacular to full effect, “but before we go any further, let me be clear: I expect my chorus at all times to maintain an atmosphere of respect; that means no whispering or laughing at anyone, unless you want your balls handed to you on a platter.”

Because Kathy—in another bold move to demonstrate her access to the highest echelons of power—had already been seen eating lunch with the varsity football coach, she quickly obtained the necessary murmurs of assent. She returned to the piano and sang a Joni Mitchell song that made every heart in the room skip a beat when she cooed the line “Marcie buys a bag of peaches.” Without exception they sensed in Ms. Warren a hip older sibling with great reserves of knowledge about life—and most important, sex—who commanded their respect and provided fodder for their own unceasing fantasies. Even more than the base physicality—fascinating as that could be—Kathy’s singing represented a broader awakening for Maria and the other students, who were confronted by the idea that someone in their immediate proximity—as opposed to a movie or a rock
concert—could exude such a nonpornographic sensuality, as though they had been dropped into a forest in springtime. Maria found herself staring at one of the jocks, less with anger over his comment than with curiosity as she imagined him with his clothes off and a lock of his long, feathery hair wrapped around her finger.

PARIS, 1852. Now fifteen and close to a head taller than Codruta, Lucien stooped to kiss each of her cheeks before stepping back to allow the waiting domestics to guide her into a chair. Over the past year, she had invited him to sing several times at her salon and also to afternoon tea, during which they discussed many things, including music—they shared a passion for Beethoven and Donizetti—the swaths of construction in Paris, and Lucien’s continuing ambivalence toward school. Once situated, the princess beckoned to a seat opposite her own. “Please,” she commanded as a second pair of servants entered the room carrying large silver trays laden with a tea service and an assortment of fruit and pastries. As these were arranged on the table, she tilted her head and scrutinized him. “So tell me—how did your final assignment go?”

Lucien regretted having mentioned it at all, but it had been weighing on him at their last meeting, a few weeks earlier. “Well, it’s done,” he answered evasively. “I finished the year.”

The late-afternoon sun angled down through the west-facing windows and reflected off the gilt rococo, an effect that seemed to turn her eyes to marble. “And did you ask your father for help?”

“Not exactly,” Lucien admitted, obdurate for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. “I did look through some of his books.”

“Imagine,” Codruta mused, “the son of one of France’s most accomplished scientists refusing to ask his father for help.” She focused on Lucien. “What’s the problem here?”

“I’m not sure,” Lucien began unsteadily. “I wanted to ask him—I really did—but then it was due and I knew he would be angry because I waited until the last second, and then …” He trailed off as Codruta beckoned toward one of her domestics to fill her cup.

“Lucien, please—I’m not your teacher or your father,” she said. “I understand you don’t want to follow in his footsteps, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you did.” She paused to dip a slice of pineapple into a warm bath of chocolate sauce. “This kind of adolescent sabotage is not becoming of a young man of your abilities—and I don’t just mean for singing.”

Lucien felt his cheeks flush as he fixed his gaze on a cluster of jade grapes that served as the centerpiece on the table. “I just wish he understood what it’s like for me!”

She nodded. “I don’t blame you—as we’ve discussed, academic studies were never my forte, either—but you have to view the situation from his perspective. His concern is for your long-term welfare, and while countless others share your love of the opera, only the very best can expect anything resembling a civilized existence in return.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Lucien insisted. “As I said to him—”

“Please don’t upset yourself,” Codruta interrupted. “It’s your father’s passion for music that makes him suspicious. He loves to hear you sing, of course, but as a scientist, he is inclined to want an objective validation, which as we both know doesn’t exist.”

“Shouldn’t your opinion count for something?”

“You flatter me, but no—my opinion here counts for nothing.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

She waved at a domestic, who lowered the blinds a fraction of an inch, effectively eliminating the glare while allowing the room to maintain a most pleasant shade of amber. “I am not a miracle worker,” she said, “but I have a plan, which—assuming you’re amenable—may prove suitable to us all.”

E
XACTLY ONE WEEK
later, Lucien arrived at 3 Place d’Aurifère, the home of Manuel García, who was probably—as Madame de Vicionière had remarked the previous spring at Codruta’s
mercredi
—the leading voice teacher in Paris, if not in all of Europe. Codruta had arranged the audition for Lucien on the condition that if the professor felt anything less than certain about his prospects, Lucien would return to lycée in the fall. It was a deal Lucien had accepted with something approaching glee but that he now considered with some terror, given what was at stake. With close to an hour to spare, he peered over the stucco wall into the mansion’s courtyard, where boxwood mermaids posed seductively above reefs of flowering azaleas and hawthorns, but this occupied him for less than two minutes and led him to cross the street into the Bois de Boulogne, where he sat on a bench to watch the cherry blossom petals drift down like snow flurries. He watched a couple smile at each other as they strolled past, their hands discreetly locked together, and felt jealous; everything and everyone around him seemed to have given over to the fervor of spring, while he was left with nothing but questions.

A few days earlier, at an outdoor café on the Boulevard St.-Michel, a girl with high cheekbones and curly golden hair had smiled shyly at him from her table, where she was sitting with an older couple, probably her parents, and though he could easily have taken a seat nearby and flirted with her—she had essentially issued an invitation—he had ignored her. It was not until later that it occurred to him that
his reluctance was rooted in the same ground as his desire to leave school, as if to return such a predictable gesture would have placed him among the throngs who populated the most generic, mundane sectors of society, the very ones he wanted to escape with a career in the theater. More intriguing had been a man near the Pont Neuf who in the dusky twilight had looked at and through him while touching the brim of his hat with one hand and suggestively shifting his other in the front pocket of his trousers. Though Lucien had again walked past, not acknowledging the gesture, he understood that he had witnessed a type of code, one that he had first become aware of at the theater and that left him wanting to know more.

With the hour almost up, Lucien drove all such thoughts from his mind; the last thing he wanted was to appear confused or lonely to Manuel García. He reminded himself that he was only fifteen—with his life ahead of him—and after gently slapping his cheeks and jumping up and down a few times, he walked with renewed determination to the mansion. After he rang the bell, a footman in scarlet livery appeared and led him through the front entrance into a huge reception foyer, where Lucien asked for and was given a moment to admire the vaulted ceilings some three stories above before he was ushered into a smaller if no less formidable drawing room, and here left with a promise of the professor’s imminent arrival.

Minutes came and went. Lucien worried he would wilt like a parched flower in the white light that caromed off the mirrors and crystal, but he dared not remove his jacket, since he had yet to meet Monsieur García and wanted to make the most of his first impression. When he finally heard footsteps, he drew himself to attention but could not restrain himself from smiling rather too broadly—almost gawking—at the professor, who in contrast to the huge dimensions the man had taken on in his mind, was quite short, slender and balding, with the droopy eyes of a hound. Lucien felt more composed
during an exchange of pleasantries as the professor led him down a hallway and into the music salon. This room also featured twenty-foot coffered ceilings but was less formal, thanks to a faded oriental rug, an old armchair—threadbare in spots, as though someone actually used it—and endless shelves of musical scores, books, and stationery.

García sat down at the piano, lifted the cover, and tossed off a few chords with an ease that announced the presence of a musician of serious ability. “
On commence?
” he asked as he flattened the sheet music against the stand. Lucien nodded slowly but intently, wanting to convey his appreciation for the jolt of adrenaline that prefaced any performance of meaning. But just before his entrance—and apparently less focused than he thought—he detected a sound, not so much a knock as a light tap, something that distracted him enough so that—
putain de merde!
—he missed his cue and instead offered up something between a gag and a cough.

Wearing the shocked expression of one who has just seen the tip of an arrow emerge through his chest, Lucien contemplated whether to hurl himself out the window, even as the knocking resumed with greater force. García, who had also heard the knock but, presumably less nervous, had chosen to ignore it, stopped playing and yelled that whoever or whatever was there would have to wait. A garbled but impassioned female voice responded, and with a sigh of resigned frustration that Lucien understood conveyed the sad fact that even the best voice teacher in the world could not conduct an audition without being interrupted by annoying trivialities, García got up and, in one quick motion that sent the piano bench stuttering back along the wood floor, took three compact steps to the door, which he opened just wide enough to allow one of his professorial eyes to peer through. “Pauline?”

“
Oui—c’est moi.
” There in the foyer—thanks to his height
Lucien could see over the professor—stood Pauline García Viardot, one of the city’s most famous sopranos and—not coincidentally—the younger sister of Manuel. Lucien admired her pale, oval face, framed by a single strand of hair that had come loose from her bun; she had her brother’s large, intelligent eyes, but on her they seemed fragile and sensitive. She leaned forward over the bulk of her crinoline to place one of her weightless hands on her brother’s forearm and in hushed tones begged him to assist her with something.

Lucien felt a pang of dread as he wondered if she had somehow detected his missed entrance, or if perhaps she was annoyed that the audition had even been scheduled. On the verge of a mea culpa, he stopped as she raised her eyes in his direction and smiled, a ray of serenity that contained no trace of seduction but—just as he would have hoped—only the reassuring condolence an established singer might give to a younger one beginning a climb toward the lofty peak where she now stood.

The professor and his sister disappeared, leaving Lucien alone in the music room. As he waited, he parted the drapes with a thought to open the window, but the casing was stuck and he dared not push too hard for fear of breaking a pane. He pressed his palms against the cool glass as he regulated his breathing and decided that he preferred the heavier, more expectant air inside, suffused with the sweet scent of the burning lamps and the long shadows of the room.

A few minutes passed before Manuel García swung open the doors. “You’re still here?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Lucien replied thickly, as if he had swallowed a jar of ink.

“Most of my singers are not in the habit of missing their cues,” the professor addressed him curtly. “As I explained to the princess,
you are quite a bit younger than I would normally consider, and your lack of concentration seems to validate my suspicion that this audition is premature.”

It had not occurred to Lucien that the professor could be so merciless, but as soon as he recognized the trait, he realized that he would have to respond accordingly unless he wanted to return to another year of classroom drudgery. “Professor, I understand your concern,” he began, “and whatever dismay you felt a few minutes ago is not only one that I share but one that is compounded for me by having made the mistake.” As Lucien spoke, he thought of Pauline Viardot and knew that he would do anything to join her ranks. “With your indulgence, I’ll sing without the piano this time.”

The professor’s expression remained stern, but he relented. “That won’t be necessary,” he said as he took his seat and began to play. “But this will be your last chance to impress me.”

L
ESS THAN TWO
hours later—after an exuberant dash through a dusty field of construction adjacent to the Rue de Rivoli—Lucien was back on the Île, where he found his father in the garden. “I have important news,” he began in a rush, before describing the audition with the famous professor and how he had managed to redeem himself. “I think you’d be very impressed,” he barreled ahead. “He’s extremely scientific—after he listened to me sing, he took measurements of my chest and waist and he looked down my throat and up my nose, all of which he declared to be in the proper proportions for a singer.”