The Pacific and Other Stories Read Free

Of course, I already knew, but I made myself look curious.
    “In New Zealand.”
    I said nothing, letting it dawn on her. It took a while, but then she asked, “Where’s Pflanzenberg?”
    “In Germany, nowhere near New Zealand.”
    “Germany! What would Quagliagliarello think?”
    “He would fly back and kill me, that’s what he would think.”
    “He would.”
    “So don’t tell him. Why does he have to know? By the time he gets back, you’ll be singing in La Scala, and it will be a fait accompli. In fact, it will be a fait accompli when, in New Zealand, he sees your picture on the cover of an LP. You know, in a gown, getting out of a carriage and alighting onto a red carpet, fountain in the background, nice shoes, glowing complexion, happiness. He won’t even place you, because he won’t expect to see you on the jacket of a Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording, but then he’ll see your name, but it won’t matter, because he’ll be so shocked he won’t be able to kill me. What
is
your name? Here we are having dinner, and I don’t even know.”
    “Rosanna Scungili,” she answered, as if she knew that this was soon to change, as indeed it would. Imagine an American or English opera singer whose name was
Jane Octopus-Slice.
She might be the greatest singer in the world, but much would stand in her way.
    “How about Rosanna Cadorna?” I suggested after my eyes had swept the restaurant and stopped at a painting of the famous general.
    “Who’s she?”
    “She would be you.” Rosanna’s expression was blank. “You would be she.”
    “How?”
    “You’d change your name.”
    “I see,” she said. “All right.” She was the quickest to decide absolutely anything of anyone I’ve ever known. She still is. She has no hesitation. It’s as if nothing matters to her. I think she may be psychotic. When her father died, the first thing she said was, “What time is the European Song Fest?” Back then, in the restaurant, just after she had so quickly agreed to a different name, she said, “Let’s go to Germany. I already know the part. When do we leave?”
    F OR SOMEONE who didn’t like German food, Rosanna ate a lot of it. In addition to the meals we had at the
Scheibenwischeroper
, the windshield-wiper opera, I had to buy her several kilos of bread, sausage, and cake every day. Ihave heard—I have seen—that really crazy people can eat ten kilos of food a day and not gain weight. That was Rosanna until she was forty. Then something changed, and she began to gain weight as inexorably as a tank into which water is dripping. Now she cracks marble floors as she passes over them, and stalls elevators as she gets into them, but back then the Germans thought she was just a typical starving Italian girl. Indifferent to her appearance and her manner, they remained unimpressed until at the first rehearsal she opened her mouth to sing.
    The Germans, after all, produced Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms: it’s not as if they’re insensitive to music. And at the end of her first aria all those stolid Germans were so moved they were in tears. They were astounded that she was there with them, and they had the touched, trembling, holy air of those present at the creation, for it was easy to see that she was going straight to the great stages of the world.
    It wasn’t exactly straight. After her flawless performances in Pflanzenberg, we went on to one flawless performance after another in—if memory serves, and it should, for these were glorious days of rising and success—Wachenrauss, Hofheim, Würzburg, Karlsruhe, and Heilbronn. The engagements in these cities were all in opera clubs. She had to sing near machine tools, gymnastic equipment, and walls of boxes. Once, she brought down the house—that is, the people on blankets on the grass—while a Turkish soccer game raged off to her left. She was as unconcerned as if she were playing in the hushed spaces of the greatest opera house. There she stood,