The Doctor and the Diva by Adrienne McDonnell Read Free Book Online

when Madame Nordica brushed crumbs from her lips with a napkin and stared with sudden interest at Erika. “Doesn’t she have a lovely-shaped face?” the opera singer remarked to Magdalena. “If she decides not to sing, she can always become a hat model or something.”
    The comment left Erika feeling both flattered and diminished. As Magdalena refilled their cups, her eyebrows arched with inquiry: “Cream? Sugar? Lemon?” Her lips closed together in a humorless line, and Erika realized that her teacher did not especially care for Madame Nordica. Magdalena squeezed sour lemon into her tea until the cream separated and curdled.
    “The thing I don’t understand,” Erika said, “is how an American goes from being a student to being a bona fide diva in Italy. She just auditions everywhere, is that it?”
    Madame Nordica rested a heavy-boned hand on Erika’s arm, as if to impart something essential. “In Italy your teacher will arrange your debut. Your teacher will know an agent who selects artists and creates companies. An impresario from Acqui or a lesser city may come to a teacher seeking singers for Norma or Ernani .
    “But let’s suppose,” she went on, “that the student dreams of doing Traviata or Sonnambula . The impresario may agree to alter the repertory, but only if she reimburses him to the tune of two or three hundred lire—”
    Magdalena’s spine flinched and became erect with indignation when she heard this. “And you advise the young woman to pay such a sum?”
    “Yes,” Madame Nordica replied. “It’s only fair to the impresario. Think of the risk he takes. He supplies the theatre, and he hires the orchestra and the rest of the cast. He lets this unknown foreign student assume the limelight in a role of her choice. Why should he agree to let this foreigner succeed or create a fiasco?
    “Think of the expenditure as an outlay for training,” the diva advised. “Opera is an expensive profession. And if you’re successful,” she added, with another pat to Erika’s knee, “you’ll have a chance of getting a genuine offer.”
    And if the debut were a failure? Erika wondered. That was a scenario Lillian Nordica did not consider, any more than she recognized that the “young lady” to whom she offered counsel was nearly twenty-nine, already encumbered with a husband and a five-story town house filled with servants.
    Upon departing, Madame Nordica stood in the foyer wearing her lapis lazuli necklace and a fur coat that made her look like a hunter’s grizzly. She placed a crisp white card in Erika’s hand with the address of her personal agent printed in raised letters upon it. “Should you ever need the name of an eminent teacher in Italy,” the diva said, “do write my agent. He will gladly name you several.”
    When the door fell shut behind the famous singer, Erika felt a draft of cold night air pass over her head. “She did not so much as ask to hear you sing,” Magdalena said.
    Hurrying home on foot, Erika touched the sharp edges of the card in her pocket. Under a lamppost on Dartmouth Street, she held it up to the light to see the agent’s name . The letters had been embossed like Braille onto the card; she could read the name with a finger.
    She had forgotten her house key, so she had to ring the bell. For weeks now, her husband had been away doing business in England and Egypt. One of the servants let her in.
    “We’ve kept your supper warm for you, ma’am,” the cook said.
    At the long mahogany table where Erika found herself alone on many nights, the servant set the meal before her—slices of pork with sautéed apples, creamed onions, mashed potatoes.
    “Will you be needing anything else, ma’am?” the cook asked.
    Erika shook her head. “It’s late now. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll leave the dishes in the butler’s pantry when I’m finished.”
    The cook nodded, wiped her hands on her apron, and left. Erika cut her meat into small pieces and paused to