The Doctor and the Diva (66 page)

After that, she no longer wanted to remain at the coconut plantation. Ravell longed to leave, too—at least for several months. Neither of them could bear to follow the footpath adjacent to the lagoon, or see the ghosts that floated there.

Ever since Christopher’s letter had come, informing her that at least one fine impresario still remembered her singing, her hopes had been rising; if she went back to Italy, her career might actually take wing. She told Ravell that the number of English-speaking expatriates in Florence was huge. If he came along with her to Florence, he could easily practice medicine there.

“If I had been a better man—”
Ravell kept saying in a remorseful tone.

If I had been a better woman—
Erika thought.

In Ravell’s sins, she saw her own—he, like she, had longed and reached for ruinous things. Ravell was similar to herself; that was why she had yearned to see him; that was why she found herself in his bed again after so many years. She did not want to return to Italy without him.

She told him, “If I ever earn enough money from my singing, we could bring Ajeet to Florence. We could hire a servant to mind him.”

“Perhaps that will happen,” Ravell said.

For the first time, she imagined that she could have love, and give herself fully to her music, too. Until now, she had not been able to envision how that might be possible.

One morning when the sky was still softly colored with dawn, Erika and Ravell and the two boys sat on the beach wearing their pajamas and dressing robes. A week had passed since the awful day at the lagoon. Quentin lolled in the sand with his head against his mother’s lap. Ajeet sat crouched between Ravell’s legs, the man’s knees braced on either side of the boy, sheltering him. Since the drownings, Ravell had talked of taking Ajeet traveling with him when the boy grew older, and of sending the child to his old boarding school in England. Ravell planned to raise Ajeet as his legal son.

“I don’t want to go back,” Quentin said.

“I thought you missed Boston,” Erika said.

“I do, but I don’t want to go back.”

Ravell loosened the belt of his robe, and he patted Quentin’s ankle. “Your father must miss you, Quentin.”

“He’s always away,” Quentin said, “on voyages.”

“That’s his job, traveling,” Erika pointed out. “He’s an importer. Just like my job is singing, and that’s why I have to return to Italy soon.”

Her son’s future was in Boston, Erika believed—Quentin would probably attend Harvard like her brother and other men from the von Kessler family. She had not yet told her son that Ravell had agreed to accompany her to Florence and stay for three months while he worked on his book. In his absence, he’d leave the plantation to the overseer’s care.

Ravell had written to Peter, asking him to come to New York to meet their ship, promising that in New York, they would return Quentin to him.

Along the horizon, a breach appeared in the silvery blue, and Erika gazed at the flames of gold and magenta that separated sky from sea.

“Why must we leave the Cocal?” Quentin asked.

“Places and people always seem particularly beautiful when you realize you’ll be leaving them,” Erika said, and she ruffled his hair with her fingers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F
rom the ship’s railing in New York, Erika saw Peter standing below on the quay. He took a gold timepiece from his pocket and checked the hour. It was her first sight of him in four years, since she’d left Boston. Peter wore a tall hat and a tweed overcoat, and he looked as elegant as ever. For years she had chosen almost every shoe and shirt he owned, but today everything he wore was new to her, including his gloves and tie. Even his hair was styled a little differently. Each change in him seemed a sign of things they no longer shared, markers of the time they’d been apart. If he’d had an interesting conversation with a stranger this morning, she was not aware of it. She did not know if he’d ridden a camel on his last trip, or if his business this year was thriving or faltering, or if he’d found love again.

Nor could Peter imagine all that had happened to her.

They had not spoken, nor would they speak now.

She rested a hand on her son’s shoulder as he stood beside her. Leaning against the rail, the boy propped his chin upon his crossed arms as he stared down at the dock. Quentin hadn’t yet noticed his father. In the crowd below, people jostled one another and raised their faces, their eyes searching for loved ones about to disembark.

Quentin appeared bored by the tedium of waiting for one thing to be over and another to begin. Lines formed at the stairwells. Suddenly the ropes lifted. Shoulder to shoulder, passengers herded toward the exit.

Ravell’s eyes met her own, like a signal.

She bent toward her son, the velvet sleeve of Quentin’s jacket soft under her touch. “It’s time to meet your father now.”

“I’ll take you down,” Ravell told Quentin.

Her son turned to embrace her, his head butting her in the ribs. She crouched to kiss him.

“Give me a few good smackers,” she said.

His chin bumped her face as he gave her kisses that were noisy and enthusiastic, his breath smelling of the sticky, banana-flavored candies that Ravell had fed him as they entered the Narrows and New York Harbor. She wondered if Quentin would be as tall as a man before she saw him again.

“Give your letters to Grandpapa,” she said, “and he’ll be sure that they reach me.”

Nodding, her son lowered his head, watching the feet of passengers shuffling past. She wondered if he would cry, but Ravell said, “Hurry now,” and Quentin merged into the crowd of bodies as he broke away.

At the rail she waited while Ravell and Quentin descended. On the dock Peter stared at the emerging passengers. He squinted slightly, his features tensed. Perhaps he worried that Erika and Ravell had changed their minds, and would not appear or return the boy as promised. Until the new arrivals had passed through customs, the passengers were being cordoned off and kept separate from those who had gathered to welcome them.

When Quentin saw Peter, the boy let go of Ravell’s hand and charged, ducking under a rope and leaping past officials who twisted in surprise. The guards laughed and shrugged when they realized it was only a young boy who’d gotten loose.

When her former husband finally noticed Quentin sprinting toward him, Peter’s relief was visible. He gave Ravell a small wave—a salute of thanks—and then turned to the boy and flung his arms wide. In just seconds Peter would catch and lift his son, arching back, smiling.
All three of us created this boy who is alive and exultant,
she thought. She and Peter and Ravell.

From the ship’s rail, Erika watched Quentin running toward his future.

 

 

 

 

S
everal months later—in the late spring—the taxicab pulled up at the Teatro Verdi. As Erika and Ravell stepped out, one of the managers rushed toward them, his chest heaving with anxious breaths.

“You must come at once,” the man said to Erika. “Your husband, the doctor, is needed in Signora Lanza’s dressing room.”

In Florence Ravell had begun caring for expatriate ladies, British and American, but his Italian was still faltering, so Erika followed to translate. The door to the renowned diva’s sanctuary opened, and after they’d entered, someone discreetly pulled it shut behind them. The large woman reclined against a violet sofa, the crook of her arm covering her eyes. She groaned and twisted against the upholstery, her knees flinching as she writhed. Ravell found a stool, drew it close to Gabriella Lanza, and sat down. He held his palm against the singer’s forehead, and he lifted her wrist to count her pulse.

“Il bambino,”
Gabriella Lanza said softly, mournfully. Turning her face toward the ceiling, she blinked, tears sliding from her eyes into her hair.

Eight days earlier, Erika had auditioned to become Gabriella Lanza’s understudy. Erika suspected that part of the reason the acclaimed diva had favored her presence, and encouraged the managers to hire her—despite her inexperience—might have been because Ravell had accompanied her on the morning she had tried out for the role of Rosina in
Il barbiere di Siviglia
. When Erika had introduced him (“
Mio marito fa il medico. . . .
My husband is a doctor, an obstetrician. . . .”), Gabriella Lanza had turned to Ravell as though he were lit from within—as though nothing could reassure her more than to keep a doctor close, almost as a member of the cast. Smiling, she had guided him and Erika for a tour backstage, petting their hands and waving away any doubts from the impresario and the managers of the Teatro Verdi.

Later, at rehearsals, Gabriella Lanza greeted Erika with a kindness that seemed rare for a prima donna, and she asked, “How is your husband? Has he delivered many babies this week?” She always spoke his name reverently: “
Il dottor Ravell.”

“When did the pains begin? How long have you been bleeding?”
Erika knelt at the mezzo-soprano’s side, repeating Ravell’s questions in Italian.

Gabriella Lanza was four—no, five months pregnant, Ravell concluded. This did not surprise the great singer. (
“Mio bambino—”
she murmured again, her head leaning far back against the pillow, the hair at her temples darkening with tears.) The singer always kept her large figure swathed in shawls or richly embroidered tunics, and until now, she had not mentioned her condition to anyone.

It was less than an hour before curtain time. The impresario, who was the tallest man Erika had seen since arriving in Italy, led her into a smaller room. His forehead glistened; he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. With his tie loosened and yanked to one side, he told Erika—rather gruffly—that she must prepare to sing. Then he rushed away down the corridor, his trouser leg crooked, caught up in his sock.