The Doctor and the Diva Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1 - BOSTON

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  PART TWO

  Chapter 22 - TRINIDAD

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  PART THREE

  Chapter 33 - BOSTON

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 34 - I TA LY

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40 - TRINIDAD

  Chapter 41 - I TA LY

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 45 - BOSTON

  Chapter 46 - EGYPT

  Chapter 47 - BRITISH GUIANA AND TRINIDAD

  Chapter 48

  PART SIX

  Chapter 49 - CAPE COD, MASSACHUSETTS

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 50 - I TA LY

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  PART EIGHT

  Chapter 53 - BOSTON

  Chapter 54 - TRINIDAD

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57 - NEW YORK

  Chapter 58 - FLORENCE, ITALY

  A Further Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Adrienne McDonnell, 2010 All rights reserved

  A Pamela Dorman Book / Viking

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  McDonnell, Adrienne.

  The doctor and the diva : a novel / Adrienne McDonnell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19027-2

  1. Women singers—Fiction. 2. Opera—Fiction. 3. Obstetricians—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.C3877D63 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2010003333

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my parents, Catherine and Phil McDonnell

  A Historical Note: Although few readers may be aware of it, certain fertility procedures now considered “modern” were used by physicians—behind a curtain of secrecy—more than a century ago.

  PART ONE

  1

  BOSTON

  1903

  Doctor Ravell had already missed the funeral. The body was being carried from the church as he arrived. Many of Boston’s most prominent physicians descended the granite steps in a parade of canes and black silk hats, the modest old man in the casket the most esteemed of them all. Six or seven members of the von Kessler family—all of them doctors—served as pallbearers, and they shouldered the gleaming casket suitable for a king. Ravell wondered how many others, like him, must have deserted patients at their bedsides in order to join the procession.

  He heard his name called, a black top hat raised and waved in his direction like a celebratory shout. “Ravell!”

  It was Doctor Gerald von Kessler, a homeopath, who greeted him—the nephew of the man they’d come to mourn. His short wife stood beside him, with violets blooming in her hat.

  The couple insisted that Ravell ride with them to the cemetery. In the privacy of their carriage, Doctor von Kessler leaned closer to confide.

  “Can you help my sister?” von Kessler said. “This is what I am asking.”

  “We are afraid,” his wife added, “that she has grown desperate.”

  Doctor von Kessler removed his top hat and placed it on the seat. “My sister’s husband has become obsessed. He’s dragged her to physician after physician, put her through every procedure and humiliation so that she can have a child. He won’t relent.”

  “I’d be honored to help your sister,” Ravell said, “in any way I can.”

  “We heard about your recent triumph in the Hallowell case.” Gerald von Kessler gave Ravell a sharp, congratulatory nod.

  “After nineteen years in a barren marriage,” Mrs. von Kessler said, “thanks to you, they had twins!” The violets jiggled in her hat and her eyes shone at Ravell.

  “My sister and her husband have wasted too much time consulting the old guard,” Doctor von Kessler said. “They need a younger man—a pioneer in modern techniques, like you.”

  At the gravesite Ravell stood next to them, one hand clasped over his opposite wrist. He would never have guessed that before his thirtieth birthday, the von Kessler family would be relying on him. In the distance of a valley below, he noticed skaters skimming along a frozen pond. Cold air filled his lungs and he felt an odd elation—so peculiar to sense at a funeral—the buoyancy of knowing that his reputation was on the rise. Lately his practice had expanded at such a rate that he had been forced to turn patients away.

  The last time he had seen the legendary physician they would bury today was at a professional dinner just two months previously. It had been the sort of event where eminent men toasted one another, half in jest; they had planted a crown of laurel leaves on Ravell’s head to welcome him into their midst. That evening the revered old man had turned to Ravell
and said, “You’ll be appointed professor of obstetrics at that famous school across the river before we know it. Remember that I made that prediction.”

  Now the grand old man in the casket was being borne up and carried above their heads to his grave. Mourners settled into respectful poses—heads bowed, feet slightly apart—yet the minister seemed to be delaying for some reason. While they waited, snow flurries began.

  Finally a black motorcar drove into the cemetery grounds. A shining black door opened, and a slender woman in a white ermine fur cape stepped out. Two violinists accompanied her. As she clutched her fur and headed for the gravesite, the crush of onlookers parted, making a wide aisle for her.

  The woman in the white cape climbed onto a small platform. Above the congregation, she stood dressed entirely in white, and as she raised her oval face to speak, snow fell faster. Flakes dusted her hat and clung to her dark ringlets.

  The deceased had been her uncle, she explained to the mourners. “The aria I am about to sing is not religious,” she said. “But when my uncle heard me sing Paisiello’s ‘Il mio ben quando verrà,’ he said: ‘When they bury me, I want you to send me up to heaven with that song.’ ”

  She loosened the white fur from her throat. For a moment she closed her eyes and gathered herself up, and then she sang.

  The sounds were unlike any Ravell had ever heard. It was not an earthly voice; it was a shimmering. Falling snow melted on her face as he listened. In the valley below, on the distant pond, skaters circled the ice with the legato of her phrases. He wanted those ice skaters to keep going, round and round. He wanted the woman’s iridescent voice never to stop.

  Who is she? he wondered. Later, when he learned her name—Erika—it made him think of the words aria, air, as if she breathed melodies.

  After her singing ended and the minister had spoken, mourners adjusted their silk top hats and knotted their scarves and shuffled past the open gap in the earth.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my sister, have you?” Gerald von Kessler said to Ravell, and guided him toward the platform. The singer lifted her chin toward him and took his hand and smiled, the light on her face as radiant as snow. Almost immediately she turned to another person. Ravell knew that at that moment, he was nothing to her—only another doctor among scores of them.

  2

  Ravell watched from an upstairs window in his private quarters as Erika von Kessler and her husband made their way down Commonwealth Avenue. They would be his first appointment of the day. The husband, the one leading the charge to end their childlessness, walked several paces ahead of his wife. She lagged. The husband paused and waited for her to catch up, but when he spoke to her, she turned her head to observe the town houses on the opposite side of the avenue.

  Ravell felt a tinge of excitement as he observed them. He was a man drawn to risk; nothing made him feel more alive than the nearness of a gamble. This might—or might not—become a storied case for him.

  As the couple moved closer, Ravell saw that the husband, Peter Myrick, was a tall, elegant figure perhaps a few years older than himself. A sandy-haired man with pleasant features, Peter had a narrow face and a blade-thin nose. He looked like a young senator. Later Ravell would learn that on the way to their first meeting, Peter Myrick had urged certain advice upon his wife: If you want this doctor to dedicate his best efforts to us, we must develop a special rapport with him.

  Ravell had just finished getting dressed, the strands of hair at his neck still damp from his morning bath. Before going downstairs to the street-level suite of rooms that housed his practice, he shook a few drops of musk-scented pomade onto his palms and combed back the wings of his dark hair with his fingers.

  When the couple entered, Ravell rose from behind his mahogany desk to greet them. Given his conversation with Erika’s brother during the carriage ride to the cemetery, Ravell had not expected to experience any particular warmth toward her husband. But from the moment Peter Myrick came into the room, he seemed lit by optimism, and Ravell felt fondness toward him. Peter was a man of refinement, and yet he had the air of an eager schoolboy.

  Like a curious child, Peter glanced around the office. He recognized at once what interested him.

  “I see you’ve got a Morpho!” he said in an accent that was unmistakably British. He lifted the magnifying glass from Ravell’s desk to examine three glass cubes. A different butterfly of exquisite colors and dimensions had been preserved inside each.

  “Did you capture these yourself?”

  Ravell nodded. “A friend has a coconut estate on an island off South America. The wildlife is magnificent there.”

  “And that?” Peter Myrick pointed to a framed photograph of an anaconda entwined in a mangrove tree. “Is that from the same island?”

  Ravell nodded.

  “I’m an animal enthusiast myself,” Peter said. “Someday I’ll show you my collections and my little menagerie.”

  Erika Myrick (or the mezzo-soprano Erika von Kessler, as she was known professionally) had stepped into his office with the same proud carriage Ravell recalled from the day she’d appeared at the cemetery. Yet she looked very different today, as if she’d been crying earlier, her lids swollen and her eyes small. As she settled herself distantly in a chair, Ravell recalled other things Gerald von Kessler had confided during the ride from the funeral. (“Peter has become fixated to the point of tormenting my sister. If she didn’t have such a glorious voice, all this might have destroyed her by now. It’s music that has saved her.”)

  Peter Myrick offered a brief history of their struggles to conceive. They had been married now for six years. He mentioned obstetricians they had previously consulted—all mature gentleman, renowned specialists.

  To reassure them that he might have something new to offer, Ravell spoke of his mentor from Harvard Medical School. Together they had designed a series of particularly elegant instruments that were beginning to yield interesting results. “Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous Doctor Sims? Some people call him ‘the Father of Modern Obstetrics.’ My mentor was a student of Sims.’ ”

  “A figure of controversy, Sims—wasn’t he?” Peter said.

  Ravell nodded. Sims had been brilliant, but far too invasive in the eyes of many. “Fertility work is still—” Ravell hesitated. “Well, let’s just say this must be handled with the utmost discretion. Few people should be aware of anything except the results.”

  Peter and Erika nodded. They understood. In a quiet tone she responded to questions about her menstrual cycles. Every gynecologist who had examined her had apparently found her female system healthy and unremarkable.

  Ravell put down his pen and turned to Peter to suggest an intrusion that made many men balk. “In such cases, it’s standard to inspect a sample of the husband’s semen as well.”

  Peter gave a laugh, as abrupt as a cough. “I can assure you that virility is not of concern here.”

  “It might provide insight.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Peter crossed one leg over the other.

  Ravell knew when a man’s dignity must be respected, so instead of pursuing the matter he led Erika von Kessler down a corridor into an examination chamber. Normally a nurse placed a freshly starched sheet on the table, but today he made it up like a little bed for her. She removed her hatpin and set her dove-gray toque on a chair, and smoothed her pompadour.

  “I heard you sing at your uncle’s funeral,” Ravell said. “Afterward, the sound of your voice stayed in my head for days. It was so—so—”

  She turned to him with interest. “Do you enjoy opera?”

  “My father trained to be a baritone, but he gave it up long before I was born. He managed a large farm in Africa. When I was a little boy, he used to sing from Figaro, and I used to dance around and bump against the walls.”

  Erika von Kessler’s lips parted in a faint smile.

  A nurse stood in attendance while he examined her. As he reached under the drape of skirts and palpated, he
kept his eyes locked on hers, as he had been trained to do, so that a female patient would feel reassured that a doctor had no intention of peering at her private areas. Her eyes were blue-gray, deepened by lavender shadows beneath the lower lashes. Unlike many women, she lay completely relaxed. Her uterus was slightly small—not uncommon for a petite woman—and it tilted to the anterior. The ovaries were healthy, properly positioned. Ravell kept his eyes on hers until she arched her throat backward and switched her gaze to the ceiling, as if returning his stare felt too intimate.

  When the examination was over, the nurse left the room. He took Erika von Kessler’s hand and helped her sit upright. Her hair had loosened from its knot, with a froth of dark curls sliding down her neck. He smelled whiffs of lilac soap.

  As he turned to depart, Erika von Kessler called to him, “It’s useless, you realize. My husband doesn’t want you to know that every procedure you’re about to propose, we’ve done before—many times. This,” she declared gravely, “is the end for me. It’s the end for me of everything.” The anguish in her words made him uneasy.

  Yet she did agree to come to the office, accompanied by her husband, for regular visits that winter. Ravell assured Peter that his privacy would be respected; the moment he surrendered a sample of his seed, it would be quickly injected into his wife’s body; no one would tamper with the precious substance.

  And so, twice a week, Peter retreated into a windowless chamber where a book of photographs taken in a Parisian brothel had been left for him. When Peter Myrick finished, he covered the glass jar and left the specimen there. He then hurried out to the street where a carriage opened its doors and bore him away, wheels rumbling over cobblestones. An importer of textile machinery from Bradford, England, to the mills of New England—and an importer of Egyptian cotton as well—Peter traveled widely. He was a man in a hurry, with numerous transactions to oversee.