Breath Unchained

Kristina practically ran to the Eclectic Theater on the morning of their meeting. The empty apartment suffocated her with its gaudy rose-papered walls, and she didn't want to run into Amelie with all her questions. Instead of going to the auditorium, she went straight to Box 17.

The door was open but the inner curtain was drawn, and Mme. Avenelle was nowhere to be seen. Kristina knocked timidly on the open panel, and heard a soft, "Come in," from within the box.

He rose to greet her, saying "Brava for last night. You brought tears to their eyes, I'm sure."

"You're kind. I thought of you listening for me. Were you?

"I was," he said.

She felt the need to prattle. "It's not Rachel, I'm afraid, but it's a good role for me, lots of coloratura, and up and down the scales. I don't expect prima roles, anyway, not yet. I felt so sorry for poor Eudoxie, she only had a brief moment of happiness, and then her husband betrayed her. It's not that I know that from experience - I've never had a husband, but it's almost as if I felt like I had. That was stupid, I know. Sometimes I still can't believe I'm really here."

He sat, waiting.

"What shall we do? I don't see your violin."

"Come down to the Singers' Salon with me; I have something to play for you."

"How do you know about that one? No one ever goes there. Do you work here?"

"I do. This is one of the last large theaters to be electrified, and it's my contract.”

“When you're not serenading us.”

“I'm ahead of schedule,” he said.

Had she offended him with a hint that he might have been slacking off? “So that's what you do.”

"Not entirely. My father taught me how to carve and lay stone. We built modern buildings for the French in Algiers. Later I learned about plumbing and gas lines. Electricity is new, but there are books. Then I was a builder, in Paris, before getting the electric contract for the theater here."

"You play and sing so beautifully - why aren't you a musician?"

"I don't think people would want to look at my face."

His warm eyes turned sad, and a great tenderness blossomed inside her for him. "I told you about Wilhelm, the student I knew who was burned. His mother didn't want him studying with Dr. Sibelius. She said no one would put him onstage; that he'd have to wear a mask or something over his head."

He turned away as if her words struck him like a blow, and now there was real pain on his face, not just in his eyes.

"M. Niemann, I'm so sorry. I've said something thoughtless."

"It's all right," he said. "Please go on."

"But his father kept sending him to lessons. 'Even if he never goes onstage,' he said, 'I want him to know the heart and soul of music.' I think that was very beautiful."

"Did he ever perform?"

"I don't know. We moved to Paris. I don't know what happened to him." He's so still. The very air around him stops when he doesn't speak. He barely moves, unlike most people who fidget, or stretch, or have to fill up the space with some noise or motion. He makes me want that kind of stillness, too.

"Let's go see about the Singer's Salon," he said after a moment.

The theater seemed dark and uninhabited for that hour of the morning, and they met no one on their way down, not even a maid or charwoman. To Kristina's surprise, the mirrored room was unlocked. Alberich seated himself at the grand piano and played a few chords, his thick hands with their strong fingers agile on the keys. He slowly transitioned into the betrayed Eudoxie's poignant aria, “Mon doux seigneur et maître,” and Kristina leapt in to join him.

"When do you sing it again?" he asked when they were done.

"Tomorrow night."

"Sing it like that, and they'll forget that Rachel boils in oil."

Her breath caught in her throat. To get a bit of air, she sat across the mirrored room on a little green velvet bench. He turned back to the keys, and played a sonatina, tender and moving.

"It's beautiful. What is it? Who is the composer?"

"It's mine. Beethoven had his FürElise, but this is FürKristina."

"You must write it down. Not because you named it after me, but so you don't forget it."

"I don't forget music. Sometimes that's a curse; a lot of music you want to forget. But if you'd like me to, I'll transcribe a score for you," and his face glowed pink with pleasure as he said it.

Her face glowed, too. "It makes me wish I could play piano better than I can."

"No one can do everything. I think you need a tutor, because to me, as an amateur, your voice doesn't sound completely formed. I know mine isn't. But with the right guidance, you could be incomparable."

"Monsieur De Carnac - he's the musical director here - he has said the same thing. Practically every rehearsal he nags me, 'Have you found a teacher yet? We're just protecting our investment here, you know.' I am supposed to be interviewing teachers, and at some point I'm going to have to find one. But since you learned from a castrato, and so few have done that, do you think you could show me some of what you know? Your own voice is a pleasure to listen to - not an "opera voice," which in some ways is an advantage, and it has a wonderful quality."

"I've never been a teacher," he replied thoughtfully, "so I don't know how well I'd do at it."

“But your father taught you?”

“Yes, he did. Both stone and music.”

"I would pay you," she began, but then stopped as his still-rosy face turned a deep red, this time with profound embarrassment, she flushed brightly as well.

"Never. Please, I couldn't think of taking money," and he stood up from the piano bench with such an abrupt movement that she almost fell backwards. The bench skidded out behind him and he turned quickly to grab it before it tipped over. No wonder he had pulled her up so effortlessly over the balcony.

She remembered having already made this mistake with Amelie. "No, of course you won't take money. How stupid of me. I've been performing less than a year, and the opera has ruined me already." He stood stiffly, still red-faced, saying nothing. "Look, let's do this. I can't meet you at this early hour after the nights I have performances. But on other days I can. I'm sure you'll be a wonderful teacher. I can imitate well; my voice teachers all said so. You show me what to do, and I'll follow. We can come here to the Singers' Salon; nobody ever uses it during the day. If it's locked, we can meet one of the ballet practice rooms; they all have pianos, but not as nice as this one. Please say you will?"

"A voice like yours requires someone professional," he said slowly. "Sopranos' careers have ended without the right care. I wouldn't know what to do."

"Oh, I will find a fat old Italian eventually, M. Niemann. But this would be different, because you'd just be showing me what you know. I've been caring for my voice since age fourteen. That's why I don't stay out late after performances, or drink too much champagne, or sit in the billiard rooms with all the cigar smokers."

"It would please Cassinelli if I did this," he finally said.

"It would please me, too, M. Niemann," and his face, which had calmed down, pinked up again. "But who is Cassinelli?"

"My late teacher. The castrato I mentioned to you."

"So he's passed, then."

"Almost fifteen years now." His deep eyes were soft in his face. His smile was a small half-flicker which played briefly around his mouth and then flew away.

Someday I'll make you smile. I'll draw down into you like a well, and when I bring up the bucket there'll be a smile, a real one. It's a promise.

* * * * * *

Over the next few weeks, Alberich and Kristina fell into a pattern. When she sang late the night before, she slept in late the next day. But on free nights she lay awake trembling in anticipation, knowing that the next morning she would find him at the piano in the Singer's Salon, lingering over his plangent, dissonant chords.

To keep from being distracted by hunger, she carried a roll or piece of baguette in her pocket, and munched it on the way. Or she would eat her morning bread and watch him sway as he made the piano sing. He would play until she finished her soft roll or baguette, and each morning she ate a little more slowly, just to watch those slow, rhythmic movements of head and hand and fingers, as well as to hear those sweet, sad tunes. What came out of him on those mornings always surprised her, whether it was a folk tune from Romany or Bretagne, or something of his own invention.

That morning, he sang an Irish melody that flowed back and forth like water poured out of a fountain.

"How can you hold your breath that long?" she asked when he finished.

"It's easier to learn when you're younger. When Cassinelli was an older boy, they spent hours every day on their breath - holding it, learning to control it, how to expand their chests. As they grew, their chests grew far beyond the capacity of most adult men. I will never sound like him; his chest was monumental, and not flattened out, but almost entirely round, like a barrel. But he did the best with me that he could."

"I want to learn to do that, too. You could teach me."

"Well, there's a problem, Mlle. Sigurdsdotter. Your corset."

She blushed and wondered, is this when the seduction begins? "My corset? What has that to do with anything?"

"It holds in your chest and stomach. You can't fully expand. You'll never get all the breath in that you need, and if your chest can't grow and expand, you'll never get that deep richness of sound."

"So no other singer knows this? Every singer I know wears a corset."

"Have you ever tried singing without one?"

She stood there by the piano, nonplussed. "I'll try it later, in private."

"If you come tomorrow wearing a corset, there's no point in showing you Cassinelli's breathing exercises. It's up to you. Wear your overcoat if you're concerned about modesty," he said straightforwardly.

The next morning Kristina wore one of Anneke's thick, shapeless overcoats and kept it on. He said nothing, but smiled the first real smile she’d seen so far. It started in his eyes and lit them from within. Then it crept downward and played over his mouth, twisting it into a wry shape.

Inside the wool coat she suddenly felt very warm.

"The boys had to learn to breathe for months before being allowed to sing a single note," he said.

So while the two still sang together for pleasure, day after day Kristina breathed, or thought of breathing, or relaxed into breathing.

"I feel like an oboe," she remarked one morning, when Anneke's hot coat confined her more than it ever had, and she had just finished a particularly long and tough exhale. "Did you ever try to play one? The first oboist teased me one evening, handing it to me to see what kind of noise I'd make. You blow and blow, and nothing comes out but a little ducky squawk and you feel like you're going to fall over."

He chuckled lightly. Then all around Kristina the room started to turn a light green, then a darker forest green, and when she opened her eyes again, she found herself looking at the painted portraits of the ladies on the ceiling. Alberich's big shoulders hunkered over her, and his irregular face hovered above them like the cratered moon.

She felt slightly sick from the faint, and when she started to gag, he rolled her over swiftly onto her side. "The coat has to come off," he said, and as she struggled to a sitting position, still wobbly in the head, he helped her out of the heavy wool garment.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, when she’d caught her breath. She reached for the coat.

“It’s why you fainted,” he said.

“Please, M. Niemann, give it to me.” Hot tears of shame and embarrassment climbed up her throat and made her voice thick.

Reluctantly he draped it over her shoulders.

She pulled the coat tighter around her, and still a bit wobbly, she tried to clamber to her feet. “I have to go. Please, let me by.” Her eyes blurred with tears, and she was afraid she would swoon again, so she sat back down. Her dress was one of Anneke’s old ones from when she’d been a bit stouter, and it hung around Kristina's uncorseted waist. She’d tried to confine her breasts with a chemise tightened severely under the arms. Even so, the weight of her loose breasts made her cross her arms in front of her, and she sat there as miserable as a shucked oyster ready for the soup pot.

Alberich moved from a crouch down to the floor next to her, where he crossed his legs Indian-style. "How long have we been working together?" he asked.

Still slightly dizzy, she said, "About three weeks, I think, off and on. In between performances and recitals."

"Have I ever behaved inappropriately to you?"

"Of course not - you have been more of a gentleman than some of those who feel God gave them a perfect right to the title." Kristina had felt the hands of those "gentlemen" occasionally, and always delivered a swift slap when it was required.

"I'm not Conservatory trained. I don't make my living as a singer. So you don't have to believe me when I tell you that to sing, you have to use your body - all of your body. You're not just an ethereal spirit hovering around the chandelier. Think of the pipe of the organ, or the reed of the oboe. We're no different. Sound comes from the movement of air over the part that resonates - in this case, the voice box in your throat. Two things determine how much air goes through your voice box - the size of your lungs, of your chest, and the strength of the muscles down below that push the air up. To push that air up, you need room." He offered her his hand. “Now, will you let me help you up?”

The room still swayed a little. "M. Niemann,” she said, “I want to go to my dressing room, have some mineral water, and lie down now. I don't feel well enough to continue." She wondered if he would ask to come along, or hint that he certainly would like a mineral water as well.

A little trace of alarm flickered in his eyes. "Kristina … oh, forgive me for using your Christian name. I haven’t offended you by speaking so frankly, I hope. You will come back tomorrow?"

"Of course," she said as she wrapped the heavy wool coat around herself. When he said nothing, she went out awkwardly, blushing and not knowing what else to say.

Later, stretched out on the chaise lounge in dusty little Room Seven, feeling the flow of her uncorseted body beneath the loose dress, it struck her that while he never stared or gawked, his interest hovered like a vibration in the air. Men didn't treat her that way, usually. They either ignored her, like most of the ballet boys, who had more interest in the ribbons on her costume slippers than she did. Or they fawned on her, those men in evening dress like Etienne de Coucy, men who sent flowers and the supper invitations which she routinely declined.

But she wanted more. She had seen so little of Paris, especially the Paris of the night, which everyone talked about. But she didn't want to go with one of those overdressed, overstuffed men, who thought that because they took a singer to a supper club, they could invite her to one of the private rooms upstairs. She didn't want to have to pretend wit, or cleverness, or make jokes about subjects of no interest. Anyway, she knew these men weren't interested in music. They talked through entire operas anyway, or showed up just to look at the dancers, or to watch the actress in trousers kiss the prima donna behind the cuckolded husband's back.

Her hands traveled over her stomach and hips, feeling them spread without whalebone and twill to contain them. She sat up straight and inhaled as Alberich had showed her, keeping her shoulders level, her back perfectly straight, and letting her belly swell outward with air. If he were going to lay a hand on you, he would have done so already. It's not that he hasn't had opportunities. Nor has he ever said a single gross word to you. Some might blush and be offended at talk of stomach muscles and bellies, but he says it in such a way that you can't stay embarrassed.

She put a hand on her stomach, and at once it seemed as if her hand had become his own broad one. Careful, Kristina. Have some more mineral water. The ice is thin here, and you've just started to skate.

She drank, and that sensation returned of every sense heightened, of colors brighter, of the bitter water wetter and sharper than it had been before. Tomorrow, she thought, I leave the coat on the bench.

* * * * * *

Early the next morning, pain pushed her up through the slow sludge of sleep, and prodded her into the light. No, I'm not ready, she complained, half in and out of dream, and back down into the dark she went. Alberich came to her in a fog of red light and pressed down on her belly, hard and slow, until she almost cried out. Then it all shifted and he wasn't pressing with hurt in mind, but instead pushed something out of her, something stuck. He pushed, and pushed with his big hand, and his hand turned to a fist. Then she awoke to the familiar cramp and drag in her thighs and belly and back.

Just what I need. Groggy from sleep and the previous long night of singing, she got up to heat water for tea and the hot water bottle. The tin of willow bark tea was empty. That would mean pulling on clothes, and fixing her hair, and walking three blocks to the chemist’s shop. Not worth it. I’ll get a nip of brandy. No, two nips. That ought to quiet it down. As she headed for the parlor, her hair all tumbled down and her housecoat half opened, a loud knock startled her into wakefulness. No good ducking back into the bedroom; Amelie wasn’t there and she would have to answer the door herself. Well, it served them right if they got a terrible fright from looking at her. They deserved it for barging in on a singer at this ungodly hour.

What time was it, anyway? The knock came again, insistent. “Who is it?” she called, her voice still cracked with sleep.

“Telegraph,” a young male voice answered.

Panic seized her, for a moment strong enough to wipe out the pain. Oh, my God. I hope Anneke is all right. A succession of quick visions raced through her mind – a train accident, a sudden illness.

The boy stared at her when she opened the door, not even looking down at the half a franc which she pressed absently into his hand. With the door securely shut, Kristina tore the envelope open so quickly that she almost shredded its contents.

The fear beating out with the waves of her pounding heart turned to annoyance as she read the telegram. It was from M. Gicard. La Renata was indisposed, and Kristina was to take her place tonight at the special performance featuring highlights from some of Paris’s favorite operas. She was to sing Maestro Gounod’s Marguerite, and Juliette from his opera of the same name. The rehearsal was to begin at noon.

That put an end to the possibility of any willow bark tea, if she were to make it to the theater by noon. Anneke had some laudanum for the nights when her joints ached, but Kristina knew that would make her sleepy, and stumble over her lines. She would have to suffer through it. Sighing, she rummaged for one of the knit cotton pads Anneke had showed her how to make when her hair still hung in long braids. It wasn’t until she sat down to sip her black tea that she realized she had long since missed her morning meeting with Alberich. That will be difficult to explain, she thought, as she sat at the kitchen table drenched with late morning sunlight, her fingers pressed up against her eyes, hoping to staunch the throbbing in her head. At least the first day usually isn't the worst. That pleasure will come tomorrow. Alberich will just have to endure this morning without me.

Right before noon, Kristina dragged herself off to rehearse, still cramping and aching down to the knees. She had just taken off her hat when Camille Letourneau dashed up, a little breathless. "You've got to go on right now. Imagine, you're singing Marguerite tonight. It's great; I finally get to do Siebel again."

“The news could have come a little sooner. I just got the message this morning.”

Camille gave her a critical look. “Probably because Renata waited until the last minute herself. What’s the matter? You look like a sick cat.”

“Meow,” Kristina said.

“Well, if you don’t want to do it,” Camille said, with a tiny undertone of threat in her voice.

“Of course I do,” and Kristina pulled herself up against the painful heaviness that felt like a sandbag dragging her down to earth. “What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

Camille shrugged. “You’d better put some rouge on those cheeks. You look positively chlorotic.”

“What do you think is wrong with Renata?"

"She says she's ill.” Camille rolled her eyes. “De Carnac says if she's 'ill' one too many times, the managers will can her."

Lead tenor Filippo Lorello swung over to them both. "It's true," he said. It didn't seem possible that a voice that high and clear could come from a body so rotund. He folded his arms across his bulky chest and frowned. "All new contracts are coming for every one of us, even those who just signed. It's all about money. Devereaux and Blanchette have been spending it like water, and half the time they don't know where it goes. Not to our salaries, that's certain."

Camille laughed a little. "Our salaries aren't that bad. You just have that new wife and all those babies," and she poked his soft stomach.

Lorello flushed and then hugged her. "Someone's got to feed them."

"How many do you have now, anyway?" Camille asked.

"My sainted Dolorosa," and he made the sign of the cross, "gave me two beautiful daughters, gifts of God. They're fourteen and sixteen now, not yet married, but soon will be, the saints willing. My Annarosa gave me my son, who's three, and now twin boys, and all the little birds chirp every day for more worms."

"Worms is what they'll get from these cheapskates," she replied. "I think we should all hold out for hard bargains, and not let them think we're too easy."

"So La Renata is sick?" Kristina ventured to Lorello. "I've never sung Marguerite with you, and I'm a little nervous. Are we doing the Jewel song, the trio at the end, what?"

"The final trio, but we won't be costumed. That takes away from it, especially for Riali. He says he can't properly sing Mephisto if he's not dressed for it."

"Let him dress like a country gentleman, and that will be devil enough," Camille said. Backstage gossip linked her with one or two girls whom Riali had left over from last season; she sounded bitter.

M. De Carnac, immersed in a heated discussion with several of the strings, caught Kristina's eye and gestured, “Get on now, what are you waiting for?” He snapped his baton across his hand angrily. Someone was having an even worse day than Kristina.

Lorello motioned to Kristina. "Come over here, sweetheart, and I'll show you how we block that last trio. It's not hard."

* * * * * * *

Tea-time came, and after a few bites of caramel bun and sips of tea, Kristina remembered to visit the costumers. In the costume studio she found a new woman, tall and thin as a piece of yarn, sharply stabbing a dress with pins.

"What roles for tonight?" the costumer barked.

"Juliette and Marguerite. Where's the wardrobe mistress?"

"Out sick," she snapped. "I'm taking over for now. You're late, anyway. What do you expect me to do, sew you into your dress?"

Did she talk this way to Renata? Of course not, because Renata had her own seamstress, who tailored every costume exactly to her big body.

The seamstress pulled out an ivory satin gown that looked like an escaped lunatic had decorated a wedding cake. It was one or two sizes too small.

"I'm never going to fit into that," Kristina remarked.

The waspish woman spun around as if accused of being fit only to stitch habits for the nuns. "Off with your dress," she said. "We'll make it fit."

As she tugged on Kristina's corset, lacing it up as tightly as it would go, she complained, "Of course it won't fit, not with how you have this laced. You young girls, thinking you can go around just letting your stomachs hanging out. In my day, men could circle a woman's waist with their hands. Anything larger was considered gross. Oh, forget this, it will never lace tightly enough. You've had it fitted far too large. I want you to wear this one instead," and she wrapped around Kristina a great whalebone contraption, and yanked the laces so hard Kristina gasped. “Stop whining. We're not done," and yanked again.

This time the breath flew right out of Kristina as the corset pushed her breasts up almost under her chin. The seamstress lowered the dress and laced it up, pulling hard. Kristina's pushed-up breasts bobbled out of the top, which was no doubt the desired effect, but she could scarcely breathe.

"You have to loosen it," Kristina said, struggling for breath. "I can't sing like this." Under the wardrobe woman's cross look, her lower belly started to cramp up again. Kristina stomped her foot. "Loosen these infernal stays! I'll tear this thing off right now if you don't!"

The glowering woman removed the dress, loosened the stays perhaps a finger's width at most. By the time Kristina heaved that dreadful concoction of ivory ruffles and beads back on, and the seamstress took in a tuck here, let out a pleat there, sweat ran down Kristina's back, and her knees began to buckle.

"Now for Marguerite's dress," the woman announced, and hauled Kristina out of the wedding cake dress and into a heavy dark blue velvet arrangement that looked like it had been salvaged from some Tudor travesty.

"What kind of costume is this for Marguerite?" Kristina asked in annoyance. "She's supposed to be in prison, waiting to get executed."

"I didn't pick it. Make everyone lovely, they told me. Well, you're lovely. That blue goes very well with your skin and reddish hair."

"I look like an overstuffed chaise lounge," Kristina remarked. Then it was back out of the sofa upholstery and back into the wedding cake all over again, and her knees trembled even more.

At the end, painted, bewigged, trussed, and jiggling on top like a gelatin mold, Kristina waited backstage.

The conductor took the podium, and a hush fell over the entire hall. Box 17 looked dark and unoccupied, although every other box glowed with candles, jewels, and the bright faces of the onlookers. Perhaps M. Niemann was up there, watching from the shadows everyone thought were reserved for the 'ghost.' She blinked, and as the first notes rose from the pit, swallowed away a flick of nausea.

While the Paris Opera’s singers got to perform Romeo et Juliette frequently, this was the first time any of its strains had been heard at the Eclectic Theater, and Kristina wobbled inside for a moment, wondering if she really could fill the hall with Renata’s big notes. On the sprightly arietta “Ah, je veux vivre,” she tried to pull all her breath up from the depths of her body, and bounced smoothly up and down the flowing passages. Like Juliette, Kristina too felt as if she had a secret little flame hidden like a treasure inside of her, and the final, almost impossibly high note in the phrase “longtemps encor” emerged effortlessly because the rising heat from that inner flame pushed it out. The crowd made some murmurs of pleased acknowledgment, and M. De Carnac himself looked up at her briefly, as if surprised.

Lorello then joined her for the final death scene between Romeo and Juliette. His fine tenor brought home the deep sadness and wastefulness of the young lovers’ pointless sacrifice, and as she joined him for “Ou, suis-je,” tears stood in her eyes. She usually didn't cry on stage, as it made her voice thick, but tonight the tears flowed down her painted face. She and the round-faced tenor had never done this duet on stage, but together they became the doomed lovers as thoroughly as if they had been born to it. When they cried out their hopes for flight and happiness, the hum of continual background chatter, the clinking of glasses, the pushing of chairs in the boxes, subsided a little.

They're really listening. That would be a first. And Lorello is splendid tonight.

No longer was he a heavy man over fifty playing a youth of fifteen. The young suitor, Dolarosa's lover, emerged from beneath the thick cracked paste covering his round lined face. The tears fell unabashedly down both their cheeks, and her final “Je t’aime” came out not just for him, but for the man she couldn't see, the one listening from somewhere in the shadows of that great hall.

In the wings, Lorello planted two enormous kisses on each of Kristina's cheeks. "Do you know why I cried, and why I now have to go fix my face?" She shook her head, stunned. When Lorello finished an opera with Renata, he walked away without a word. He said, "I looked over at you and saw my oldest daughter lying there in that tomb. It was as if I wanted to rescue her, to make her live, but I couldn't." He turned away from her with a final whispered, "Bellisima!"

At intermission Kristina tried to do something about her dress. However, when she beckoned Camille Letourneau over and asked her for some help unlacing, Camille gave a cold glance and said, "Where's your maid?"

"Not here tonight, or I wouldn't have asked you."

"I'm on right when intermission ends. I’m going out for a cigarette first. Find someone else."

"So, your aim is to sound like a frog? You'd do better to help me out."

"I'm your understudy, Svenska, not your maid, and if I want to smoke, I will. Go find someone else to unlace you. Don't you have a costume change, anyway? Maybe it would also help to lay off the potatoes."

Kristina's face burned as a twittery costumer's maid fussed over the blue embroidered horror that was supposed to decorate the suffering prisoner Marguerite. Camille had never delivered comments so sharp or insulting before. Then Kristina understood that Camille had been Renata's understudy, before Kristina signed a contract. They pushed her farther down the ladder, instead of up. And unlike Renata, I don't get sick, and I always show up.

The finale was Marguerite's triumphant ascension into heaven at the end of Gounod's Faust. Kristina knew the legend from childhood, but Pappa's ending went differently from Maestro Gounod's. Faust went on to achieve wisdom and understanding, and finally tricked his way out of the devil's bargain. Her elation from the duet with Lorello had all but vanished. Why can't we do that happy ending here? Why all this tragedy? Why does everyone at the end of these stories have to die in particularly nasty ways?

Lost in gloomy thoughts, Kristina almost collided with the baritone Riali backstage, already costumed as Mephistopheles. So he'd gotten his way after all. But his lingering stares down her bosom went on far too long.

"You're beautiful tonight, Svenska. A sight for sore eyes longing for a fresh young Marguerite, if you ask me."

"No one did ask you, Riali, and your comments are most insulting to La Renata, and not all that flattering to me."

"With that dress, darling, I think I'll fight off Lorello and the angels, and drag you down into hell with me instead."

His frank staring made her want to laugh, rather than blush. "Some costume for a penitent, eh?"

"That's opera for you. It makes no sense. Just open your mouth and sing it."

He gave her a quick buzz on the cheek and strutted away, one minute later laughing with a chorus girl, who hopefully wasn't naïve enough to take his banter seriously.

Suddenly Kristina missed Alberich very much. I know he's here. Why do I feel so shy even thinking of him, when I can trade quips and jibes with Riali and Lorello, even Camille, any day of the week? He would probably make some pithy comment about how tightly I was laced. If he would love this dress, he wouldn't show it.

Lorello looked concerned, and Riali leered devilishly at her again as they left backstage. "You look ill, dear," Lorello said. “You're swaying like a ship in the wind.”

"It's nothing," she replied as the footlights blurred a little, and De Carnac at the conductor's podium seemed farther away than he should have been.

Nervousness left her the instant the music began to play. Lorello, Riali and Kristina soared on a great wave of sound, and when the chorus came out to join them in the final angelic uplift, the audience followed the lead of several prominent box-holders and rose to its feet in thunderous applause.

Kristina looked up to Box 17 again, and this time it wasn't imagination; a grey figure moved among the dark shadows of the box. Was it Alberich, the man nobody seemed to know, but who sang like an angel and played the fiddle like the devil himself, up there in the “ghost's” box? Suddenly a cramp of pain and sickness opened up in her stomach. She thought she saw him leaning over the edge of Box 17 as if wanting to come out of the shadows. Then everything before her eyes whirled all together in a wavering green mass. The next thing she knew, her cheek rested against the cold hard floor of the stage that smelled of the wax used to shine boots.

It was terrible luck, to be hauled off stage like a sack of flour. Lorello hoisted Kristina in his strong arms and laid her against his thick soft chest, carrying her like one of his own little daughters. She squeezed her eyes shut and rested her head against his powerful mass, not wanting to open them again. She had just hit the floor in front of a thousand people and the shame was almost too much to bear.

Behind her closed eyes, Kristina heard jabbering and chattering. Riali boomed out, “Get out of the way, someone's already called the doctor, give her air, just move, why don't you?” Then Riali faded, but Lorello marched on, and she nestled closer to him, wanting to stay that way forever, wanting never to have to open her eyes again. Cold air hit her face as they turned a corner. She heard the click of a lock, and the familiar powder-and-dust smell told her she was back in her dressing room.

Lorello set her down tenderly on the chaise, and stepped aside so that the white-haired house doctor could sit down. The dressing room's door quickly filled up with people, and a few even crossed over the threshold. One stocky youth stood to one side in a dark corner by the door where the gaslight never seemed to go.

"Get these people out of here," the doctor said. "I've got a patient to examine."

Lorello shooed them out, but the youth remained. To Kristina he looked vaguely familiar, with his face screwed up into an expression of passionate interest and concern, and also puzzlement, as if he expected to be recognized by the girl who lay back on the chaise, two hot tears leaking out from under her closed eyes.

"Please get everyone out of here," Kristina whispered to the doctor. "I feel as if I'm coming apart."

The elderly man shoved everyone out, including the silent young one, shutting the door conclusively. "Where's the maid?" he asked in irritation. “Bother her, I'll have to do this myself. Don't be embarrassed, Mademoiselle, but I must ask you to remove your dress and loosen your stays. Do you know how many times I get called because of these infernal accoutrements?" He helped her loosen both the dress and the corset beneath, and her ribs swelled out in relief. "Don't get up," he ordered. "I'm not done. When did you last eat?" He shook his head at Kristina's vague answer, and pulled down one pink eyelid. "It's a little pale. Have you just had your monthlies?"

"They started today.”

"I'm glad you admitted it to me. Some won't even acknowledge that they have them. Listen to me, young lady. You need to eat more beef. Salads and aspic are fine, but ladies need beef. French women especially never seem to understand that."

"I'm not French; I'm from Sweden."

"Then, constitutionally, you're descended from people who ate practically nothing but meat. Loosen your stays as far as modesty will allow; stop skipping meals, and eat more of what's on the hoof. I think you're going to live, but you have to take better care of yourself. Come see me tomorrow or the day after if you're not feeling better. Don't take laudanum for your monthlies, either. It just makes things worse in the long run," and with that, he went out the door.

Kristina stood up, surprisingly steady on her feet. Through the door the doctor spoke sharply to someone, saying, "No, she can't see you now, do you hear? She's had a shock and needs rest. You young men need to stop hanging about the corridors. This isn't a Pigalle brothel. Just go home and leave the lady alone," and then his footsteps receded into the distance.

Wrapped up in one of Anneke's warm afghans, she gently rocked back and forth with unhappiness. She could bear neither the thought of the walk home in the dark, nor the idea of sleeping on the chaise or the daybed. She drifted away to where a tiny, forlorn creature scurried back and forth, lost in a maze of stone, looking endlessly for an exit never found.

A gentle tap on the door interrupted her dream. "Mlle. Sigurdsdotter?"

She swung the door open at once and there he was, his mournful face crossed with anxiety. He waited until she took hold of his cloak and rapidly drew him in, then shut the door. "I saw you faint," he said. "How are you now?" He stood there with his hat pulled low over his face, as if he hadn't wanted anyone to recognize him in the corridor. Almost as an afterthought, he removed his hat.

"Alberich! Oh, I'm sorry, M. Niemann. I'm not myself right now, and you must forgive me."

He looked at the costume lying on the chair. "Your corset was too tight, wasn't it?"

"I knew you would say that. Don't worry, I've already had the lecture from the doctor. He also told me to eat more beef," and Alberich half-smiled again. "I imagined you listening to me. I tried to put into practice what you've taught me, but the dress was just too tight. I couldn't hold my breath that long, and when I tried … well, you saw. I shouldn't be surprised if I'm never given the role of Marguerite again. They'll think I don't have it in me. Maybe I don't."

"You do. You would make a splendid Marguerite."

"Oh, it's a showcase role, all right, and the singing part itself would be a great triumph.”

“It's cold in here,” he said, and adjusted the woolen afghan around her again.

Nestled in, she went on, “But I don't even like her, as a character. She breaks poor Siebel's heart, all because he's poor, even when he truly loves her. When Pappa and I lived in Uppsala, people treated us as if we were nothing because we were poor. Then she yields herself to Faust … but that isn't the worst part; it's her poor darling baby. Then, simply because she won't go with Faust at the end, but decides to die instead, she gets taken up to Heaven. We never even hear that she was sorry about the baby."

He leaned his head against the wall. His hair was what night might look like, if it were poured out of a bottle and set about with threads of silver.

"Right before we went on,” she prattled, “Riali told me that it was opera; that it didn't have to make sense. I almost long for the days when I sang at the Comic Opera. At least the characters' motivations were understandable. They were either in love, or someone was in love with them, and it all got tangled up into this silly, overblown plot. But at bottom, it was all about the heart, and funny besides. I thought 'serious opera' would be grand, but it's mostly incoherent, and it always ends so sadly."

"You're feeling better," he remarked. "And you're missing the party."

"I couldn't go. I'm sad and I'm tired. You wouldn't think fainting was hard work, but it is. I'm too weary to face the walk home, and the thought of staying here while a party rages through the whole theater … "

He said in a loud, firm voice, "You sang beautifully tonight, unlike anything from you that I have heard so far."

"I sang for you. I imagined you listening to me." She recalled the strange mental picture right before everything went green and black. "Where were you sitting tonight, M. Niemann?"

His eyes flickered in the gaslight, and the shadows under them looked very bruised. "I bought a seat up in the top tier. Luckily I got the center."

"What? You weren't in your box?"

He laughed without smiling. “My box? What am I, a lord?”

“But I thought ...” and she stopped. What had she seen up there, if anything? Distracted by the deep glittery dark of his eyes, by how the dimmed gaslight backlit his long hair with an almost halo-like glow, she wanted to take his hand, but held herself back. “Never mind.”

The moment passed, and he stirred. "Mlle. Sigurdsdotter, I would like to escort you home. A walk is less burdensome when it's made in company."

She warmed to the second genuine burst of happiness of the day. As they went into the hall, Kristina veered towards her customary turn to the left, but he gestured to follow him to the right. As they rounded the corner she heard a shout in the hallway as someone called her name, but Alberich steered her deftly along, clearly not wanting to wait for whomever it was that called out for her. Just some other well-wisher anyway. I'd much rather head for home.

Then, to her surprise, Alberich entered the little cul-de-sac at the end of the hall, placed his hand on the left-side wall, and a narrow door opened into a dark, masonry-lined passageway. She followed him in and the door closed behind without a sound.

A few dim gaslights spaced at long intervals made it barely possible to see. The corridor was too narrow for the two of them to walk abreast, so she crept up closely behind him. They walked for what seemed a long way, and then another fork branched off to the right, into a hallway even darker, narrower, and more forlorn than this one.

"Where does it go?" she asked.

"Down below to the basement," he replied. "But we're going up and out, not down. Be quiet, as we're not supposed to be here now.” They went on in silence for another few moments, and then came out onto that side of the theater away from the cab stands and crowds.

“I saved you a block or so walk, didn't I?” he said, offering his arm as they crossed the boulevard.

"How did you come to know so much about the Eclectic Theater?"

“It's full of tunnels. Some were from the war with the Prussians, but some are older than that. I found a lot of them while wiring the building for the new electric lights.” He offered her his arm as he slowed his long strides to match hers. His arm radiated warmth through the woolen cloak and jacket beneath it. She put her other hand on top of it as they walked on, and the big hard muscle in his forearm trembled a little. "They also pay me to keep up the gas lines and venting for the gas system, and the pumps which keep the lower cellar from filling up with water."

"You aren't building now."

"Soon, probably. I have some of my own designs. But they're unusual, and it's hard to find someone to invest in them. It will take time, but I'll find a way to work on them."

"If not here, then in Algeria?"

He looked surprised, but before he could answer, another couple passed them going the other way. The woman was drunk and almost sprawled on her partner, who leaned over to kiss the side of her face as they both stumbled on.

Embarrassed, Kristina leaned a little closer into his arm, and almost walked past her own building. It was after two in the morning, and coming home with a man on her arm was still quite new, even if it was the one man whom she wanted to see all through this evening. It was worth the faint, and the humiliation of crumpling to the stage floor in front of all those people.

Presently Alberich stopped, and she looked around dazedly. "I really am more tired than I thought. It was so pleasant to just keep on going.” Still holding on to his arm, reluctant to let go, she said, "Tomorrow I have to sleep, but what about the next day? We don't have to go to the Singers' Salon. You could come to my dressing room.” Then she felt a trace of anxiety; was that too forward? In the world backstage, a man in the dressing room meant one thing.

“All right,” he said. “I have something you might find interesting. I'll provide our accompaniment.” Then he smiled, a full and genuine smile that lit up his face in the soft cold night that smelled of snow. The broad expanse of night sky threatened to snow fat white flakes that would cover everything. All through Kristina's childhood, winter meant snow, not the anemic slush that lined the Parisian streets. She wanted to see Alberich in the snow, with flakes covering his streaked hair. “I think you'll like it,” he went on. “Now I'll wait here until I see the light come on in your window."

As she walked up the stairs, looking anxiously at the concierge's dark window, she turned to see him standing so still under the gaslight, casting a long shadow of intense blackness. When she lit her bedroom light and looked out over the balcony, he was still there, and he waved before turning swiftly to stride noiselessly up the street.

His shoes were so quiet. And how was it that he knew at which building to stop?

(continued …)