The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [161]
MARIA SEEMED TO brace herself—but with a graceful strength and heightened sense of control that did not fail to remind him of her performance in Bayreuth, which had matched and possibly exceeded his own—while Martin aggressively leaned forward, as if to assault him with questions, a response that also did not lack a certain aesthetic appeal and intellectual rigor. Leo could see both of them working to reconcile their doubts with a desire to believe him, not only because of who he was but also because of everything that such belief implied about the potential of life to deliver the unexpected. And so, as soon as he caught his breath, he asked them to judge him in such terms: he begged them to look at the city in front of them, to consider the skyline, to imagine the streets and the subways, the hypnotic ebb and flow of the people moving in and out of the buildings and elevators, or even the availability—in a certain restaurant on Fifth Avenue—of a pâté de canard that brought him back to a Romanian princess he had known in Paris. His life, he maintained, was no less and no more than an attempt to create something transcendent and lasting out of the haphazard and random events that defined so much of it—to order and possess his past, as if he had willed it and not the other way around—just as the city did for the millions who lived there. Or—he added more softly—they might consider Maria’s earlier song and Martin’s appreciation of the same, or the impossible but undeniable odds that both of their parents had tragically died at such a young age, or even the circumstances that had brought them together on this day. That they had already discussed this idea was apparent to Leo in the way they glanced at each other with expressions that seemed to convey more understanding and determination than shock, although it lasted only a second before they turned back to him with renewed expectation, which he knew stemmed from his failure to explain exactly why he was telling them this story.
On the verge of unveiling this last great secret, he felt exhausted, so that he could barely manage to part his lips to breathe, let alone summon the energy to speak. He grimaced and managed to steady himself; this weariness, he knew, was also an aspect of his performance, a symptom of the self-destructive but sacrificial need to go on at any cost—even the ultimate one—as if the lives of those who listened, those he loved, depended on it. He took their hands and in a hoarse but urgent whisper told them how he had met Anna after her performance—one, he noted, that was almost as miraculous as Maria’s in Bayreuth, and perhaps even more unexpected—and inspired by the idea that her voice might help him to regain his own, had invited her to his store. To his pleasant surprise, she had come the following day, and he had impulsively shown her the manuscript and played from it, with a thought to re-create a moment of his youth, to both honor and be absolved from it, and to his astonishment and gratification, she had joined him, singing Isolde to his Tristan.
Maria through her tears quietly confirmed that this was true, and that Anna had never told anyone but her. What she had not told Maria, Leo continued, was that, in the course of singing, they had been gripped in a way that he felt sure they all could understand; and that while he had been physically attracted to women only a handful of times in his very long life, for these minutes, his desire had mirrored her own, and several months later he had received a letter from Anna explaining that she had given birth to twins, one boy and one girl, but that she had given them up for adoption to two families who lived near the city of Pittsburgh, where she was certain they would be given the love and attention she—as an opera singer traveling the world—had not felt capable of delivering. Over their gasps of belief and disbelief, he found the will to tell them that this had occurred almost exactly forty-two years ago, and he hoped they would forgive him for not coming forward until now, because it was only after