The Poison Tide by Andrew Williams

Author:Andrew Williams [Williams, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2012-08-16T06:00:00+00:00

21

Opera Lover

UPTOWN ON THE same evening, Dr Anton Dilger was sipping champagne with his new friend while casting warm glances at an older and very dear one. The queen of the New York night was holding court beneath a crystal chandelier in the ballroom of the German Club with the press and rich box regulars at the Met in attendance. Those who didn’t know Frieda Hempel thought her plain and a little matronly; those who did were caught in a glittering spell.

‘She’s worth more to us than a dozen old aristocrats in Washington,’ Paul Hilken whispered at his elbow. ‘Just look at Bodzansky. He worships her.’

Yes, the conductor was moonstruck; and I am too, Dilger reflected.

And yet she had greeted him in her crowded dressing room at the opera house like a stranger, large brown eyes only for Kahn, the railroad banking baron, and his friends. Dr Dilger, isn’t it? A pleasant surprise. I hope you enjoyed tonight’s performance. Performance. After so many months he’d forgotten that her performance didn’t end with the orchestra or in a shower of carnations at the curtain, but only when she stepped from her dress in her chamber – and sometimes she was the self-conscious artiste in silken sheets too. She’d cut him because he’d spoken proprietorially, too eager to impress his new friend Hilken, yes, cut him, humiliated him, left him seething with embarrassment, just to remind him she was a prima diva who belonged to everybody and to nobody. Confounded, he was inventing lame excuses when a dresser found him, with an invitation: Frau Hempel would like to invite the doctor and Mr Hilken to a reception to be given in her honour.

Hilken was a member of the German Club. He was a member of a good many clubs, Dilger had discovered in the course of the three days they’d spent together. It was Hilken who’d persuaded him to enjoy some society, visit the homes of other Germans, share a box at the opera.

‘There’s nothing to be gained from hiding in the country with your sister. Live a little, Doctor. That’s what people will expect,’ Hilken had assured him. ‘Then you can return to your laboratory with a lighter heart.’

Dinner one night at Delmonico’s, the next at the Waldorf. By the time they reached the bottom of their first Latour, they understood each other perfectly. They were more or less the same vintage, good Germans both – Hilken from Baltimore – they shared the same dry sense of humour, the same shameless hauteur, the same taste in women. He was slight of build with the sort of boyish good looks that, in Dilger’s experience, appealed to ladies who were ready to lie about their age. Of the laboratory and their work, they had barely spoken. ‘We’ve used the first batch here and in Boston,’ was all Hilken ventured of their operation, ‘but that’s Hinsch’s business.’ For the first time since arriving in America, Dilger had managed to forget why he was there for a few hours, to pass a night without waking.

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