Chapter Two

1921  New York, David and Celia’s apartment

Lucy sat in the window of David and Celia’s apartment opening the morning mail.  Her Egyptian dressing gown was tucked up around her bare legs, and she looked to Celia like a child, translucent in the sunlight, an otherworldly creature from another time.  She seemed out of place surrounded by the heavy, ornate furniture and romantic bric-a-brac of Celia’s youth. Her freshness was lost amidst the elaborate arrangements of waxy lilies and roses in alabaster urns.

In spite of all her loveliness, there was something about the girl that Celia found unsettling.  Perhaps she was just too modern, too new in a world for which she, herself, had little sympathy.

“Another invitation from Mrs. Mullridge,” Lucy interrupted the older woman’s musing.  “You know what that means, one of her séances,” she stated with mock mystery.

“Are you going to accept?”  Celia asked tenuously.

“I’m not certain yet.  I’m such a poor traveler, and a journey into the beyond, as she calls it, sounds far more tiresome than any ocean crossing… you know how I hate those.”

“You seem to take all of this rather lightly… all of this otherworldly business.  Don’t you find it… well, at least a little alarming?” Celia asked, trying not to show her disdain.

“Not really, why should I?”

“Because it doesn’t seem right somehow, trying to cross the perfectly serviceable boundaries between the living and the departed.”

Lucy looked up from gazing at the address on an envelope with an amused expression.

“Dear Celia, don’t you realize that to attend these evenings is all the rage, as you say here.  At least I’m not asked to play bridge or some silly card game that I hate.  I’m just trying to be sociable.”

“Well, I believe people can be sociable and still remain in this world,” Celia remarked, bringing her cup down too hard on the saucer.  “In my day, people may have been more conventional, but we found dancing and talking with real living companions  exciting enough. We had no need to invite in amusing apparitions.”

“Oh, there are seldom apparitions. I have not seen one at any rate,” Lucy stated matter-of-factly, “only a Medium or someone through whom the spirits speak.”

She returned to opening her letters as if the phenomenon had been sufficiently explained.

“And how does one know that this Medium isn’t pretending to be in a trance, telling you any manner of rubbish they choose?”

“Oh, but they do,” Lucy laughed. “Most of them are fakes… nur fette Frauen… just thick old ladies, who surround themselves in mystery in order to get invited into the fine houses, like that of Mrs. Mullridge. Anyway, I shouldn’t think it would be too difficult to trace the history of one of those prominent families and shock them all by telling them something that most everyone in the room already knows.”

“Rubbish,” Celia sniffed with contempt.

“You are probably right, but in many ways it can be fun.”

“You will accept then?” Celia asked.

“I expect I might. Why don’t you come with me?” Lucy suggested.  “Then, at least, you might see for yourself how silly much of it is.  It’s not in the least frightening.”

Celia sighed her disapproval and answered that she would consider it.

After a moment of comfortable silence, Celia spoke again.  “Do you believe that one can truly contact the dead?”

Lucy’s face seemed to darken.

“Yes, I do,” she answered simply.

“But you just finished telling me that it was all a load of rubbish, nothing more than a free dinner in Society.”

Lucy gathered her thoughts as she leaned back into the primrose pattern of the window seat.  The morning sun through the gauze curtains backlit her silhouette in a halo of light, and her pale face, now cast in shadow, seemed to Celia eerily altered and unfamiliar.

“I said that most dabblings with the supernatural are meant to amuse and little more.  They are not disappointing, if they are regarded in that spirit from the onset,” Lucy said.  “But there is more… more in the Heavens and Earth than we can know.  Death is everywhere, all around us, all the time.  It is not a state of being, a condition of the body, like most people think, but rather a place of consciousness that we have access to, and has access to us in the dreams of our sleep.  The dead are just a thought, a dream away.  There is no need to conjure them up.  They are around us all the time, helping us, inspiring us to do great things.  Do not ask me how I know, but it is so.”

Lucy saw Celia’s eyes widen.  Her hand reached, in her customary fashion, for the pearls around her neck, but fastened instead on a tiny gold crucifix at her throat.

“You must understand,” Lucy added hesitantly, in an attempt to soften the effects of her discourse, “in Germany we are very morbid.  Death for the Germans colors everything.  It’s as if we have an allegiance with it. Especially after the Great War that ended only a few years ago.  There are so many who are gone.  Most of our young men were taken by Death, and those they leave behind still talk to them and look for them in places that are familiar and remembered.”

“Yes, the war must have been intolerable in Germany,” Celia stated without real knowledge of what she spoke about. “We lost many of our boys here too, but, I suppose we were very fortunate because we joined the war effort so late and only participated for such a short time.”

Lucy nodded her head.

“It is not only Death that holds fascination for the German people, but the past and all that is long gone,” Lucy continued to explain.  “We are a people who are steeped in mythology.  Lohengrin and the great warriors, like Siegfried, are also the basis for our stories of love and romance.  The word ‘romance’ comes from the German word for a novel… ein Roman.  It is a book that tells of love and death.  In the German mind, war and valor… and love and death are all seen as partners in the same story. War, and the possibility of a noble death, makes life worth living, and Death, as a constant companion for the warrior, only serves to make love eternal in death.  Love and death are inseparable for us.  It is celebrated in our poetry and literature.  After all, we have Goethe and Wagner for inspiration and you can’t get any more melodramatic than that.”

Lucy tried to laugh, to brighten the mood, but Celia did not return her lightness.

“The séance is really little more than an amusement for me,” Lucy said, hoping to change the subject and reassure her hostess.  “I have no desire that you should disapprove of me.”

She rose and held out her hand to the older woman who, after a moment, took it and softened toward her young visitor.

“I was just thinking, a moment ago, how the new and modern world has passed me by.  I suppose this is just another thing that I don’t understand.  I, of all people, ought to know how morbid a life in the opera can be, with all those heroines leaping off parapets and divas taking four hours to cough themselves to the end of a brilliant life.”

She stroked the youth’s hand.

“You have a brilliant life, my dear.  I, as your friend here in America, only want you to take a strong interest in Life and for it to triumph over Death. At least while it lasts.  I want to see you put the emphasis where it belongs for a young woman, on the living, and leave the journeys to the beyond to those who are ready for more permanent travel.”

“You are very kind to me,” Lucy replied.

“I’m just being silly.” Celia smiled.  “You go along to your party and have fun.”

“Then I shan’t disappoint you?” Lucy asked.

“Child, you couldn’t disappoint me.  Now, go on back to opening your post and we’ll have no more talk about this nonsense.”

Lucy returned to the window and silently shuffled through her stack of morning letters.  She stopped at the sight of a blue linen envelope with a tiny crown printed on the flap.  It was from the Prussian Prince, Henry, the younger brother of the Emperor.  She tore at the paper flap to get it open.

The letter was formal and a bit old-fashioned.  It told of the older man’s devotion and kindness, his interest in her career, and a slight longing, if she only allowed herself to read below the text, that hinted at an infatuation that his position and his discretion would not permit him to express.

He was her benefactor and her friend.  It had been his generosity and interest in her singing that had set her on the path of her career, and his money that had financed this trip to America.  He had traveled the world, as a younger man, and had often spoken fondly of an exciting trip he had made to America in 1902, where he had been received with great acclaim, not only by the German-American population, but the press as well, and was even given an honorary Doctorate from Harvard University.  He loved the Americans, even after the debacle of the War and the shattering of his family dynasty, following the German Revolution in 1918.  He had many long conversations with Lucy about his interest in American motor cars and their modern technologies, so it was no surprise that when the offer came for her to sing at the Metropolitan in New York, he was more than willing to cover the cost of her passage, and include a small stipend as well.

Lucy held the letter in her hand and stared at the sky blue paper upon which it was written.  She let her mind wander back to when she had first met the handsome and dignified man who must now be in his late fifties.  He had first appeared at a performance she had given at the voice academy where she studied in Stuttgart.  It had been four years ago now, when she was just seventeen.  She remembered that he had worn a cobalt blue Imperial naval uniform, with rows of buttons on his chest that were interrupted at intervals by brass medals and a great red sash that was draped diagonally across the front.  His hair and moustache were impeccably groomed, and he was lean and polished in a way that men of her own age had not yet learned.  When he was first introduced, he had complimented her on the beauty of her voice and clicked his heels together, ever so slightly, then bowed, as if she had been a lady of his own social rank.

“But how did you come to know of the recital in such an out of way place as this school?” she had asked, a bit breathless.

He took her hand and came closer, dispelling her nervousness with his smile.

“It seems I was told about you by my nephew, the Crown Prince, Wilhelm.  He appears to be a bit of an opera fan at the moment, and knows people who move in these circles.  Perhaps you know the American opera star Geraldine Farrar?  He is a great admirer of her, I am told.  At any rate, my nephew is the source of the information that led me here today… and I must remember to thank him at the first opportunity for suggesting what has turned out to be a most delightful afternoon.”

That being said, he kissed the back of her gloved hand gently, clicked his heels and departed without another word.  It was several days later that she had come home from vocal practice at the Institute to find a bouquet of flowers and an invitation to attend a small party.  Even then, he had the decorum to suggest that a companion of sorts might be in order, as a chaperone, and that many of the aristocratic patrons of the arts would be in attendance.  From the very first moment he met her, he had thought of nothing but being kind to her and furthering her singing career.  She felt sad that she could offer little more than her sincere gratitude in return.

She put his card aside with a familiar sigh and addressed a note to Mrs. Mullridge accepting the engagement for Saturday night.