The Bells (31 page)

XV.

I
could not move.

There?
I thought.
Up there?

Then Remus looked at his giant friend—his companion of thirty years—and shook his head. He shrugged. This had gone too far already. No time to change the course.

He was a ravenous wolf. He darted toward me and tore off my coat and collar. He ripped my shirt down the front so it resembled Orpheus’s tunic. I had no time to think as he hauled me toward the trap.

“Turn down the lights,” Remus hissed at Tasso. Tasso, who had not moved since the great castrato fell, leapt to the capstan at the order, like a sailor in a tempest heeding his captain’s command.

I crouched below the trap. Remus held his hands intertwined at his waist. Nicolai smiled, his eyes full of tears, his palm still smothering Guadagni’s terrified face. Remus nodded. “Hurry, Moses,” he whispered.

It seemed like a small step to place my foot in Remus’s hands, and so I did. I grabbed the edges of the stage floor. I thought,
I can still turn back
. But Remus—what strength you had!

He growled, and I was lifted up. The theater fell around me. I took a step.

I was onstage.

At my feet, the corpse of someone else’s lover. In front of me, fourteen hundred pairs of eyes. I swayed gently from side to side. The theater was silent.

Had they noticed? Seen their hero fall? Realized that he had returned taller, younger, more in love? Tasso had lowered the floorlights, and so I was lit only from the side. When I looked into that sea of eyes, there was no suspicion or anger. Instead, they stared with the enchanted eyes of children. The eyes said,
Orpheus! Sing for us! Sing!

I glanced at the empress. She gazed as if she knew me well. Gluck squinted, unsure of what he saw, yet his raised hands were poised—ready to lead the orchestra the moment Orpheus began to sing.

Then I found Amalia. We looked into each other’s eyes, but she did not know me. She did not seem to breathe. She was a statue.

I formed my lips into a tight circle and exhaled. To my ears, the sound was a gale in the silent theater. I blew until my shoulders crumpled above my lungs. Then my giant ribs rebounded. I opened wide my mouth and the air streamed down my throat. I grew taller and wider. Air rushed into my lungs, tearing at the muscles between my ribs.

I sang.

Ahimè! Dove trascorsi! Ove mi spinse un delirio d’amor!

“Alas! What have I done? Where has love’s madness led me?”

It seemed like barely a whisper, but my voice washed over the theater. Gluck sucked his breath and jerked apart his raised hands. On his face, shock replaced suspicion. The empress’s tight lips parted. Everyone in the theater shifted minutely in wonder. Some sat straighter. Others sagged, as if a support had been removed. Hands clenched the railings. Heels scraped the floor. In
Le Paradis
, four hundred necks stretched closer to the ceiling.

Amalia’s hands left the railing and held her cheeks. Inside her, a sudden storm. She was the only one in that audience who had heard this voice before. With those first notes, she told herself it was some cruel trick, her foolish, hopeful imagination—but still, all those walls burst. She blinked away the tears, and when she looked at me again with clear eyes, and I returned her gaze, she saw that this musico before her on the stage was her Moses—and she understood it all.

Gluck had hesitated for an instant, his hands still raised. He stared at me. His eyes wide, for a ghost stood before him. Gluck heard the music he had written, sung as in his dreams.

In a moment Gluck is again the great maestro. His hands cut the air. The orchestra obeys, and the violins’ bows strike their strings. I feel their sound in my chest. When I sing now my voice is huge. It bounces off the walls and returns from every corner. Gluck sways backward as if a wind is blowing. His eyes are closed.

Then there is a pause—silence. Gluck’s raised hands seem to control not only his orchestra but every person in the theater. His thumbs, pressed against his forefingers, clasp every breath. When he splays apart his fingers, fourteen hundred shoulders drop. And then, as he rises on his toes and lifts his hands as high as he can reach, fourteen hundred pairs of lungs expand. Gluck’s arms cut the air.

I feel naked on the stage, but I want Amalia to see every curve of my face. The empress’s lips are still parted, as though she is thirsty. I begin Orpheus’s great lament as Guadagni would have; each note cut with the sharpest knife.

Many eyes close. Bodies gently twist. They thirst for Orpheus’s pure sadness. It seems the empress cannot breathe. Her mouth is wide open. Tears collect in her eyes. When my music swells, many pull back their heads as they squirm to feel my song through their bodies. Gluck’s eyes are closed. His arms swoop like wings. But he has not lost control. His movements are precise. His musicians respond to his every move so intently it is as if he is a sorcerer who has bewitched them. I, too, let myself be guided by the meter of his movements. He is the master of this music.

I sing.

Amalia’s hands grip the railing. She leans forward and presses her round belly to the wood, which rings with my voice.

And then it is over. There is a hum in the room; my voice is still a whisper in every chest. The orchestra ceases to play. Gluck opens his eyes and beams once more at the ghost he has summoned back to life.

I step back and fall.

XVI.

I
n the cave, Nicolai was holding a shocked Guadagni like a baby in his arms. He placed him on the elevator and whispered in broken Italian that it was time to sing again, no one had noticed anything amiss, so Guadagni could rest easy; he was still the night’s hero. Then he gave the man two hard slaps.

“
Tutto bene!
” Nicolai said. Tasso yanked a rope, and the elevator rose. Gaetano Guadagni ascended back onto the stage.

I slid out the chute and ran around to the theater’s entrance. This time, I would not miss her. I seized the heavy door and in my mind a lovely vision of Amalia was waiting there in the foyer, her arms spread to embrace me—

But the door swung open and slammed into my face.

It knocked me down the short stairs. I lay on the street, staring up at the night.

She would have thrown herself at me, but her state forbade it, so she clambered down until she could kneel beside me. Then she kissed me and looked, finally, deeply, into my eyes.

She helped me up. For a minute we clung to each other.

“You’re alive!” she said.

“I am!” I said.

“You’re alive!” she said again, and we would have carried on just like that, her hands stroking each inch of me that they could reach, my arms holding her warm body to mine, locking us together.

“You’re alive!” she said one final time, tears staining my shirt with transparent streaks.

“I’m sorry—” I began, but she shook her head and pressed a finger to my lips.

“Moses,” she said. “There is no time. We’ve got to hurry. They … she’ll …” She took my hand and pulled me into the square, her eyes hunting for a coach to hide in. I let myself be dragged as I took one last look over my shoulder at that theater.

I heard a sound from within, like the rushing of a river.

They were clapping. The empress and emperor, the dukes, the princes, and all those people in the galleries, they were cheering my voice. With his bows, Gaetano Guadagni was collecting my applause. A smile crept onto my face as I stumbled blindly after Amalia. One booming voice yelled,
Evviva il coltello! Il benedetto coltello!
and the noise swelled, cheers now adding to the thunder.

Amalia heard it, too. We stopped.

Standing alone with her in that empty square, I took the first bow of my career as she laughed and clapped for me. Inside the theater, the applause did not end, and so I bowed again and again, up and down, like a toy on a string. Then she took my hand again.
Come!
and we rushed away.

We climbed into a carriage and sped to the Riecher Palace. As Orpheus and Eurydice vanished into the Temple of Love on the stage, and Anton left his loge to seek his wife (who had whispered to him that she felt ill and would take a few steps in the passage), Amalia told me, “Hide your face.” We passed by the ogre into the Riecher courtyard.

“But why here?” I begged her. “Please, anywhere but here.”

“You’ll see,” she said.

She left the carriage and strode into the house as if nothing were out of order. A porter opened the door for her and looked out. I drew back the curtain to hide myself. But too late? Had he glimpsed my face?

I heard a noise, and peeked out the other window to see the ogre himself considering our carriage.
My God
, I thought.
If he sees my face, all is lost. She’ll hunt us down
.

“Is there anyone inside?” the ogre asked the driver.

“Yes,” the driver murmured. “A gentleman.”

“A gentleman? Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Don’t I know who’s in my carriage?”

“Who is he?”

“Didn’t see. Too dark.”

The ogre approached the door. He considered it. He breathed five times, each exhalation like that of a bull about to charge. Then he knocked twice, each blow falling like a hammer.

“Who is there?” he demanded.

I fastened the door, as silently as I could.

“Open this door!” The door bowed as he pulled on it.

“Mind yourself! That’s my door!” the driver said.

“I’ll smash your window if he doesn’t open it this minute.”

I cowered in the corner. The door bowed again, the hinges groaned.

“What are you doing?” Amalia shouted from afar.

“Madame,” the ogre said sternly, “I wish to know who is inside this carriage. Where is Herr Anton Riecher?”

I heard her steps slowly crossing the courtyard. When I peeked out between the curtains, she was standing so close to him her rounded belly brushed his thighs. She wore a heavy cloak now across her shoulders.

“You disrespectful brute,” she said. She poked him in his chest, and he retreated two steps. “In this carriage sits a kind old man disfigured in the war—of course he will not show his face to a boor like you. And where is Anton? I’ll tell you that. He’s waiting for us at the Count Nadasty’s—every minute angrier that you are keeping me.”

I slipped open the clasp just as she reached to open the door. We sat as still as corpses until our driver had escaped the gate. Then we both exhaled.

“I hope she burns every dress she bought me,” Amalia said. “And says curses on my name.”

She passed a small, intricate chest into my lap; it could have contained a little Bible. I opened it.

Ten stacks, each with twenty ten-gulden golden coins, two thousand gulden in all. I gaped. I had never even held a single gulden in my hand.

“On my last day in Saint Gall,” she said, “Father came into my room. I’d thought him so happy about my marriage, but he paced nervously back and forth. When I asked him what was wrong, he put this in my hands. ‘In case,’ he said, ‘someday you wish to come home.’ And then added, for the sake of propriety, ‘To visit, that is, I mean.’ Two thousand gulden for a visit!”

I closed the box.

“It is enough,” she said, “for wherever we wish to run. But run we must. When she returns and hears that I have been there, they will not believe me lost or kidnapped. They will not seek a wife and daughter. They will hunt a traitor.”

For two hours we rode around Vienna, considering our options for escape. We changed carriages twice, to be sure we could not be tracked.

“The roads leading away from Vienna will not be safe,” she said. “Count Riecher has agents in every direction. It is better that we hide here for a time and prepare some means of disguise.”

I agreed. A pregnant lady—and one as striking as my Amalia—would be hard to disguise in the inns of surrounding towns, and she could not sleep in a coach. If we tried to flee the city, in but a single day I would be in that ogre’s hands.

I told her I knew where we could hide.

“It is quite small,” I said as our carriage navigated the mounds of refuse on the Burggasse in Spittelberg. “And the air can be rather close. It is noisy. But the walls are solid. The furniture is soft, though worn.”

“Oh, Moses,” she said, “I told you, I do not care.”

“It will not be what you are used to,” I said, thinking of the riches of the Riecher Palace and Haus Duft.

“What I am used to is a witch who watches over me day and night. What I am used to is a husband with no will of his own. The only reason I am pregnant is because she ordered it.”

The carriage bounced as it ran over a loose cobble, or perhaps a dog. When the coachman said he would go no farther, I offered to pay him double. He brought us to the coffeehouse door.

“Here it is,” I said, humiliated by how small the building now seemed. It could have been a set piece on Tasso’s stage. Amalia drew her cloak’s hood low across her brow. I held the chest of coins in one hand while I helped her out of the carriage. She was strong, but her back was sore from the hours sitting on the hard seats of the loge and carriage, and her limp was much more pronounced as we walked across the pitted street to the door.

It was past midnight now—an illicit time of day in this quarter—and so the passersby stared at the ground rather than look us in the eye. The coffeehouse was almost empty. Four men, ruddy with drink, sipped at their bitter, dark medicine, staring at Amalia as if she were a fantastic vision conjured by the potion. Scrupulous Herr Kost looked at his shoes, certain he was not meant to witness this fine lady entering his establishment.

We climbed the stairs to my friends’ rooms. Remus leapt from his chair. Nicolai struggled to his feet. I beamed at them, and relief washed across their faces.

“Praise God,” Remus said, like a worried mother. He clasped his hands before his chest when I appeared in the doorway, though as Amalia entered behind me and drew back her hood, his grin faded to a nervous nod of greeting.

But Nicolai’s smile only grew when his weak eyes discerned a female shadow. “Welcome to the Temple of Love!” he shouted. Remus’s face paled another shade, while mine reddened in humiliation. Only Amalia smiled. Then she looked closely at Remus.

“My God!” she said. “It’s the wolfish monk!”

“Hello, Fräulein Duft.” He bowed.

“Actually, they call me Frau Riecher now,” she said. “But tonight I wish to be a Duft again.”

“In this house you can have whatever name you wish,” Nicolai said. He took her hand in his two giant ones, as if he meant to warm it.

“Friends,” I said. “May we stay here for some time?”

Nicolai pressed Amalia’s hand to his cheek. “As long as you wish!” he exclaimed.

“Thank you,” she said. She smiled. She looked around the shabby room. To my relief, no disgust appeared on her face.

“You may have Remus’s room,” Nicolai said gallantly. “He can curl up out here with his books.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Amalia said.

“It is no trouble,” said Remus.

“It won’t be for long,” I said.

“I pray it is!” said Nicolai.

“We are going to Venice!” I blurted.

“To Venice?” said Nicolai. His eyes were huge.

“Moses will sing in the opera,” said Amalia.

“Yes!” shouted Nicolai. “In Teatro San Benedetto!”

“And you two as well,” I said. “You must come with us!”

Nicolai clasped his round hands below his chin. Tears welled in his eyes. “Venice! My dream come true! Of course we will!”

For a moment Remus did not speak. His face was like a cloud over the sunshine of our future. “Remus,” Nicolai said, “don’t be such a bore.”

“Nicolai cannot travel to Venice,” Remus said to Amalia. “He is sick.”

“I went to the theater tonight!” Nicolai’s smile was stubborn. “You can place a sack over my head so I miss the sun.”

“Nicolai, Venice is four hundred miles from here, across the Alps. You can’t possibly ride a horse. In any case, we have no funds for such a journey.”

“Yes, we do!” I said. I took the chest from beneath my arm and set loose the lid. The gold glittered in the candlelight.

“My God,” whispered Remus.

“What is it?” asked Nicolai, trying to focus his eyes on the gold. “Is it on fire?”

“Moses and Amalia have a fortune,” Remus told him. “More money than you’ve touched in your lifetime.”

Nicolai gasped.

“We will buy a coach,” I said. “We will build Nicolai a bed inside it.”

“You see, we need you,” Amalia explained. “Here in Austria, you must be our disguise. And in Italy, no one will believe that Moses is my husband.”

“I will be your husband!” Nicolai said.

Now Amalia did blush.

“We were thinking,” I said, “that Remus could be her father. Her husband, we will say, is away in the war.”

“I could be an uncle, then.”

“We thought you could be a patient,” Amalia said. Then she looked at Remus. “My father’s patient.”

“A rich patient, then,” Nicolai said.

“A rich patient,” I confirmed.

Just then we heard footsteps on the stairs. Remus looked toward the door, blood draining from his face. Nicolai reached out a long arm and herded Amalia and me behind him, squaring himself against the threat coming up the stairs.

But I just smiled: my ears heard more than theirs. When the door finally opened, and Nicolai lumbered forward in attack, the invader barely reached his waist.

Tasso’s face was red and coated with sweat from running through the city. He rubbed his paws together in relief when he saw me.

“Guadagni is looking for you!” Tasso said between breaths. “He jumped out of the shadows as I was sweeping up the stage. Grabbed me by the throat. Said Durazzo would banish me from the theater!”

“What will you do?” I asked.

The little man smiled and shook his head. “I kicked him in the shin and laughed at his threats,” he boasted. “I heard Durazzo himself congratulate Guadagni. The superintendent said that what you sang was the greatest song ever sung in the empress’s theater. They think it was he, so Guadagni can’t say a word! But he asked me where you were hiding. I said you are his student; he should know.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And I’ll kick him again tomorrow,” Tasso boasted.

Amalia took my arm and stepped out from behind Nicolai. Tasso jumped. “But that means we must both stay hidden until we can leave the city,” she said to me.

“Tasso,” I said. “This is Amalia.”

The little man looked her up and down. When his eyes fell upon her rounded belly he let out a squeak with an intake of air. We had told him nothing of our plan, and he turned to each of us now with looks of rage such as I had never before seen on his little face. I feared for a moment that he would go himself to seek Guadagni and Countess Riecher.

He swung the door closed behind him; it clattered against the misshapen frame. He shook his head at each of his friends and then he stepped to Amalia’s side and clasped her wrist. His head just reached her elbow. He raised her arm and, taking it in both hands above his head—like a waiter carrying a platter—he led her first toward the door, then bent around Nicolai, past a stack of books, between two upturned coffee cups, and around a dark stain on the carpet, until he had positioned her before Nicolai’s armchair. Then he turned back to us. We had not moved. He scowled. “Get over here,” he spat. “Right this minute.” He pointed at the floor beside her. When I arrived, he helped me lower her slowly, gingerly, into the comfort of the chair. He removed her shoes and ordered, “Rub her feet.”