Diva and the Bear
A/N: A darling little French poodle for Laura, who got me going on this story one day. "You're depressed? Go write me some Carlotta/Piangi fluff!" A sable muff goes to Jennie for her wonderful beta-advice, and a pair of marabou-trimmed mules to GlovedHand for some after-the-fact editing.
All the way up the stairs, Carlotta Guidicelli complained about how the party had been spoiled. She had thrown her wine-velvet cloak and creamy silk gloves onto the foyer floor below, where the maid scrambled to pick them up. Ubaldo Piangi handed the butler his evening cloak as the diva headed up the curved mahogany staircase of her Parisian townhouse. It would take a lot to calm her down tonight, so he leaned conspiratorially towards the tall trembling man awaiting some new blow or explosion from Madame. "Cognac," Piangi said to him. "And some of those blueberries in cream. Fifteen minutes."
Her curved heels thumped loudly on the stairs through the thin Morocco carpet, and her even more curved behind swayed angrily from side to side. Piangi lumbered heavily behind her, silently cursing his still-inflamed knee, a souvenir from slipping during a rehearsal of Hannibal over three months ago. At the open door to Carlotta's bedroom he stopped. It was ritual, nothing more. She didn't like him to follow her in automatically. Instead, she wanted to be the one to do the inviting. He was willing to play along, and so he stood quietly. Her maid hung outside the door as well, waiting to see what Madame would prefer. If she called for the maid, Piangi would delicately retreat to his own rooms down the hall, comfortably furnished for just these visits. If she called out "Orsino," then he knew to go in. Piangi was patient. He could wait, either way. These moods passed. Sometimes it took all night and half the next day, and then the reconciliation was sweet, very sweet. Of course, it would be sweet enough if she called to him as well.
Carlotta threw her feather headdress angrily on the bed. The ruffling plumes reminded Piangi that not two hours earlier, a lunatic with a sword had waved the blade through the marabou. Next he had poked his sword into Piangi's stomach, lightly pressing the gold fabric right above his cummerbund. The big man flushed with irritation at the memory, still angry with himself for not knocking the idiot to the ground with one blow. Why had he not? But he had stood there glazed and rooted to the spot, as paralyzed as every other man on that winding staircase in that massive golden room.
Overly anxious, the maid peeked around Piangi's wide frame. This inflamed Carlotta, and she snarled, "Get out of here and go to bed! I don't need you tonight." She turned towards him, lashes lowered. "Orsino, why are you standing there like that? Come in," and that was all Piangi needed. He smiled at the maid and whispered to her, "Go draw a bath about half an hour from now." The nervous little woman skittered off.
Orsino, she called him. Ubaldo he was christened, but in her room he was Orsino, the bear. It had started as a joke on the night they first became lovers. Carlotta ran her hands through the thick mat of black fur on his vast chest and breathed in sharply with delight, "Il mio Orso, Orsino mio," my bear, not so little, are you? Ah, my great bear." Now he stood in her doorway, filling it, and when he crossed over the threshold she circled round him, smiling, and he shut the door with a firm snap.
When she lifted off his own feather headdress, it reminded her again of the spoiled masquerade, and she threw it down next to hers. "A fine end to an evening. Just another one of 'these things that happen,' eh?" Her eyes flashed.
"Cara," he said in his Napoli-accented Italian, "It was nothing. Some upstart. Some baritone understudy wanting attention because he's never gotten a leading role. Some composer looking for a new way to get his opera produced." He knew it would set her off in anger. He wanted it to. She would release her venom, purge it from her system, and then on to the rest of the night they would go.
"Nothing! You say nothing?" She had already known the Italian of the theater, but her spoken Italian she had learned from him. Close enough to her native Spanish, she had picked up his peasant accent. In Rome it would have labeled both of them provincials. She didn't care, and neither did he. To hell with the Romans and the Parisians both. To hell with men in red capes who interrupted a party where she was enjoying herself. "I'll tell you nothing!" she went on. "That little Daaé bitch, we hear nothing of her for three months ..."
"She was in the chorus of The Virgin Enchantress," Piangi said slowly, watching for the effect.
"That role was nothing!"
"Some chorus full of virgins," Piangi joked. "Every one of them would need to kill a chicken for their wedding night, so not to be shamed when they hung the sheet out the next day for all the village to see."
She laughed, but it came out ragged and angry. "Including the lily-pure Daaé. She was off with her Vicomte in their love nest, so why didn't she stay there? Couldn't he keep her attention, or did she lie underneath him and count each crystal in the bedroom chandelier? No, instead she has to come sashaying back in, and this other lover, this jealous one, he has to ruin everything. The red pig, I'd stick him and bleed him if I could."
Carlotta clawed at the back of her spangled costume, her sultaness to his sultan, and yelled for the maid.
"Never mind," Piangi said. "I'll get it."
His big fingers deftly undid the hooks underneath the sequins, and Carlotta's voice grew gentler, more conversational. "We hear nothing of her for three months," she repeated.
"Who?" Piangi asked, concentrating on a button.
"Daaé, of course! Who else? The Vicomte, her lover, takes her all over Paris in his carriage, feathers a little apartment for her, but oh, no, she wants to come to the New Year's Eve ball with the grown-ups. You know why she came. She knew he was going to be there, that cock-of-the-walk, that devil in red."
Piangi slipped the golden dress gently down her back. It fell to her ample hips, resting there. He took her shoulders in his paws and rubbed them with expert gentleness around the blades, then up to the neck. Her skin was the color of cream with just a splash of coffee, a leftover from life under the Spanish sun. He caressed it lightly, enjoying its satin ripeness, then dropped the dress down over her hips. "Careful, cara, when you step out," he suggested, and she was, the tension in her shoulders softened now. He went on to unlace the stiff corset strung rigidly up the back.
"Too tight, Carlotta," he said softly as he pulled the laces apart, watching her ribs expand, hearing the breath flood into her chest. He lifted her slippery colorless chemise and rubbed gently across her back, where the whalebone had dug a deep reddish dent into the flesh. "Why so tight?"
She didn't answer. He knew why. Because she wasn't a girl like that skinny little chit anymore. Every year there were more in the chorus like that. Every one of them would like to see her out on the street. Then she leaned back into Piangi, who stroked the sore spots around her front and sides warmly under the shift. He draped a robe over her shoulders, the blue silk embroidered with golden peacocks whose tails twisted over their heads like eyes on stalks. He didn't know how old Carlotta was, not exactly, but the little waif of a chorus girl could almost have been her daughter. As if she knew where his thoughts wandered, she whirled on Piangi as he began pulling off his own costume.
"Everyone pushes Daaé," she complained. "Tonight, every night. Three months don't matter. Everyone has to fawn over her, put her in the center stage where she's not wanted. First the ballet mistress, that dried-up old crow Giry, although to tell the truth, Giry isn't that old. What kind of hard life has she had, eh? She looks like shoe leather left out in the sun too long. Then the managers, those blood-suckers, it's all about the money with them. Now the Vicomte I can understand. A man who tumbles a woman has to give something back, and as a patron of the opera, of course he shoves her in everybody's face. And what was that gimcrack around her neck? If I were him, I'd watch that she didn't hock it."
Piangi made appreciative little noises. He had learned in his affair with Carlotta to look convincingly attentive while only half-listening. It's not as if she said something new in every sentence, either. But he couldn't quiet her down just now, not with his hands busy undoing the stiff, uncooperative hooks of his cummerbund.
The still-chattering Carlotta shrugged as she settled herself in front of her vanity mirror. Down came the curled loops of thick reddish hair black at the roots, hennaed because she thought it went well with her skin. Piangi watched her brush the drooping locks with sharp stabbing motions, and gazed at the back of her honey-colored neck, tender and vulnerable. He thought about kissing it, but he knew to wait awhile, let her wind down a bit more. She rolled her hair with little rags, wrapping a large cloth around the bound-up curls when she was done. With her hair tied in a scarf, she looked as a woman from his village might appear before age and poverty and childbearing ground her down. She sponged her face with lotion, cleaning off the makeup in little circular swipes.
Freed of the gold-lamé cincture, his stomach eased out unbound and full. Then he turned to Carlotta in surprise, for something new had come out of that busy mouth.
"... So this rude brute who showed up on the stairs tonight, that one I don't understand. He's the one who sent all those notes, who's stealing the managers' money and making them quake like virgins on their wedding night. Why do they listen to him?"
"Used to be, you thought Mme. Giry wrote those notes."
"That's right. Not any more. I think he used to be Giry's lover, too, but I bet he's given her the boot. Can you blame him? She's a hag. Now he wants the little bitch, and Giry won't haul his ashes or carry his water anymore. Did you see the way she looked at him? The way all those women looked at him?"
"Not you," Piangi said, almost laughing.
"What was to look at there, some no-account actor in red tights? Not me, of course not me. Why should I look? Bah!" she said, spitting out a little lotion. "Our Don Juan must lose some weight," she mocked, perfectly imitating the man's arch tones, his over-emphasized words. "I'd like to make him lose some weight right between his ears."
She reached down to rub her right ankle, permanently stiff. It made dancing difficult, oh, Piangi knew that she had to work harder than anyone, because a limb that stiffened soon grew weak. When she was thirteen, she had climbed onto the roof of her house to escape a boy, a man, really, huge for sixteen. He had ambushed her early that morning as she went to the well, intending to drag her behind the house and have his way with her. She made it to the roof but he grabbed her ankle, and not until it made a cracking sound did he let her go. When she told Piangi, it was one of the rare times he had seen her tears, and it took a long time holding her in his arms before she stopped sobbing.
"Does it ache?" Piangi asked, struggling with what felt like a thousand slippery cloth-covered buttons on his sultan's costume.
"No," Carlotta said, still rubbing, and picked up where she'd left off. "So the Vicomte's little lorette disappears from the Opera for weeks. And when she's gone, then that unholy 'ghost' is too. Coincidence? No. Where was he gone to, do you think? Probably sniffing around her like a stray dog, hoping she'll lift her tail to him as well as her pretty young boy. Some ghost, eh? Giry started that ghost nonsense to cover up for him. He's not a ghost. He's a man who hangs them in his trousers to one side or the other like everyone else. I'll tell you, I know these things. The set pieces that kept falling, my costumes spoiled on opening night. My wigs that wound up with feathers or sand in them. And that night, that terrible night of Il Muto. He had a hand in it, a hand in it all. He probably was the one who hung that stagehand from the flies, you'll see." She turned around to him, indignantly.
"You can't prove that," he said, drawing his words out as long as he could, trying to think. "Cara, that's a terrible thing to say. They found that note in the stagehand's room."
"And I guess he just cut himself down while twitching like a gigged fish. I tell you, I can put these things together, more than those stupid policemen. And that little mop-haired rag-doll of a girl, she knows. Did you see how she looked at him? Oh, if I catch him ... Ghost!" She pretended to spit on the floor. "A man can be caught. A man can be killed, and the blade of the guillotine can carve right through his neck. You'll see. You'll see that I'm right."
Saying nothing, because no answer was really expected, he took from her closet a voluminous robe, blue flannel instead of silk. Piangi liked slippery fabrics under his hands, not around his frame. He settled himself into a soft upholstered chair, a big man slow to anger, even slower to come to conclusions, and watched Carlotta finish cleaning her face. Yes, she was right more often than not, he gave her that. But one man responsible for those tricks, the spectacle at the party, and a so-called suicide besides? He was still trying to piece it together when someone knocked on the door, and Carlotta cried out sharply, "What? What now?"
Piangi answered it, taking from the butler a silver platter laden with a small bottle of sweet cognac, some English biscuits, blueberries and clabbered cream. Carlotta looked gentler now, her points made, her temper rapidly fading. He spooned some berries into her bowl, more into his own. His he covered with cream, but held the spoon over hers tentatively.
"I shouldn't," she said, smiling at him and lowering her lashes. "I barely fit into my costume tonight."
"You were beautiful, cara," and he plopped the cream onto her berries.
"You came from a village outside Naples where the women look like bags of flour by the time they're twenty," she retorted, but her eyes laughed.
He watched her sip cognac as they sat at the low table covered with Belgian linen. She was from one of those poor Spanish farming villages where perhaps one farmer owned a mule, and if others couldn't rent it out, they pulled the plow themselves, guided by wife or child. The one well in town probably ran dry half the days of summer. He could imagine the miserable little dust pile where she'd spent her youth, not much different from his own. She'd done well for a girl who preserved her virtue at the cost of a broken ankle, only to lose it the next year to a farmer who bought her from her father, who made use of her the way the buck serviced the nannies, and probably smelled like a billy goat besides. Every month she waited anxiously for the child that would bind her to him, that would pen her in like the farm animal she was, but no child came, and that gave her the courage at fifteen to run away to Seville, where she sang on the street for coins. He knew she'd had lovers, that he expected. Some she even cared about. One brought her to Paris, and Piangi thanked the man silently. None of her lovers could compare to her Orso, she had told him, and he believed her.
Certainly no one he'd had could compare to her. Piangi liked what he saw. She was a beautiful woman, strong and proud. He didn't see what attracted the Vicomte or the man in red either to little matchsticks like the Daaé girl, all lips and hair and blank cow-like eyes. Carlotta wasn't intimidated or repelled by his size. The first time she'd seen him he was a tenor new to the Opera Populaire, struggling through the unfamiliar English of Dido and Aeneas. Her eyes wandered over him like hands. When he sweated in the stuffy rehearsal hall's September heat, she handed him her kerchief but wouldn't let go of it. She wiped his round perspiring face herself, then kissed the kerchief lightly as she slid it into her sleeve, saying everything with her brown mocking eyes full of wicked intelligence. And later that night in his carriage, her hands spoke when her eyes and lips did not, her mouth silent because it was covered so thoroughly by his.
He liked her room, too, with its gilt carved furniture. In Piangi's family, eight had shared a rundown house with a dirt floor. Carlotta's bright heavy chairs and wardrobes reminded him that he wasn't a younger son in that wretched village any longer, just as his fleshy wide belly told him the cyclic starvation of his childhood was past. The cognac worked its soft magic on him as he stretched out in his chair, and his eyes narrowed appreciatively. He had worked hard to get to this city, to this room, and he had planned to enjoy himself in the process. What he hadn't counted on, what surprised him anew, was that on the way he had fallen in love.
Through the door he heard the maid running the bath, and he began to hum a little tune, a folk song from long ago. Carlotta picked up the melody and then laughed, shaking her head. The maid tapped on the door to signal that the hot water was ready, and he gestured towards the bathroom, smiling broadly. She went past him and he pulled her into his embrace. He kissed her mouth, free of paint and tasting of face cream. Over his short beard and round cheeks she roved, nuzzling him with little wandering kisses. She closed her eyes shyly and that touched him. He pulled her up a little, closer so that his belly compressed a bit, allowing her to reach all the way around his wide back. They broke off at the same time, and he said, "I'll wash what you can't reach."
"And everything else too," she laughed.
He removed his own makeup while she splashed in the bath, looking critically and then sighing at the crinkling around his eyes, the soft sagging chin under his beard. He still had a few years left in him, he hoped. There were younger tenors sounder of wind and limb, but his repertoire was as broad as his back, and his range was still good, remarkable even. Hadn't he sung the role of Orlando two seasons ago in that one Handel production, the one originally written for a castrato? True, they had to transpose it down a bit, but he could still hit the high notes. For Carlotta and him both, hitting the high notes was what counted. That's what the audiences came to hear.
She called to him, interrupting his reverie. The bath was lined in white marble and laden with gold-painted fixtures that contrasted sharply with the brilliant blues of their robes, the olive-cream of their bodies. The maid had thrown in some fragrant lavender salts. When Piangi slipped the robe from Carlotta's shoulders, he breathed in sharply with pleasure of smell and sight both. She was broad across the shoulders, generous in the hips, with high plump breasts and a deep chest. From the graceful narrowing curve of her back her buttocks sloped wide and low. Carlotta settled herself into the hot water and he picked up the sponge, lathering her gently up and down the spine.
"Did you see Firmin tonight?" she said, arching her back under his wide strokes. "He wears the horns, all right. I saw his mistress in Montmartre, in that new café they call The Red Beret. With a name like that, they'd better watch their step. She was on the lap of some poet." She leaned her head back and stretched with enjoyment as he washed her neck. Gently he soaped around her breasts, relishing how they floated on the warm water.
"Firmin keeps her, but sometime she has to play, no?"
"I'm sure he's an old dry stick, and mean with money besides." She stretched out her stiff leg and he massaged it under the water, feeling how it pulled a little to the right, finding the tendon with his skillful fingers and rubbing, rubbing until it loosened. Then his hand began to wander up her leg.
"Oh, what are you looking for down there?" she chuckled.
"A little fish, lost in the water. Come out, little fishie."
"No, the little fish is hiding in her cave. The big fish has to come in and find her."
Piangi looked dubiously at the claw foot tub. It was larger than usual, long enough for him to stretch out in it alone, which he enjoyed, but he didn't know what would happen should the two of them get in at the same time. "I don't think so. The tub's feet are small, and I am not. Come on," he said, offering a towel, "Let's take the little fish out of the barrel before she pickles," and as she stepped out of the water, a dark-rose, strong-thighed Venus, he draped the thick Turkish cloth around her.
Carlotta dried herself, shivering a little. Then the shivers turned to anticipation as she slipped off Piangi's robe. Her hands traveled over the round wide shoulders thick with muscle underneath, the fluffy hair over his broad chest. With fluid grace he lowered himself down into the soap-cloudy tub, and the water pushed over the top, slopping a little on the floor.
She leaned over him to soap him up, but he pulled her towards him instead, so that the top of her kimono fell into the water as they kissed. Pulling the garment off, she squatted by the side of the tub in her silk chemise. His chest and belly shook a little as she rubbed them with the soft sponge. He sank down under the water entirely, and it slopped over a little again, wetting her thoroughly. Laughing, she pretended to hold his head under the water, and he thrust forward like a seal coming up for air. She grabbed his head and kissed him, hard, then broke off the kiss as abruptly as she'd started it.
"Now I'll find the fish," she laughed, "but it's not a little one," and she slid her hand around under water, sliding back and forth until Piangi let out a long excited breath. He pulled her farther into the warm water until, half-submerged, she rolled her tongue from his mouth down to his neck, tasting soap and the salty delicious flesh. As he pulled her chemise off, it felt like a wet skin being discarded, and then her breasts swung free against his slippery chest.
"The fish is getting away," he whispered.
"Come back here," she playfully snapped. "Oh, I've got you now!"
The tub had a long sloped back, and Piangi reclined all the way into it, squirming in pleasure under Carlotta's questing hand.
Then she let him go. "That fish is fierce," she laughed. "He's more like a shark. I'm afraid he'll bite me," and she rested her chin on his chest. He put his arm up around her and she squirmed a little, complaining, "Don't get my hair wet. I don't want to have to bother with the hairdresser tomorrow. In the morning, we stay in bed." Then she ran her hands around his back and sides, soapy water sliding between hand and flesh, and she murmured, "My love, oh, Orso, my big bear, my love."
He pulled her close protectively, suddenly a little afraid. What if there really was a crazy man who had the managers of the Opera Populaire under some kind of influence? What could he have on them? Blackmail? Some crime? In his own village a ruthless padrone could bring brave peasants unafraid of tax collectors or soldiers to their knees in terror. That Carlotta was at the center of some blackmailing scheme wakened in him a slow angry flame which did not flare up easily but could melt iron.
He shifted restlessly, no longer wanting to lounge in the bath with vague threats running through his mind, and announced, "I am coming out." She raised herself up a little clumsily to get out of the way, and slipped on the wet tile floor. Down she went, and he was up in an instant, water flying everywhere as he rose up on tree-trunk thighs. A red-hot wire sliced through his knee but he ignored it. He stepped quickly out of the tub and pulled her to her feet, murmuring "Cara, cara, are you all right?" Close he drew her to him. "Where?" he asked. "Where did you fall?"
She made a face, rolling her eyes at him, mouth downturned. "Here," she pouted, caressing her flank. He rubbed it, swabbing the wet floor with a towel under his foot so she would not slip again. Then he wrapped her in his own robe, thick and fluffy, and led her from the soaked bathroom into the warm, bright boudoir all lit with gold reflections. After tucking her into the high bed with its elaborate headboard of cherubs and roses, he returned to the bathroom and finished cleaning up the water.
"Orso," she called out, "let the maid do that!"
"No, no," he answered, "It's nothing. Get yourself warm."
"I can't," she pouted. "Not without you."
"I'll be there soon."
"Now, Orsino," she called.
"In a minute, cara." Then he strode in naked and from a shelf in her armoire pulled out a linen nightshirt soft from many washings.
She ran her hand from his underchin, around his thick neck to the front of his golden throat, then down over his barrel chest. Under her caresses the vengeful red ghost receded from his mind, and he pulled her nearer to him. She rubbed her face against his fabric-swathed front, breathing in the clean linen smell. "Orso, I'm sick of this place."
"What, this house?" he said sleepily, luxuriating in her breasts up against him, how her hand on his side stroked but didn't rouse him, instead just guided him gently into sleep. The morning, there was always time in the morning for love. For now Piangi, bathed in warmth, closed his eyes. "I thought you liked this house."
"No, it's not the house," she said, a little too awake for him, wasn't she tired? He pulled her closer, hoping that his body would lull her, but she went on, "It's these managers, these imbeciles who don't have the sense to catch and lock up a madman who runs around and extorts from them, who terrorizes. It's been five seasons, Orso, and I'm tired."
"You want to leave Paris?" he asked slowly, incredulously. This was something new, something inside Carlotta he hadn't seen, and he woke up a little. "You're afraid?"
"Not afraid," she said, snuggling close, his warmth deflecting the sting in her voice. "Tired. Sometimes I just want to let Christine Daaé take my place. I don't want to leave Paris. I love Paris, and I loved the Opera Populaire when I first came here. Then, there you were, and that made me so happy. But now everyone hates me, they laugh at me. One thing happens after another. It's as if I have no luck."
"The crowds like you."
"They like you too. They love us together. But I'm afraid now, and I don't know what of. There's a curse on this theater. Can't you feel it?"
Piangi lifted his hand quickly, made "the horns of the devil" and spat through them. "We have contracts, cara," he said, and while her words were still anxious, her body softened against his. He went on, so glad to have her against him. "We have to finish the season, but that's not so long. The time comes for new contracts, then we decide." He stroked her scarved head. She cuddled up under his arm, sheltering in his warmth and size, in his concern.
He went on, "But I don't think he'll return. It's between him and that new patron now. They're fighting over a woman. Men do that. They beat each other bloody, one gets her or the other one does. Either way, they drink and they're friends again. Please don't worry. The season ends, we go to the Italian Alps, would you like that? Out of the noise and dirt of Paris, away from these crazy people."
"Oh, Orsino, thank you," she said, nestling under his arm, her face pressed into his chest. "Keep me safe."
"Always," he said, as they covered themselves with the blanket of sleep. "Always."
(the end)