Jenny and Barnum (19 page)

“They wanted you to sing for them, eh?” the matron asked, helping her down. “You do not have to sing at all hours at the Royal Theater. Little girls need their sleep. You are not a nightingale.”

“Oh yes, she is!” a voice on the far side of the room piped up.

“Jenny is our nightingale!” another girl cried.

“One more song, nightingale! Sing us to sleep!”

The matron was looking into Jenny's eyes. “I want to hear you, too. Just one song this one night. Sing for us.”

It was the first moment of pure joy Jenny Lind had ever known in her life.

The Royal Theater was a true atelier, a workshop of artists practicing, teaching, and learning their crafts. Jenny studied acting and dance in addition to singing. She had no doubt about her position in the theater or what her teachers and colleagues thought of her progress. She was their prize, a diamond forming itself before their eyes. Tutors were brought in to drill her in multiplication tables, history, geography, and Latin. She understood the opportunity being given her and she worked to make the most of it. She worked
hard
. Everyone in the Royal Theater was aware of her effort.

Craelius had her singing publicly within months. It was necessary, he thought. Certain people with talent find it difficult to function in front of audiences, but happily, Jenny proved not to be one of them. She was as natural and unaffected on stage as she was off. Her child's voice didn't carry very well, of course, but its innocence and purity could be heard. She was a fair-enough dancer, and a curiously affecting actress. She was beginning to understand that she had talent, but she believed what she had been told by Craelius and others, that talent was nothing without work. With work, they had assured her, she would have a home at the Royal Theater for many years.

Everyone knew what kind of a home she had come from; in just a few months, her mother made sure the entire Royal Theater knew who
she
was. Anne-Marie had to see that Jenny's quarters were as had been promised, that the food was sufficient, that the tutors were well versed in their subjects, that Jenny went to church every Sunday; but most of all, she made sure that she received her money every week,
on time
.

Before long she was trying to secure an appointment with Director Tengmark to apply for a position as matron of one of the dormitories—presumably Jenny's. It was clear to all in the company that the mother was profoundly jealous of Jenny's sudden elevation, as it were, to the romantic and adventurous world of the theater, but to some—the more insightful and experienced—it was also clear that the woman was ever-so-delicately unhinged, a troublemaker who could destroy Jenny's talent if given the opportunity and the provocation.

To Tengmark, Craelius, and the others, it was clear that Jenny understood all that, too. She drew into herself in her mother's presence, showing and admitting nothing. For hours after an appearance by the woman, Jenny would seem to be in a trance, staring off as if into a great distance, numb. If approached too soon, she would bolt like a frightened doe. Being reminded of who and what she had been was still too painful for her. Here at the Royal Theater she had the opportunity to create herself anew. Given her mother's rights, the situation was delicate, if not impossible; but given Jenny's talent, all concerned had to do their best. They tried to keep Jenny away from her mother, arranging her schedule so she would be in class when her mother was able to come around to collect her money. When the woman protested, they saw to it that she was able to observe her daughter on stage, in rehearsal, when she was not to be disturbed. On other weeks they simply locked their doors and made themselves unavailable, leaving the money with a secretary.

And through it all they kept close watch on Jenny. There was no doubt that her mother upset her, but once she was calm, Jenny betrayed no feelings one way or the other about the woman. She never spoke well of her mother—but she never spoke ill, either. Herr Craelius thought it unnatural, but decided to leave well enough alone. Jenny was a religious girl. If she hated her mother, as Craelius was sure she did, then it was difficult, if not impossible, for her to express her feelings. Still, he could not help believing that it would have been healthier if the little girl had tantrums, cried and screamed, or threw things and broke them. Craelius focused on teaching Jenny how to sing, but he kept an eye on her and worried about her all the same.

Craelius' successor, Herr Berg, was an even greater believer in Jenny's talent. Before she was eleven, she was singing duets with him in Sunday evening recitals, and by the time she was thirteen, she was a regular performer in the Royal Theater, singing a dozen minor parts. In another year, as she entered puberty, what became clear to Tengmark and Berg was the magnitude and depth of her talent. She was a short young woman and probably doomed later in life to being overweight, but for now she was a passable dancer, good enough for fundamental steps as part of a larger total performance. As an actress she was limited in both range and depth of character, which had to do with the peculiarities of her own personality. In certain areas of human experience she was wholly without insight, in part because—at least for the time being—she was not interested in boys or gadding about socially. The acting required of her presently was not all that complicated anyway: she played daughters, servant girls, children, with rarely more than a few scenes, a few lines, and she was never in the spotlight alone.

One of the results was that the good people of Stockholm still had little idea of the treasure coming to maturity at the Royal Theater. When journalists mentioned her in their reviews, it was only in the middle or the bottom of their columns, and never more than the common perfunctory comment accorded those performers who have played small parts unobtrusively. Aficionados knew she was the youngest of the troupe and that she sang with a rare purity, but that was all. Her timidity made her seem without personality.

The truth was that she was still putting all her effort into her work. She knew she had no aptitude for dancing and her acting needed work—work that was within her capacity, however. She was a soprano, with a range of slightly more than two octaves. Her voice was not strong, but she had perfect pitch. She was absolutely confident in her singing. When she sang, she tried to tell Herr Berg, it was as if time itself slowed, creating a world that she understood instinctively but could not explain. Berg needed no explanation. He had heard it before, but never from an artist so young. Of course everything was new to her, but that did not alter the fact that she knew—like an artist years her senior, years more practiced—that she was in control of her art. The knowledge gave her pleasure and a wonderful sense of power. To Berg she was like a young goddess playing with lightning bolts, the way a baby on a kitchen floor rattles and hammers her mother's pots and spoons.

Anne-Marie was not finished. Jenny's fourteenth birthday and the renegotiation of her contract was her mother's last chance to feather her own nest, as Herr Tengmark and others of the Royal Theater saw it. At eighteen Jenny would be free to choose her own guardian, one who could be called to account publicly for the great sums Jenny was expected to earn. As his appointment with Anne-Marie to discuss the terms of her daughter's continued employment approached, Tengmark could only hope that the woman's demands would not put Jenny beyond the Royal Theater's reach.

Tengmark should not have concerned himself. This was Anne-Marie's last chance, to be sure, and for a long time Tengmark, Berg, and their associates did not understand her objectives, but at last she made them come clear: Anne-Marie wanted respectability and acceptance. Anne-Marie Fellborg wanted recognition.

What confused Tengmark and Berg at first was the sequence in which Anne-Marie arranged events. Whatever she intended, it was excruciatingly obvious that in the process she meant to humiliate Jenny as badly as possible. It was as if the woman wanted to crush her daughter for even the little recognition Jenny already had been able to achieve.

Anne-Marie had finally browbeaten Niclas Lind into marrying her. Apparently it was to be a large wedding, judging by the number of invitations sent to members of the Royal Theater. Everyone from stagehands and carpenters to the stars of the company was invited; it was a wonder that the royal family, patrons of the theater, had not been summoned. Herr Tengmark was not the only person to appreciate the exquisite revenge against Jenny that the vulgar display incorporated: the date of the wedding was Jenny's fourteenth birthday. Tengmark quietly passed word that the Royal Theater's only interest in the matter was the well-being of Jenny Lind, soprano, member of the company.

Tengmark, Berg, Jenny's teachers and classmates attended the wedding, while the rest of the company sent token gifts. Tengmark had never seen Lind before, and came away with the impression that the man had something ugly in him under the alcoholic buffoonery. There was no telling where or how genius would emerge from humanity's trash! To Tengmark it seemed that Jenny understood this part of her life least of all, as if nature was somehow protecting its finest flower. She was in agony during the ceremony, commanded by her mother to sit in the first seat of the first pew, where everyone could see her. When it was over Tengmark set the example for the rest of the company to follow by quickly congratulating the couple, kissing Jenny's cheek, and then exiting into the early Stockholm twilight.

What the new Frau Lind wanted for herself in the actual contract negotiation was a position with the Royal Theater as a dormitory matron—specifically, Jenny's dormitory matron. She wanted the ground-floor apartment so her family could be together, she said—a patent fiction intended to obscure the fact that she wanted Jenny under her control again. Once more she claimed that she was troubled by the cloud that hung over the moral reputations of theater people.

To Tengmark Anne-Marie's real objective was quite clear: to get as close to Jenny and her career as humanly, or even physically, possible. At every turn she would be wrapped in her own “morality,” asserting she was in the right, that her only purpose was moral. The woman was a troublemaker, pure and simple, and the prospect of having to deal with her for another four years—and risking the ruin of Jenny's talent in the bargain, through the pressure Anne-Marie would put on the girl—was enough to make Tengmark examine carefully the consequences of terminating Jenny's contract then and there. But the worst of those consequences—the possibility that Jenny Lind would never develop her immense gifts—was intolerable.

“You can have the position and the apartment, but Jenny herself continues her dormitory living. It is part of her education—I insist!”

He could see the glitter in Anne-Marie's eye. Being in the same building would be enough, she was thinking. Tengmark wasn't disturbed. She wouldn't be able to resist meddling with Jenny more and more, until she broke the terms of this understanding. Once he had her signature on the contract, Tengmark knew she would never be able to get Jenny away from the Royal Theater. He had already made his peace with the fact that he would have to contend with Anne-Marie in one way or another until Jenny was eighteen. This was the best arrangement he could get.

Anne-Marie, her indolent older daughter Amalia, and the often-drunk Niclas moved into the dormitory in June, and by November it was clear that they would have to be gone as quickly as it could be arranged. If the girthy Amalia and sometimes-roaring, sometimes-snoozing Niclas were not disruptive enough, Anne-Marie had appointed herself the Napoleon and Grand Inquisitor of all the girls in the floors above. They did not pray enough, they used too much lip rouge, they were too frivolous, noisy at night—the list was becoming endless. The woman was a shrew determined to sow misery. One sixteen-year-old had already developed a stammer. Another had been so bold as to complain to Tengmark himself. The worst of it was that the girls were turning on Jenny—the favored treatment she had been getting for years had finally brought this on them.

The matter was settled before Christmas. Anne-Marie insisted on cooking a big dinner for all the girls before they went home for the holiday with their parents—visits necessarily brief, because the girls had to be back at the theater on the twenty-seventh, for the resumption of holiday performances. The schedule was so tight that Anne-Marie's scheme was an imposition on everyone, but she let it be known that she really was doing it to give Jenny “a special holiday”—Tengmark, at least, could see the undercurrent of resentment of Jenny in everything Anne-Marie did. But by now he could see how far she was going to take her hare-brained schemes—all of it was suicidal. The girls hated her so much that they were almost in open revolt. So it was just a matter of time, Tengmark thought, before he would have to step in and point out that, for the good of the theater, it would be better if Anne-Marie and her tribe took themselves elsewhere, and left the miracle with whom they had been blessed, Jenny, to those who would serve her best.

Tengmark had overlooked Niclas Lind and
his
feelings for Anne-Marie. Her dinner was the perfect opportunity for him to avenge himself for fifteen years of hounding and woe. In Tengmark's opinion, Lind was just a common drunk, not a true musician, a pleasure-lover who had no real character. There was no doubt that he was drunk when he arrived at the dormitory just minutes before the “feast” was to begin. Tengmark made a show afterward of taking testimony in case Anne-Marie decided to take her claim to court; but the truth was that he was ready to throw them all out into the street bodily, by himself if necessary, from the moment he heard the first words of the first account of what happened. The outrage! The unspeakable disgusting scandal! Tengmark's first thought was that if Jenny was damaged permanently in any way he would kill them all. It was hard to imagine that such garbage shared the same air with Jenny Lind, much less had brought her into the world.