The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [159]
With the cabin infused by the bronze light of the setting sun, Leo raised the topic of the manuscript. Martin abashedly confessed—given how little sense it made—his suspicion, or perhaps hope, that Anna had died in a state of bliss, which led Maria to describe how she had heard a second voice at the end of her Liebestod in Bayreuth, and how she had somehow known—even before she got the phone call—that it had been Anna. It pleased Leo to hear this, for it seemed to confirm that in the beckoning aura of the approaching night, there would be a familiar, theatrical sense of possibility, a necessary suspension of belief that would allow his audience to understand his story—just as he had understood theirs—without questioning its plausibility.
Martin opened his briefcase and handed the document to Leo, who—and this was a conscious decision on his part—flipped through the pages not with the reverence of a scholar or the greedy fingers of a dealer but with the easy assurance of one who had handled it hundreds of times. Although he had not expected to have this document at his side and was prepared to tell his story without it, its appearance struck him as a fortuitous break, and one that the performer in him felt obliged to use to his advantage. As Martin and Maria silently watched, he took a breath and began to speak, looking at them each in turn and explaining that he had wanted to talk to them about something for quite some time but that circumstances—along with a certain cowardice on his part that he hoped they would soon understand and forgive—had prevented him from doing so until now. He asked for their indulgence—which they appeared quite willing to give—and begged them not to jump to conclusions; he assured them that he did not want to convince them of anything but only to offer his service and perhaps—in return—ask for their help.
This moment—the beginning of his story—was one he had rehearsed many times, at least in his head, and he welcomed a familiar weightlessness that allowed him to craft every phrase, to fill each syllable with as much love and nuance as he could—at least without singing—as if he were taking the stage for the greatest role in his life. He started quietly, with a more distant, objective tone, not unlike the narrative in his mind when he recalled episodes from his past but could not afford to delve into the accompanying emotion. From his pocket he withdrew an envelope, which he set on top of the manuscript and encouraged them to examine. These notes, he explained, which had been in his possession for a very long time, represented a formula for a vaccine against aging, discovered by a French scientist in the nineteenth century, who coincidentally—and here he nodded at the score—was the father of Lucien Marchand, the French heldentenor who had created the role of Tristan. As Leo said this, he glanced at Maria, who just as he had hoped instinctively nodded—she had obviously heard of the man—while Martin watched pensively beside her.
Leo briefly explained how Lucien had come to possess the score and then offered a few details about his life; he described how Eduard had jumped to his death from the scaffolding of his opera house, and how Lucien had carried his lifeless body through the streets of Vienna to the steps of the palace, as if to indict Franz Joseph, after which he remained in a state of grief-stricken paralysis, unable to sing. He told them what had happened one summer when Lucien returned to Paris, where his father, as per the French emperor’s edict, had taken the vaccine, and how Lucien had also taken it, with the unexpected result