He puts the pen aside and rises from the piano, ash falling from his cigarette as he stretches with both hands pressed into his lower back. He eases back the curtains so he can peer out at the street below while staying hidden. Harsh morning light accentuates the angles of his face. Then he turns to study his reflection in the mirror on the other side of the window. Was his face always so lined, the shadows beneath his eyes so dark? He can see grey in both his hair and moustache. He must attend to that.
Giacomo Puccini is fifty-one. He fears he looks older. Since the death of his countryman Giuseppe Verdi nine years earlier, Puccini is regarded as the pre-eminent Italian operatic composer. His fame rests on a series of successes which have sparked standing ovations in opera houses from London to Milan, New York to Buenos Aires: La Boheme in 1896; Tosca in 1900; Madama Butterfly four years later. Now it is 1910 and another deadline looms: in December the popular tenor Enrico Caruso is contracted to sing in the premiere of Puccini’s new opera, La Fanciulla del West – ‘The Girl of the Golden West’ – in New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Expectations are high.
But there is a problem: the opera is unfinished.
The composer has his theories about why this is so. Why there has been such a long gap between this work and the last one. There have been too many interruptions. And it is always easier to reconsider an old work, perhaps even make some amendments, than complete something new. In just one month, at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, his Butterfly will be staged for the first time in Australia. This news had surprised the composer. So slow? Close to six years will separate the Sydney production of his opera and its world premiere at La Scala in Milan.
The premiere … What a disaster Milan had been. Performers were jeered; critics were savage; the composer was humiliated. His poor crushed Butterfly: with what feline rage did they hurl themselves at her. He now believes it was all organised. Jealous rivals in the Italian opera world had orchestrated a hostile reception. He had to retreat. Withdraw the opera. Make changes. After some reworking, two Acts becoming three, Butterfly found its wings and became an international hit. But this belated success has only made the composer’s paralysing fear of failure more acute.
It is such slow work. Always questions without answers. More starts than finishes. And he is still not sure how this new work will end. There will be something grand, he knows that, but it is proving elusive.
He sighs, ponders the crumpled sheets of paper, dabs at ink on his fingers with a handkerchief. Piano, paper, ink … they are just tools, like his Edison phonograph. He composes with his heart and his head, never his hands. Beautiful music comes from inside a violin, not the fingers holding a bow. The phonograph can play music but never create it.
He ignites a new cigarette with a gold lighter that he snaps shut before returning it to a pocket in his checked waistcoat, inhales, holds the burning cigarette out as if to study it. This is a strange existence in a back-to-front place. Warm in February, when there might still be snow in Italy. He misses his home by the lake. But he was right to come. There are fewer distractions here. He can try to focus on Minnie, his Girl of the Golden West. She is another Butterfly with a strong spirit, confronting all that fate delivers.
He returns to the piano. Picks up the top sheet of composition paper. But before resuming work he picks out on the piano keys a simple melody – the love duet from the first Act of La Boheme. In his memory, this music came to him without strain. He wonders if he will ever recapture that sense of easy release. Wonders if he will ever do anything to surpass Boheme.
He will always be judged against his own operas as well as the works of others. And it always seems that anything new he creates does not match what has come before. A performer like Caruso, meanwhile, improves with age. Like wine. But if he – the composer – does not keep working, Caruso will have nothing to sing at the Met in December.
Smoke settles over him as he resumes his labour. Playing notes, scribbling on paper, closing his eyes to help him hear the sounds he is summoning. Progress is made. A page is almost completed without being discarded. Then he stops.
There is a rapping at the door, even though he has left out the sign requesting no disturbances. One knock. Pause. Two more in quick succession. The composer rises, grimaces as his right leg twinges, then opens the door for the hotel manager. Audran is carrying fresh linen and a basket of oranges, which he places on the small table beside the unmade bed. If he notices the fug of cigarette smoke, he doesn’t comment on it. For all he says is this:
‘Good morning, Maestro. There has been a complication.’
9
IF his room faced east instead of north, the composer would have been able to spy from his window a man standing near a motor car opposite the Metropole’s main entrance. A slim man with a prominent Adam’s apple, wearing a flat cloth cap and broad leather braces over a cream-coloured shirt. He has been told the visiting American will expect to see him outside the hotel at 11.30am. Punctuality is imperative. He knows what Harry Houdini looks like, though it occurs to him that on the one previous occasion he saw him, in between strangers’ heads and children perched on adult shoulders, the American was wearing nothing more than a bathing-costume. Yet he recognises him at once as he strides out into the street, blinking in the sunshine. The man waiting has been chewing at a matchstick but withdraws it with his left hand, which he then raises in a curt greeting. Harry approaches briskly, walking like someone with a stone stuck in his shoe.
‘Audran sent you?’
It is a statement as much as a question, and while Harry speaks his dark eyes are appraising both the figure in front of him and the motor car with its open sides and narrow tyres. He leaves an impression of extreme restlessness, a man intent on achieving several things at once.
‘He did. The name’s Jordan.’
‘Good,’ Harry says, without introducing himself. ‘Swell.’
Harry extends his right hand. It seems to Jordan that the American uses the handshake as a trial of strength, squeezing much harder than necessary. Jordan holds both his gaze and his grip. The American is dressed like a toff. Jordan is reminded of a tightly-wrapped parcel, with a shiny black leather belt instead of string. The compact knot of a striped necktie is wedged between two halves of a stiff white collar, which strain towards each other like opposing sides of a suspension-bridge. Jordan can smell the cloying fragrance of hair-oil and see shirt cuffs, as stiff as the collar, protruding from the sleeves of his light grey suit. The driver guesses that he will have autographed likenesses of himself tucked inside a pocket.
Harry releases his hand and wipes it on the seat of his trousers.
‘Audran outlined my requirements?’
Jordan returns the matchstick to his mouth, chewing it as he speaks.
‘Said you wanted a driver.’
‘Precisely. I must have a reliable driver for the remainder of my time in Melbourne. For another month. You are available?’
Jordan shrugs.
‘I’m a taxi-driver. I drive. That’s what I do.’
‘But I need to be assured of your services whenever I require them. And the hours will be irregular. Some very early starts, too.’
‘I’m a dairy farmer’s son, mate. Know all about early starts. And we’ll take hours into account when we sort out an arrangement. Keeping in mind the jobs I miss attending to you, of course.’
‘I’ll leave it to Audran to finalise details. Or Rickards, my promoter. But it’ll be worth your while.’ Harry runs his hand along the shiny black mud-guard over the right front wheel of Jordan’s vehicle. ‘Say, what is this automobile?’
‘A Darracq. Sixteen horse-power. Four cylinders. Only a few in town.’
‘Darracq – that’s French, isn’t it?’
Harry bangs his hands together when Jordan nods, like a child delighted by what he finds under the tree on Christmas morning.
‘That’s a most propitious omen. My flying machine is French. A Voisin. You know anything about such things, Jordan?’
‘Only that I prefer my chances on the ground.’
‘There’s nothing like flying!’ Harry enthuses, pacing around the car. ‘Nothing at all. But so far I have only experienced this sensation fleetingly, in Germany last November. It’s magical – although on my first attempt I smashed the machine. Broke the propeller all to hell. Yet I am confident of achieving something memorable here.’
Without pausing to ask permission, he steps up inside the vehicle and settles himself into the front passenger’s seat, scanning the driver’s controls.
‘Please join me,’ he says. Jordan does so, though it irks to be invited to sit in his own car. ‘Yes,’ Harry says, ‘I am confident this will do.’
‘Hang about,’ says Jordan, removing the matchstick from his mouth and studying the chewed end. ‘You haven’t told me where you want to go.’
