Magic Flutes полностью

‘I shall go to Schalk!’ stated Raisa – and Jacob blenched. Schalk was the director of Vienna’s most prestigious institution, the heavily subsidized State Opera. Saying ‘Schalk’ to Jacob was like saying ‘Boots’ to a struggling British retail chemist.

Rallying, he launched into an impassioned speech in praise of Debussy’s subtle, impressionistic score, its contrapuntal texture, its throbbing beauty . . .

The idea of throbbing beautifully had a slightly calming effect on Raisa, who narrowed her greedy almond eyes and said that if Jacob was prepared to consider a bonus, ‘zinking’ in French might just be possible.

To all this Tessa, busy repainting a flat for Tosca in the wings, listened with eager interest. True, there were strange things in Pelleas and Melisande. One never knew, for example, who exactly Melisande was. Was she a mortal or a being from another world? Had she in fact deceived her husband, Gollaud, with his handsome younger brother Pelleas? And why did she keep losing quite so many things down wells – her crown, her golden ball, her wedding ring? But the whole opera, played largely behind a gauze and subtly and romantically lit, was the very stuff of poetry – and modern too.

She was therefore a little disappointed when Boris, spooning yoghurt on to his plate at lunchtime, said gloomily, ‘You know what Pelleas means, don’t you? It means hair. And hair, right now, spells trouble.’

Boris was right. For the outstanding feature of Melisande which makes her mysterious, haunting beauty unforgettable, is her knee-length shimmering, streaming, golden hair. With this hair, as she lets it fall from her window, the lovesick Pelleas besottedly toys; with this hair Gollaud, her jealous husband, humiliates her, pulling her by it back and forth across the stage. The same hair surrounds her, an incandescent aureole, as she lies dying.

Hair for wigs comes traditionally from nuns. Italian nuns, mostly, since the Italians are noted for being both hirsute and religious, and postulants by the hundred are shorn to become brides of Christ. But her Italian possessions had been wrested from Austria, as had Moravia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and all the other countries which had once humbly supplied the capital with everything from paprika to the tresses of their young girls. Of late, Boris had been driven to do business with the local convents, which had been anything but easy – with the fall of the monarchy and the urgings of the new republic, the religious vocation of Vienna’s jeunes filles had declined disastrously.

Any hope that they would get away with horsehair dipped in peroxide, or an old wig from Meistersinger, was dispelled at the first rehearsal. Max Regensburg, the young director called in for the production, was a realist through and through. ‘This Melisande must be flesh and blood,’ he declared, and the company, envisaging Raisa’s bulk, felt he had a point.

On a cold morning during the second week of rehearsals, Tessa accordingly set off on the long tram ride which took her to the lower slopes of the Leopolds-berg and trudged up a steep, tree-lined avenue to the Convent of the Sacred Heart – only to be met at the gate by a distraught Mother Superior.

‘My dear, I’m so sorry but I’m afraid the girl I spoke of has turned out to be quite unfit to take her final vows!’ She lowered her voice. ‘We found her with the carpenter who came to fix one of the prie-dieux. Such a scandal! We had to send her straight home!’

Two days later Tessa arrived at the Convent of the Annunciation in the working-class district of Ottakring, only to find that she had been beaten by a Swiss merchant who had appeared the day before and bought up the entire crop of hair.

‘He paid in Swiss currency, you see,’ the Mistress of Postulants apologized, ‘and our Order is very poor.’

The Convent of the Blessed Virgin was in quarantine for typhus. The Convent of the Resurrection yielded a single, meagre hank of hair at which Boris looked in disgust.

‘I can fudge the colour, but I’ve got to have the length,’ he said gloomily.

With a week to go to the dress rehearsal, Boris grew frantic. The making of a wig is a most delicate business, for some four thousand strands of hair have to be knotted painstakingly into the lace.

‘What am I going to do?’ he enquired. ‘Jesus Maria, what am I going to do?’

Tessa, who was sewing silver stars on to Melisande’s cloak, lifted her head and rather sadly told him.

At Pfaffenstein, everything was going ahead as Guy had planned. The absent Putzerl had given her consent to the sale; the workmen, much impressed by the dollars with which they were paid, had promised to carry out the necessary repairs in the minimum of time and David, left in charge at the Pfaffenstein Arms, was following his employer’s orders to spare no expense in preparing for the house party in June.