I complained, wiping my cheeks with the heels of my hands, which were impressed with the costly whorls of the Aubusson carpet.
Irene regarded me carefully, and somewhat wearily. “Why do you suppose the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy are always shown paired, tilted together like a pair of gossiping neighbors? When I was performing at La Scala in Milan, I encountered a composer, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who was working on an aria by Pagliacci, the tragic clown. It is a virtuoso exercise in despairing laughter.”
I shook my head. What did opera have to do with my unforgivable behavior?
Irene took my wrists in her hands and pulled my fingers from my face, as one might demand the attention of a petulant child, save I was not petulant, but mortified.
“Nell, laughter and tears sit side by side in the chamber of the heart, as any actor can tell you. And any tenor who will someday sing Pagliacci can tell you that the same contraction of air and muscle that produces sobs produces laughter. The brilliance of Pagliacci’s aria is its interplay of forced hilarity and unsurvivable despair.”
Having settled to a discreet hiccough during her lecture on the finer points of stage performance, I finally nodded, relieved that the irresistible urge to giggle had sunk beneath an exhausted melancholy much more appropriate to the situation.
“Now. What is this object by any other name? Besides a rose?” Irene smiled slightly.
I recognized the Shakespearean allusion. Strangely, all this stagecraft talk had given me a sense of distance from the terrible scene in which we played such ludicrous parts.
“My needle case,” I said with sobriety. “Here.” I drew the long, narrow, enameled case from the chatelaine. I removed the needles, lancing them into temporary lodging in my skirt’s sturdy twill fabric until the case was empty. “It’s meant to hold needles and bodkins and toothpicks, but may serve for other things. Will this do?”
“Admirably!” Irene pronounced, inspecting it through her—my—spectacles. “And the pincers?”
I extended the small sterling silver tweezers. “I use these for picking up threads and beads.”
“Excellent.” In a moment she had bent to pluck some vague brownish yellow crumbs from the carpet. She dropped them into the enameled needle case.
She paused to eye me. “How are you doing now?”
“Doing? That is such an American expression. I am not doing at all. I am pretending to be in another place at another task, breathing other air. Will that do?”
“It will,” she said. “That is also a clue as to how our Mr. Holmes performs his miracles of detection in the face of human iniquity. He looks close, not far, dear Nell, and spares himself much anguish.”
“We are looking through a microscope then?”
“Yes. As a physician or a botanist. We look small, so that the large does not overwhelm us. Yes?”
“Yes.” I crawled forward behind her on my elbows and knees. “It is most undignified.”
“So should we be in the presence of such indignities to the human body and soul. Does this not remind you of something other than the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe about the rue Morgue?”
“Oh yes, Irene.” I found my voice quivering and cast a quick glance at the heavens, which in this room was a painted ceiling of naked cherubs and naked ladies, a pairing I shall never understand. “Despite the distance in location and in time, I find this scene most distressingly reminiscent of the depredations performed in London just last autumn.”
Irene rose to her knees, reminding me of some rearing centaur in her unnatural man’s garb. Her hastily piled locks seemed to writhe in the wavering lamplight like the Medusa’s snaky tendrils.
“Jacques the Ripper appears to have turned his ghastly attentions on Paris.”
“It does not make sense,” I objected.
“But it does make for murder,” she said. “And politics. And a most brutal puzzle.”
6.
Frere Jacques, Dormez-Vous?
Well I
Irene regarded me carefully, and somewhat wearily. “Why do you suppose the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy are always shown paired, tilted together like a pair of gossiping neighbors? When I was performing at La Scala in Milan, I encountered a composer, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who was working on an aria by Pagliacci, the tragic clown. It is a virtuoso exercise in despairing laughter.”
I shook my head. What did opera have to do with my unforgivable behavior?
Irene took my wrists in her hands and pulled my fingers from my face, as one might demand the attention of a petulant child, save I was not petulant, but mortified.
“Nell, laughter and tears sit side by side in the chamber of the heart, as any actor can tell you. And any tenor who will someday sing Pagliacci can tell you that the same contraction of air and muscle that produces sobs produces laughter. The brilliance of Pagliacci’s aria is its interplay of forced hilarity and unsurvivable despair.”
Having settled to a discreet hiccough during her lecture on the finer points of stage performance, I finally nodded, relieved that the irresistible urge to giggle had sunk beneath an exhausted melancholy much more appropriate to the situation.
“Now. What is this object by any other name? Besides a rose?” Irene smiled slightly.
I recognized the Shakespearean allusion. Strangely, all this stagecraft talk had given me a sense of distance from the terrible scene in which we played such ludicrous parts.
“My needle case,” I said with sobriety. “Here.” I drew the long, narrow, enameled case from the chatelaine. I removed the needles, lancing them into temporary lodging in my skirt’s sturdy twill fabric until the case was empty. “It’s meant to hold needles and bodkins and toothpicks, but may serve for other things. Will this do?”
“Admirably!” Irene pronounced, inspecting it through her—my—spectacles. “And the pincers?”
I extended the small sterling silver tweezers. “I use these for picking up threads and beads.”
“Excellent.” In a moment she had bent to pluck some vague brownish yellow crumbs from the carpet. She dropped them into the enameled needle case.
She paused to eye me. “How are you doing now?”
“Doing? That is such an American expression. I am not doing at all. I am pretending to be in another place at another task, breathing other air. Will that do?”
“It will,” she said. “That is also a clue as to how our Mr. Holmes performs his miracles of detection in the face of human iniquity. He looks close, not far, dear Nell, and spares himself much anguish.”
“We are looking through a microscope then?”
“Yes. As a physician or a botanist. We look small, so that the large does not overwhelm us. Yes?”
“Yes.” I crawled forward behind her on my elbows and knees. “It is most undignified.”
“So should we be in the presence of such indignities to the human body and soul. Does this not remind you of something other than the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe about the rue Morgue?”
“Oh yes, Irene.” I found my voice quivering and cast a quick glance at the heavens, which in this room was a painted ceiling of naked cherubs and naked ladies, a pairing I shall never understand. “Despite the distance in location and in time, I find this scene most distressingly reminiscent of the depredations performed in London just last autumn.”
Irene rose to her knees, reminding me of some rearing centaur in her unnatural man’s garb. Her hastily piled locks seemed to writhe in the wavering lamplight like the Medusa’s snaky tendrils.
“Jacques the Ripper appears to have turned his ghastly attentions on Paris.”
“It does not make sense,” I objected.
“But it does make for murder,” she said. “And politics. And a most brutal puzzle.”
6.
Frere Jacques, Dormez-Vous?
Well I
Similar Books
