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XXX Molto Agitato

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Stabshauptmann Manfred Exner, Commandant of Grenzregiment 6, Brocken Border Control Unit of the German Democratic Republic, buttoned his dark green uniform jacket. Annoyed, he flicked a speck of dirt from the white Grenztruppen DDR lettering around his cuff and prepared to meet his visitor. The call had come from the Ministry of Defense an hour earlier, so he knew the substance of the coming meeting, and he didn’t like it.

While he waited for his lieutenant to bring in the visitor, he glanced around his office. He was acutely aware of how shabby the room, the whole installation, in fact, would look to Western eyes. It put him in a weak position, and it galled him to have to talk to the man at all. Exner was a good communist, but he was not a fool. It was clear to anyone with eyes and a brain that the prosperous West had won the ideological battle with their East German brethren. The world had changed greatly in the decades following the war, and in that time, while the West was thriving, the DDR had not lived up to its promise to create a prosperous workers’ society. The very fact that East Germans had to be blocked from leaving the DDR under penalty of death was evidence enough of the failure. Even for believers like himself, the dream of a just and egalitarian socialist state was receding ever more into the distance. Some time in the past year he had realized that he and his troops were an anachronism and the state they guarded a failure. But Stabshauptmann Exner was a good soldier, and when he was given an order, he obeyed. He had a border to guard, and that is what he would do until he was commanded to stand down.

The lieutenant ushered in the visitor, a slender, well-dressed man in his sixties with a reserved businesslike smile. The handshake told Exner all he needed to know. It was the smooth cool hand of a rich man with the loose grip of one who could not be trusted.

He sat down again at his desk. “What can I do for you, Mr. Raspin? ” he asked, though he knew full well.

“I believe the ministry has contacted you about allowing your men to attend our performance on Saturday. Not the select few we had originally agreed upon, but the entire garrison. ”

“They have, and I informed them that it is a terrible idea. My men are not palace guards with time on their hands, Mr. Raspin, but battle-ready soldiers. What possible value could an opera have for us? ”

“Apparently your government is not as averse as you are. Grenzkommando Nord thinks a completely apolitical performance by both Eastern and Western musicians would have great propaganda value. That is why they are setting up cameras to film it as we speak. A triumph of art over ideologies, in effect. We know, the world knows, that Germans have a tender spot for classical music. ”

Exner drummed his fingers on his desk in a brief cadence. Whatever truth was in the man’s words was undermined by his air of condescension. “We are not talking about a string quartet here, but an entire opera production. An avant-garde opera, as I understand it. I have objected to it from the very beginning. However, I have been ordered to cooperate with your undertaking and I will do so. I warn you that my troops may put up with your little spectacle without incident, but I cannot vouch for our Soviet colleagues. ”

“Forgive me if I find your reaction amusing, Herr Stabshauptmann. But Commander Zaizev of the Russian unit expressed the same misgivings about the German troops when I spoke to him this morning. ”

Exner did not share the amusement. “Ah, you have already reached an agreement with the Soviets. Well then, so be it. I will supply you with half of your audience, but I have already informed the ministry that this assignment falls outside the articles defining military border responsibilities. You will therefore be held to account personally for any irregularities, either between my men and the Soviets, or between my men and your own team. I presume a similar understanding exists between yourself and Commander Zaizev. My authority—and I assure you I will enforce it—extends only to German border troops and, now, of course, yourself. However, neither German civilian courts nor German military courts have jurisdiction over Soviet troops. ”

“Understood. ” Raspin stood up, glanced quickly at his watch, and offered his hand once again. “I thank you for your cooperation, Herr Stabshauptmann. Now, if you will permit me, I have an opera to produce. ” With the hint of a military bow, he strode to the door, which the attentive lieutenant opened for him.

Exner stood fuming. He remembered now why he hated the West Germans.

Gregory Raspin rode the last steam train of the day down from the Brocken Peak satisfied that he’d solved the last problem. What’s more, it hadn’t added to the fortune he had already spent on the opera on fees, expenses, bribes, all the rest. Even if it had, he would have paid whatever was necessary. Ultimately, a man had to put his money where his heart was. Besides, the well would soon fill up again, nourished as it was by dividends from shares in petroleum, pharmaceuticals, and armaments. And the investors in his private investment firm, Nibelung, GmbH, would not even notice the temporary vacuum. As long as their quarterly statements showed a profit, they trusted him.

Ah, there was so much money to be gotten from that trust, that is, real money earned from the mere promise of money, the fictional money of quarterly statements. Gullible institutions, mostly music and art foundations, entrusted huge sums to him, and each new investor allowed him to make actual payments to the previous ones, cementing their trust. When people trusted you, they stopped making withdrawals and simply re-invested, and so the money poured in.

He congratulated himself. How far he had come since being Peter Stein, a hungry little boy in Rü sselsheim, son of a soldier who had been highly decorated in World War I. But his hero of a father had become a drunk who brutalized his wife and his son and sexually assaulted the serving girl. The concussion he suffered from being thrown against the wall during one of his father’s rages had crushed any seed of idealism the son might have had. When he recovered, he swore never again to be weak. But he was still young and he endured abuse for three more years. Finally, when the political atmosphere changed, Peter’s first act of revenge was to denounce the drunken old brute to the local Gauleiter.

Raspin thanked God that he himself was smart, handsome, and Aryan-looking. He was a star in the Hitler jugend and a star at university and had always known which way the wind was blowing. When the war began in 1939, he had already been a party member for a year and was in a good position to make his way into the Gestapo. That’s when the game got really interesting. One of his first successes was to uncover two brothers, expert counterfeiters who could create high-quality “Aryan” papers for Jews. It was perhaps the smartest move of his life to not denounce them and instead to demand in exchange a new set of identity papers for himself. He had no immediate need for them—his ship was in high sail with the Nazis—but he believed in contingency plans. He even protected the counterfeiters, knowing full well they were letting hundreds of Jews and communists escape. That arrangement paid off spectacularly.

In 1945, when it became obvious that Peter Stein, NSDAP party number 2746 and active member of the Gestapo, was someone the victors would certainly hang, he retrieved the masterpiece of fraudulent papers the brothers had created for him and surrendered to the Allies as a simple, apolitical soldier, Obergefreiter Peter Schalk.

The transition had been seamless, and he immediately joined forces with—and expanded—the business of the counterfeiters. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be someone else, and would pay a lot for the opportunity. From that business, he developed a whole network of trading partners in medicines and other high-value goods.

Then, in the early 1950s, when the false-identity business waned, he had a stroke of genius. He had already concluded back in Rü sselsheim that men were vile, that they all craved a hot ejaculation that could be spiced by violence, the dogfight, the corrida, the grisly public execution. The revelation of the 1950s was that this appetite could provide a market. The “special-entertainment” films that had titillated a few friends, he realized, were a gold mine, and he set about acquiring new ones with higher resolution and better camera work. It required a delicate touch, utilizing the talents of various circles of his business dependents, while calibrating just how much information to give each one. The “actors” ironically were the easiest to manage. Three or four well-paid, slightly drunken soldiers just about to be shipped home, plus a prostitute who would not be in a position to contact the police, a secure location. A certain sensitivity entered the business only with respect to the two-man camera crew, the film developer, and the miscellaneous contacts involved in distribution or disposal. They had to be convinced, absolutely, of the need for discretion.

But the business took off, the appetite of the limited but loyal public insatiable. Ever new waves of viewers, both German and foreign, washed into and out of the city and paid handsomely for their voyeurism. Soon he had access to underground venues in Hanover, Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Munich, and the money poured in. So much so that he could set about laundering it through legitimate businesses.

Then, to make the final transition, he got his clever counterfeiting partners to create a third identity for him, which allowed him to lead a double life. For several years, he tapered off his entertainment businesses, while at the same time investing his new fortune in financial ventures under the name of Gregory Raspin.

He chuckled at the name choice. Only he would ever know that he had modeled himself after the pre-eminent charlatan of the Russian Empire, Grigori Rasputin, who had conned the Tsarina of Russia and fucked every noblewoman in St. Petersburg. Like Rasputin, he grasped that politics, economics, whole societies were largely theater. Narratives, promises, and images of vanquished evil and beautiful, erotically charged success.

No wonder he loved opera, the ultimate theater, in which audiences were moved, often to tears, by the most absurd nonsense.

But alas, opera was his Achilles heel. He did not want to think of all the money he had spent collecting musicians, violinists, tenors, conductors. Not to mention his sponsoring of concerts, operas, whole festivals so that his proté gé s had places to perform. He did not mind the expense. To hear a performance he had organized, by artists he essentially owned, made him feel like Caesar.

But he also wanted to feel like Wagner, so he devised his most audacious plan of all. Not to simply finance an opera, but to write one. Or at least collaborate in writing one. He had already read Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and knew exactly what he wanted, the Dionysian revel.

He did not have the time to compose an entire opera, but he had already collected a composer, movie-music writer Friedrich Diener, who could compose it for him. With sufficient compensation, Diener agreed to write 90% of the music and remain anonymous, while Raspin would write the libretto and a few arias.

Then, by extraordinary accident, he happened to be attending a concert, Brahms’ German Requiem, and he saw Katherina Marow. A gorgeous woman who sang with a crystalline soprano sound he’d never heard before, and the daughter of an old “client. ” He knew he had to have her for his magnum opus, no matter what it took. He’d tried to make arrangements with her father for an introduction, but the ridiculous man, a pathetic old homosexual, had refused and threatened to expose him. That was a fatal mistake.

After resolving that problem, he had no difficulty luring the charming soprano into the net anyway. He could focus on the climax to his work, the soprano aria of surrender, sung to Mephisto. What better way to bring the reveling audience to vent its fury on her than to present her, morally broken, to their appetites?

If she was molested in front of the cameras, it would make fabulous press and seal the success of the opera, guaranteeing more performances. If even worse occurred—he licked his lips thinking about it—that would steam-drive the success of the work. It would be universally remembered as the opera that “sacrificed” its star. Even if it jeopardized his corporate persona, he was legally protected. The sense of achievement would make it all worthwhile. This was his aria, the culmination of all his aspirations, his masterstroke.

Some outdoor sound woke Katherina from troubled sleep. She glanced at the 3: 00 a. m. on the radio clock and sat up. She was used to waking up in strange hotels but this time she felt particularly alone.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to dispel her anxiety. It was just a case of nerves; the opening performance was, after all, the next day. Stupid to worry. It would probably go splendidly and by the same time the next night, it would all be over.

When had she become so easily rattled? She had not been this way before the Berlin Tosca, or even before Rosenkavalier. What had happened? She felt foolish asking herself the question, because she knew.

Anastasia had happened. From the moment Katherina saw her onstage she felt an inexplicable attraction. No, even before that. From the moment she saw the face of Marguerite on the record jacket of her father’s recording of Faust. She even remembered the aria she had listened to as she went through his things and found the mysterious note, “Florian, forgive me. ”

It was an aria every mezzo-soprano knew, Berlioz’ adaptation of Marguerite’s longing for Faust, “D’amour l’ardente Flame. ” The melodic line ran through her mind and she translated the French in her head.

“Love’s smoldering flame consumes my happiness, my peace of mind is gone. His leaving, his absence, is like the grave…His step, his bearing, the sweet smile of his mouth, his eyes, his voice that sets me afire, the caress of his hand and…oh, his kiss. ”

The irony of it struck her. In French there was no difference between “his” and “hers. ” “Sa bouche, ses yeux, son baiser” could also mean “her mouth, her eyes. Her kiss. ” She hummed the final lines of the song, thinking of Anastasia. “Burning caresses. I would give up my soul under his—her passionate kisses. ”

She covered her eyes, feeling like a fool. A pathetic, lovesick girl. Marguerite at her spinning wheel. And Marguerite ended up dead.

Why hadn’t she heard from Anastasia? No call, no letter, not even the promised translation. But maybe there was something awful in the Cyrillic text, something so appalling that Anastasia had washed her hands of it. No way of knowing.

Katherina peered at the bedside clock again. Four in the morning, and she had no one to call. She couldn’t bear to stay alone in the tiny hotel room. She threw on slacks and a sweater and drew a shawl over her shoulders.

The hotel lobby seemed desolate at the pre-dawn hour and she pulled her shawl more tightly around her. The night manager was someone she had never seen before. A bony fellow scarcely out of his teens, wiping down the counter with a cloth. He looked up anxiously. “Is everything all right, Madame Marow? ”

“Yes, everything is fine. I’ve just been wondering if I’d gotten any calls. ”

He looked surprised at the question. “Yes, Madame Marow, there were a couple. But I gave them to Mr. Raspin, as agreed. I assumed that was your wish, too. ”

“What? That was not my wish at all. Who instructed you to do that? ”

“That was Mr Raspin. I’m very sorry if there was a misunderstanding. I will cancel that instruction if you like. ”

Katherina forced calmness on her voice. “Yes, ” she said. “I would like to cancel the instruction. ” Her heart quickened with anger and a little fear. Was it merely incompetence, or something more insidious? Whichever it was, the night boy obviously had nothing to do with it. “Do you have a copy of the messages, or at least the names? ”

Clearly embarrassed, the young man bit his lip and rummaged among papers on the counter. “Uh, no. I’m sorry. As I mentioned, we gave them to Mr. Raspin. He said he would take care of them. Can you…uh…contact him about the messages? ”

Katherina’s anger grew. She did not even know what hotel Gregory Raspin was staying in and thus could not reach him. He had isolated her and for the moment she could do nothing about it. She would not be able to confront him until she saw him on the Brocken, and that might not be until after the performance. It was infuriating.

The young man suddenly brightened. “Oh, but look. Something arrived separately this afternoon, after Mr. Raspin passed by. ” He held out a carton in brown paper, the size of a shoebox. The mysterious package that Charlotte had forwarded from Salzburg.

Placated, Katherina accepted his contrition. “Thank you, Herr…” She read his nametag. “Herr Dubchek. But in future, please be sure to give all my phone messages to me and me alone. ”

“Of course, Madame Marow. I’ll also inform the day manager when he arrives. ”

It was still long before dawn when she returned to her room, but with the bedside light on and a surprise package waiting to be opened, the night seemed friendlier. She tore open the outside wrapping from Charlotte’s office, uncovering the smaller package that was inside. She still couldn’t tell what it contained. It was tied in ribbon with the name of some Salzburg shop imprinted on it. She had no scissors and so she untied the knot, delaying gratification, then removed the lid.

She stared at the object bedded in tissue paper, trying to make sense of it. Was it a joke, a gift from a fan, a mistake? She lifted out the doll and examined it. It was clothed in a broad sweeping coat, a sort of royal cloak or mantle, in ice blue. White fur ran from collar to hem and along the edges of the long dropped sleeves. Embroidered all over the icy blue satin of the cloak were tiny snowflakes. Under the cloak the doll wore white satin trousers and over them high boots made of felt. Valenki.

Katrina felt a sudden rush of pleasure as it dawned on her what she held. And yet, what did it mean? It had been sent weeks before, and since that time there had been no other word. Still. An hour before she had seemed to be in free fall, and now she had something to hold on to. She could almost hear the rich mezzo voice reminiscing about “the symbol for our perfect world, the world of our dreams. ”

A warm blanket of hope enveloping her, she lay down again on the bed and let herself fall asleep with the doll tucked in her arm, Anastasia’s gift of the Snow Maiden.

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