A friend of our mother’s, on her way to Herzegovina, whence she had intended to repair to Montenegro for several weeks, stopped off in Cavtat and, while there, visited the cemetery famous both for its unique location across from Dubrovnik and for the Mestrovic mausoleum there. Across from the mausoleum, as she told us, she suddenly discovered a tombstone bearing the name of Tino Pattiera, a favorite of hers who was once the most celebrated singer in the Vienna Opera, and it occurred to her at that moment that her favorite singer came from Cavtat, which was once called Ragusaveggia. She had not known that the singer Pattiera was dead. In her distress, she went down to Cavtat, which is also famous for its mimosa, and returned to the cemetery with a bunch of mimosa to lay on Pattiera’s grave. In the nature of things, her trip to Montenegro was overshadowed by her experience in Cavtat. Her astonishment must have been beyond bounds when, after returning to Vienna, she read the announcement that Pattiera would be singing next day in Tosca, her favorite opera. And, in fact, Pattiera did sing in this Tosca as the announcement had stated, and our mother’s friend managed to convince herself in the opera—which was sold out—of the singer’s still brilliant voice: there was no way she could have known that Pattiera had bought himself a burial plot in his native Cavtat while he was still alive and had had his name chiseled on the white marble stone that had misled our mother’s friend, who had been an opera enthusiast all her life.

A Famous Dancer

A FAMOUS DANCER

In Maloja we made the acquaintance of a once-famous male dancer in the Paris Opera, who was brought in a wheelchair into our hotel one evening by a young Italian from Castasegna whom the dancer had engaged for a period of several years. As we learned from the dancer, he had collapsed in mid-performance on the first night of Handel’s Raphael, which had been specially choreographed for him by Béjart, and he had been paralyzed ever since. The dancer said he had suddenly lost consciousness and only two days later had come to. It was possible, according to the dancer, who was wrapped in very expensive nutria fur, that his misfortune could be traced back to the fact that for the first time in his career he had thought about the complexity of a combination of steps that he had been afraid of for the whole fifteen years of his career and that had taken him to all the great opera houses of the world. A dancer, in his opinion, ought never to think about his dance while he is dancing; he should only dance, nothing else.

Guilty Conscience

GUILTY CONSCIENCE