CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Girl Downstairs
Donati came home from the clinic still sick, though cotton continued to burn from his wick.
It had long since been unnecessary for Dante to knock at number 114 on his Sunday visits. The opera singer had given him a key, kept supple by an oiled pouch, which he now used in the home’s ancient lock. It was ten in the morning. The smell of fresh cappuccino should have greeted him in the anteroom. Donati should have been up and about, fiddling with breakfast, smiling, beckoning Dante inside.
This morning the hall was quiet, the stairs empty. Peering into the classrooms-turned-living rooms, Dante could see two cold fireplaces. The table where they ate brioche was clean and bare. He went to the kitchen already knowing what he would find. And sure enough, it too was empty.
None of this surprised him. Donati had not been home from the hospital long. Along with heart medication, his doctors were prescribing extra rest, and more vegetables in his diet. Dante went to the stairs half wondering if he should go up and check on the old man. Deciding not to, he turned to go, and that was when Donati called from one of the upper rooms.
“Is that you, Dante?” his cracked voice asked.
“It’s me,” Dante said. “How are you this morning, Mr. Donati?”
Shuffling footsteps across the hall. Slippers on wood. Donati appeared at the top of the stairs. “A storm rumbles on the horizon, young man,” he said as he started carefully down, “but it has yet to reach the happy streets.”
“You look well,” Dante lied.
The singer looked rather more like Ebenezer Scrooge. He’d lost weight, and now his bathrobe, rather than bulge around his once formidable belly, hung like a beaten battle flag on a bent pole. Clinging to the rail, Donati took the steps as the child he once was, using his right foot to come down, hesitating, bringing the left, then moving again with his right.
Help him, dummy, called a voice from some great distance in Dante’s mind.
He helped the singer into the living room and got him sat down in his usual chair. Donati thanked him. He tightened the belt of his robe. Then he asked for brioche.
“I think your doctor would prefer strawberries and chamomile tea,” Dante told him.
“And if he were here he could have some,” Donati said with a smile.
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant—“
“I know, dear boy, I know.” He tilted his head. “Do you know how to make toast?”
“Of course.”
“And wrap it around ice cream?”
“I think I can manage. If you truly insist.”
“The truth is typically an unhappy thing,” Donati said. “And food makes me happy. So let’s eat brioche and call it a lie.”
∞
They took breakfast without speech, clinging forks on the plates, slurping from coffee mugs. The only other sound was that of the fire, which Dante had taken time light, and the constant aging of the house. Sighs from peeling paint, groans from warped wood. The creak of subsidence in some far off empty room.
When Donati’s plate was clean he asked Dante about school. How were his grades? Going up or going down? Dante told him they had leveled off, but were still low. Cs and Ds mostly. The singer became appalled. He asked what was wrong. Was it concentration? Self-confidence? Or something else?
“A girlfriend,” he ventured. “The girlfriend.”
Dante waved the allusion off. “No, no. Sunny’s cool.”
“I see. And what of that despicable letter? Has it been deployed to its intended target?”
It took Dante a moment to gather what Donati was talking about. “The poem you mean,” he replied flatly. “Not yet. But we’ve set a date.”
“Is there no way I can change your mind about sending it at all?”
“I…don’t think so,” Dante admitted.
The other shook his head. “Sad.” His fork found a bit of brioche left on the plate, lifted it to his mouth. “Sad,” he repeated, “but here I am, still happy to be your friend. I am ipocrita. A hypocrite.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Dante told him.
“But I must. At times the only teacher we can listen to is ourselves. Indeed, that voice that speaks in our brains, the voice of Virgil, the voice of reason, is always the strongest. It knows what’s best.”
“What is it telling you now?”
Donati looked at him with a dab of ice cream hanging on his chin. “You’re a good boy who has been mislead by beauty. Fleur de feu. That is French. It means flower of fire. It happened to me once, a long time ago. Would you care to hear?”
“Please,” Dante said, in all sincerity.
“Then perhaps you should boil more water for cappuccino.”
∞
It happened somewhere between 1958 and 1960. Our choir from Nascosto Villagio had not been out of Rome for long. The Pope enjoyed our singing, but of course there were other choirs that deserved a chance to be heard, and indeed other Catholic places on the planet that deserved a chance to hear us. One of those places was the Philippine Islands. We flew to its capital to perform at a beautiful church in the village of Intramuros—a Latin worded meaning within the walls—which is even today considered the heart of Manila, and at the age of five hundred, is its very oldest section.
I arrived at San Agustin Cathedral on a sweltering hot day. It must have been the end of April. High summer in the Philippines. At that time of year the planet is tilted in just such a way to bring the full effect of the sun directly upon the islands. We were ants under a magnifying glass. It tell you, boy, it burned. Sweat dripped from your body. The air felt weighty and reluctant to nourish your lungs. It was like being trapped inside of a stove. And no matter where you went that sun found a way to reach you. It gouged at my eyes. It cooked my arms brown. During my time in the tropics I came to despise anything having to do with hydrogen and helium. It hasn’t gone away. You may have noticed by now that I almost always prefer to stay indoors.
We stayed at the church on that first day, and when evening fell, we did our show. It went well despite the heat. Manila in those days was a clean city filled with respectful, decent citizens. And of course any church-goer is urbane. The priest was also very kind. He enjoyed our singing and asked us to hold over for more shows. That was a lucky break, for while we all relished the idea of flight to cooler venues, none of us were keen on more road travel, especially having just arrived from Italy.
We slept that night in the church’s stony basement, deep beneath the streets. My chamber in particular was quite set apart from the others, and possessed of a cool draft which immediately earned my gratitude, though I could never locate its source. The candle at my bedside flickered throughout the night, as did a number of pages from an open Bible, their fluttering disturbing my sleep to the extent that I was forced to rise and close the cover.
In the morning we ate a delightful breakfast with the bishop. He, too, had been impressed with our performance. It would very much please him, he went on, to have such a talented group of singers continue to display their abilities for the Catholics of Intramuros.
We rehearsed after lunch, then performed that very evening for anyone who wanted to come and hear. The nave was huge, and because of the heat the church’s massive doors were kept open, allowing passers by to see the gold of candlelight through the arches, and become entranced. Later that night I returned to my chamber. The draft was waiting. That it hadn’t decided to leave made me happy. I lay awake until midnight with a book, drowsing over the pages until at last sleep carried me off. Hours later I awoke in pure darkness. Remember we were deep in the basement, near the crypts. The rooms had no windows. But that strange draft had found a way to put out my candle.
And from across the room I could hear it: the pages of the Bible, fluttering. This was odd, since I knew I hadn’t myself opened it. I lit the candle, rose, and once more closed its cover. Then I went back to sleep.
We sang at the church for perhaps two months, drawing decent crowds even on days when there were no sermons. When not singing, I was strolling the streets of Intramuros, getting acquainted with its ancient stone walls. The sidewalks were clean, and for a time swept with a spectacular pink show of Dona Luz petals from a number of blossoming trees. I shopped in several bookstores and drank coffee at lovely cafes, many of which served brioche.
In one such café I met a barista who told me about an apartment for rent off nearby Dewey Boulevard. It had to have been June by this time, for the choir’s run at San Agustin was nearing its end. Indeed, the choir itself would soon be no more. Two of our tenors had found work at a theater in the Ukraine and were leaving soon. Two other female singers had just gotten engaged. The group’s time together was winding down. We had at best two weeks’ worth of shows left.
Soon to be in need of a place to lay my head at night, I visited the address off Dewey. Mind you I never would have bothered to do this at all, except that I, too, had been lured from the choir by a singing offer from Manila’s Lyric Theater, which often held operas. A troupe there was in need of a baritone voice, and I was in need of broader vistas upon which to let my interests frolic.
As luck would have it, the cab driver who took me from Intramuros was not familiar with the address; thus, we were forced to tool around a number of quiet, shaded barangays that looked as alien to me as the blood eye of Zeus upon a midnight desert landscape. Making things stranger still were the heavily clouded skies, rumbling with violent dreams that would soon become reality. Summer was over and the rains were near. The cabbie warned me about this in English that I found surprisingly good, when I asked to be let off so I might find the address on my own. He would have none of it. Setting his meter to pause, he said that to step out now would mean certain drenching from the deluge poised over our heads. I peered out my window to see that the skies were even darker than they’d been five minutes ago, and a wind had gotten up, bending the branches of myriad flowered trees along the residential lane.
And yet the rains held off, even as the kindly driver—a middle-aged man who introduced himself as Milo—at last located the address. It was a three-storied white house with an unkempt lawn cut through by a broken sidewalk. Dead leaves swirled on its dusty concrete porch, and its windows were all black. It didn’t look to me as if anyone were home, so I thanked Milo for the ride, then asked if he might wait a few extra minutes should my appeal at the doorbell prove fruitless. He agreed, and not wishing to waste more of his time than necessary, I hurried across the lawn and up a short flight of crooked steps.
The bell was an antique—the kind with a handle you had to twist to make ring. I did so. To my great surprise the door was pulled open after only a few moments. A very small, very old woman peered at me through enormous square glasses. Using my best Tagalog, I began to inquire about the apartment. She nodded, saying that yes, there was indeed a unit available for rent at this address, but no, she could not give me a proper showing today, as she was just on her way to a dentist appointment. I remember that her name was Mrs. Dominguez. Might I be available to return tomorrow at this same time? she asked. She spoke mostly in English, which enabled us to retreat from my own linguistic ineptitude. I thanked her and said that of course I could come back. She then gave me a quick look at the apartment, which seemed adequate. This after I informed Milo I would only be another five minutes.
I returned next day at the exact same time and under very similar weather conditions. Such is the season from June to September in the Philippines. Afternoon storms flood the streets; at midnight they flood them again. In between lie the churning, tumultuous skies which I already mentioned, at hopeless war with Apollo, yet clinging in paradox to that language of his poetry which speaks through the voice of other deities: the wind and rain, the sigh of cooled trees; fallen foliage at play down the street; garden flower scents swept away to far off places.
The landlady did not answer. Instead the door opened on a girl of perhaps twenty, small and slender, wearing a plain but rather pretty white dress that complimented her delicate curves. I stammered a bit, taken aback by her beauty, before regaining the course of my thoughts to give my name, along with the purpose of my visit. Mrs. Dominguez was out for the day, the girl informed, but that was all right, for she’d been told to expect me.
“My name is Princess,” she said, pulling the door wide. “Come inside and let’s look at the apartment.”
I was startled by her invitation, for yesterday we had not gone through the Dominguez apartment, but to a separate door—the vacancy’s main door—at the house’s far end. Still, the environment beyond Princess’ shoulder looked harmless enough; thus, I left my shoes on the wind-swept porch and followed her inside.
Her beauty continued to distract me. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and forced to make a guess, I would have put her weight at around one hundred pounds. Her feet, tiny and bare, made no sound as we passed through a clean, quiet living room decorated with wood furniture, then into a shiny kitchen where hovered the faint scent of coffee and dish cleaner.
Princess opened another door which let on a long balcony connecting the two apartments. It overlooked a lawn of flowered trees, pink and red, that were just now beginning to sway with the winds of a coming storm. The door of the vacant apartment opened onto another kitchen—one I had already seen, if briefly. Only today the floors were swept, the counters polished. A window was open to invite the flowery breeze, which lifted Princess’ hair as if in attempt to lure her out to the boughs for a dance with the petals.
I checked under the sink for leaky pipes. All seemed dry. Next I looked for rotted wood along the cabinetry. Again I was satisfied. Princess then led me into the living room. She turned on a light that cast an orange glow over the cloudy-day shadows. A spacious, clean room presented itself. The ceiling was high, the floor sturdy. One thing I hadn’t noticed the day before was a flight of stairs at the archway, going down.
“Where do these go?” I asked Princess.
She smiled. “To the basement apartment, where I live. I’m a student at Mary Cause Of Our Joy College.”
“Ah!” I answered. “What do you study there?”
“Hotel management. Showing this apartment for you is actually giving me a nice little dry run in the business.”
“I can see how it would. And you’re doing a lovely job,” I added, hoping not to sound absurd.
“Thank you, Mr. Donati.” She smiled again and, to my utter astonishment, performed a lovely little curtsey. “Most Filipinas my age still live at home with family, but both of my parents are dead. I’m able to afford the apartment and school with money they left me.”
At this I had no idea how to react. I did my best to convey sympathy through tilted brows and downturned mouth, along with offering one of those tiny nods one reserves for occasions when words simply will not do.
We looked at the bedroom next. I had no complaints, and told Princess I would be happy to accept the apartment if Mrs. Dominguez would have me. The show of modesty made her laugh. “Of course she’ll have you,” she said. “She goes to the church where you sing.”
“Oh,” I said. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Come back tomorrow. Mrs. Dominguez will be here, and chances are she’ll let you move right in.”
At that exact moment a crash of thunder—the loudest I had ever heard—went off like a bomb outside, shaking the entire building. I jumped, but if Princess reacted I didn’t see. When I turned from the window, ready to laugh at my skittishness, she was already gliding down the basement steps, her black hair entwined with the shadows, and fading from view.
I caught a cab back to San Agustin and packed what few belongings I carried from venue to venue. Because of the stormy weather, the draft in my chamber no longer felt like a respite from insane heat, but chilly. I shivered in the candle-lit gloom whilst folding my shirts. As always, shadows played on the walls; the Bible fluttered.
Suddenly there came a knock at the door. I opened it to find our conductor, Simone, standing at the threshold. Immediately it took me aback, for the look upon his normally thoughtful, slightly flustered face (the face of a Tuscan poet, if I may be so bold as to add, fiercely in love, searching the hills of his homeland on a sunny day for that one line, that one magical string of words proper enough in harmony and complexity to convey the burning of his heart) had become stern and calculating. He did not move. His tall, lean frame seemed to give off waves of coolness, in chorus with the draft. I bade him come in. He refused, then imparted upon me this piece of unpleasant news:
I was to leave San Agustin at once. Something I had said or done had caused the bishop to become unhappy with me. Simone would not tell me what that something was, though I, in reeling astonishment, all but begged to know. Whatever it was, Simone seemed to believe it, too. Throughout his short visit he continued to look at me in a way that suggested a longing to raise his boot and step, with disgusted ferocity, upon the face to which he’d been forced to speak.
“Simone, really,” I began afresh, having retreated and regrouped my senses best as I knew how. “I’m certain we have a simple misunderstanding, nothing more—“
“I’m afraid not, Horatio,” the other rejoined. “The bishop is quite adamant about having you gone. And the choir, though together for only three more shows, shall have none of you either.”
“Smettila!” I nearly barked, my own anger beginning to boil. “Questo non ha senso!”
But the conductor’s own demeanor did not change. He looked at me, cool and insistent, for several seconds before allowing himself to gaze past my shoulder, where no doubt he discovered the bags I’d been packing.
“It would seem that you’re well aware of the circumstances already,” he remarked with perhaps a nip of sarcasm.
“Not at all,” I replied. “I planned to stay at San Agustin for the remainder of our run.”
Simone shook his head slowly. He still had not entered the room.
“So I’m to leave right now?” I felt compelled to ask.
“Correct.” And at this point Simone at last began to display some flurry of sympathy. Looking rather sad, he dropped his head and told me the bishop would have come down with the news himself, except that he felt too embarrassed for me to conduct a formal presentation.
Confused as much as I’d ever been in my life, I once more beseeched Simone to impart his knowledge of whatever crime I supposedly committed. Again he shook his head, clearly unconvinced of my ignorance.
“Amor, tosse e fumo, malemente si nascondono,” he whispered, then turned and walked away, leaving me agape.
He had quoted an old Italian proverb which means: Love, smoke, and cough are hard to hide. Pertaining to me, I had no idea what it was supposed to mean.
I spent that night on the streets of Intramuros, bags in hand, newly alone in an alien world. After dinner I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked several in a long, dark passageway under the fortress walls. During this interlude I came to the conclusion that whatever it was I had done to upset the bishop scarcely mattered amidst the immediate timeframe of things, as these were to be the final days of the choir anyway, and we shan’t be seeing each other ever again. Faces floated in my mind—friends I’d made on the road. We’d shared happy times, drinking toasts in obscure corner bars, celebrating holidays on the roofs of fancy hotels, swapping stories of the girls we’d loved, the games we’d played, the tears we’d shed. No more would we laugh together, or help one another through troubled times. The old friends were gone. It was time to make new ones.
As I thought these things it began to rain. At the end of the tunnel I could see it—a curtain of silver upon the empty street, whispering its arrival to the trees, smudging wares in the window of an old shop, long since closed for the night. Streams formed along the curb, carrying off that day’s dust.
“So be it,” I whispered to myself, there in the gloomy passage.
I was sorry the Lord no longer wished to hear me sing for Him. Perhaps one day I would have another chance. But for now I was on my own, far from the mystic rose of that long dead poet, with its thrones set at great distances to which one could always see, as I felt I could still see, though I stood far from the light of angels.
The next day found me at Mrs. Dominguez’s door, deposit in hand. An odd look surfaced on her face, yet she relinquished the apartment key. From there I retired to my new abode and unpacked. Whilst doing so I shouted a greeting to Princess. No reply traveled back from the basement stairs. Indeed, I didn’t see nor hear from her for the next several days, by which time I had begun my gig at the Lyric Theater, singing in conventional operas such as The Magic Flute and Carmen.
I bought some furniture for the apartment. Not much, mind you, but I needed a place to drink my coffee and read my books. For the bedroom I put a mattress on the floor, and a fan in the window. That window overlooked the street where, I discovered, children often played after dark, their laughter mingling with the evening air as the lyrics of pretty song do its music.
And as the days became weeks, I wondered more about Princess. Several times over that June and July I ventured downstairs to knock on her door. Never once did she respond. I watched the front walk from my window. The postman left packages. Occasionally a boy would come to trim the lawn, or tend to Mrs. Dominguez’s sampaguita shrub. But of Princess I saw nothing. She had either moved away from the building at some point, or had found my company too awkward to pursue. Whichever, I began to let the memory of her slip away, focusing fully on my performances at the Lyric, and paying the rent on time.
Then at the beginning of August a typhoon warning came over the radio. I had just settled for the evening in my sparsely decorated living-room, a book in hand, ready to while off an hour or two with music and prose. You Butterfly by Andy Williams, one of my favorite tunes, began to play, then was cut off by a weather bulletin. It informed that a rather powerful storm was approaching the Philippines. It would arrive in Manila before midnight. All residents were to prepare themselves appropriately. Having never been through a typhoon before, I had no idea how to conduct myself, but my powers of improvisation were quick, and my mind sharp and keen as a cutting blade…
∞
“I hid myself in the closet,” Donati said.
Dante tilted his head. “Excuse me?”
“Just kidding, my boy, just kidding.”
∞
I battened down the apartment as best I knew how. I also went to check on the well-being of Mrs. Dominguez. She invited me in for dinner with her family, which I accepted, and we made pleasant chatter over rice and sinigang as the wind outside grew stronger. At some point or other I mentioned Princess. It must have been toward the end of the meal. It was full dark by then. Twigs were blowing across the porch, scratching at the door like phantom fingers. The trees had begun to howl.
“Will we lose the electricity?” I asked. “If so I should fetch Princess. She’ll be frightened all by herself in the basement.”
The cup of coffee Mrs. Dominguez had been about to drink from froze halfway to her lips. She blinked at me for a moment, then began to laugh. “Of course,” she said, “of course. I’ll be sure to check on her as well.”
I stayed for a short while longer, drinking coffee and telling stories of my travels. It must have been close to eight o’clock when I at last bid my gracious hosts goodnight. A gale met me on the porch, ruffling my clothes. Leaves scurried over the lawn. Street-lamps flickered. I went to my apartment and made sure a number of candles were readily at hand. I secured the back door. Then I went downstairs to look in on Princess. Not in the least expectant of an answer to my knock, I became quite surprised when her voice suddenly floated forth.
“Mr. Donati? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me,” I answered. “Is everything all right in there?”
Only it was hard to know where to send my voice, for her reply did not seem to come from behind the door, but rather, somewhere upstairs.
“Mr. Donati? Mr. Donati?”
Now I felt compelled to go back up. The steps creaked under my weight. Halfway to the top she called my name again. Her voice was very faint—the voice of a girl on a faulty telephone line. Reaching the top step I had no idea whether to turn left or right. I went left, into the kitchen. Not finding her there, I next opened the door to the back balcony. A gust of angry wind tore it from my grasp. It banged against the counter, rattling a number of cheap saucers and plates. I could already see the balcony was empty, but stepped outside anyway to marvel the coming storm. My hair whipped in all directions. The back lawn howled in a chaos of twigs and flower petals.