Gramercy Park. Paula Cohen

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СКАЧАТЬ she says shyly. “Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?”

      Alfieri loathes tea. A true son of his country, his beverage is coffee: thick, strong, and taken black.

      “I would love a cup of tea,” he says.

      HOME” CONSISTS of two rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room, facing south and east over the garden at the back of the huge house. The sitting room is a pleasant, airy chamber, with sunlight falling like water through curtains of lace, and its bright comforts seem touched with some kindly magic, permitting it alone to escape the dark spell which has plunged the rest of the house into profound sleep. Adding to the feeling of enchantment is a table before one window, set with covered dishes, a cup and saucer, a round blue teapot, and a small kettle which steams cheerfully above a spirit lamp, as if invisible hands had been there only moments before. While Clara busies herself with the tea things, taking for her own use a glass tumbler fetched from the table beside her bed, Alfieri examines his surroundings.

      His eyes travel from the soft rugs on the floor to the books piled on the tables, to the hoop of half-finished embroidery lying on the window seat, to the mantelpiece, which is white marble carved with swags of roses. Upon it sits a vase filled with tulips and anemones, a fountain of bright reds, blues, and yellows; on the wall above hangs a portrait of a girl with long chestnut hair tumbling about her shoulders, looking like a flower herself in a pale blue gown. The artist, with masterly hand and eye, had captured his subject at a magical time—no longer a child, not quite a woman—and Alfieri stares at it, once more feeling something that he cannot explain … the tilt of the head, the slant of the eyes, the oddly knowing expression, smiling and infinitely sad … all achingly familiar—and then he is back, and realizing that the wan little creature now pouring out tea is the faded shadow of the portrait’s original.

      “My guardian had me sit for it, two years ago,” Clara says, following his gaze. “I was very young then.”

      “So I see. How young, if I might be permitted to ask?”

      “Seventeen.”

      “Why then you are very old now,” he says gravely, and is rewarded by one of her rare smiles.

      “Sometimes I feel very old. I tire so quickly.”

      “You must give it time.”

      “It’s taking so long.”

      “I know. But you will grow well and strong. If you do not believe me, I will show you.” He takes the teacup she has handed him and quickly drinks off its contents, leaving a small amount in the bottom. Swirling the remaining liquid around, he pours it out into his saucer and holds the empty cup out for her inspection.

      She peers into it. “Do you read tea leaves?”

      “I am famous for it. In my family I am the only one permitted to read them. It is a rule.”

      “Whom do you read them for?”

      “My brothers and sisters and their children.”

      “Does what you read always come true?”

      “Always.”

      “What do you see there?”

      He holds the cup to the light and rotates it between his hands. “I see a very beautiful young lady—radiant with health, and with long, chestnut hair—in a park. Not a little park, like the one outside here, but a big one, like the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. See this?” He points to a smudge of tea leaves inside the cup.

      “What is it?”

      “A ship. And here are waves and seabirds.”

      “What does it mean?”

      “It means that you will grow well and strong, and travel across the sea.”

      “You are very kind,” she says, looking away. “But I think not. Not I.”

      “Miss Adler, do you doubt me? You do me an injustice. I have predicted it, and, as my family will tell you, my predictions are never wrong.”

      “But …” She stops, puzzled by a new thought. “Mr. Alfieri, forgive me, but I fear you’ve made a mistake.”

      “Never. Not with tea leaves. It cannot be done.”

      “But that is your teacup. You would need to read my glass to tell my fortune, wouldn’t you? That was your own fortune you just read.”

      Alfieri smiles gently and puts down the cup.

       Chapter Three

      LIKE JUNO ON MOUNT OLYMPUS, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor stands at the pinnacle of New York society. From her exalted vantage point, with its commanding views, Mrs. Astor single-handedly metes out the fate of those would-be immortals who everlastingly strive for a place on the holy mount. The self-appointed arbiter of worth in her rarefied universe, Mrs. Astor admits only the most deserving to the ranks of the blessed. In all such matters her power is absolute, and her word, law.

      In consequence of such toilsome efforts to organize society into a finely measured hierarchy, and to elevate it to ever new levels of distinction, Mrs. Astor’s life had been measured not in days or weeks or months, but in cotillions and balls and levées. For twenty years, newcomers worthy of a foothold on the lower rungs of the celestial ladder might have been invited to an afternoon reception, one of the lesser observances in Mrs. Astor’s ritual; only for those in the preeminent ranks of the pantheon would there have been an invitation to one of her weekly dinner parties.

      But alas for New York! The goddess’s consort is two years dead. While Mr. Astor lived, Mrs. Astor’s year would begin in the autumn, when the elite, after the summer’s diaspora, were gathered once more in the city; would build momentum through the fall and early winter with patriarchs’ balls, assembly balls, family circle dancing classes, Monday nights at the opera, and a hundred exquisite suppers at Delmonico’s; would whirl past Christmas and the New Year; and would achieve its culmination at her annual ball, held on the third Monday of each January—the single most sacred occasion of the social year. Since Mr. Astor’s translation to an even higher sphere, however, his widow has ceased to entertain. For two years, no events have breathed life into the great crimson and gold ballroom in Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue mansion.

      Until tonight.

      Tonight is a supreme occasion, in every respect worthy of bringing society’s queen out of mourning: not merely an amusement, but a portent of glories to come … a ball to welcome Maestro Mario Alfieri, primo tenore assoluto, to New York. Moreover, it is a radical departure for the fastidious Mrs. Astor, an anomaly that in itself would be enough to bring society snapping to attention. Mrs. Astor has long held that artists of any ilk—painters, authors, actors, and the like—merit no recognition unless safely dead, and that meeting them risks both needless mental fatigue and the possibility of social contamination.

      But Mario Alfieri is no ordinary artist. The reigning god of Europe’s opera stages for as long as Mrs. Astor has been the reigning goddess of New York society, he is still bettering his art, going from strength to strength, and triumph to triumph. What is more, he is said to be able to trace his ancestry back, in an unbroken line, СКАЧАТЬ