The Bells (33 page)

XIX.

T
he parlor had never seemed so small. Guadagni’s brilliant eyes considered the tattered curtains, the dusty books stacked along the walls, the mismatched furniture, as if each object whispered to him secrets about the men inhabiting these rooms. Finally he turned to me.

“You hide yourself well,” he said. “It is fortunate for me that you surround yourself with quite”—he gestured around the room—“
conspicuous
persons, who have been very active today.” He smiled at Tasso. “Who was that woman whom you just escorted here, might I ask?” The little man crossed his arms and stared at the floor.

There was a loud groan from Amalia’s room, and the firm, deep voice of the
Hebamme
in response.

Only Guadagni turned to look at the door. “Moses will come to see you,” Remus said, “at another time. Or you may come visit. But today we are indisposed.”

“No, no,” Guadagni said absently, still watching the bedroom door. “Another visit is not necessary. I will not be long. I only wish to say goodbye to my student. Then I will leave.”

“Goodbye,” I said.

Guadagni smiled at me and shook his head at my naïveté. He stepped forward, until he stood inside our circle, Nicolai to his left, Remus and Tasso to his right, me seated before him. “Of course, I did not want to take my leave,” he said, “without discussing what has passed between us. I am sure the stagehand has told you that the aria you stole made quite an impact.”

“Moses is a far better singer than you,” Nicolai said suddenly. Guadagni did not appear affected by this outburst, but he studied Nicolai closely, as if noticing his deformities for the first time. He raised his eyebrows.

“Moses,” he said, weighing my name this first time it had passed his lips, “before I take my leave, before I let a man like this”—he showed a palm to Nicolai—“inflate your ambitions, I wish to give you some advice. I have sung opera since I was ten. I have sung on rotting stages in remote Italian villages. I have sung in Covent Garden. You are not the first student who left my care thinking he was greater than the teacher. And what became of them? I do not know. I have never heard the name of a single one again.” He shrugged and looked again toward Amalia’s door. “I imagine they sing somewhere. The choirs of rural churches, or travel in
buffa
companies. I know how they live, for I once lived like that. They sing upon a tiny outdoor stage, and people cheer their voices. They make men cry. Then, the concert ends. The audience leaves, and as they walk home through the streets, some of these men from the audience who laughed and cried at the song, they hold their hands over their parts”—he looked down pointedly at my groin, then returned his eyes to my face—“and pretend to sing like little girls.”

Nicolai shook his head defiantly from his chair, but Guadagni had eyes only for me.

I looked at the singer’s feet.

“Moses,” he continued, “do you think these poor singers have no talent? Is that why they rot in nameless villages?
Moses,
” he called my name softly and I looked up. He shook his head sadly. “Oh yes, they have talent! They have great voices, like yours and mine. They could make the empress cry, as you did, if only they could make her
believe in them.
” His face grew dark. “But don’t think it is an accident that they sleep in wagons and I sleep in one of Vienna’s finest houses. It is not an accident.”

Amalia began moaning again, and Guadagni stopped, glaring at the door as if her suffering were like a hacking cough in his theater. “It is not an accident at all,” he continued, much more hotly now. “Singing is only the gateway to our profession. Moses, I explained all this, but you did not listen. You would not have done such a
stupid
thing if you had understood—” Guadagni paused, willing himself to control the anger growing in his voice, but my ears told me more; he was also afraid of something in this room. With a shaking hand, he patted the pocket of his cloak. He took a slow, deep breath.

“They do not love us for our singing,” he began again. He took another step forward. “You have a fine voice, Moses—”

“He has the best voice I have ever heard,” Nicolai broke in, waving a finger that was adequate to stop Guadagni in his tracks.

“A fine voice,” Guadagni said. He nodded respectfully. “Any
buffa
company will be pleased to have you. Good thing,” he looked about the room, “that you seem well used to the conditions of that life.”

“Please leave,” I said.

“But I would have taught you to be a musico!” The sudden force of his words made me cringe, as if he meant to strike me. When I looked up, I saw that he shook with fury.

Very quietly, I said, “You did not teach me anything.”

“It is time for you to leave,” Remus said.

Guadagni whirled around. “I will leave when I am ready!” He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned back to me and pointed a shaking finger. “They thought they heard
me sing
. If they had known it was you, they would have laughed. And the empress’s soldiers would have chased you from the stage. It was your voice, but it was
me
they cheered.”

“Nonsense,” Nicolai muttered.

Guadagni swung his arm and slapped Nicolai with the back of his hand. His long fingers left four white shafts across Nicolai’s cheek and temple. Nicolai’s new lenses flew off his face and shattered on the floor.

“I created Orpheus,” Guadagni roared, and his voice in the small parlor made the room tremble. “I brought his spirit back to life! And this boy, this
amateur
, stole his voice from me!”

Nicolai squinted, but he did not shy from the light. Slowly, he began to struggle out of his chair to his feet. He rose above the singer. Guadagni stumbled back until he hit the wall and then fumbled at his cloak. As Nicolai approached him, he withdrew a pistol and pointed it at the giant.

Nicolai laughed and reared to his full height. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make sure you do not miss.”

Remus pulled Nicolai’s arm. “Nicolai, sit down.”

The pistol shook. Guadagni kept it pointed at Nicolai but turned to me. “I am so much more than a voice, and you are nothing more than a thief.”

For a brief moment, I felt sympathy for the man. He was correct: I had robbed him. I had stolen from him what every virtuoso needs: the faith that no one in this world could perform better. He held the pistol loosely, inexpertly. He would not shoot us; he merely needed to make us listen.

“Is this all you came to say?” I asked carefully.

“I came to tell you to leave this city. I do not want you here.”

Just then, the moans began once more. I dug my fingers into my thighs. Tasso jumped up from his seat. When Amalia was quiet again, the pistol shook more violently in Guadagni’s hand. His eyes jumped from each man in the room to the next. He finally firmly grasped the meaning of these cries. He was looking for the father.

“We are leaving Vienna,” I said. I tried to speak forcefully to divert him, but my voice was a dry whisper.

“When?” he said.

“Very soon.”

He nodded, but he was distracted. His face drained of color. “My God,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”

“Get out!” howled Nicolai, struggling from Remus’s grasp and toward the pistol, which now trembled more than ever.

Guadagni backed away. “Is it true?” he muttered. “Is that the Riecher girl?”

None of us replied. Nicolai froze his assault.

“She ran away with you?” he asked me. His red lips and piercing eyes were the only color in his face.

Just then, Amalia screamed. There was such pain in her voice that I jumped and rushed for the door, but Remus grabbed my arm and held me back.

When her scream faded, Guadagni was standing at the door to the stairs. “You are all damned,” he said, and then he fled.

Only Nicolai reacted. But he was no longer the man who had raced through the abbey toward Ulrich’s room years before. He lumbered down the stairs. Remus, Tasso, and I went to the window. We saw the singer bolt into the street and disappear amid the throng. It was several seconds before Nicolai followed, and when he burst into the afternoon sunshine, without his lenses, he cried out and tore at his eyes. Beside me, Remus gasped as we watched Nicolai clutch his head and fall to his knees on the street below.

XX.

I
stood at Amalia’s door as the others helped Nicolai back up the stairs. They placed him in his chair. “No!” he cried, pressing the heels of his palms against his temples. “No, no, no!” Remus brought him wine laced with laudanum, but Nicolai batted it away, and the glass smashed on the floor.

“Will he tell her? Will the Riecher woman come?” Tasso whispered to Remus, thinking I could not hear.

“I think she will.”

“Why?” he asked. “It is not her child.”

“If it is a boy, it will be her eldest son’s eldest son—one day Count Riecher. And it will be the Duft heir as well. She will try to take him.”

“But we will not let her,” Tasso said.

Remus did not answer. He came to me and, placing his hands on my shoulders, led me back to my chair. Nicolai exhaled rhythmically, trying to drive the pain from his head.

“Remus,” I said. “What will we do?”

“I do not know.”

“If she tries to take the child,” Nicolai said, “I will kill her.”

She did come, an hour later, and she did not come alone.

It was growing dark outside. Four soldiers rode with her carriage. “Move aside!” they shouted. “Move, you cur!” They thumped their bludgeons against their palms and whisked them through the air at anyone too slow to make way for the horses. Tasso watched them from the window. The carriage’s springs creaked as it struggled over the pits and mounds in the street. Then all was silent, except for the snorting of the four stallions.

“The carriage door has opened,” Tasso whispered. “Someone is getting out.”

I heard her shoe step on the narrow stair of her carriage and her gown rustle as she lifted it over the filthy street. The heavy footsteps of a soldier stepped before her, opening the door to the coffeehouse. “Clear out, you swine,” he yelled. “A lady wishes to enter.” Benches scraped along the floor. Patrons struggled with their coats. Three coffee cups shattered on the planks. The men hurried into the street.

We all heard the footsteps: the heavy boots of two of the soldiers, the click of Countess Riecher’s heels—and another shuffling step I could not identify. They climbed the stairs. The door slammed open into the wall. A soldier, his hand on his sword, quickly took stock of the room, but soon deemed us a pathetic foe. Nicolai balanced his head between two fingers. Tasso stood defeated by the window. Remus looked at his hands in his lap.

When Countess Riecher stepped into the room, the swishing of her pristine gown and cloak around our slanted door, the tap of her toes on our creaking floor, every single hair on her head tied up in perfect order—all this made it all too clear how foolish we had been. Behind her came the second soldier, and then a pale, plump woman—a nurse—who cowered like a timid hound dragged forward on a lead.

Countess Riecher glared at me. “Is what the castrate says true?” she demanded. “Is she here?” She stepped forward, and Nicolai’s shattered lenses crunched beneath her shoes.

“Answer me,” she said.

I shook my head, but at that moment we all heard a moan, and it climbed into a scream, as if someone had pressed a knife into my lover’s belly. The nurse’s eyes grew wider, and I froze, the sound tearing through my head.

Countess Riecher’s expression was blank. She waited for the yelling to subside. “Very well,” she said, “I will see for myself what unfortunate creature is making that noise.” She stepped around Nicolai toward Amalia’s door.

Remus blocked her path. He was no taller than she, and at that moment seemed twice as frail. “No,” he said. He held up his hands.

“Move aside,” she said.

“There is no need for you to go inside. You know it is whom you seek, but she needs nothing more to alarm her at present.”

She examined his face, but did not push past. He offered her a seat. She waved him off. “I will stand until it is born. Then I can leave this filthy place.”

“We will not let you take it,” Nicolai’s deep voice growled, his palms still pressed into his temples. His eyes were closed.

Countess Riecher turned to face Nicolai in his chair. “You will not
let
me?”

Nicolai did not say anything, but I was afraid his quivering hands would crush his own head.

Countess Riecher frowned, looking around the room. She shook her head and snorted. “I can have you arrested this very minute. All four of you.” She laughed coldly. “I do not even need your names. I can have you hanged for abducting her, before the sun comes up tomorrow.” She stared at Tasso, and though he matched her gaze, he was shaking. “Are you all such fools? Did you really mean to steal this child and raise him here, in this hovel? Why? Because”—she pointed at the bedroom door and spat her words—“that
impudent
girl told you she wished it so?”

Guadagni must have told her that she should direct her anger at me, for now she glared at me. I wished I held a knife. I would have killed her then.

She continued: “She has no right to choose what happens to that child. It will be a
Riecher.
” She looked me up and down. She shook her head.

She bid the soldiers to guard the door to Amalia’s room. “Sit,” she ordered Remus.

He did.

She looked fiercely at each of us in turn: Tasso’s stunted limbs, Nicolai’s deformed face, ugly Remus. Then me. “A castrate,” she hissed. “For you she left our house? Left my son?” She smiled cruelly. “Oh, I hope you have a pretty, pretty voice. In twenty years, when she is miserable and lonely, I hope its faint memory will comfort her.”

I did not answer. I felt her stare like a cold finger across my face, probing for each proof of my inadequacy.

“I give you a choice, then,” she continued. She turned about and waved her hand dismissively. “We will wait until the baby is born. I will take it. My nurse will care for it as it deserves, as fits its station. I will send a carriage for the mother. I will send her where I please. She will be provided for, but far enough away from any place where she can harm my grandchild’s future with her shameful ways. And you, all four of you, will leave Vienna. I do not wish it to be known that my heir was born in …” She looked around the room, as if searching for the ugliest words, but finally sighed and said, “Spittelberg.” She continued, “If you raise a hand to stop me, or if I ever hear of you again in this city, I will have no choice. You will die.”

We did not speak, but as the cries from Amalia’s room began again, our hearts cried as well. I looked at my friends. Nicolai nodded at me to confirm what I already knew: he would rather die than let this woman have her way. Tasso, too, still standing in the corner, looked ready to bite and scratch her. Even Remus’s neck was flushed.

My hands shook at my sides. I prayed my knees would hold. “You cannot take this child from its mother,” I said. It was a whisper. “We will not let you.”

She stared at me as if she thought me so frail her mere gaze could knock me over. “From men,” she finally said, “I expect stupidity. I would have hoped yours had been removed.”

Then the door to Amalia’s room opened. The
Hebamme
peered out. Her calm expression was gone. Her hair was tousled, and though she hid her hands behind the doorframe, the streak of blood across her brow made it clear why. She took in the crowded room.

“You must get a doctor,” she said to no one in particular.

Tasso stood, but Countess Riecher held up her hand. “She will have the best in Vienna.” She walked to the window and yelled orders to her coachman below to fetch the Riecher physician.