The Maestro's Wife
I love him, he is an International Maestro adored in every opera house. But he has a secret. He has a wasting disease. He has told me he doesn't want to retire. Over the years our height has equalised. I have grown longer with my daily rowing on the Danube and he has diminished with his condition. We are now the same height, the same weight. He used to be an energetic lover, now he uses his fingers to create a multitude of variations on a theme.
I sit behind him in the stalls of the Staatsoper. Tristan is a long haul. He falters in Act II as Isolde struggles with her top C's. He is sensitive, too sensitive. Afterwards we have oysters and champagne in an Italian Bistro. He talks animatedly with his agent from Hamburg. But I know that he can't keep going much longer.
The next morning he is virtually comatose on the chez long, panting like an old dog. I slip out to the opera for my coaching, not as the singer I once was but as a conductor for The Ring. I have been doing this for two years since my husband's diagnosis. The rehearsal pianist is dexterous. She thumps out the whole orchestra on the black and white keys. We pause to make love under the piano after Erda's aria. Our orgasms are of Wagnerian proportions.
Back in our apartment, my husband is quieter than ever. He hasn't moved for the last four hours and can barely suck the goodness out of steamed asparagus dressed with olive oil and parmesan cheese. " What can I do ' he pleads in a heavy Israeli accent. " Nothing, you will carry on " I say. " See, I have a plan". The orchestral rehearsals for The Ring are set to start the following week. As he sleeps I pay deep attention to the nuances of shading my face from the online make up artists. I apply my moustache of human hair. In my husband's conducting suit and round glasses, I look identical to him, like a version of Mahler.
By the end of the week, my husband musters and conducts a performance of Lohengrin. Only we know that it is his last performance. He stumbles into the pit clutching his black leather score embossed with Lohengrin in gold. I see him as a knight of old. The orchestra know his understated stick work so well that he hardly has to move. They play with extreme sensitivity, the tips of their bows quivering with love to convey the fragility of the music.
I sit in the front stalls deeply connecting to every musical gesture. My tight sequinned dress defines me as the Maestro's wife. But no one knows that I never wear knickers just in case his hand might need to wander to my crotch during a climax, which as always it does.
The next week we are back in the opera but is now me on the podium disguised as my husband. I lift my baton lightly. The smallest of movement initiates the rippling strings and distant horns. In the overture to Das Rhinegold, three naked women cavort in a water tank on stage. The disguise is working. The orchestra has no suspicion of the switch. I am my husband. Behind me in the stalls sits an a elegant woman in a tight sequinned dress. Her legs are wound round each other like two inseparable serpents. As the Rhinemaiden's music takes off, I discretely let the door to the pit open slightly. I can feel 'her' hand on my cunt. We are man and woman, woman and man.
