XXIV Da Capo

It was dawning as Katherina waited on the platform at the tiny train station at Drei Annen. She peered down the track, searching for the steam locomotive that would take her up to the Brocken Peak, but still saw no sign of it. Idly, she watched the stationmaster sweeping snow off the platform onto the tracks. He pushed his broom lightly, mechanically, as if accepting the futility of his work, and, in fact, the light snowy mist that still drifted down soon recovered the portions of the platform he had just swept.

The voice rehearsals that had taken place the previous week in rooms all over Drei Annen had gone well. Practicing in school classrooms and private houses was a bit primitive, but that was often the case with festival operas staged outside of a permanent theater or large city. You went wherever you could find a piano and a room large enough. The singing cast of nine included one voice for each of the seven sins and one for Mephisto. She herself, in the role of Woman, made up the ninth. They were mostly “young” singers, starting their careers, hungry for work and willing to take risks. Now the new mountaintop theater was finished and everyone was ready for stage rehearsals.

Katherina was glad to be moving on to the more active phase of the performance, though the intense week of voice rehearsals had begun to relieve both the mourning for her father and the longing for Anastasia. Still, both losses were unhealed wounds, and when she tried to rest, a soft ache settled over her like a pall. She needed to work, to be outdoors, so it felt good to focus attention on the snow-laden fir trees and the cold air in her nostrils carrying the fragrance of pine.

A bird chirped somewhere behind her, signaling daybreak, and Katherina caught sight of it fluttering from under the station roof into nearby trees.

“Snow finch. ” The stationmaster stopped sweeping and leaned on his broom. “Been here as long as I have—since ’59. Even blizzards don’t faze ’em. Pretty little things, too. ” He nodded toward a second bird that swooped past them, its open wings revealing a striking black-and-white pattern.

“You one of those show people got permission to go up on the Brocken, Miss? ” He started sweeping again, desultorily.

She lifted the collar of her coat and blew into her gloved hands. “Show people? Yes, I suppose I am. They’ve just built a performance space for us, I hear. ”

“Uh-hunh, over the Brocken Stones. That’s got to be bad luck, seem to me. ”

“Bad luck? Why’s that? It’s just a pile of boulders. ”

“Two piles. Devil’s Pulpit and the Witches’ Altar, Miss. I’m not saying that there were real witches up there, carrying off souls. But there’s such a thing as an evil place, you know, haunted like, where things happen. So just be careful’s all I’m saying. ” He started sweeping again, Sisyphus-like against the forces of winter.

Katherina stared at his back for a moment, bemused by the warning. The opera they were about to present was all about evil. The seven deadly sins, in fact. She considered Magda’s mock declaration that evil was sex and smiled. She rather doubted she’d encounter any of that on the weather-beaten rocks of the Brocken.

“Good morning, Madame Marow. ” A short bulky man with an enormous mustache appeared at her side. He looked familiar, at least the mustache did, though she could not recall where she had seen it before.

Her expression must have revealed her puzzlement, because the stranger added, “Friedrich Diener at your service. ” He executed a slight military bow.

“Ah, the composer. ” Katherina offered her gloved hand. A pudgy hand emerged from the sleeve of his enormous winter coat and touched lightly against her palm.

“So happy you are joining us, ” Diener said, and slipped his hand back into his pocket.

Katherina endeavored to make conversation. “I understood you are to be anonymous. Why is that? ”

“Mr. Raspin has requested that I remain unknown. He has compensated me for that discretion and I have no objections. He has also contributed a number of his own ideas. ”

“Morning, all! ” The bass, Matti, waved at them from farther down the platform. Other cast members were joining him, and Katherina spotted Radu Gavril among them.

The sound of a steam-locomotive whistle pierced the air, and a moment later the train became visible in the distance, chugging up the incline to Drei Annen, pouring out sooty black smoke. When it drew into the station and stopped, the soot disappeared and gray steam escaped into the icy air.

It was a wonderful antique locomotive, a massive black iron-and-steel barrel covered with countless fixtures, valves, wheels, pipes, and lights. The lower portions of the steam engine were painted red, along with the fully exposed wheels and the armature that turned them. Three lights burned at the front, now superfluous in the snow-augmented morning light, and a wide steel plate between the lights bore the engine number. An open red car directly behind the locomotive held coal, and behind the coal car were six small green passenger cars. Like a child’s train set replicated in real-life format.

A conductor opened the passenger-car door from the inside and reached out to help her up. The moment seemed fairy-tale-like. As she clasped the proffered hand, she glanced sideways down the platform, taking one last look at the charming nineteenth-century train station.

With a jolt, she saw Sabine Maurach stepping into the next passenger car.

Katherina stared out the train window at the Alpine landscape, listening to the ever-accelerating bedattabedatta of the train wheels. The morning sunlight that shone with double intensity on the snow cheered her immensely and allowed her to forget about Sabine Maurach and most of her other cares. Some of the trees, she noted, had collected snow on only one side. The constant wind had blown it outward and it had frozen in ragged horizontal shapes. They made her think of witches flying into the wind. Could the strange phenomenon be the source of the Witches’ Sabbath legends? She wished that Anastasia were at the window with her, explaining snow myths.

“May we join you? ” Katherina smiled welcome as Radu Gavril and Friedrich Diener sat down on the seats across the aisle from her. When the train passed through clearings in the line of trees, the newly risen sun was just high enough to shine through the coach window, warming the side of her face.

“Lovely morning, isn’t it? ” Radu said. “Is this your first trip up to the peak? ”

Katherina nodded. “Yes. But I’m curious why we are allowed to perform on the Brocken Peak. As I understood it, it’s a high-security area used by the East German government and the Soviets. ”

“You’re quite right, Frä ulein Marow, ” Friedrich Diener said, small now on his seat, all mustache and coat. “It’s surrounded by a concrete wall, too. The transmission tower there not only broadcasts East German television, but probably monitors signals from the West. Nasty business. ”

“It’s hard to believe they would allow something like this. I mean the orchestra and conductor are from the DDR, but the soloists are West German. ”

Diener nodded pedagogically. “Quite so, but it is a work that from its conception was intended to be performed at this location. Mr. Raspin has spent a lot of money and called in a lot of favors to get the DDR to agree to this production. An amazing achievement. ”

“We’ll have to go through border control, then? ”

“Yes, two times, in fact. At the Brocken station and again as we pass through the security wall around the transmission station. You have your temporary visa, don’t you? ”

“Of course. My agent took care of all that. ” She held up her shoulder bag, which now had a fastener holding it firmly shut.

Friedrich Diener bent toward her from his seat across the aisle. “I trust Herr Raspin has discussed with you the…uh…novel aspects of this opera. ”

“Yes, briefly. But perhaps you can fill me in on more of the details. ”

He clasped his hands in front of him. “The novelty is both in the musical structure and in the staging. You see, we return to the roots of the theatrical experience. The performance will be anti-Goethe, even anti-Brecht. We don’t want any intellectual detachment. That is the art of the weakling. We wish to initiate a complete abandoning of the self to the musical experience. ”

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow you. I don’t know what that means. ”

Diener continued with what was apparently a little speech he often gave. “Since the onset of the technological age, people have become emotionally lazy, intellectualized. They sit passively in movie theaters having their excitement poured into them from outside. We’re going to excite them from the inside. Using the historical-literary nomenclature, we offer a return to pre-classical Greek drama, which was a religious rite—the sacrifice of Dionysius. ”

Pre-classical Greek drama? Katherina realized now who the composer resembled. Friedrich Nietzsche. Had the man read so much of the nineteenth-century philosopher that he decided to grow a bushy mustache to look like him? Or did the mustache come first?

“How, exactly, will you do this? ” she asked.

He smiled with his eyes, though it was not possible to see whether his lips did as well. “Mr. Gavril will be taking care of that. ”

Radu Gavril cleared his throat as if being handed a microphone. “Part of the performance design is for you to provoke the audience to join in simple tunes and chants. We’ll be blocking that out today. ”

“How can you rehearse that aspect without an audience? ”

“We can’t really, but spontaneity is part of our challenge and our strength. Dress rehearsal will have an invited audience selected by the East German government, and by opening night, with a different audience, you will all be veterans. You’ll see. ”

An ominous question occurred to Katherina and she felt foolish not having wondered about it sooner. “Mr. Diener, if the Brocken is a restricted high-security area, how do you plan to invite a public to see the performance? ”

“Don’t you worry about that, dear, ” Diener responded gently. “You just concentrate on the music. We’ll address the question of the audience when the time comes. ”

Katherina was a little put off by the condescending answer, but saw no point in pushing for more information. It was, as he said, their problem.

“Well, hello, ” a familiar voice sounded over Katherina’s head. The shadow, two shadows, moved along the aisle into view. Sabine Maurach stood next to a tall, pale-skinned man. His square face with its somewhat large nose and cleft chin gave him a certain masculinity, offset by a wide mouth with high-arched sensuous lips that all but rippled. He seemed unable to hold them still for very long, first pressing them together, then running his tongue quickly over them. The effect was a sort of drawing of attention to his mouth rather than to his whole person. He had also shaved away his eyebrows.

Sabine laid her hand on his shoulder, positioning him for introduction. “Have you met Gustav? ” she asked. “He’ll be your Mephisto. ”

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