Edinburgh by Alexander Chee Page A

egg-shaped swelling in the groin.
    How many people does the narrator describe dying?
    Several hundred thousand in Florence, many more through the countryside.
    Â 
    Rehearsals in the fall are tighter: the camp has done its magic. We sit in ordered rows, we sing that way as well, chords offered like gleaming chains. Cathedral ceilings are references to Noah’s ark, I have just learned. The idea being that he founded his church by upturning the boat: when we look up, it’s supposed to be like looking at the prow of a boat above us. I think of this often, as I look at the bowed ceiling. This boat, I say to myself, is turning over.
    Today is warm, and our rehearsal is going well. The choir has recently auditioned new members, and now we sit, forty, in broken arcs around our director. New money has provided music stands, nice folding chairs with padded seats. You’re real pros now, Big Eric announces in one break. In another, he points to Little Eric and says, Now, and Little Eric gets up and leaves the room. I have a surprise, Big Eric says. Eric is helping me with it.
    Little Eric returns, a miniature monk. Muslin tunic, burgundy overtunic. Rope belt. The shoes are obscured by the hem, which falls to the floor. He smiles at us and raises his hands palm-up in mock propriety. Big Eric walks around to stand beside my seat. If he were Friar Tuck, Big Eric says to me, Robin Hood would not be so busy rescuing Maid Marian.
    This, Big Eric says to the room, gesturing to Little Eric, is the way we will dress for the Italian pieces. I’m having the costumes ordered, and you will all be fitted for them afterward. Also, please welcome Freddy Moran, a new soprano. Freddy stands from where he is seated in the row in front of me.
    Unable to join us for the summer, he is a new soprano with a clear light voice and all the other details of Big Eric’s favorites: long blond hair, straight, cut in a Viking mop, with a short sturdy frame and then the surprise, brown eyes, long lashes. The sort mascara means to replicate. He doesn’t look particularly Irish except perhaps this last part, the eyelashes. Zach’s mother, Mrs. Guietz, calls them sooty eyes. Merle and Peter have them also.
    Big Eric then makes his announcement about
Tosca
and reads off the boys to be included. Little Eric and Zach are a bit old for this and so weren’t included, Big Eric concludes, and he laughs as he says this and puts his hand on Little Eric’s shoulder.
    Little Eric, mouth firm, continues to stand in the tunic beside him.
    In the rehearsals that follow, we learn to wear the robes. How to stand for hours without fainting under the hot lights, and sing: breathe from the diaphragm, tilt the head forward slightly to project sound from the throat out through the forehead, keep the knees bent slightly; feet under the shoulders, and the fingers of your hands rest on your thighs, your pointer finger pointed at your foot, along the seam of your slacks. We go to Biddeford to meet the opera cast where the director tells us stories of past Toscas, past choruses: one director told the boys to follow her wherever she went on the stage, and so when she dives to her death, the boys followed her, jumping also, all landing in the orchestra pit trampoline installed for the stunt. In another, the diva dove and bounced back up. In another, she missed the pad, crashing into orchestra members and breaking a collarbone.
    I combine the stories gradually over the rehearsals, until in my mind I see us all following Tosca, jumping with her and bouncing back up, all of us in the air together, broken.
    My mother picks me up today from rehearsal. She has come after a teacher conference at school, where my teacher team, Mrs. Strauss and Mr. Christie, ask if everything is all right at home. My mother assures them everything is.
    They say you don’t have friends, she says to me. She drives the slow rush-hour traffic across the bridge back to Cape Elizabeth, the