The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [52]
Lucien had met Pauline several times over the years—he continued to train with her brother—and she greeted him warmly. To his delight, she even went so far as to offer to lend him the Tristan manuscript after the reading if it proved to his liking.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
“It’s innovative but difficult,” she said and glanced around, as if to make sure the composer was not within earshot. “To be honest, it makes my head swim a little”—she laughed—“but I don’t want to prejudice you.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” he said truthfully, and she winked at him as Codruta swept back into the room accompanied by the pianist Karl Klindworth, a protégé of Franz Liszt. Next was Berlioz, who with a furrowed brow and an immense, swirling head of hair appeared to be thinking only serious thoughts, and finally Wagner, surprisingly diminutive with eyes like tiny buttons and a stern expression framed by large muttonchops. He marched in wearing a golden velvet cape with red trim and pants to match; under his arm he carried a leather briefcase containing another copy of the score. Codruta briefly introduced the men to Lucien, whose presence as a young singer of high pedigree seemed to cause no consternation; all in turn offered a perfunctory hand for Lucien to shake before returning to their seats, arranged in a semicircle next to the piano. A few minutes passed in conversation before Klindworth began to play, and he was soon joined by Wagner and Viardot singing the parts of Tristan and Isolde.
Lucien leaned forward to listen. The music was slow and dense, yet jarring to the extent that at times it sounded like two works being played at once, with each taking turns pushing to the surface while the other lurked beneath, giving the piece a constant, shivering sense of anticipation that was almost maddening for its lack of resolution. There was a sense of grandeur but unlike in Wagner’s earlier work, one that evoked not mountaintops or dark forests so much as urban landscapes; or that’s how it seemed to Lucien as he stared past his reflection in the window at the flickering lights of Haussmann’s new boulevards, which stretched out into the blackening horizon, with the music reminding him of a certain delirium and fatigue he sometimes felt wandering the city streets, of looking for something but not quite knowing what, as each creaking door, rolling carriage, and waft of savory heat from the patisseries and bistros washed over him, filling him with longing and possibility.
He thought of the night ahead, and could see himself walking past the syphilitic beggars of Montmartre to meet Gérard at the Pérégrine, where—just as they had done a few weeks earlier—they would be confronted by hundred-foot spires and turrets painted in gold leaf, illuminated by overlapping shafts of limelight. Inside, they would meander through a labyrinth of candlelit tables and gas chandeliers, gawking less at the entertainers who danced or juggled or tumbled through rings of fire than at the merchants—dressed in silk suits with fur-lined collars and gold monocles—discussing stock prices on the bourse, accompanied by slender nymphs who sat silently by under tiaras ringed by variegated gems casting kaleidoscopic halos around their bored, waxen faces. They would watch suave, white-gloved aristocrats who kept live falcons