Kyra Read online

  “O dolci mani, mansuete e pure.” Andreas held Tali’s hands and sang the words, his voice soft, the phrasing supple. I watched her return his gaze, and then he dropped her hands. “Let’s do it in Italian for now, those m sounds are gorgeous, it’s what Puccini set. Once you put it into English—‘Oh sweet hands, pure and gentle’—it sounds like a soap ad.”

  Sid had to leave. I walked out with him. The air was heavy with snow. “What a winter,” I said. “It seems pretty good to me,” he said, raising his eyebrows. He checked his watch and looked at the sky. “If I can get to the airport before it starts, there’s a chance I will get to New York.” There wasn’t a cab in sight.

  Was it Sid? His lingering tinge of regret? Or the tenor aria? Simon too had been shot just when he held his dream in his hands. Or was it Andreas, as he was that afternoon—the precision of his ear, his gentle humor, his total presence, and the generosity of his emotional response—that caused something in me to dislodge? Walking back into the church, I felt giddy. As if I were going into free fall, or giving myself over to the fall line, as you do in skiing. It’s when you hold back that you get into trouble.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t know that Andreas, like all conductors and directors, traveled. I also knew the meaning to him of his work. It was something we shared, a sense of total devotion, even mission you could say. I was prepared for what happened after I came back from Thailand. It’s just that I wasn’t prepared for what happened after that.

  There was a month still before previews. The rehearsals had entered a new phase. I was to leave for Thailand right after the opening, to spend two months with the Akha. The tickets had been bought, but I had done nothing to get ready. Randy called to remind me about shots. For anthropologists, this was routine. I balked at the thought of introducing toxins into my body. The alternative was worse. He gave me the number of the travel clinic. I put off calling. I was reluctant to leave. Still, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go with Randy, who spoke the Akha language, who knew the people. I wanted to see the Akha villages, to experience the fluidity of center and periphery, the permeability of the boundaries between inside and outside. It had seemed essential to my work.

  “So you’re really going?” Anna looked up from her book.

  “I just can’t pass it up, the chance to go there with Randy. I would always regret it if I didn’t go.” She gave me a skeptical look and returned to her book. It wasn’t what she was really asking. She knew I knew this. I had avoided the question: Did I really want to go? The answer was yes and no.

  The church fathers agreed to the idea of doing Tosca in the church. “The spirit of Vatican II lives,” Andreas said. “If Constantine won’t give the church back to the people, the people will take it back.” It was his dream, to bring opera into the places where people live, to bring the stories into their lives so they would hear them, learn from them, instead of repeating these tragedies, instead of turning away from facing such intense feelings. It was why he was doing Tosca in English. He didn’t want spectacle, he was suspicious of the word awe. He took off his sweater and tied the arms around his shoulders.

  “What I want,” I said, leaning toward him, “is to create spaces that will bring people into harmony with their inner rhythms, where the language of building is in scale with their lives.”

  We were sitting in an alcove of the church, patterns of colored light falling on the stone. I needed to talk about the sets. Sarah was helping me. She had found a large, beautiful Persian carpet that was perfect for Act Two. But Act Three was a challenge: how to turn the church into a castle. I had brought drawings. I leaned down, retrieved them from my bag, and handed them to Andreas, the church still, the windows turning black, the end of the day.

  “What do you think?”

  “Let’s look,” he said, getting up, taking the drawings to the front and spreading them on the floor. There was a section of casement wall, a battlement abstractly rendered, a ramp to convey elevation.

  I stood beside him, our shadows falling over the paper. A priest came in, noticed us, nodded, retrieved a book from the altar table, and left.

  “I’m thinking that the parapet will be on the audience’s right,” I said, taking a clasp from my bag. I gathered my hair away from my face. “The eye, reading from left to right, will fill in the continuation of the battlement. The ramp on the opposite side of the stage will pick up the diagonal line of the casement wall and extend the elevation.” I sounded like someone giving a lecture. I removed the clasp.

  What’s a parapet? Tali had asked in rehearsal one day.

  “I’ll do a model, then you can see it before the sets move into construction. The height of the ramp should conceal the mattress or whatever it is Tosca lands on. I’d like your take on this before we move ahead.”

  He stood back, squinting to visualize the forms in three dimensions. He glanced at me, the expression on his face startled, then looked back at the drawings.

  “I think it’s brilliant.” He folded his arms, leaned back, one foot out in front of him. “You are.” He was staring ahead as if viewing the set itself. “I don’t need a model. I love the abstraction of the wall. Menacing without being literal, or trivial. It conveys the ambiguity, will this execution be real or fake?”

  He picked up the drawings and handed them to me with a look of what I might have called awe, had he not just said he was suspicious of the word.

  “It’s beautiful, Kyra.”

  We gathered our coats and started to leave. “The third act,” Andreas said, “it always surprises me. For the first time in this so-enclosed opera, we are outdoors. We are reminded there is still nature, shepherds, the dawn. Suddenly we taste the possibility of freedom, a world beyond the rim of terror, but then the net closes in. And the music…” His eyes brightened, a flush on his face.

  “Sing it,” I said, “the aria about hands.”

  He sang, his voice fluid, the melody drifting through the hushed church. Running through me after we left.

  In the week before previews began, there was an argument over a flag. The sets had been constructed, the window and the doors for Act Two. Sarah brought in the carpet, and the performers loved working on it, the Toscas in particular since it invited their aria about art and love. The proponents of the flag argued that we needed something to symbolize the presence of the state, especially now that we were performing in a church. I worried it would detract from the effect of the wall, reduce the monumental to the tawdry. It was the feeling of Rome I was after, not the literal sign. The cast was divided, Sarah was adamant, no. Andreas voted yes. We already have a crucifix, he said, to stand for the church. Peter said that was specified in Puccini’s stage directions. Peter read from his score to make his point: “A crucifix hangs on one of the casement walls.” I waited for Tali: “What’s a casement?” she asked.

  “What do you think?” Andreas turned to me, his face serious, his voice conveying new deference.

  “As long as the crucifix and flag do not distract from the emotional statement, as long as they don’t function like neon signs, here’s the church, here’s the state, get it?”

  Andreas nodded. “We’ll try it and see.”

  The musicians arrived, a small chamber orchestra seated around the performers, the pianist off to one side. On the Thursday before previews, the neighbors came, families with children, the homeless, the shopkeepers. Word had gotten out. The sparsely attended church was filled. They cheered, booed, wept, applauded at the end of every aria. The cast was buoyant.

  Andreas was keeping his mind in tight focus. The atmosphere around him was tense. He wanted a tightening here, an adjustment there, his eye always on the dynamic, the relentless move forward of the drama. Usually the conductor directs this; here, he reminded the cast, everyone is responsible for the pace.

  Anna came with me to the opening, or, as Andreas would say, the first of the three openings, the three casts performing on three nights in succession. Tali and Dan sang Tosca and Cava
radossi the first night, along with Steve, the Scarpia of their trio. Again the church was filled, but now it was largely the Cambridge crowd, heads buried in programs reading assiduously, waiting to be convinced. Boston was a music city. This wasn’t the right way to do opera. We’ll see, tight faces said. I turned to Anna. “Opening night is always tough,” I said. I wanted her to like it, to see it at its best. Scattered through the audience, the critics sat in their carefully chosen seats. The danger was that their presence would draw the ear of the performers outward in an effort to glean the response, distracting them from the emotional pulse. I took off my coat. Andreas had worked hard to create an ensemble—would it hold? When I was concerned about last-minute changes in the sets, he reassured me. “Given the kind of work we have done, it doesn’t pose any substantial problems.” He had once changed an entire mise-en-scène at the last moment, the actors terrified that they wouldn’t remember, but in fact there were no difficulties. He looked at me and smiled. I thought of Tali, what’s a mise-en-scène? I picked up my program and saw my name listed. Set designer. I liked the sound.

  The musicians took their places, the oboe gave the A, the instruments tuned, church lights went down, stage lights came up. With the three descending chords of the Scarpia theme, the performance was under way. I sat forward in my seat, my attention gripped. The singing was inspired, the movement at once stark and fluid, the sets worked, adding without distracting. Tension left my shoulders, my heartbeat slowed, and I gave myself over to the music and the story, as if I were hearing it for the first time.

  Afterward, Anna said it was the first time she had liked opera. She found it mesmerizing, terrifying, too close to home. She liked the sets and the sexy young cast. The singing had been exquisite. Peter came over and gave me a hug. “See, our intuition was brilliant. I adore you.” I was in a daze. I was used to working in isolation, long hours alone at the drawing table, followed by meetings with clients, contractors, zoning boards, stretches of time between conception and completion. This had had a dreamlike intensity.

  The cast party took place on the third night, after all three casts had performed. The Globe critic wrote, “My one reservation about Mr. Verban’s Tosca is that its lessons are destined to be misapplied for years to come.” Andreas worked to keep the focus inward. In the short speech he made at the party, he quoted Peter Brook: “We are a small group of human beings. If our way of living and working is infused with a certain quality, this quality will be perceived by the audience, who will leave the theater subliminally colored by the working experience we have lived together. Perhaps that is the small contribution we can make, the only thing we have to convey to other human beings.” In a drawing class once, the teacher had addressed us simply as “humans.”

  Before I left for Thailand, he took me out to dinner. “There’s so much I want to say to you, so many things I have wanted to say through this time of working together,” he said. His eyes found mine across the table. A shiver ran through my body. Breathe, I remembered, let the breath fall in. I placed my hand on the flat surface of table, my fingers splayed across the wood. The blue lapis in the ring Simon had given me absorbed the light. I looked toward the window. I didn’t want to think about leaving. I told him that Sid had said that this theater experience might prove fruitful in ways I could not anticipate. It already had, I said. Solutions to problems about the sets had spurred ideas for other projects. Andreas’s way of working was more center-oriented than bounded. No orchestra pit, no clear demarcation between musicians and singers, no raised podium, the impulse coming from the singers themselves, everything starting from and flowing back into a circle.

  I looked at his face. He placed his hand over mine, fingers interlacing, a Braille conversation. Neither of us looked away.

  When the plates were cleared and two small cups of espresso set before us, I said, “I’m so glad we did this.”

  Outside the restaurant, the street was quiet. I turned my collar up against the wind, tree branches swaying, patterning the sidewalk under the light. He didn’t ask when I was coming back. Superstition maybe. Not to tempt fate. I didn’t ask about his plans. Faith was unreliable. We both knew that. “Safe journey,” he said, sadness in his eyes. Travel safely, God be with you. I didn’t believe in God anymore, after Simon. “You have to live life,” as Anna would say. To do otherwise made no sense. Let the dead bury the dead. That didn’t make sense either. “It’s been…” I said, and smiled, remembering, past now turning into present, the future indefinite. I held out my hand. He kissed it softly, three times, like a stone skipping across the water. “Come back soon.”

  I walked unsteadily to my car.

  3

  I GOT BACK FROM THAILAND IN LATE APRIL AND WENT DIRECTLY to Woods Hole. Anna was waiting at the dock, her face glowing. “You,” she said. Joy rushed through me. We hugged, stood back, looked at each other, then hugged again. “I see it in your face,” Anna said. “It must have been amazing.” I said that it was, truly amazing, living in the Akha world. We climbed into the boat, the sea rocking. I had been on solid ground for two months, high in the mountains, in literally thin air. I breathed in the moisture, spray on my face, the taste of salt. Home.

  Anna had roasted a chicken, charred onions on top. She made a green salad and we sat down to supper. “Tell me everything,” she said, but with the twelve-hour time difference, it was morning now in Thailand, and I had in effect been up all night. She told me that the weather had been mild on the island, spring had come early, construction had started in sooner than planned. She said she had closed her therapy practice in Cambridge. I said that with me on leave, we’d be together on the island, in the way that we were when we first came. I felt her hesitation and wondered about Tony. I had been away for two months, and as the Akha would say, nothing stays put.

  I woke at four the next morning, and at first light took my jacket and went to the site. The framers had come, the lines elegant, the fir beams gold in the early sun. I watched the color change with the light. I wanted Andreas to see it this way with me, light and airy, the open structures shaping vistas of sea and sky. It would never be this magical again. In Thailand, I had felt myself letting go of my memories, not thinking much about Simon. The thing with Andreas had receded. Now I wondered where he was.

  The south side of the site was filling in so quickly, it might be ready for habitation by summer. Some of the enclosures, fluid in concept if not in contour, could expand and contract depending on the activities that people imagine for them. On the hill, the terracing was under way. Turf had been turned up, stone risers set. I imagined Grant, the head of the construction crew, smiling. This was his gift to me. I was thrilled, a little taken aback by how much they had done in my absence.

  The sun was up, and suddenly I was hungry. The Akha would be eating their evening meal, rice in a bowl, steamed in the right way. I went back to the house, boiled an egg and made a fresh pot of tea. Anna was still sleeping. She had left a manila envelope addressed to me on the counter. It was my mail, forwarded by Hannah, the department assistant. The university world now had become remote. I shuffled through the envelopes and took the blue airmail letter along with my tea into the living room and settled onto the sofa. Morning light filled the room. I slit the flap.

  Dearest Kyra,

  I’m thinking of you, imagining you in Thailand, ringed by mountains, surrounded by gentle people. Has it been all that you hoped?

  I’m in Barcelona for two months working with a small, experimental opera company on a contemporary opera that you would hate. I’ll be back at the beginning of June, and then I’m hoping to stay. Jesse and Abe have settled in with Edith, and Peter has plans for a new season. We’re thinking of doing Pelleas and Melisande.

  I could go on, but there’s an urgency to this letter. Peter, ever the impresario, and your pal Richard Livingston, who doesn’t miss a chance to call attention to your project, have cooked up a plan. They want to bring Tosca to Nashawena this summer (the Boston run sold o
ut!).

  I told them that before I could say anything, I needed to know if this is something you want. I know you’re on leave and protecting your time, and this may be the opposite of what you had in mind. Tell me what you think, but more to the point, Peter and Richard are like runaway trains. It’s hard to stop them once under way. For me, the question is whether enough of the singers would be available. For us, it’s a chance to work together again, and I would love that. But it’s your island, your project, and if this doesn’t work for you, we’ll find something else to do.

  I realize that you will have just gotten back and may want time to think it over. The whole idea may be impractical from your end, but for whatever reason, Richard thinks it’s not. For the moment, I’ve managed to hold them back, but there is a need to act quickly now if you want to stop it. Peter knows you’ll be back at the end of April. I told him to wait for you to call him.

  Let me know if there’s something you want me to do. I’m eager to hear about your trip. About this, it’s really up to you, and I’ll do whatever you wish. Till soon, A.

  I had read about divers getting the bends when they come up too quickly, decompression overtaking them. This was the opposite, everything suddenly felt compressed. I had visions of boatloads of people landing on Nashawena, the sheep looking up in alarm. This image crowded out the prospect of Andreas being here for the summer.

  Anna stood in the doorway in her silk bathrobe, a lightness to her presence, the silk falling gently, her morning face quizzical. “What’s up?” she asked.

  The Akha speak of zang, meaning their way of living, their way of doing things: how you honor your ancestors, how you boil eggs, how you take rice out of the steamer, how you speak to your father, how you don’t have intercourse in another person’s house. Randy was right. It had taken two months, but by the end I could feel it: the Akhazang. A different way of life. To these mountain people of Thailand, life was unbounded, inside and outside flowed into each other, like a street running through a building, but with them, there was even less demarcation between where one thing ended and another began. This was true with people as well. It was the hardest part to grasp. No self, no individual. Randy had told me a story that made my mind swirl. A woman had said that when she and her husband and children lived with his brother, they had raised pigs. But once they were living as only one person, she said, meaning herself and her husband and their children, they no longer raised pigs. What we call a family was to them one person.