The Metropolis (3 page)

NEW YORK CITY, 1960. It was almost noon when Anna heard a knock at her bedroom door. Her domestic entered carrying a silver platter covered with telegrams from friends and colleagues both old and new, offering congratulations and making requests to consider this or that role or to talk to so-and-so, while at least five claimed to know that critics from the
Times
and—even better
—This Is Our Music
planned to write rave reviews. With her head buzzing, she went to the kitchen and ate two soft-boiled eggs and a roll, along with drinking some very strong coffee—Viennese by birth and temperament, she was not partial to tea—before making a round of phone calls. As exciting as it was to consider what she had done, to rehash the details left her jittery and anxious in the solitude of the afternoon, and as she contemplated the prospect of singing in London, Paris, Milan, perhaps even Vienna, she could not escape a premonition of what the days after these spectacular nights might offer. To this point her out-of-town commitments had been relatively light, nothing like what she expected going forward, and even if she surrounded herself with people—the staff from opera houses and hotels, her fellow cast members, perhaps even a personal assistant—she worried about loneliness; it was such a common lament among
top singers, after all, though one she had never liked to consider with too much seriousness for fear of being presumptuous.

Still, she wondered if her Isolde performance was only the first in a line of life-altering dominoes about to topple. She smiled at the memory of swooning over her ex-husband—an industrial tycoon fifteen years older than she was—in the early days of their relationship. While that hadn’t worked out—as she acknowledged with a familiar mix of relief and disappointment—she hadn’t given up; in the decade since their divorce, she had dated others, including a doctor (boring), a lawyer (argumentative), and even a dentist (fussy), all pleasant enough but none of whom had ultimately left her wanting to rip out her heart and offer it up with his to the endless night.

She returned to her bedroom and flipped through a stack of cards she had collected the previous night at the after-party—per the Met custom, held at Demoiselles—with a thought to find one that had been given to her by the friend of a donor; both men were seated at her table. Over dinner, she could not shake the sense that the friend was watching her with a pleasant (though not invasive) intensity as she greeted a steady stream of well-wishers like a bride in a receiving line. Several times she glanced in his direction, and meeting his gaze made her feel almost giddy, like they were sharing a joke about this performance after the performance, before he returned to the endless plates of escargots and bottles of champagne that appeared in front of them. They managed to exchange a few words across the table, enough for her to learn that he, too, was from Europe and that French was his native language, although he was also fluent in German. When she stood up to leave—after being distracted by still more patrons who wished to convey their admiration—she felt a pang of disappointment to find him already gone; that he was a big man, with a wide chest and broad shoulders, made his absence seem that much keener. She
slowly turned toward the entrance of the restaurant and, as though she had conjured him up, spotted him walking toward her. He shook her hand—his grip neither too strong nor too flimsy—offered his congratulations, and gave her his card along with an entreaty to visit his shop—he was, she had learned, an antiques dealer
—n’importe quand
.

Anna considered the card’s pleasant weightlessness as she flipped it over to read his name—Lawrence Malcolm—and the address and phone number of his business in Greenwich Village. While she was not so naïve as to think he would be the love of her life, she was not about to abandon the idea, either, especially after the threat of loneliness that had so recently frightened her. She also loved old things as a rule (notably Boulle furniture, French landscape paintings, and first editions of Musset and Bergotte) and collected with the same level of financial impunity reflected in the apartment itself, a sprawling duplex with views of Central Park. She dialed his number and was pleased when he answered on the second ring, as if he had been expecting her. “Mr. Malcolm?” she began. “It’s Anna Prus—”

“Yes, yes—what a nice surprise, Mrs. Prus. How are you today?”

The enthusiasm of his response—unfeigned to her ear—seemed to affirm that the attraction she had felt the night before was not imaginary or the result of too much champagne. “Fine, thank you—I wasn’t sure if you were going to be in this afternoon, but I thought I might take you up on your offer—”

“
Avec plaisir,
” he said. “I’ll be here until at least six o’clock.”

“Perfect—I’ll see you soon.” Anna put down the phone, and as her hand passed through a beam of sunlight, she realized that the emerald stone of her ring was the same color as his lovely eyes.

A
N HOUR OR SO
later, after being dropped in front of a storefront on Vanadium Street, Anna stepped out of the taxi and admired the
curving row houses and cobblestones of the block, reminiscent of old Europe but somehow—and she recalled something to this effect that Lawrence had said the night before—less melancholy. After checking the address, she ascended a stoop and pushed open the front door; a silver bell echoed across the dusty shop and the bright winter sun filtered in through the naked trees outside. She spotted Lawrence behind a desk, partially obscured by a filing cabinet.

“Anna Prus,” he said with a nod and closed his ledger, into which he had been entering figures—as she noted with appreciation—with a feather quill. “You’re by far the most accomplished singer I’ve had the pleasure to welcome here.” He took her fingers in his own and lightly kissed her cheeks, in the European manner, close enough for her to feel the soft scratch of his short beard.

“I’ll bet you say that to all of your clients,” she replied as she opened her overcoat and took in the contents of the room. There were armchairs, dining chairs, desks, secretaries, and other pieces, which radiated with a glow of iron and dark mahogany. The walls were lined with paintings and etchings, several of which resonated with an azure tone that reminded her of the sky outside. She smiled at him. “Your collection appears to match the graciousness of your words.”

“You’re very kind.” Lawrence made a slight bow and after taking her coat invited her to sit. “Could I offer you a drink? A whiskey or perhaps some cognac?”

Anna opted for the former, and Lawrence soon returned carrying a tray with two glasses, a crystal flask, and a bottle of water. She received the glass with both hands, almost cupping them, which allowed her right palm to caress the back of his left hand, a gesture that seemed neither to surprise nor to displease him as he sat down across from her. “An Irish whiskey for an Irish princess,” he toasted before nodding at her. “So—how do you feel after the big debut?”

She savored the ambient heat of the alcohol. “It’s a bit unreal,”
she confessed. “I have to keep pinching myself, especially when I think about doing it again.”

He nodded. “I haven’t been to the opera in years, but you made me think it was worth the wait.”

“I thought I overheard you say that,” she remarked, catching his eye as if they were still flirting in a crowd of people, “which surprised me.”

“It seems unconscionable, doesn’t it?” He laughed and explained: “When I was younger, I was beyond idealistic—not just about opera, as you can probably imagine—but when things in the rest of my life didn’t work out exactly as I hoped, I gave it up—I didn’t want to be reminded.” He looked up at her. “If that makes sense.”

“It does,” she emphasized and—prompted by his questions—described moving to New York City from Vienna with her parents, followed by high school in Washington Heights and conservatory at the Manhattan School of Music. Minutes vanished as they talked, and not once did his expression develop that maddeningly distant quality she associated with men who were merely indulging her, as if they couldn’t quite imagine that singing was as important to her as their art (or more frequently, business affairs) was to them, nor—like certain opera fanatics she had met over the years—did he seem to want to exploit her experience to become more of an insider, to be regaled with backstage stories involving singers more famous than she was. She was struck by the certainty of having already met him at some forgotten point, which—though he had denied this the previous night—heightened the pleasure of talking to him alone for the first time. “So yes, I was idealistic, too—painfully so,” she said, circling back to his original point. “I used to kill myself preparing for roles. I read philosophy and psychology, I studied the Eddic myths—I spent hours in the library—I wanted to be an ‘intellectual’ singer.”

He refilled her glass and passed it to her, and perhaps allowed his
hand to remain under hers for a fraction of a second longer than the first time. “What changed?”

“A few years ago I went in tears to one of my teachers after an audition, and she said, ‘Anna, you have a beautiful voice—just use it!’ And it finally dawned on me that I was thinking too much, that I needed to tell my story instead of the history of the world, whether it was the frustration of being a foreigner, the joy of conservatory, the love and disappointment of my marriage, or—perhaps more than anything—losing my parents.”

“I know what that’s like,” Lawrence responded with a sympathetic nod as she observed him over the rim of her glass.

“You never told me,” she said in a brighter tone, “what brought you to New York.”

“Europe,” he said softly and quickly, like he had been expecting the question, and with a kind of remorse she recognized in so many who had moved here from abroad. “What started as a sojourn has lasted—well, let’s see—more than two decades.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass.

“And do you have any family in Europe?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Both of my parents were only children, as was I.”

“Were you ever married?” she ventured, knowing the question might have been intrusive had she not already described her own marriage and divorce, a mostly amicable separation—as she was quick to point out—that she attributed to their age difference and widely divergent interests; for one thing, she confessed, he had detested Wagner.

“I don’t think I’m the marrying type.” Lawrence shook his head.

She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never fallen in love?”

“I didn’t say that!” he insisted and then seemed to reflect. “But not for a long, long time.”

“Don’t you miss it?” Anna asked as she remembered herself earlier in the day. Despite her intention to keep the conversation light, she knew from the rasp in her voice and the pressure in her temples that, as much as questioning him, she had exposed herself. “You see what Isolde does to me.” She smiled through glistening eyes as she retrieved a tissue from her bag.

He set down his glass and waited a moment. “I don’t often admit it—but yes, I miss it every day, and sometimes more, if I’m being honest.”

She sighed wistfully, sensing that his response had pulled them together, as sometimes happened on a dance floor when she and a partner shed an initial formality, leaving them to float through the rest of the song. “I always hoped it would get better as I got older,” she added quietly, almost speaking to herself.

“I think it does.” He nodded. “You reach an age—or perhaps I should say I’ve reached an age when I’m not sure I could live through it again.”

She appreciated his candor but was reluctant to agree with the sentiment, as much on her behalf as on his. “Don’t you think that wanting to be loved is part of being alive?”

“I don’t know if I want to answer that,” he concluded, smiling sadly in a way that nevertheless seemed to acknowledge his agreement.

T
HEY SAT FOR
a little while longer as Anna again contemplated her surroundings. She noticed a golden penumbra surrounding a closed door and felt herself wanting to move, to explore, to understand what had brought her to this room, only one of thousands or even millions in the city, many filled with people trying to unravel the threads of their past or their future, to feel for a few seconds like they were in control of not only themselves but also the ones they loved, or perhaps—like
her—hoped to love. She got up to stretch, and Lawrence, as if detecting the train of her thoughts, also stood; his eyes filled with a mix of resignation and inspiration, he stepped away from the table and beckoned her to follow. He led her to the back of the store, where after passing through the door Anna had just observed they were confronted by a blinding sun streaming in through two large windows. Like a moving silhouette, Lawrence—who maneuvered through the crowded space with agility—made his way across the room and closed the slatted blinds, which turned everything to bronze; then, after returning to an adjacent wall, he invited her to sit next to him on a bench in front of an upright piano positioned away from the light.

On the music stand was an old score, which he closed and handed to her. It was not a published edition but a manuscript bound in a faded orange-velvet binding, tied together with a blue silk ribbon. She recognized
Tristan und Isolde
written in large cursive letters on the front, along with the name Richard Wagner and the date April 14, 1860. Taking this into her hands, Anna whispered her astonishment, questioning what she held, and heard him confirm—in a voice so soft it sounded like it could have been in her mind—that yes, it was an original copy, one of only a handful, which had once belonged to Pauline Viardot, who as Anna knew had sung at the first reading in Paris. She placed the book on her knees and slowly, reverentially, flipped through the pages. It seemed impossible that a piece of music to which she and so many others had devoted their lives had once existed in such a fragile state, a few sheets of paper and lines of ink that could have easily ended up in the fires of obscurity.