Act Three

It was the third act, the candles round the orchestra pit had burned down to their drip pans, and Hermia was dying on stage. In the dark corners of her vision Ottilie could see ushers striking matches against their boxes, the tiny flames like a solemn procession on Christmas Eve, before the bells. They would light the oil lamps soon, and the audience would slowly be drawn from the dream of the stage into the dark evening world, waking to the night and the fire. They’d stand, legs shaking from the blood, and stagger out where they would laugh and chatter and round up the high-whinnying horses with the ribbons in their tails and run all the way home, buoyed by the performance. The next day they’d struggle to recall the details of so-and-so doing this-and-that and did you see who fell on the stage? Well isn’t that a shame, a shame, such a shame… Ottilie always lost herself in the performances, or at least the very best ones. To see a play was to fall asleep, and she would dream a dream beyond her consciousness. The first time she saw Carmen, the lights had blinded her so brightly when she awoke that she thought of the sun outside her window, and was astonished to find herself in the Royal Theater instead. Even when she didn’t dream, she acted that she did, watching the play rapturously as her mind wandered. Her mind wandered too when her grandfather would slip into his waking dreams. There was no play to enchant him away from verisimilitude, only brief reprieves between the coughing fits and pains of consumption. And yet, when she’d feed him water from a flask, his pretty, glassy eyes would stare up at the ceiling as though he were the one watching Hermia die, and she’d pretend to watch him dream even while her mind galloped away from her like the palomino horses with the ribbons in their tails, over park and over pale… She’d been pulling on the buttons of her glossy gold coat, a fine dupioni, when her grandfather had died. He had pulled in his last breath like the rattle of an orchestra before the finale, but the music had never followed. She’d sat there plucking at the buttons in anticipation until she finally called for her father. They’d lined up the horses outside the manor, their coats shaggy with the winter air because her father had never bothered to travel to Spain, and their tails had no ribbons. Instead, they had donned them with limp yellow carnations, and the horses had danced back and forth with impatience as they brought out the coffin, now filled. All the way down to the plot, the horses had danced back and forth, nostrils puffing smoke like chimneys in the Ton, like fog over the far out green that lay dead before them. The body smelled like burnt wax, a reminder of the candles that had

burned beside his bedside. Ottilie had suggested to her father that they use perfume, formaldehyde, ethanol, anything. Perhaps the oil from the pomegranate seeds that her grandfather had been so fond of. When he still breathed he would have them brought in from the Mediterranean, and the juice would stain his fingers red as he pulled out the arils for Ottilie to eat. But the pomegranates were in Spain and her father had never bothered to travel to Spain, so her grandfather smelled like burnt wax and blown out fire instead. The doctor had recommended that they go, she knew. He had looked at her grandfather looking at the ceiling and informed them that it would be better to go to Spain, because it had worked for others and it might work for them too. To Spain, her father had said, and leave England? At least through the winter, the doctor had suggested. Leave England for the winter and stay through the summer. The warm, dry air would help the coughing. Perhaps Seville, the doctor had said, perhaps Granada. Her father had thanked the doctor, sent him on his way, and then they had stayed in England through the winter. By the time Parliament was out of session her grandfather was long dead, and it was Ottilie who now spent her days dreaming off into space. Why stay in England through the winter? Hadn’t the doctor said to go? What of Seville? What of Granada? Ottilie often found it hard to focus when she would think of Spain. She would think of Spain often, too. She dreamed of it. She’d dream of Granada with its ancient buildings and its rolling greenery, and its mountain ranges with clouds sticking to the mountaintops like foam, like frothed spit from the mouth of God. The sharp spires of the Royal Chapel and the pools of the Alhambra Palace. She’d think of Seville, its wide skies, where the sun had nowhere to hide. Her grandfather had told her the yellow sun had nowhere to hide. People would walk on the paved brick streets and would feel the sun on their skin, and they had nowhere to hide. Ottilie could only dream of the heat, because the heat was in Spain and her father had never taken her to Spain because her father had never bothered to travel to Spain. Even now, when Hermia was dying on stage, she dreamed of Spain. To all the world she seemed lost in the dream of the play, when she was really dreaming of stained glass and pomegranates in the warm, dry sun. Dew drops on their flesh drunk up by the thirsty air, which pulled moisture from her grandfather’s lungs. She wondered if her father dreamed of Spain. Hermia was dying on stage, so the dream was almost over. And the lamp-

lighters would light the oil lamps and the whole auditorium would rouse from its docile state, given guidance only by the weak flickering flames and the dim figures that held them aloft. Soon she’d go and gallop all the way home, over dew-ridden park and thick sage underbrush, shivering in the dark. Her horses with their yellow ribbons would gallop with her, out far into the night. Past the moon and into the sun. She’d wake up with the warm dawn. But the horses had not yet come, the lights were not yet lit, and Hermia was dying on stage.