She caught my stare and pulled up the fan again, giggling, having fun.
“Oh, you brought glasses,” she said as I lifted them out of my pocket. “Can I see, please?” Suddenly twelve.
I watched her as she scanned the audience.
“There’s Rusconi, from the Accademia. My god, what a wife. Two of him. Do you think Signor Howard’s here?”
“No idea,” I said, still watching her, face tilted up now as she took in the upper tier.
“Where do they all come from?” she said. “You always hear it’s a small town, but I don’t know any of them.”
“Maybe it’s small to them. Same people.”
“The musicians are coming,” she said, almost fidgeting now with anticipation.
There was a final rustle of feathers below as the lights dimmed for the overture, then the music started and I moved my chair closer to hers. She was sitting erect, years of table manners and piano lessons, a well-brought-up girl. The back of her neck was pale and thin, and when I reached to touch it with my fingers, she turned with a shy smile, as if in fact we’d been flirting over fans.
The opera was Cosi fan tutte, and since the program notes were in Italian, beyond my guidebook vocabulary, I just sat back and listened, not even bothering to follow the story. Real fans and full-skirted gowns began to appear on the stage below, as natural there as the gilt-and-red wallpaper. How did they stage tragedies in a room like this? Nothing worse than mistaken identity and harmless jealousy could happen here. When Claudia leaned over to whisper, “They’re pretending to be Albanians,” I almost laughed out loud at the silliness of it, then felt a kind of giddy release. Even Claudia was smiling broadly, almost grinning, maybe the way she used to be all the time, after the piano lessons.
The four lovers were singing an ensemble piece when the door opened behind us. I turned to find a middle- aged woman in a prewar evening gown, trailed by a white-haired man with a bushy fur-collared coat, like the cartoon plutocrat on Monopoly cards. Everything about her was lacquered-glistening lipstick and nails, dress shiny with beadwork. She looked at us, her eyes moving from surprise to displeasure in a second, obviously put out to find strangers in her box. I got up, gesturing to my front-row seat, but she waved her hand in a kind of dismissal, pretending to be concerned about distracting the people next to us, and took the chair behind.
We spent the rest of Act I speculating about one another-only Claudia in all that rustling and craning of necks seemed to be paying attention to the opera-but it was only when the interval finally came that we could stand and introduce ourselves in the light. Their name was Montanari. I mentioned Gianni and insisted that the woman move to the front row, but she was interested only in Claudia now, literally going over her from head to foot, eyes cold and superior behind the public smile. Then she raised her head, finished, with that peculiar satisfaction of finding someone wanting. Claudia, who had started with a polite nod, moved back a little against the rail, caught by the woman’s gaze, her color suddenly draining away.
“Grassini,” the woman said carefully, repeating Claudia’s name as if she were trying to place her, the way her eyes had judged the rhinestone slippers cheap, the dress ordinary, everything somehow wrong.
And for a second I saw it too, not the young skin and high spirits that had made everything seem right before, but someone found out, in the wrong box. There are tiny moments that change the nature of things. I glanced at Signora Montanari, the withering, stupid eyes, and suddenly I wanted to fold up Claudia in some protective cape, safe, so that no one could look at her again. I touched her hand at the rail, asking her to read my face. Never mind about the dress, never mind about any of it. You’re not just someone I sleep with.
But Claudia’s color had come back and with it her assurance. “Yes, Grassini,” she said evenly. “Perhaps you knew my father, Abramo Grassini.”
The woman blinked. “Ah. Abramo. No.” She turned to me. “And you’re a friend of Gianni’s?” she said, still assessing.
“Yes,” I said easily. “He’s with a patient. I’m sorry about the seat. Will you have a drink with us?”
“No, no, we’re meeting some people.” She gathered up her cloak, eager now to leave. “Please,” she said, evidently offering us the run of the box.
“What was that all about?” I said when she’d left.
“She knows I’m a Jew,” Claudia said.
“Don’t be silly. How could she possibly know? She just doesn’t want to share the box.”
“No. She knows. Once you see the look, you don’t forget it.” She picked up the fan, opened it, and put it against her face. “Well, so much for this. Let’s go.” She reached for her coat.
“Later,” I said. “Right now we’re going downstairs and have some champagne. Then we’ll come back and listen to the rest.”
“She doesn’t want me here.”
“Well, I do. Would you rather please her?”
She looked up, a small smile. “One grandfather. It’s easy for you. But for me, it’s not-comfortable.”
“I’ll sit between you. Come on, let’s have some champagne.” I held out my hand to her. “Tell me the rest of the story. Why they’re pretending to be Albanians.”
Another smile.
“It’s our box,” I said, taking her hand. “We’re not leaving.”
In the end it was the Montanaris who left, midway through the second act, after Fiordiligi sang in the garden by the sea. Signora Montanari had taken the rail seat next to Claudia, and it may be that she finally realized, distressed, how they must appear from below-one young, her pale skin catching the stage lamps, the other expensive and brittle, attractive now only to men on Monopoly cards. Or it may be this was just my idea, the story I made up as Signor Montanari nodded off at my side. But when Fiordiligi finished and Signora Montanari made an apologetic headache motion and slipped out with her surprised husband under the applause, I felt as if we had won something. I moved down to the rail seat.
“We’ve run them off.”
Claudia shrugged, a wry smile. “One victory for the Jews.”
But she seemed happier now, relieved, and the music went with her, buoyant, heading into the finale. As things sorted themselves out onstage, something for everyone, it seemed to me that we had gotten our earlier mood back, frothy again, like the interval champagne.
Outside it was cold and damp, and I put my arm around her as we walked.
“You looked lovely, just sitting there, waiting it out like that.”
“It didn’t feel lovely. Bitch. Probably a Fascist too.”
“No, there aren’t any, haven’t you heard? Same thing in Germany. All disappeared somehow.”
“You think it’s funny.”
“No, but I spent months chasing them, so I know what it’s like. Anyway, she’s gone, so let’s have a drink. The Gritti’s right up here-they’ll be open.”
The street was filled with people coming from La Fenice, wrapped in coats and furs, like the shuttered stores.
“No, it’s late.”
“All right, I’ll take you home.”
“No,” she said, putting a gloved hand on my chest. “I’ll go. It was wonderful, the opera.” She looked up. “So, shall we meet tomorrow?”
“I want to go home with you.”
“Why? You can’t wait?”
“Not for that.” I stopped. “It’s not that.”
“What?”
I put my hand up to the side of her neck. “I don’t want to skip anything. I want to take you to dinner. Out, like this. I want to spend the night with you. See you sleep, what you look like. Wake up. Make coffee. All of it. Not skip anything.”
“Don’t say that,” she said softly, lowering her head. “I don’t want that.”
“Yes, you do. Everybody does.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”
“You mean, not with me.”
