But just then he had, of all things, become sick. (No one got sick!) When the racking cough began to spoil his lines, he had to do something. He complained to his doctors about it. Somewhat startled (people didn't have coughs), the doctors put him in a clinic for observation, because they were as discomfited by it as Rafiel himself. And when all the tests were over, the head resident herself came to his hospital room to break the bad news.
Even all these decades later, Rafiel remembered exactly what she had looked like that morning. Striking. Sexy, too; he had noticed that right away, in spite of the circumstances' A tall woman, taller in fact than Rafiel himself; with reddish-brown hair, a nose with a bit of a bend in it that kept it from being perfect in any orthodox way, but a smile that made up for it all. He had looked at her, made suspicious by the smile, a little hostile because a little scared. She sat down next to him, no longer smiling. 'Rafiel,' she said directly, 'I have some bad news for you.'
'Che c'e? Can't you fix this damn cold?' he said, irritated.
She hesitated before she answered. 'Oh, yes, we can cure that. We'll have it all cleared up by morning. But you see, you shouldn't have a cough at all now. It means....' She paused, obviously in some pain. 'It means the procedure didn't work for you,' she said at last, and that was how Alegretta told Rafiel that he was doomed to die in no more than another hundred years, at most.
When he understood what she was saying, he listened quietly and patiently to all the explanations that went with it. Queerly, he felt sorrier for her than for himself - just then he did, anyway; later on, when it had all sunk in, it was different. But as she was telling him that such failures were very rare, but still they came up now and then, and at least he had survived the attempt, which many unborn babies did not, he interrupted her. 'I don't think you should be a doctor,' he told her, searching her lovely face.
'Why not?' she asked.
'You take it too hard. You can't stand giving bad news.'
She said soberly, 'I haven't had much practice at it, have I?'
He laughed at her. She looked at him in surprise; but then, he was still in his twenties, and a promise of another hundred years seemed close enough to forever. 'Practise on me,' he urged. 'When I'm released, let's have dinner.'
They did. They had a dozen dinners, those first weeks, and breakfasts too, because that same night he moved into her flat above the hospital wing. They stayed together nearly two weeks; and there had never been another woman like her. 'I'll never tell,' she promised when they parted. 'It's a medical confidence, you know. A secret.' She never had told, either.
And his career did blossom. In those days Rafiel didn't need to be an oddity to be a star, he became a star because he was so damn good.
It was only later on that he became an oddity as well because, though Alegretta had never told, there were a lot of other checkups, and ultimately somebody else had.
It had not mattered to Rafiel, then, that Alegretta was nearly a hundred to his twenty. Why should it? Such things made no difference in a world of eternal youth. Alegretta did not look one minute older than himself... And it was only later, when she had left him, and he was miserably trying to figure out why, that he realized the meaning of the fact that she never would.
First run-throughs didn't matter much. All they were really for was to get the whole cast together, to get some idea of their lines and what the relationship of each character was to the others, who was what to whom. They didn't act, much less sing; they read their lines at half-voice, eyes on the prompter scroll on the wall more than each other. It didn't matter that Rafiel's mind was elsewhere. When others were onstage he took out the fax from Alegretta and read it again. And again. But he wasn't, he thought, any more inattentive than any of the others. The pretty young Anti- gone - what was her real name? Bruta? Something like that - was a real amateur, and amateurishly she kept trying to move toward stage front each time she spoke. Which was not often; and didn't matter, really, because when Mosay came back he would take charge of that sort of thing in his gentle, irresistible way. And Andrev, the Creon, had obviously never even looked at the script, while Sander, who was to play the blind prophet, Tiresias, complained that there wasn't any point in doing all this without the actual dramaturge being present. Victorium had his hands full.
But he was dealing with it. When they had finished the quick run-through he dispatched Charlus to start on the choreography of the first scene, where all the Thebans were reciting for the audience their opening misery under the Sphinx. Rafiel was reaching in his pocket for another look at the fax when Victorium came over. 'Sindsie okay, Rafiel?' he asked. 'I thought you seemed just a little absent-minded.'
'Pas du tout,' Rafiel said, stuffing the letter away. Then, admitting it, 'Well, just a little, forse. I, ah, had a letter from an old friend.'
'Yes,' Victorium said, nodding, 'Mosay said something about it. Alegretta, was that her name?'
Rafiel shrugged, not letting his annoyance show. Of course Mosay had known all about Alegretta, because Mosay made it a point to know everything there was to know about every one of his artists; but to pry into private mail, and then to discuss it with others, was going too far.
'Old lovers can still make the heart beat faster, can't they?' he said.
'Yes?' Victorium said, not meaning to sound sceptical, but obviously not troubled with any such emotions himself. 'Has it been a long time? Will you be seeing her again?'
'Oh' - startled by the thought, almost afraid of it - 'no, I don't think so. No, probably not - she's a long way away. She seems to be in one of the orbiters now. You know she used to be a doctor? But now she's given up medicine, doing some kind of science now.'
'She sounds like a very interesting person,' Victorium said neutrally - a little absent-mindedly himself, too, because in the centre of the room Charlus had started showing the Thebans the dance parts, and Victorium had not failed to catch the sounds of his own music. Still looking at the Thebans, Victorium said, 'Mosay asked me to show you the rough simulation for the opening. Let's go over to the small screen - oh, hell,' he said, interrupting himself, 'can you pardonnez-moi a minute? Verdammt, Charlus has got them hopping when the music's obviously con vivace. I'll be right back.'
Rafiel listened to the raised voices, giving them his full willed attention in order to avoid a repetition of the rush of feeling that Victorium's casual suggestion had provoked. Charlus seemed to be winning the argument, he thought, though the results would not be final until Mosay returned to ratify them. It was a fairly important scene. Antigone, Ismene, Polyneices and Eteocles - the four children of Oedipus and Jocasta - were doing a sort of pas de quatre in tap, arms linked like the cygnets in Swan Lake, while they sang a recapitulation of how Oedipus came and saved them from the horrid Sphinx. The chorus was being a real chorus, in fact a chorus line, tapping in the background and, one by one, speaking up - a potter, a weaver, a soldier, a household slave - saying yes, but things are going badly now and something must be done. Then Rafiel would make his entrance as Oedipus and the story would roll on ... but not today.
Victorium was breathing hard when he rejoined Rafiel. 'You can ignore all that,' he said grimly, 'because I'm sure Mosay isn't going to let that dummkopf dance-teacher screw up the grand ensemble. Never mind.' He snapped on the prompter monitor to show what he and Mosay had programmed for the under-the-credits opening. 'Let's get down your part here. This is before the actual story begins, showing you and the Sphinx.'