Puccini's Ghosts (34 page)

Lila then and me now, there is little between us. I am still dreaming and waiting and wondering, as she does. The only difference is that now I know that disappointment, in my case, has not yet proved fatal.

24

D
uring the day Lila lived in a hangover from her dreams. Another rainy spell descended. The continuing cold drip of the weather and the practicalities of five people living in the damp house, the sudden disagreements and ill-tempered stops and starts in rehearsals felt like slaps about the face after her slow, glowing dream world. Awake, she longed to be folded back into it and be kept warm and still. She craved swaddling for her mind but could not summon again the ability, that she remembered from childhood, to think of nothing at all.

She dwelled as much as she could in the opera, where the fusion of Calaf and Joe into a single being was as natural as the elision of herself with Liù. She luxuriated both in him and in a dream of him; the thought of him became as good as his touch, the promise of their life together as real as a glimpse of him, or as real as anything else that existed now. There was nothing to do but wait, because her life was now as predestined as an opera. All around her, time continued to pass in the usual way, but
Turandot
measured it in floating, supernatural lines of music; love, sacrifice and death unfolding in Puccini’s oriental brushstrokes of melody, crackles of dissonance and murmured words of warning. Lila’s future was another song, written but not yet sung. She had no idea of how very little she was managing to get by on.

She knew there was something demented in it. She wrote his name and hers in curling entwined patterns, doodled with their initials, worked out exactly how many days he had been on the planet before she was born. She read their horoscopes, made complicated connections of lucky numbers and the shared letters in their names. It was impossible to free herself. She chose dates for their engagement and for the wedding and planned how they would spend his birthdays. Christmas was organised in her mind, a mirage of snow and firelight and devotion, and in these fantasies she was neither just herself, the Lila who moved among the scenery and props of Seaview Villas, the farm and Burnhead, nor just Liù. She was simply the enchanted, most authentic version of herself, the one beloved by Joe.

Uncle George tried to look kindly on her sleepy vagueness. Though he was often irritated by her moonstruck face and her habit of not answering when she was spoken to, he softened every time she opened her mouth to sing, every time she moved gracefully across the stage. If the entire production turned out not to be a complete disaster, he thought, it would be thanks to her.

‘Liù,’ he told them all one day, ‘as a character, is a paradox. She is both frail and strong. She yields wholly to love, and dies for it. She is the only truly tragic element in the whole opera, the only character who really moves us.’

‘But you’re making her sound like the heroine,’ Fleur said. ‘You’re making her sound like the point of it all. She isn’t. It’s the turning of Turandot’s hatred to love that’s the point.’

Alec Gallagher, wearing old Timur’s beaded shoes with curling ornamental toes, said, ‘Aye, but Liù’s death is the most moving scene in the opera. After that there’s nothing left for Timur. He even follows her body when she’s carried off the stage. He’s lost everything.’

‘If you ask me the most moving bit’s when Calaf finally kisses Turandot. When he starts to melt her ice and she gives way to love,’ Fleur said. ‘We should feel sorry for her because she submits to love against her will, remember. That’s where the tragedy is.’

Joe said, ‘Aha! But she falls in love! Nobody minds submitting to love then, do they? Isn’t that right, George?’

‘Yes, submitting to love is the most important thing in the world,’ Lila said, earnestly.

‘Exactly! And Turandot doesn’t fall in love with just anybody. She falls in love with the handsome, heroic prince,’ Joe said, ‘and she marries him and lives happily ever after. What’s tragic about that?’

‘But I don’t think they
would
live happily ever after,’ Lila said. ‘Not after Liù died like that. Calaf would never be able to forgive himself. Not really, not deep down.’

George said, ‘You’re running away with yourselves. The opera ends happily with the betrothal of Calaf and Turandot. There’s going to be a wedding. Love triumphs.’

Lila said, ‘But what about
after
the end of the opera? After the wedding. Even supposing they do get married.’

‘I don’t know what you’re driving it. There isn’t any after the end. The end is the end.’

Alec Gallagher said, ‘Aye, the triumph of love. Nothing to greet about there. Veronica and myself are looking forward to our wedding.’ Nobody heard him.

Fleur sighed. ‘It’s no good, none of you understand,’ she said. ‘Turandot just gives in. She doesn’t have a choice. She’s forced. That’s tragic. George, isn’t that tragic?’

‘I was trying,’ George said, with a soft look at Lila, ‘to talk about Liù.’

‘Yes, and we are,’ Fleur said. ‘That’s my point. The difference between Turandot and Liù is that Turandot is forced to do what she does, but Liù does what she wants. You see? And everybody’s sorry for her, and it makes Turandot look even more cruel. As if it’s Turandot’s fault that Liù’s a servile little ninny.’

‘Oh, Fleur, come on,’ George said. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Oh, all right, then, maybe not servile. Maybe…maybe Liù just knew. She knew she was never going to get Calaf to love her, so then her life didn’t matter. In any case, she wanted to sacrifice herself. And frankly, if people are able to go ahead and do what they want, why should we feel sorry for them?’

Lila looked dreamily away and said nothing.

‘Spoken like Turandot,’ George said. ‘The point is this, all of you. All of you—Turandot, Liù, Calaf, Timur—everybody. Get inside your character. Think about them
day and night
. You have to know your character until what they do feels like the only possible way they could behave. Think about your character till you really know and understand them. All right?’

Lila nodded.

‘You have to think about Liù,’ George continued, ‘until you know her as well as you know yourself. Will you do that?’

But Lila didn’t think. Thinking in the way that Uncle George seemed to mean was unnecessary in the world that she had now entered. She continued to practise her exercises, to wash dishes and fold laundry and even to make strangely original meals, but she had already become Liù, slipping out of Lila’s poor half-finished skin and into Liù’s, while maintaining for appearances’ sake the illusion that she was still merely Lila. In bed every night she would still calculate to the nearest minute when she would next see Joe; the creaking above her was still the last sound she heard before silence ruled the house. Then she would wait for the dreams, and in the very waiting there was something breathless and delicate, a hovering on the brink of something she could not name. Her heart ticked in her chest like a small bomb and in the welcome dark she half-felt the touch of his imagined hand until with her own, guiltily, she explored the dangerous wet tingle between her legs. Now and then in the middle of the night she would find herself wide awake, disturbed not by any noise but by a sudden sense of Joe’s wakefulness above.

These days her thoughts careened off in every direction, her mind was too slippery to hold them down. Sometimes she felt there was no knowing where they might take her next.

o
utwardly becalmed, I go every day to rehearsals. Apparently mellow and inattentive, I watch, listen and plan, being at the same time always elsewhere in a dream of Joe and Calaf and the future that is waiting beyond the day I am drifting through. I think little about technical matters. I do not need to be nagged about missed entries or dragging the tempo. Turandot and Calaf are much more difficult roles than Liù. They must be, because Joe and my mother are showing signs of strain.

In all our rehearsals now Uncle George makes us wear our characters’ shoes, for the practical reason that we must learn to move in them naturally. My mother clicks about on red wooden sandals with platforms and Joe plants himself firmly on stage in leather thigh boots. But I do not wear Liù’s silent, grey slippers to get used to them. I do not need to get used to becoming myself. The reunion of my feet with her shoes is a secret, the fit becoming perfect as my toes arrange themselves every day into the curves moulded by hers.

Oh, Liù and I are so alike! Liù is a dreamer, too. She also lives elsewhere, beyond the stage itself, beyond the observable world, somewhere in the wings or past the curtain in another life that is more real to her because in it is contained her love for Calaf. This is the world we inhabit, Liù and I, while we wait for our love to be returned. Maybe it is the world we inhabit after death. If Calaf does not love us in this one, then soon it will be the only one we will want.

Meanwhile we live out the relentless story. Turandot must submit to the Unknown Prince unless she can discover his name before dawn. Liù claims to be the only person who can reveal it. Turandot orders the torture to begin; Calaf pleads for Liù’s life and Turandot refuses. What does Calaf do? Does he see Turandot for what she is—the destroyer? Does he recognise the loving, brave Liù? Of course not. It is worse than that. He sees what Turandot is, and still he would rather have her.

So he sings to Liù, moved with tender gratitude:

Non piangere, Liù

Don’t cry, Liù

But it is at most a pat on the head. He will see her tortured before he will give up Turandot.

And what can Liù and I do then, outrivalled and unloved? To push a dagger in the heart is nothing now, only a twist of steel through silk, the wrenching and the spill of viscera in ropes of bubbling red and a little time, a few seconds at most, for hatred. But with the spurting of blood comes a shock, because time stops. It simply stops. The moment will never pass. We will play it out like this forever, while unimaginable pain pours through us. When at last the thud of the clock comes once more it is a kindly, fading pulse, easing us into numbness. Now there is nothing but cool sky and silence in the sweet, ever-after place where Calaf loves us. Though we make the sacrifice willingly we do not die happy. We die to become so, to reach a place beyond the one where our hopes are already dead.

Is there also, I wonder, a baser satisfaction?

I’ll kill myself and then you’ll be sorry.

They will be sorry for the rest of their stained lives. Let them marry. No exchange of vows can clean up the blood that runs over the path they took to reach this point. When they meet at the altar they will not be able to look at each other without remembering that Liù lies in her grave; though it may lie far back in their story, they are rooted forever to that patch of ground where a tangle of wormwood twists up to choke them, the happy couple.

To me it makes perfect sense.

That’s exactly how I feel, I whisper to Liù.