The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [67]
“You don’t know who that is?” she asked, smiling benignly as if she could have predicted this all along.
“Obviously not,” Lucien muttered, for once impatient with her.
“How charming—I seem to have struck a nerve.” She looked through him toward a group of dancers exiting the floor before she continued. “His name is Eduard van der Null. He’s Austrian, he comes from a noble family, and like you he has inspired heartbreak among some of my more desperate peers. He’s also involved in the opera, but unlike you, he’s no longer aspiring.” She fixed her inscrutable eyes on Lucien. “If only he lived in Paris, he would be perfect.”
Lucien could not restrain himself from looking back at the man, though his gaze was no longer returned. “Is—is he a singer?”
“Fortunately no. As we’ve discussed, that’s rarely a good idea.” She paused and shook her head, as if the question required some consideration. “He’s an architect,” she murmured. “Probably the most important outside of Paris—at least on the continent. He’s been commissioned, if memory serves, to build the new opera house in Vienna.”
“You mean he’s like Garnier?” Lucien asked, incredulous.
“Effectively, yes—that is my meaning.”
Lucien brushed away a pang of something that felt like stage fright: “Is he attached?”
Codruta nodded. “I expect this will be your biggest challenge, with Herr van der Null.”
Lucien was unabashed. “Who’s his lover?”
“Not who, but what,” she answered while casting a stern eye at Lucien. “Like someone else I know, his first love is his art.” Hearing this, Lucien could not resist another glance toward Eduard van der Null, who in light of this information—and also because he was probably a decade older—seemed to possess a dignified reserve that inspired Lucien with a sense of understanding, as if they belonged on two sides of the same coin.
After a slow procession across the floor, during which Codruta paused not so much to greet as to acknowledge several guests—with whom she shared opinions about anything from the unseasonably frigid weather to the quality of the mousse au chocolat—she and Lucien reached their destination, a perfectly timed arrival that led her to envelop Eduard as he stepped away from a conversation. “Herr van der Null, what a delightful honor to see you this evening,” she greeted him, in a tone that managed to convey both intimacy and hauteur, as if they were cousins who as children had shared summers in some distant castle. “I’d like you to meet Lucien Marchand, who in case you missed him earlier is one of our most promising young singers.” Lucien extended his hand for Eduard to shake as she continued. “Which is to say that I expect he’ll be singing in your new opera house.”
“I would look forward to that,” Eduard replied as he released Lucien’s hand and seemed to wink—or perhaps it was just a raised eyebrow—which pleased Lucien, who understood the gesture to represent the formation of an unspoken alliance in this repartee with a grande dame, notwithstanding the fact that she had clearly intended this. “And I would hope even more,” he added, “that you would be there to witness it.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Codruta frowned. “But I regret to say, at my age, I don’t travel as well as I used to. Tell me,” she said, “do you still have that lovely café on Kärntnerstrasse, perhaps a block below St. Stephen’s?”
“You mean Joséphine?” Eduard suggested.
“Yes, that’s the one.” She beckoned for them to lean in. “I have an amusing story for you. I went to Vienna as a girl before I had ever been to Paris, and so when I arrived here, I was rather shocked to see the same thing everywhere. ‘Isn’t it odd,’ I said to myself, ‘how all of these cafés are just like the one in Vienna?’ Of course, that was before I realized that all great ideas originate in Paris and go on to enlighten the rest of the world!”
The two men laughed, at which point Codruta turned away