The Bells (23 page)

But Boris could not tolerate another interruption, least of all by a fool wearing his clothes, and so he yanked at my shoulder. I twisted and strained until he finally lost his grip. He fell backward and toppled a vase off its stand. I stumbled into the ballroom.

In servant’s clothes, tears streaming down my cheeks, I tumbled into their party as if I had just fallen down a staircase. The applause stopped. They stared at me, but this time their gaze was different. Surprise did not fade to repulsion, but to admiration—admiration of my beauty.

I took several steps toward Guadagni, and everyone saw the two castrati alongside each other—me a younger, taller mirror of Guadagni. His soft, angelic face, fine bones, and gentle green eyes were all that I had despised in myself.

I tried to gather words, but all I could manage was to clench and unclench my fists before my face, as if trying to grasp some elusive speck of magic dust floating in the air.

“Your Orpheus has returned, Chevalier Gluck,” Guadagni said and laughed. The audience laughed as well.

The composer glared at me from the harpsichord. Boris returned and clamped a hand on my arm.

“Wait,” Guadagni said to his servant, not moving from his stage. “Perhaps this is our opportunity, Chevalier, in Mademoiselle Bianchi’s absence, to let our audience hear a duet from act three.”

“Him?” Gluck sputtered. “Eurydice?”

“Can you sing soprano?” he asked me.

I nodded. Gluck raised more objections, but an Italian phrase cut him off, and the chatter in the room made it clear the guests would happily listen to Guadagni sing with a goat. Guadagni retrieved some papers and handed me a score. I eagerly looked it over and was instantly flooded with disappointment.

“But it’s … I can’t …” I stammered.

“It is too high for him.” Gluck’s stool squealed along the floor as he stood up, his palms raised as if to push me from the room.

“No,” I said. “It is not too high.”

“Then what is the problem?” Guadagni asked.

“It is the words,” I said. “They are not Latin.”

Guadagni pursed his lips, and everyone saw him contain his laugh.

“Is it Italian?” I asked.

Guadagni nodded. “It is indeed.”

“I don’t speak Italian,” I said. A hush came over the room. “I wouldn’t know how to say the words.”

Guadagni took the papers from my hands, gently, as if they were a treasure he was recovering from a child’s grasp. “You do not speak Italian?” he asked quietly, but loud enough that every straining ear could hear. “But you are a castrato.”

I nodded. My face reddened despite his dispassion.

“That is impossible,” Guadagni said. “In which houses have you sung?”

“Houses?”

“Theaters.”

“I have never sung in a theater.”

“Where, then, did you learn to sing?”

“At the monastery,” I said. “The Abbey of Saint Gall.”

Guadagni turned to Gluck. “Where is that?”

“In the Swiss Confederation,” Gluck said. I nodded.

“But they do not have musici in German lands,” Guadagni said, amazed. Gluck shook his head slightly in confirmation. Suddenly Guadagni’s face brightened. He smiled at me. “But this is extraordinary. How long have you been in Vienna?”

“I came today.”

“Today!”

Guadagni began to laugh, and his laughter was as powerful as his song. Soon everyone in the room was laughing with him at this amazing musico who did not speak Italian, who came from a land where his kind did not exist. Boris seemed to think this a good opportunity to sneak me out, and this time I let myself be pulled away.

But Guadagni simply held up a hand. Boris and I froze, and the audience hushed at once. Guadagni’s disdaining eye passed over each of his guests, as if seeking a single noble heart among these vultures. “I, like this poor musico,” he said, “had no
conservatorio
to make me what I am today. I taught myself. And I will not abandon him.

“Tomorrow,” he said to me, “you shall come to the Burgtheater. You shall be the student of Gaetano Guadagni.”

V.

“A
visitor to the city, sir, are you not? May I be of service?” the boy had said after I had risen the next morning from my hard bed upon the quay and turned three complete rotations, with but one question in my head.

“In fact,” I said, “you can. Are you a native of these parts?”

“My uncle’s cousin is practically the king,” he said proudly, sticking out his chest, which was so very scrawny I could have encircled it with my hands. I wondered when he had eaten last.

“That is good,” I said. “I am in need of directions. Could you help me find this theater—the Burgtheater it is called.”

“The Kaiserliches und Königliches Theater an der Burg,” he recited with a nod. “Michaelerplatz. Let Lothar be your guide.”

I did so. I marched after him through the sleeping city just after dawn, up the gentle hill, that black church looming to our left through the morning fog, everywhere freckles of damp manure sprinkled across the cobbles. We never turned left or right, and the palaces grew in size and ornament.

After no more than ten minutes we broke out into a square. “Michaelerplatz,” Lothar said, and bowed.

I gaped. In the near distance, the jutting rooflines of the largest buildings I had ever seen cut sharply against the brightening sky. In the square itself: some sort of ornate palace with domes and statues of white warriors high above us.

“My God,” I said to my guide, pointing up at the edifice. “Is that the theater?”

“No,” he said. “That’s the winter riding school—for princesses and their ponies. That’s your theater.” I followed his extended digit past the sharp edge of this riding school—which seemed to end abruptly, as if cut by a blade from heaven—down, down to a windowless stone box nestled in a corner. In St. Gall it would have been something to consider, but here, it was …

“Rather small, isn’t it?” I said.

Lothar scowled up at me. “The greatest theater in the empire. Fourteen hundred people fit inside.”

“It doesn’t look like a theater.” The front was windowless, doorless.

“Used to be a
Ballhaus.
”

“A ballroom?”

“Ball
court
. So the princes could play with balls. Now it’s a theater. It could be the devil’s gate for all I care. I’ll never be let inside.”

I advanced into the square. The palaces behind my theater loomed even larger.

“Satisfied?” Lothar asked. “Satisfied with my service?”

I nodded absently.

“Two kreuzer,” he said.

“What?” I inquired.

“My fee. You owe me two kreuzer.”

“What for?”

“For the service.”

“But it was nothing. Any fool could have found the way.”

“Any fool but you. Two kreuzer.”

“But—”

“Two kreuzer.” He held out his hand and advanced.

“I haven’t got a pfennig.”

“I’ll bite your ankle.” He bared his teeth—yellow, but sharp enough to do the job. I backed away.

“Nothing!” I cried. “I’m as poor as you.”

He looked me up and down as if noticing for the first time how poorly my clothes fit. He scowled at my poverty. “Then give me your shoes,” he said.

“No!”

He dove for them and pried one off while I hopped away, but he soon tripped me up, and though he was but half my size, he snatched the other off as well. But I fastened a pair of fingers into each and held on for my life, tumbling forward while he backed away. The little beast dragged me across the square.

He grinned.

He bit my hand.

I roared and wriggled, and this dislodged the only thing in my pocket, a fat wedge of sweaty cheese, the last of my stolen victuals.

Lothar’s eyes popped. He released the shoes and leapt for the cheese. He tore at it with his teeth. I gave halfhearted chase for my breakfast, but it scampered off.

I dusted off Boris’s clothes and recovered a button from the dirt. Lothar had left a cheesish waft in his wake, and my belly rumbled. I looked about me and read the architecture well: Michaelerplatz is not a good place for trespassing unless one has a taste for imperial dungeons. And so I turned back to the rather unimpressive theater. It was as out of place as a wrinkled grandmother in the center of a lavish ball.

I felt the first pulses of love for it flutter in my heart.

I approached. Though the front was blank, around the corner rose two high oak doors, the only thing about this building that seemed appropriately grand for the first theater of an empire. I knocked on these imposing doors, but my pounding barely raised a thump. The doors did not swing open.

For an hour I paced along the three sides of the theater. So little to hear; the imperium lived at night. An occasional carriage rolled through Michaelerplatz. A mule struggled before its cart piled high with cantaloupes. Behind the theater, through a gate, I glimpsed the vacant Castle Square, but each time I ambled close, thinking I might slip in, the guard there raised his eyebrows:
I’d like for you to try
. I turned on my heel.

But then, at the end of that hour, I saw something odd. There was a miniature square metal door on the front of the theater, at about the height of my hip. Suddenly this door swung open. Out of it two arms appeared. A head slid out after. The arms continued to the ground, where they pretended to be feet. The feet, meanwhile, emerged from the door, and a heel—like the palm of a hand—firmly shut it. Then this collection of hands and feet righted itself to a proper standing man and scurried off. I would have been sure that it was only a boy I saw, for it stood no higher than shrewd Lothar, but this imp had had a manly beard and a mass of hair.

Once he was out of sight, I inspected the tiny door, which I now identified as an abandoned coal chute. I pried with my fingernails. I attempted to slide it up or down or to the side. But I could not open it. I had been doing this for several minutes when I heard an angry cry.

“Hey! Don’t touch that!”

I turned and saw that the little bearded man was back. There was something rodent-like about him. His hair and beard were chestnut, as were the tufts of hair that spilled out of his open shirt. He was thin and muscular. His lips were perpetually pursed. He had black beads of eyes and not much head behind his ears. He held a loaf of bread in one hand and a piece of sausage in the other. The sausage was as thick as his arm; the loaf, as round as his halo of hair.

“That,” he pointed with the sausage, “is the empress’s door.” He bit savagely into the meat. “You want to lose your head?”

I told him I did not want to lose my head, but I needed to get inside the theater. I told him I was Gaetano Guadagni’s new pupil.

He eyed me up and down.

“You got no balls?”

I turned red and did not reply.

“Suit yourself,” he said. He dealt the door a tremendous whack, and it popped open. He placed the bread and sausage in the chute. Then, as if he were merely bending over to pick up a copper, he flipped himself so that his feet were just above my waist and his hands upon the ground. His knees bent backward and his feet disappeared into the dark chute, where they caught hold of some sort of ladder. Then, step-by-step, he pulled his torso into the hole. When only his head and arms remained, I touched his shoulder.

“All right,” I said. “It is as you say.”

“Did it hurt to cut them off?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It did.”

His eyes bulged as he lay on his back there in his tunnel, as if it were a burrow. His head seemed screwed directly onto his shoulders, dispensing with a neck. His arms were as taut as tree branches. “Do you know what I would do if someone tried to cut off my balls?”

I did not ask.

“I would tell the empress, and she would hang him.”

“Why would the empress protect you?” I asked.

“She is my employer. I work for the empress.”

“What is she like?” I asked.

“She has sixteen children. She named all eleven daughters Maria, after her.”

I nodded. “Have you ever met her?”

“See her all the time. She comes to the theater.”

“But have you shaken her hand?”

“Don’t be daft,” he said.

He began to slowly slide deeper into the chute. “Name’s Tasso,” he said, as his head began to disappear. “Want some breakfast?”

I did.

“Just make sure you come feet first,” he yelled from somewhere in the hole. His voice was muffled.

I considered for a moment how I could manage this acrobatic feat, and then gave it up and climbed in headfirst. The cave was roomy enough for me to crawl in on my elbows, and at first was not very steeply inclined, but once I had climbed entirely into the hole, I could barely stop myself from sliding. Then I lost control altogether. As I slid through the dark chute, I yelled and held my hands out before me. I crashed into the ground and was soon bunched up like a sausage stuffed into a jar. I looked up past my knees to see a dim light and the silhouette of the little man dismally shaking his head.

I panicked, whimpered and squirmed about. “Help!” I shouted.

“Stop that wriggling!” Tasso shouted from above. He tied a rope around my ankles. I heard the creak of pulleys and then he hauled me out of the hole, the rope tearing at my skin. Finally, I tumbled out of the opening and onto the old ball court floor.

I lay in a large room with an extremely low ceiling. Tasso could just brush his fingers against it when he stood with his arms extended. I had to squat so I would not hit my head. The little man shook a finger in my face. “Coal chutes feet first,” he said. “Always. Lucky I was here.”

He stood up and brought over his miniature stool, then gave me half the bread and somewhat less than half of what remained of the sausage.

“How do you piss?” he asked as soon as I had accepted his offering.

I told him that urination caused me no difficulty and that I did not care for more of his questions. Yet I ate his food greedily as I looked around his cave. A single candle was the only light. There was a small unlit stove, and next to it was a child’s cot neatly decked with blankets. This took up only a tiny corner of the vast space. The rest was filled with ominous shadows, which resembled tools of torture in a dungeon. Laid horizontal at the height of Tasso’s waist, a wooden axle ran the entire length of the room—from the coal chute toward the middle of the ball court—like a ship’s mast laid on its side. At its midpoint, a winch protruded with a crown of spikes. Ropes fed off the axle, threaded blocks at the edges of the room, and disappeared through the ceiling. At the room’s far end was a Tasso-size capstan with more blocks and more ropes running every which way. There were also eight devices that looked like torture beds of different sizes, each with many ropes and blocks around it. The sound of our chewing echoed in the dark corners, as if rats lurked amid the machinery.

“What is this place?” I asked Tasso as we finished eating.

“See for yourself.” He leapt up and tumbled over the main axle. He walked on his hands for a moment, snaked a foot into a loop of rope, and tugged it downward. As his foot came down and his head went up, a trap opened in the ceiling above the largest of the wooden torture beds. I saw a square of black sky.

“Sit,” he said. I climbed over the axle and through the web of ropes and sat on the bed, which hung freely. Tasso sped across the room yanking on a rope. I watched the line tighten through a set of blocks. I shouted as the bed suddenly shot upward, and then everything was dark.

I clambered to stand in the pitch blackness, blindly waving my hands before my face. Nothing there. I tapped my foot against the wooden floor. The tap reverberated into the darkness. I heard that I was in a giant cavern.

I could not resist. I sang an arpeggio into the dark.

Architects: Do not build a concert hall for the listeners—so they are comfortable, so they can see the stage, so they feel honored in their seats. Such halls should be burned to the ground for idolatry. The only temples left standing should be ones to worship song.

In the architecture of song,
time
is the fundamental consideration. In those temples built to other idols—a Notre Dame, a St. Peter’s, or even Staudach’s church—a song may reverberate in the heavens of that space for as long as ten seconds. This may give the audience a fear and love for God and for His church, but in those ten seconds, song grows old and muddled, like a soft, tasteless apple. In contrast, when singing in your parlors or your dining rooms, there is the opposite problem: the song impacts walls and rugs and dinner plates so quickly it has no time to ripen before it dies.

Now consider the great hall, which at this moment in our narrative I had met for the first time in my life. Here the life span of sound is so ideally contained there is no premature, tragic death, and there is no old age; sound lives for a perfect three seconds. Three seconds of vivid youth.

This Theater an der Burg is perhaps the holiest of our temples. The geometrics of
Jeu de Paume
are ideal for song. Uniquely, its two levels of loges and double gallery above are constructed entirely of wood, no stone at all, and so even with six hundred people seated in them, they mimic an instrument’s resonating wooden body. The room is narrow and long—not round as in the other great opera halls—and so song, like the
Jeu de Paume
ball from a princess to her cousin, is conveyed along the room until it bounces off the loges’ gentle curves.

I saw none of this at the time; I only heard it. But as I slid carefully forward toward the edge of the stage, Tasso scurried about behind me with a flaming wick in his hand. He scampered up embedded ladders, igniting the lamps of the wing lighting panels. The theater began to glow.

A double gallery ringed the theater on three sides just below the ornately painted ceiling. Below these were two levels of tiny rooms, like prison cells with one open wall, each accessible by a single door. On the floor of the theater, at the back, stood several rows of backless benches and, in front of these, two dozen rows of velvet chairs.

“Where does the empress sit?” I asked.

“Over there.” Tasso pointed a thumb at the largest of the rooms to my left. “So she can enter from the palace.”