I am not certain how Isak Dinesen would have handled this, for her ravaged face is suddenly in my mind's eye as I begin to realize where all of this is coming from. The switch, I see now, will activate a special tape of catcalls and hootings. It was already cued back when I used the past tense of the verb. It may, after all, be hate rather than love that is responsible for this expensive private show. Yes. John knew of Mary's vanity from long ago, which is why he chose this form of revenge - a thing that will strike her where she is most vulnerable.
She begins the passage. Her head is turned, and it appears that she is staring directly at him, there in the booth. Even knowing that this is impossible, he shifts uneasily. He looks away. He listens. He waits.
She has done it! She has managed the passage without a lapse. Something of her old power seems to be growing within her. Once past that passage, her voice seems somewhat stronger, as if she has drawn some heartening reassurance from it. Perhaps the fact that this must be her last performance has also stoked the banked fires of her virtuosity. She is singing beautifully now, as she has not in years.
John lets his hand slip from the control board and leans back again. It would not serve his purpose to use that tape without an obvious reason. She is too much a professional. She would know that it was not warranted. Her vanity would sustain her through a false reaction. He must wait. Sooner or later, her voice has to fail. Then ...
He closes his eyes as he listens to the song. The renewed energy in her performance causes him to see her as she once was. Somewhere, she is beautiful again.
He must move quickly at the end of this number. Lost in reverie, he had almost forgotten the applause control. He draws this one out. She is bowing in his direction now, almost as if ...
No!
She has collapsed. The last piece was too much for her. He is on his feet and out the door, rushing down the stairs. It can't end this way ... He had not anticipated her exerting herself to this extent for a single item and then not making it beyond it - even if it was one of her most famous pieces. It strikes him as very unfair.
He hurries up the aisle and onto the stage. He is lifting her, holding a glass of water to her lips. The applause tape is still running.
She looks at him.
"You can see!"
She nods and takes a drink.
"For a moment, during the last song, my vision began to clear. It is still with me. I saw the hall. Empty. I had feared I could not get through that song. Then I realized that someone from among my admirers cared enough to give me this last show. I sang to that person. You. And the song was there ..."
"Mary ..."
A fumbled embrace. He raises her in his arms - straining, for she is heavier and he is older now.
He carries her back to the dressing room and phones for an ambulance. The hall is still filled with applause and she is smiling as she drifts into delirium, hearing it.
She dies at the hospital the following morning, John at her bedside. She mentions the names of many men before this happens, none of them his. He feels he should be bitter, knowing he has served her vanity this final time. But he is not. Everything else in her life had served it also, and perhaps this had been a necessary condition for her greatness - and each time that he plays the tape, when he comes to that final number, he knows that it was for him alone - and that that was more than she had ever given to anyone else.
I do not know what became of him afterward. When the moral is reached it is customary to close - hopefully with a striking image. But all that I see striking now are typewriter keys, and I am fairly certain that he would have used the catcall tape at the end if she had finished the performance on a weak note. But, of course, she didn't. Which is why he was satisfied. For he was an aficionado before he was a lover, and one loves different things in different places.
There is also a place of understanding, but it is difficult, and sometimes unnecessary, to find it.