The Metropolis (22 page)

There was a boy—Joey Finn—who like Rhonda was a freak and sometimes smoked with them after math class. He lived down the street from Maria’s new house and was famous for having convinced his parents to let him install in their basement “den” four couches—one on each wall—a television, a two-hundred-gallon fish tank with a pair of oscars that made short work of goldfish, and a stereo with two speakers, each the size of a small car. Maria started going to Joey’s after school and learned to get high; once she even dropped acid and watched the massive subwoofers morph into faceless lips mouthing the words to
The Dark Side of the Moon
. Usually there were other kids around, but one day Maria was the only one, and when Finn sat next to her on the couch and started to rub his hand up and down her leg, she didn’t stop him, and soon enough he was kissing her, and even though there was a part of her that didn’t want to kiss him back, his more obvious desire easily outweighed her reluctance, so that she didn’t really mind when he pulled his pants down and told her to suck it, because this was where her life was taking her, and it didn’t seem any better or worse than anything else.

It was also how a few days later she ended up back at Finn’s—she walked past his house twice a day—and he said he wanted to go all the way and she didn’t really care about that, either; even the pain when he awkwardly rammed into her, or the vague disgust she felt as her hands traveled from his long, greasy hair over his acne-covered back and bony ass, seemed far away, really no more than distorted images to accompany the dull and muted strains of music she could
barely hear, as if her life were being played in a movie theater three doors over from the one in which she sat.

M
EANWHILE IN
N
EW
York City, Maria’s name had already acquired an almost supernatural aura, thanks to her mind-warping audition—which was saying something at Juilliard—and news of the fiery death of her parents. There were those who denied her existence, an urban myth that gained traction after her failure to respond to the acceptance letter was leaked from the admissions office. There were times—given what Anna suspected about her own relationship to Maria—when Anna was inclined to believe this as well, which always led her to pick up the phone and call Maria, because to hear even a few syllables in that voice reminded her of what she had witnessed in Pittsburgh—and then later at the audition—and increased her resolve to bring the girl to New York. With a thought to counter the inevitable chorus of doubters—all of whom had their own agendas to promote—Anna staged conversations with her friends in the Juilliard lobby in which she referred—in full voice, almost singing—to “this little robin’s remarkable determination” and her “unrelenting desire to make a new start at Juilliard,” and informed admissions that Maria would in fact be attending in the fall but needed an extension to supply replacement copies of papers lost in the fire.

Though she didn’t want to alienate Maria—whom she did not begrudge this period of mourning—Anna worried that Maria’s grief would lead to other, more active forms of self-destruction. Such fears were confirmed when she called Kathy Warren and learned that Maria had skipped chorus a few times and had also been seen smoking outside the high school, which though not alone a cause for panic was enough to make Anna think the time had come to intervene. She considered a visit to Castle Shannon but ultimately opted for the phone, reasoning that it was best to engage Maria
voce a voce
.

Bea answered and made the sign of the cross. “Thank you and please—you must save her,” she pleaded. “Every day I am more—
comment dire, j’ai peur
—” Once again Bea was reverting to the language of her childhood, as if speaking in French would erase the memories of what had come after. “
C’est trop dur.
”

“
Je comprends, je comprends.
” Anna tried to reassure her, though she was also nervous. “
Ne vous inquietez pas—est-elle chez vous?
”

“
Momento.
” Bérénice went to retrieve Maria, while Anna listened through the line. “Maria,
bella
, is the nice German lady singer.”

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” Even through the phone, Maria sounded far away to Anna, particularly when she remembered how excited she had been at the Heinz Recitals and before the audition.

“
Merde!
You tell her yourself,” Bérénice said, after which there was a long pause before Anna heard footsteps approaching and the clank of the receiver knocking against a wall, or perhaps some cabinets.

“Hello.”

Anna took a deep breath. “Maria, it’s Anna. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“How’s school going?”

“Not bad.”

“And your singing?”

“It’s okay,” Maria said.

“Well, there’s certainly no need to push yourself right now,” Anna replied, “but I was a little concerned that we didn’t receive your acceptance letter. Did you mail it?”

There was a long pause before Maria answered. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

Anna let some time pass before she spoke. “Maria, my heart breaks every time I think about what happened to your lovely parents, but there’s no reason to compound this tragedy. I can’t imagine
they would have wanted anything except for you to sing, don’t you think?”

“That’s true.”

Anna knew she was not reaching Maria and tried a different tack. “When I think of your voice, it’s a little painful for me, and not just because of what happened, or because I think you’re beautiful and talented, but because it reminds me of when I was your age—or perhaps a bit older—and trying to come to terms with what it means to have this; except for me, it wasn’t so much a talent or a skill as a secret language, a way to describe the world that made it seem wonderful and the rest of my life dull and drab by comparison. But after I lost my parents, life became painful for me, and I really struggled for a few years. I could barely sing—my voice felt lost to me. Do you understand this?”

“I’m not sure,” Maria said, but there was a trembling, hesitant quality to her response that Anna found encouraging, since it seemed to reflect the churning of real thoughts.

“We’re born with a gift,” Anna continued, “and for a while it seems magical and gives us great pleasure, but there comes a time when it no longer satisfies us, except unlike a toy or a dress it’s not something we can just outgrow, because it’s part of us, and when you first begin to understand this, it can feel like a curse, so that you regret having been given the gift in the first place. If your voice feels different because of what happened to your parents, that’s natural—it’s part of growing up. And though you can never go back, you have the option of really learning how to use it in a way that will still bring you—and countless others—a lot of joy. Because—trust me—most people
don’t
have it, but it’s through us that they find at least a little piece of it in themselves.”

For a long time there was no sound, until Anna heard the raspy
choke of tears. “I wanted it so much,” Maria sobbed, “but I just don’t know if I can anymore.”

“It’s okay,” Anna reassured her and listened until Maria had stopped. “I’m here.”

“How?” Maria asked miserably, and Anna resisted an impulse to cry, as much with empathy as with relief at having broken through.

“First I want you to send in the letter,” Anna said with hope and encouragement, knowing that Maria only needed to grasp the life preserver in front of her. She outlined a plan to bring Maria to New York after graduation; she would get her a part-time job and an apartment—with a roommate, another incoming singer—before classes began in the fall. “I’ll be here whenever you need to talk,” she added quietly, almost wistfully, as though speaking to a younger version of herself.

M
ARIA HUNG UP
and felt stunned, but in a very different way than she had a few months earlier. She looked down expecting to see fragments of whatever it was she had been encased in exploding around her on the floor and then went into the bedroom, where her grandmother was lying on her bed, rosary beads in hand, her wrinkled cheeks wet from tears. “You spoke to the frau?” she asked. “She is
vraiment
not so bad for a German,
mia bella
. I hope—”

“I’m going,” Maria said as she retrieved the Juilliard letter from under a stack of books, the exact place she had put it a month earlier, when it arrived. She sat down next to Bea and showed it to her. “This summer—she’s helping me. I start school in the fall.”

“
Dieu merci,
” Bea responded and kissed both of Maria’s cheeks before she insisted upon kneeling next to the bed and saying a prayer of thanks.

As Maria watched her grandmother, she felt a familiar exasperation
but was thankful that it was not marked by the same ambivalence that had so recently clouded her thoughts. As she listened to her grandmother’s incantations, and remembered how much as a child she had loved praying with Bea, like two performers before an audience of God, she realized that what she felt was something entirely new, a combination of exasperation, ambivalence, nostalgia, and even a certain detachment, as if these were all different hues of paint on a single canvas, which she had the sense to step back from so that she might appreciate it.

She considered the letter, which continued to feel heavy in her hand, but less with obligation than with portent. She thought about what Anna had said about her “gift” and how she could have been describing the musical landscapes that Maria had inhabited for as long as she could remember but that had seemed so foreboding and unattainable at her parents’ funeral. She knew she was still adrift but was more determined, even if the thought of finding something she might not recognize frightened her almost as much as not getting there at all.

VIENNA, 1864. Though it was February and the temperature outside well below freezing, Lucien was not deterred as he trotted down the spiral stairs of his apartment building, two steps behind Eduard. He knew that, despite the cold, stepping out into the open air—where the winter sun refracted through the mist to create an almost perpetual twilight of orange and pink pastels—would be like
stepping into a dream. It was one of his favorite things about Vienna, and something he often thought about when he was inclined to miss Paris.

Still, there was a limit to how fast he liked to move in the morning, and Eduard was testing it. “Please, slow down just a little—you’re making me dizzy!” he begged as they circled closer to the foyer.

“I know—I’m sorry,” Eduard said and stopped in front of the door to wait. He quickly placed a finger on Lucien’s lower lip in lieu of a kiss. “I told you—I don’t want to be late.”

Lucien lightly bit the finger, shook his head like a dog, and then just as quickly let it go. “Okay—that’s better—
on y va.
”

Outside, they continued at a brisk pace past the university—where Eduard was an adjunct professor—toward the center of the city, making a detour around a vast field adjacent to the Ringstrasse, where the new parliament buildings, all in different stages of construction, could have been mistaken for ruins. After crossing into the old city, they walked past the Spanish Riding School, where Lucien insisted they spend a few seconds admiring the horses—steaming after their morning exercises—before continuing on to Grabenstrasse, where a strip of yellow tents extended in either direction in the center of the wide thoroughfare.

“Is there anything else I need to get?” asked Lucien as he withdrew from his pocket a list that they—along with Heinrich, Eduard’s longtime domestic and cook—had made in anticipation of dinner that night, to celebrate Lucien’s third anniversary in Vienna.

“I don’t think so”—Eduard shook his head—“but if you see anything that looks good—”

“Pomegranates, perhaps?” Lucien joked, knowing that these were Eduard’s favorites, but were no longer in season.

“If you love me you’ll find them,” Eduard replied with a wink, before he doffed his hat and turned toward Kärntnerstrasse—which
led directly south to the site of the new opera house—leaving Lucien in the growing throngs at the base of St. Stephen’s.

Now on his own, he meandered through the tents, which in this corner of the marketplace were filled with barrels of strange gourds, dried lemons, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks, and other spices. After buying a few things—bartering down the prices like a true Viennese—he went back to the street and paused in front of a plague monument to consider the tower of writhing bodies and skulls; in Vienna, death was honored the way Paris paid tribute to military victories, a distinction Lucien realized he had come to appreciate as he turned to orient himself by way of the cathedral rooftop. Looking up, he ignored the shouts and cries of the surrounding merchants and allowed himself to be momentarily hypnotized by the vibrating mosaic of orange and green against the pale white sky.

A
S
HE WALKED
back to the apartment, he was struck by how three years in a foreign city could feel at once so fleeting and so epic. Like a tourist, he was always discovering unmapped streets, dusty bookshops with rare prints and old editions—sometimes in strange Eastern languages he didn’t even recognize—and courtyard cafés that served tortes whose recipes were said to be kept in vaults under the imperial palace. At the same time, it often felt as though he had never lived anywhere else. Like many Viennese, Lucien had learned to move with a methodical deliberateness that announced an awareness of life’s difficulties and a corresponding desire to avoid them whenever possible; his German was close to flawless, and he had made new friends to replace the ones he had left behind.

That he was still singing—albeit again, more in German than in French—added to the sense of having lived nowhere but here, as if his art trumped—or transcended—any geographical consideration; it also helped that, since arriving in Vienna, he had achieved
a consistency in his upper range that allowed him to entertain the idea of tackling certain roles that would have been quite beyond him at the conservatory. In addition to performing periodically at recitals and salons hosted by a number of Eduard’s friends, Lucien was working with a new teacher, who agreed it would not be unreasonable for him to start auditioning in the very near future, possibly as soon as the fall.