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The performance was a triumph, one of her best. She had been in fantastic voice tonight. The ghostlike stupor and despairing devotion of poor little Amina had been conjured with great depth and virtuosity. He felt the entire audience, including the needliest critics and stoniest purists, hold their breath as La Sonnambula had padded like a drowsy feline across the precarious crevasse of the rickety old mill bridge. The blood rushed to his pale cheeks as she awoke, falling into the arms of her virile Elvino. His fingertips tingled to hear her voice flutter through the animated passages of the delightful final aria.
The last waves of applause washed away after the encore. The rising house lights assaulted his retinas and he returned to reality. He recalled exactly why he had dragged himself here in the first place.
Oh, God. Twenty-nine. One more year exactly until Living Death claimed him.
It had become a clockwork ritual. Every midsummer he would book a suite at the same hotel, reserve a seat at the same lavish opera house and order a lurid cocktail at the same piano bar. He looked forward to it each year with gratification and dread. As he ticked another year off, it was one of the rare occasions in which he could get out of Lazytown, leave Robbie Rotten behind to wistfully indulge what little of Glannitino was still left inside him.
On some years, when he was in a less morbid mood, he’d managed to find a companion to celebrate with. In the high bloom of his early twenties there had been one or two fumbling hook-ups with narcissistic gym rats— experiences which had left him feeling more dried up than the inevitable cocktail hangover. And on his twenty-fifth, there had been Brad, or Brent, or whatever his name was. A few months of designer jewellery, lobster dinners and weekends at a luxurious beach house. Then the bastard’s poor wife had walked in on them, and Robbie declared he’d rather die than submit to being the bit on the side.
Apart from that, birthdays were just as lonely as the rest of the year.
He scanned the quiet, walnut-panelled confines of the piano bar. Apart from the ham sitting at the ebony Steinway (thinking himself excruciatingly clever and innovative for tinkling out a transposed rendition of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”), there were a few huddled clumps of creatures gathered about the place, aging quietly with their lukewarm Merlots. Well, at least it was better than having to face the noise and colour of the club scene. How he hated house music.
He roosted upon the most inconspicuous barstool he could find and asked the bartender for whatever was full of obscene amounts of cream and liqueur. Screw ethanol, nothing gave him a bigger buzz than sugar and tryptophanes.
He settled into the cloudy reflection in his Magarita glass. The nasal timbre of the Rufus Wainwright wannabe provided a citric tang to the haze of alcohol.
“Someday he’ll come along
The Man I Love
And he’ll be big and strong
The Man I Love
And when he comes my way
I’ll do my best to make to stay…”
“Oh, Teddy, you couldn’t tell your elbow from your ass.”
“I tell you, it’s him! Those green eyes, those Nordic genes, the classic look of a child of the stage.”
“Darling, all men start looking that good after enough post-show champagne.”
“Go and hit on him. Fifty bucks says a Viking accent will come outta that mouth.”
A quick glance askance told him more than he wanted to know. A flock of three clucking opera queens had swooped their way from the theatre to Robbie’s haunt, with the same ‘idea’ of a post-opera nightcap. Christ, they must have spotted him in the lobby or something. Leering at him from the raised lounges at the back of the bar, they looked like the gay Statler and Waldorf.
Turning away and sighing, he awaited the onslaught.
“Excuse me, my dear…”
“No thank you. I don’t care how many times you’ve listened to my mother’s Donna Elvira, you can’t have any of the royalties. I need them to escape from the creepier of her fans.”
An affectatious gasp. “It is you!”
He stared determinedly into his drink, and endured the crushing aura of their invasion.
“Glannitino!”
“Good lord, it really is the little clown of the opera world!”
“My, how you’ve grown since those days of backstage pranks and gambols!”
“And from that great glug of amaretto there, I see you’re just as much of a sweet tooth as ever.”
He hoped his mother wasn’t watching over him right now. He lethargically wondered what she would make of the debauched delinquent her once adorable little clown had become. The same curly-haired pixie who had often serenaded her with an off-key Paggliaco in her La Scala dressing room.
Ridi, Pagliaccio! Sul tuo amore infranto!
Laugh, clown, at your broken love.
“Misericordia! Theodoro, il vampiro! Leave the poor boy alone! Get back to il teatro at once, naughty man! You have molti repairs on my costume before Sunday matinee! Your stitching was lazy, all the belli cristallini were falling off all over the stage tonight! Povera Irma was in tears!”
Robbie almost choked.
The Milanese Nightingale had descended from the heavens to scold her mortal handmaidens. She stood in the doorway, illuminated by the outside streetlight. ‘Theodoro’ had forgotten his diffident victim, grovelling at her feet pathetically.
“Yes, Signora Castafiore. Right away, Signora Castafiore.”
The handmaidens scuttled out onto the pavement.
Their eyes met. True to her Italian form, there was not a shade of aloofness in her face.
“Glannitino!” She opened her arms, singing his name as a joyful coloratura melody.
**
The press had revelled in the decades-long scandal of La Fata Lillà vs. Bianca Castafiore. According to the masses in the stalls, the Milanese Nightingale had resented the Icelandic Fairy’s sudden ‘invasion’ of the Italian coloratura style from her former Wagnerian repertoire. Stories of their catfights were legendary. Why, claimed the Castafiore fans, should an accomplished Italian prima donna of considerable experience pass the mantle to some young, haughty Nordic strumpet? The Lillà loyalists declared that the Nightingale was past her prime, too stubborn to accept a new star who was younger, fresher, more vibrant.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Upon her first arrival in Milan, fresh from triumphs in London and Stockholm, Lillà had sought out the woman who had been a heroine in her eyes for the longest time. And once Bianca clapped eyes on the girl, all her buried maternal instincts were awoken. The Nightingale trained the Fairy in coloratura singing with all the patience and warmth of a mama bird teaching her chick to fly. It was thanks to Castafiore herself that the deep, dusky textures of Lillà’s Isolde and Brunhilde were soon augmented with a bright, elastic range of lively notes in her higher register.
Robbie remembered the visits to see ‘Móðursystir Bianca’ quite vividly. Both he and Mamma were pampered and spoiled by the large blonde woman shamelessly, given sweets and lectures and big kisses on the cheek. He rememered the two women laughing at the magazine articles detailing their ‘catfights’, and comparing notes on experiences on the stage—everything from which passages were the most troublesome to sing and which tenors were the best kissers. It was the closest Robbie had gotten to having a grandmother, although he knew better than to tell Bianca that.
**
“I’ve never heard your ‘Sonnambula’ before tonight. You were exquisite.”
She laughed. “I saw that the swine with the bad toupee from the New Yorker was lurking in the audience tonight. I should be pleased to see how he strives to find fault with my performance. All I have given him is loose stitching on my gown from the second act.”
It was so refreshing to be with someone for whom ‘pride’ was not a dirty word.
“So, Glannitino mio,” Bianca chirped, casually ignoring Irma as she placed a tray holding two mineral waters before them. “Or should I say, Roberto mio. What kind of man has the little clown become?”
He half-smiled, exhaled, and looked away out the window.
“I’m… self-employed.” He straightened the lining on his wine-coloured jacket. “I’ve managed to sell a few patents. Mostly culinary gadgets that have ended up on shopping channels.”
“Ah, taking after that father of yours.” The Nighingale sniffed. “He had a brilliant brain. Such a pity that the rest of him was so beastly.”
Off Robbie’s darkened expression, she reached forward and cradled his thin face in a long-nailed hand. “Not that you were burdened with any of that, caro. The light that shines from you is the same as your Mamma.”
He blushed— the praise of a doting matriarch was something he had not experienced for many years, and it was as if he had forgotten how to savour it.
“Where is Robertino Bello living today?”
“Still in that tiny backwater town that my father took me to, amongst the lakes and the dairy farms.”
“Ah,” Bianca sighed, “I too find myself pining for the countryside, you know. Perhaps the purest happinees I have known recently has lain in a grand country house in the lowlands of Wallonia. Has Robertino ever been to see the stony beauty of Brussels, I wonder?”
Robbie chuckled. “I read about that little Belgian physicist you’ve hooked up with, if that’s what you mean.” He spotted a diamond ring glittering on her left ring finger.
There had been lengthy articles on the whole affair in all the major A&E rags. So quick on the heels of her last engagement (to the master of the aforementioned country house), the Nightingale had been proposed to by his best friend, a meek little rocket scientist whose contributions to the world of physical science more than made up for his lack of stature and testosterone. The reporters had waxed lyrical at how impressed the diva had been at the size of the man’s gigantic V-2 nuclear rocket. Since meeting her, however, this brilliant man had spurned nuclear engines for the art of horticulture, toiling away to create a flower that was just as beautiful as the songstress he worshipped.
Robbie had been amused to read all of this, and wistfully reflected on how it seemed to parallel the affaire de cœur of Bianca’s long-dead protégé. A reclusive engineering genius, tucked away in the country, falling for a dazzling opera star. Her seduction at his grand estate, amongst the perfume of his lilac blossoms.
The crucial difference lay in the character of the little Belgian physicist. Unlike Robbie’s father, he gave all indication of being passive, patient and as mellow as a dozy labrador. Reflecting on this single contrast between the two beaux stung Robbie with a strange, indescribable pain.
As he looked back at Bianca, a dozen ‘what ifs’ began to swim about in his mind.
“Oh, bambino,” she cooed. “Don’t drown in wishes to change the past. Do what you can with the day you have been given. Each morning you awaken to is a blessing from Il Dio Nostro.”
“I don’t get up until noon,” Robbie muttered.
Bianca responded with a very grandmotherly ‘hmmm’ sound.
“It’s just…” he reached for the words to explain himself. “I say I am happy, relaxed and free of responsibility. But in blocking out the nightmares of the past, my life has become so… dead. Every hour is the same. There are no opportunities, no changes, for fear of awakening some evil memory. The same low-key hostility with the townsfolk, the same solitary pursuits in my workshop. Everything echoes underground, and I daren’t sing too loud. It’s like being poor little Amina, walking through life asleep. All I can do is wait until my feet drag me onto the rickety mill bridge and I’m sent plunging to my doom.”
The Nightingale stared at him as he sang under his breath:
“Ah, non credea mirarti
Si presto estinto, o fiore!”
He was answered with an equally grandmotherly clip to his ear.
“Glannitino was always such a little drama queen, just like his Zia Bianca!” She held up her beringed finger to make a point.
“Listen here, bimbo mio. You cannot escape life, because life will follow you when you flee from him. The seconds count down until you fall off that mill bridge into the arms of some Elvino vivacemente, who will wake you and get you up off your lazy little behind. Bianca has seen this happen too many times before to doubt it!”
He hunched over. One thing he hadn’t forgotten was the humility of being scolded.
“I bet my life on it. The next time I come to perform in this town, I want to see my Glannitino in the front row. He will come to me after the show with a full report on how much has changed, and how he understands that he should listen to Zia Bianca.”
His silence expressed obedience.
“Now get home. Robertino Bello will sleep in a bed, and that way he won’t sleep on his feet.”
A slight smile curled the edge of Robbie’s lip.
The two arose, and Bianca saw ‘Robertino Bello’ out with another firm lipstick print to his pale cheek.
With each listless footstep back to the hotel, the strength of her words began to recede. Móðursystir Bianca always had a knack for cheering Glannitino up, but Robbie Rotten knew better. He was more acquainted with the ways of a world which did not fulfil the prophecies of indulgent aunties. Disappointment was a fact of life. Friends drifted apart, lovers spurned one another, parents died. Adorable children grew up into monsters.
His eyes drifted up to the dark horizon, and the strains of Amina’s lament returned to his lips.
“Ah, non credea mirarti…
Si presto estinto, o fiore…”
His tired mind could not recall the next melancholy line. He walked in silence for a few more moments, and soon found another lyric to sing. Of all the grand melodies he had absorbed that evening, his memory had settled upon echoing the twangy warbling of the pianist at the bar.
“Someday he’ll come along
The Man I Love
And he’ll be big and strong
The Man I Love
And when he comes my way
I’ll do my best to make to stay…”
**
Far above the treetops and skyscrapers, sailing past the scattered streams of starlight, a sleek blue airship. Its pilot stared down at the expanse of humanity indicated by the twinkling city lights. He wondered when, and by whom, he would be needed.