OPERAREALM

Chapter III

Much later that night, Roza tiptoed down the drafty, black oak stairs at the Inn aspiring towards the warm glow of the fire on the great hearth in the den. She needed some warm tea or cocoa, something to calm her mind and soul. She also needed some time alone to reflect on her extraordinary experiences so far in this realm of true opera. She had spent a delightful evening with the Puccinians and some of the characters of Pikovaya Dama and Der Freischütz conversing over a small buffet in the parlor. She still could not believe everything that had happened to her so far and knew not what the mysterious future held. Roza was restless with the anticipation of it. So restless that she could not sleep a wink and therefore had left her cozy bedroom. She felt as if something beyond her control compelled her to float down that gloomy staircase.

Slowly, quietly Roza entered the dimly lit room. The only light came from a waning fire in the fireplace. An elaborate scarlet oriental carpet blanketed the floor and glossy navy, peach and cream wallpaper which gracefully set off the hues in the carpet adorned the walls. The ceiling was high and quite beamed with a rustic chandelier of brass extending from its center. Two walls of the room featured two gothic high-arched windows; one of which was fully obscured by a great navy tapestry and the other of which was half drawn exposing a lovely crimson velvet window seat. Beyond that was the inky darkness of night. The wind whistled eerily and a branch tapped relentlessly against the windowpane.

The room somehow struck Roza with an overwhelming sense of isolation and mysterious foreboding. She lingered on the threshold for several moments, deciding if she would even enter it or not. Morbid thoughts plagued her overly active imaginative mind and sent chills down her spine. A sudden creak which seemed to issue from one of the fireside chairs made her gasp in fright. Roza took a few startled steps back into the dark hallway, ready to run.

"Please don't leave," came a man's voice from one of the chairs at the hearth. The voice was so rich and velvety, yet so infinitely sad that Roza found herself compelled to do its bidding.

"I beg your pardon?" Roza asked timidly, slowly entering the great room.

"I am very much alone," the melancholy male voice said with a sigh. "Mademoiselle, will you grant me your presence?"

Roza hesitated in uncertainty. "What is it you want, Monsieur?"

"Some companionship in this accursed solitude of mine," the voice answered desolately with a trace of bitter hopelessness in it. Roza recognized a prominent Slavic accent adorning his speech. She immediately tried to place his identity in Operaland, but found herself momentarily stumped. The name was in her heart, but not in her mind. For her mind was reeling uncontrollably and for seemingly no reason at all...

"Please join me by the fireside," the mysterious man said in invitation.

"I will," Roza told him gently, regaining her composure.

Suddenly a tall, dark form in a elegant velvet brown waist coat with a high collar and an silken cravat rose from one of the great chairs at the fireplace and turned towards Roza. Adorned in extravagant 1820's style clothes, he was easily well over six feet tall and had an abundance of thick wavy dark brown hair and sideburns. His handsome features were unmistakably Slavic--severe and masculine, yet very refined with a surface coldness and an underlying sense of incomparable passion and melancholy which shone through his penetrating eyes of sapphire. He was melancholy. And Roza could not mistake him for anybody else in the world.

The mysterious man gazed at Roza intensely. There was a soul-searching desperation in his eyes that inspired Roza with both compassion and a strange excitement. She timidly returned the stranger's gaze, trembling with an emotion that she could not comprehend. Neither of the two spoke. The man preceded to pull one of the chairs closer to the fireplace and gestured for her to sit. As Roza moved forward, the man took her hand in greeting.

"Oh, forgive me, mademoiselle," he said gallantly as it had just occurred to him that he had not introduced himself. "I am Yevgeny Onegin."

"I know," Roza whispered involuntarily. Her heart skipped a few beats. He was exactly as she had imagined him. So exactly that it scared it. And it was then that she also realized that he was the same melancholic man that she had seen in that most tragic scene she had seen in the mirror. "My name is Roza," she told him, suddenly inexplicably shy for the first time since she had come to Operarealm.

"Roza," Yevgeny murmured. "It is such a beautiful name. It's my pleasure to be in your acquaintance, Roza." He kissed her hand rather lingeringly and then seated her gently before taking his own chair at the fire.

Yevgeny studied her carefully with his piercing sapphire eyes. "There is something so familiar about you," he said sadly.

"How so?" Roza inquired softly.

Yevgeny considered this for a moment and then shook his handsome head. "I do not know what it is exactly...There is just something about you...but I would have remembered if I had met a lady named Roza."

"Well I knew who you were instantly, " Roza told him. "You are exactly the way I pictured you...exactly."

"How?" Yevgeny asked her, rather confused and slightly uncomfortable for a moment. "Unless...of course!" he realized with a pang. "Then it is you who are the opera child from Reality who has come to visit this land!"

Roza nodded. "It is I."

Yevgeny rose to put some more wood on the fire and then settled back into his great chair, without taking his eyes off Roza.

"I must tell you," Roza said. "That it is the people of your opera, that I have been most anxious to meet. Your opera is my absolute favorite."

"Spasiba," Yevgeny said, obviously touched. "But why? Doesn't it bore you?"

"Not at all," said Roza, but she wasn't at all surprised by his question.

"It bores me," Yevgeny said bitterly and with profound sadness.

"Everything bores you Yevgeny," Roza said dryly.

"And it wounds my heart tremendously," Yevgeny continued as if not hearing Roza. "Can you imagine how painful it is to live the same abominable story--those same horrible mistakes that you alone are responsible for and that agonizing rejection scene--again and again while each time being powerless to stop it?!" He put his face in his hands.

"Oh," murmured Roza, aching for this melancholy man and the sad fate she knew too well. "No, I have no idea...not in that sense. But I do know well that we make our own misery."

"Have you ever been rejected by one you adore, and see as the light of your life?" Yevgeny asked her, looking for all the world, as if this was the worst fate any human being could suffer.

"Yes," said Roza calmly. "In fact I have."

Yevgeny regarded her incredulously. "Not you," he uttered, in sheer disbelief. "You are young, beautiful, talented...and kind. It is so good of you to sit with me during a wretched time like this."

" 'Tis nothing at all," said Roza thoughtfully.

"Please tell me who was fool enough to reject you," Yevgeny said. It was not a question, it was closer to a gentle command.

"It was a musician I worked with," Roza explained. "His name was Marco...I was about seventeen at the time and he seemed to step right out from one of my operas...a tenor of course. Charming, handsome, articulate. He was much older than myself and I knew my parents would never allow it, but I loved him in spite of myself. I never dared confess it, but I used to write poetry about him in a little notebook I carried around and I used to sing about and only for him. I lived in a sort of unbearable agony, because I knew well that a man of his worldliness could never care for me. I would have done anything for him...but he had other ideas. Being the foolish child I was, I was surely very obvious in my affections and it was not hard for him to realize how I felt about him. So he had a great sport in flirting with me a little bit, to make me believe I had a chance with him. Meanwhile he merely laughed at me and charged me twice for music lessons what he charged others. He was a con-artist and when my parents discovered this they fired him and I never saw him again. My romantic dream not only never came true, but it was completely shattered."

Yevgeny seemed extremely moved by every aspect of Roza's story. He was silent for several moments. "Roza," he sighed. "Is there no honor in your world? What a hellish man this Marco was! If I ever met him, I would dearly love to teach him a lesson! I was wrong to fail to see the rare quality and potential in my dear Tatyana. But I never deceived her! I was and am no hypocrite! But oh...I've paid dearly for it all the same!"

"Oh Yevgeny...please don't look back, it will only make it worse! Why punish yourself even more? One cannot change the past. It took me so long to figure that out myself." Roza told him earnestly.

Yevgeny gazed at her with an intensity that made her nervous. "In you, I seem to see both the former and present day Tatyana. Roza, with your soul, your passion, your steadfast spirit, you remind me very much of her."

Roza was quite taken. She shifted back in her chair. "Thank you." What else was she supposed to say? He was comparing her to the most acclaimed heroine in Russian literature and opera, her dream role. But she didn't go into how hard it was going to be to sing that role on stage and to have to be the one that had to reject a man like himself.

"Do you know what it is to be alone?" Yevgeny asked her in his soul-searching way. "To live a live a life that is fruitless and devoid of repose?"

Roza shook her head. "No, I do not. Although I know to some extent, what it is like to be alone and betrayed, I cannot say my life was ever fruitless. Never! I've always had my music to keep my company. Any turmoil in my life has served as nothing but tremendous inspiration for my music. My art is wonderful, it is always and will always be with me. It will never abandon or betray me!"

Yevgeny regarded Roza with incredulous admiration. "How can you live your life in such a fashion? How can you be so content--"

"I keep busy," Roza cut in. "Your problem, Yevgeny is that you have no aim in life. No dream to set your heart and soul on fire! In reality one would say that you have no life. I must tell you frankly, Yevgeny--you need to get a life! If you had a life--goals--then you would no longer be alone. No one wants to be in the company--mind you this is not the case with me I find you wonderfully fascinating and complex--of one that is jaded and constantly depressed about something of which is their fault. I really hate to say this, but it is nobody's fault but your own, Yevgeny."

For several moments Yevgeny was silent, in utter awe of what she had just said. Then he sighed. "I know, Roza...I know...And I must do something or this nightmare will never end."

Roza sighed too. "I really do not know what to say. I really think I should apologize. I am a mistress of Reality and I have no business interfering in the lives of men of Operarealm. I have overstepped my bounds and I am sorry."

Yevgeny looked at her in an imploring and incredulous manner as if he had not understood what she had just said. "You have nothing to be sorry for at all," he said in his most velvet tone, and in a voice which was barely above a whisper. "I must humbly thank you Roza, for you have helped me more than you know. "

Roza rose, struck to the core by the tenderness in Yevgeny's velvet baritone voice. "Sir, I have much enjoyed our conversation. But it is late and tomorrow will be a long day. I suppose you will be attending the seasonal Operarealm Ball in St. Petersburg?"

"I was not planning on it," Yevgeny told her. "Most balls are so terribly boorish and depressing. And I am very haunted by what happened at the last ball in my home city. So haunted! But I think I will overlook this."

Roza smiled. "Then perhaps we shall meet again."

"I hope so, Roza," Yevgeny said lingeringly.

Oh...what was it about this man's voice that brought about the most insidious shivers? "Good night, Monsieur," Roza said. And then she left the room before Yevgeny could say any more. She slipped back to her comfortable room where sleep found her and she dreamt of wonderful unattainable things.