The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [143]
“I’m always ready,” he responded with an arrogance that under almost any other circumstances would have irritated her, to say the least, but at this moment left her more unnerved by the thought that it was a challenge she would have issued herself.
The intendant clutched his hands together in front of his chest and made a slight bow. “I’m sorry, but under the circumstances—”
Maria watched his lips move and weighed her options. She could imagine general managers throughout the world getting wind of this and reasoning that if an opera could be pulled off without any rehearsal at all, why not make no rehearsals the rule instead of the exception? She knew on one hand she could balk—she could push them out the door and say no fucking thanks—and count on any number of sympathetic ears; accidents happened, the opening would be pushed back to the next scheduled performance, and the house would have to take the hit. On the other hand, it was the sort of unpredictable event that made Maria love the theater, where accidents could—and did—happen, even at the highest levels; that they were in Bayreuth, with its perfectly manicured flower beds and sepulchral Wagnerism—a place where such rituals were never supposed to go wrong—was not lost on her.
Leo stared back with a salacious expression in which she recognized an obsessive desire to sing that mirrored her own, and she felt all of her objections gather like lemmings and run into a chasm of irrelevance. She took a few moments to compose herself and then looked at each of the men in turn. “Gentlemen, despite the short notice, and because I have no reason to believe that something so idiotic could have been planned, and because I have, up to this point, been treated with nothing but respect by everyone here at the theater, I will sing with Mr. Metropolis.” She listened to the collective sigh of relief that filled the room and then addressed the last thread of a practical thought related to how her decision might be perceived. “However!” She held up her hand, not wanting to be upstaged by a wave of Leo Metropolis hysteria. “There will be nothing said about this—that is, no announcements—until after the show, because I am looking forward to performing in an opera, not a circus.”
THE LIGHTS WENT down, and a hush swept across the sold-out auditorium, quieting the buzz about the mysterious accident, which in the end delayed the curtain by only fifteen minutes. Maria/Isolde took her place on the stage, in the ship’s aft quarters. She did not have to rely on great reserves of acting ability to look at Leo/Tristan with an appropriate mistrust, knowing that she planned to poison him in a murder-suicide as vengeance for killing her first betrothed and taking her to marry his uncle, the hated King Mark. That was all to come; as she waited, she gently rocked on her feet and took deep breaths, filling every available space of her body like an accordion, until, in response to the opening notes of the sailor offstage, she sang. The audience ducked to avoid the beam of sound that splayed across the theater like the first bolt of lightning in a night sky. Maria ignored the conductor—who wore the expression of one savoring the first bite of a spectacular crème brûlée—and the collective murmur that went up in recognition that—wow!—the American diva was really on this afternoon.
She paused when the lighting shifted to Leo, who with the lithe bearing of a toreador took three steps forward to hear—in case he was deaf—the news from his second in command that Isolde was not happy. She took in the lines of his face and the dark circles under his eyes and was impressed; he looked like a man who had endured his share of suffering, and in no way like someone walking into a role with exactly no rehearsal. None of which, however, prepared her for what happened when, a few seconds later, he began to sing; as soon as Maria heard him, she gripped the lines of the ship and whispered, “Holyfuckingchrist,” as if her entire life were a thin sheet of paper about to be tossed