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ate of the soil at its roots, of its triangular foliage ... and knew!
I can never retell the agony of that day, when all those Zobranoirundisi faced
us, their maimers, and announced the form our expiation would take. We bowed
our heads to the inevitable, for we knew the sentence to be just and of
Hammurabian simplicity.
We had to give back to the soil what we had taken from it. The handless
Zobranoirundisi, recognizing his missing member from the cells now
incorporated into the fingers of a young colony child nurtured on milk from
cattle fed in the velvet fields, had every right to reclaim what was
undeniably his own flesh. The legless Zobranoirundisi could not be condemned
to a crippled existence when the Terran child had used the same cells to run
freely for seven years on land where previously only Zobranoirundisi had trod.
We rendered, all of us, unto the Zobranoirundisi that which was truly theirs -
seed and soil of the velvet fields, part and particle of the originally
fertilizing dust that would have been reconstituted during the cycle we had so
impiously interrupted.
Nor were we permitted to evade the least segment of required reparation, for
the galaxy watched. I will say this of us proudly, though I no longer have a
tongue: Mankind will be able to live with its conscience. Not one of us, when
required, failed to give his flesh to the Zobranoirundisi in atonement!
Euterpe on a Fling
Looking through old files for something else entirely, I chanced upon the
notes I'd made during an interview with Madame Florence Foster Jenkins.
Considering that the musical world had been far more concerned with the
curious and brief career of one Peter Pelty, substitute tenor at the
Metropolitan Opera House, I'd never transcribed the notes into an article. But
reviewing them now - after nearly fifty years - I was amazed at how vividly I
recalled the incident. Of course, Madame Florence Foster Jenkins had had her
own niche in the recital world of New York. Having met and then heard her, I
knew that she was eminently memorable.
I carefully unfolded the two yellowed and now fragile clippings attached to my
scrawled sheets, and suddenly it was as if I were back in that dark comer of
the gloomy old Seymour Lounge, where Madame Jenkins had agreed to meet me.
The first article, lamentably in only the last paragraph, described her
Carnegie Hall debut, at age seventy-six. I'd been there: I didn't need further
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joggling. I grinned as I read,
Her style, her artistry, her joy of singing, her technique remain one of the
most refreshingly different pages in the annals of musical history. She was
known as the mistress of the sliding scale, a skilled proponent of altered
tempi. Her ability to remain a quarter tone above or below the written note
was truly inspired.
Her rendition of the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute had, to my
astonished ears, been certainly all that and more.
The second clipping mentioned the curious and unscheduled debut of the
American tenor Peter Pelty, who remains far more of a controversial musical
mystery than Madame Florence Foster Jenkins.
Or, -I thought with sudden surprise, does he?
Pelty had substituted in the role of Radamès in a Saturday matinee at the
Metropolitan Opera, the advertised tenor having been injured in a taxi
accident on his way to the opera house. Those in the audience vowed they had
never heard such a magnificent voice - an opinion substantiated by not only
Milton Cross but also Mr. Aaronsky, the director of the Met; Madame Neroni,
who sang Aida; and Maestro Di Saltsa, the conductor. The radio audience,
however, held a diametrically opposite opinion of Pelty's vocal
accomplishments. The entire musical world was talking about the affair, so I
had thought to set Madame Jenkins at ease by asking her opinion of the
dichotomy, for she had been at the performance.
"Tenors are never so happy but when they are stage center," Madame Jenkins
told me, inclining her torso toward me, a habit she used to emphasize a point.
Her voice, which, up to that point, had been genteel and refined, suddenly
oozed with disdain. "He had only himself to blame for overextending himself.
Eighteen curtain calls is impolite: especially when he took most of them
himself."
"He won't do it again," I said, remembering that he had expired before the
curtain could be raised on the nineteenth demand of his audience to express
their appreciation of that incredible performance.
"It shall remain as a lesson to others not to exceed operatic decorum." Again
that slight forward motion, but her lips were primly thin in disapproval.
She was, in herself, an astonishing figure: small, and so well corseted I
thought I heard subtle creakings - but then many singers are tightly corseted
during performances to assist breath support. Her rounded face displayed the
jowls that often plague singers and mar an otherwise pretty face, but Madame
Jenkins looked more Victorian, e.g., like the Queen. Her mousy hair was neatly
marcelled in waves reminiscent of a prewar style, and her clothing, while well
cut and an attractive cherry red that lent color to a rather pale complexion,
also harked back to the pre-flapper era. But it suited her.
"Didn't you think it odd, Madame Jenkins, that a total unknown would be called
upon to substitute at the Met?"
"Not at all," she surprised me by saying. "He was not only a dedicated
subscriber to the Metropolitan Opera Society but he knew every libretto by
heart." An expression of mixed exasperation and then immediate remorse crossed
her expressive little face. "He sat near me, you see."
"Sat near you, Madame Jenkins? I don't understand."
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She waved a graceful hand, preparatory to enlightening me. "Ever since I have
subscribed to my seat for the Saturday opera matinees, I have had his voice in
my ear."
"His voice in your ear?"
"It's quite simple, young man. His seat was diagonally behind mine in row H. I
was in row G. I'm just a teensy bit nearsighted," she added in a confidential
tone. Then she drew herself up, reclasping her hands in her lap with Victorian
precision. "For twenty-four years, through every opera, he hummed every single
tenor aria and chanted, mind you, chanted the recitatives. No one ever sat
beside him, on either side, more than once but .. " She shuddered delicately,
eyes closed, her pale rounded face eloquently expressing her patient
forbearance. "... he ought not to have done so."
"That must have been frightfully irritating," I said solicitously.
"Irritating?" One graceful hand rose in a gesture of dismay. "It was
ill-mannered in the extreme. My papa and my mama would have had words with the
manager at the very first occurrence. Of course. Papa was not fond of opera
although he attended when the troupe came to Philadelphia, where we lived. But
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