Chapter 6

I had another restless night. I was back on that damn beach again, and this time I was hurt on top of everything. Each time I walked up to fetch more stuff for my signal fire my chest pained me, and it limited how much I could carry back. And each time I was a little slower than the time before, every footstep was coming to be an effort.

Worst of all, I realized that I had to have a coconut to top the fire off before I could light it. A coconut? What can I say, it was a dream. But there was only one coconut in sight, it was at the top of a huge palm tree, and I could tell it wasn't ripe enough to drop yet. Dream me knew it'd be days yet before the damn thing ripened, and I wasn't sure I could last that long. It seemed so damn unfair to have the thing in view and yet so inaccessible, and the fire all ready to go except for that stupid coconut.

Somewhere in there I guess I got some decent sleep, but I was still feeling pretty dragged out when I got up. Kitty was right beside me again, his tail draped loosely across my chest; together we made our way downstairs and I let him out while I started my coffee perking. Once again he was back at the door in only a minute or two. I wondered if he was skittish about being outside after his experience with the bear.

It'd be another off day for me. No more Marullos, last night had been the final Rigoletto. We were finishing off the season with Turandot, and I'd be singing a nameless character that the libretto just calls "a mandarin." I did a lot of roles that didn't have names, mainly because they weren't important enough: "a messenger," "a soldier," "a doctor," like that. Even Marullo would have been just "a courtier" except the lead needs a name to call him in the second and third acts. It was the curse of the comprimario. The ones who had names were the leads, but the only time I sang those was in the deepest boonies where I was the best the cash-strapped folks could afford, and they paid so poorly I was better off financially sticking to Marullos.

Actually, in Turandot my role wasn't a character at all, just a plot convenience. He comes out at the beginning of Act I to lay out what film director Alfred Hitchcock used to call the "MacGuffin," the contrivance that underlies the whole opera. In this case it's that Princess Turandot is a man-hater who's said she'll only marry a guy who can solve three riddles she's thought up. The catch is that he has just one try, and they'll chop off his head if he can't get all three. My mandarin explains all this to the chorus, which already knows it of course, but the audience gets to hear, too. Then he explains it again halfway into the second act, just in case some numbnuts in the box seats wasn't paying attention the first time around.

Opera plots get pretty weird. I mean, why would any guy in his right mind play this kind of a stacked deck? And three riddles; even the sphinx is supposed to have given just one. Well, Puccini, who wrote it, tries to get around this by having Calaf, the tenor hero, get a quick glimpse of the princess as she passes by, and she's so beautiful he falls madly in love and insists on trying the riddles even though everybody around him does their best to discourage him.

What a crock, especially in our production. Our Turandot tipped the scales at what had to be pretty close to three hundred pounds. I knew too, from having worked with her before, that she had the personality of a rasp; the only reason she was up there was that she also had a voice like a trumpet, which is what the role calls for. Meantime Calaf has Camilla St. John, our Gilda in Rigoletto who's now singing a slave girl named Liu, absolutely drooling for him and he doesn't give her a second glance. Hmm, drop-dead gorgeous girl who loves me versus porker princess who thinks all men suck, now which should I pick? Gee, Mr. Interlocutor, that's a tough one, can't you start me off with an easier question?

Well, the stereotype is that tenors are dumb as oxes, so maybe this fits.

Anyhow, with a new production coming up they'd be having half-voice rehearsals a good part of the day, but that was only for principals. Us second-tier folks weren't needed. The real point was that if they called me they'd have to pay me, and they didn't want to do that if they didn't have to. Opera never pays its own way; even at ticket prices that run upwards from $100 all companies have to hold fund-raisers and pander for grants and all that just to make ends meet. So they cut corners when they can. And since I just stood in one place and sang my piece and then occasionally milled around with the chorus to add an extra body and voice, in my case they could.

So I was at loose ends for the day. I figured I'd do a little clean-up—the furniture could use dusting, I needed to run the vacuum cleaner a little, and there was some laundry waiting. But first I'd get a bit of vocalizing in, maybe run the Turandot bit. It wasn't very interesting music, but I don't think Puccini ever wrote a really bad note, and it was OK. And at least it was one solid chunk where I'd really have the audience's attention; most of my roles were bits and pieces that you scarcely noticed as they went by.