Lambrusco by Ellen Cooney Page B

marvelous it must be to be gifted! People said this to me all the time, as if I’d been born with the privilege of breezing through life in an effortless way, when most of humanity had to trudge through endless mud, with a bag full of bricks on their backs.
    But getting ready to go out and sing could feel like getting ready to be born all over again.
    No Beppi in sight. He wasn’t at his father’s desk. No schoolbooks this evening, no fighting. Where was he?
    Oh, it was a Saturday evening; that explained it. It was the one time of the week he was allowed to be free from books. He was up to his usual Saturday habits, of course, following his father at his heels, arguing with the cooks, monitoring the cash box, greeting customers at the door, bothering the waiters, and all the while, walking about like a prince, beloved and indulged, in a safe, completely unassailable castle.
    There was a window seat, like a church pew without a back, cushioned. Aldo had brought in carpenters from Etto Renzetti’s factory to build it for me to sit and rest, pre-performance.
    As if I could rest, with everyone waiting for me.
    But this evening, I felt no agitation. The window seat was where I was, half sitting, half lying back. When I turned my head, I saw that I wasn’t alone.
    Verdi and Puccini were here, side by side, in chairs they must have dragged over from the other end of the office. They were just to my right.
    Verdi was stiff with dignity. His dark beard was perfectly trimmed. His chin was tucked deeply in his high-rise collar, and he looked like a giant bird, all face and no neck: an owl. Puccini’s clothes were badly rumpled; it seemed he hadn’t had a bath in weeks. He started humming from the first act of
Tosca.
    Verdi was silent, pretending not to hear—pretending, I felt, not to be jealous.
    Then directly opposite me appeared plump, sparkly-eyed Rossini, with his ink-black hair slicked down, as if he’d stuck his head in a bucket of oil. He reminded me of Etto Renzetti.
    He’d pulled up the chair from behind Aldo’s desk. I felt the need to address him.
    â€œMy dear maestro,” I said, gently but firmly, “as much as your arrival doesn’t bother me, I’m afraid you don’t belong here with these two.”
    â€œThese two? These
two
?” This from Verdi. “I mean no offense, because, my dear lady, where you come from, it’s possible you weren’t educated properly. As every Italian should know, in music there is only myself. There is only one
sommo,
at the highest of heights, as there is only one summit of a mountain.”
    Puccini showed his disagreement. He made motions in the air to indicate not a mountain but a woman’s two breasts.
    â€œYour son sent me,” said Rossini. “You know I’m Beppino’s favorite.”
    Puccini, raising his eyebrows, hummed louder.
    â€œChange your tune, please,” said Rossini to Puccini. “Enough with your Tosca. I’m sure people are correct when they call her heroic, but it’s also correct that she’s somewhat overly hysterical. Don’t take that the wrong way. This is a time for calmness. Don’t forget, Tosca’s doomed.”
    Puccini ignored him. He’d just begun the menacing, boomy part of his opera where Tosca’s enemy expresses his desire to have her followed, to have her found, to have her delivered to him, so that he—Scarpia, chief of the secret police, that black-shirted fiend, that sadist—can act out his fantasy of lording it over her. If he can’t get her to be his lover, he’ll go ahead and destroy her.
    â€œFor the second time, enough with the tragedy. Cut it out,” said Rossini. “We need something optimistic. We’ve got to keep up this lady’s spirits. We must fill her with lightness, yes, lightness, even lighter than air itself, which, if you ask me, is the point of all music. It’s a sort of buoyancy, I