“He would be about 80 now wouldn’t he?” I asked her.

“He was always 10 years younger than me, I’m 89 so yes, he would be around 79 now,” Irene said her brown eyes darting slowly to the left for a moment then back to me. Her wrinkled hands and long fingers always moving as she talked, tapping her nails on the wooden table as she set them back down, as frail and delicate as the skin seemed to be she looked ‘healthy’. The short wavy grey hair a bit disheveled today.

“Let me see” I said, the phone was by my left hand as it lay on her lounge room table, we were seated there, me at the head and her on the right a painting by her husband of a ship on the wall just behind her and a rain meter below it. A very clean spacious lounge with gleaming parquet under us, the large window to the street the main feature.

I tapped the screen and it lit up as I entered Placido Domingo into a search field. 

“Yeah, he’s 80,” I said still looking at the phone.

“What was that?” said Irene shaking her head and moving her left ear towards me squinting her eyes slightly.

“YES HE’S 80,” I said a bit louder. She had trouble hearing me on pretty much every second question I ever asked.

“Oh wow” I said, “He gave a concert in Vienna two weeks ago! At 80.”

“No, really?” 

“Yes it was Nabucco by Verdi, what a feat I can’t believe it… oh no….. “ I said slowing down my voice but reading more rapidly.

“What is it? Nothing happened to him?” said Irene, concern now furrowing her brow trying to bring her favorite singer who’s records she’d played all through the 70s 80s and 90s until her record player was broken, to life, and into today not just in the past where she spent most of her time.

“He’s OK?”

“He’s OK I said, “BUT he didn’t finish the opera, wow, he actually had to stop and be replaced because of his voice he couldn’t make it all the way through. THEY HAD TO REPLACE HIM,” I said louder.

“He’s too old for that now it’s too late, he shouldn’t have gone,” she said waving an arm toward me.

Followed by “Did his voice quack? Give out? What was it?”

I read on for a bit looking at the phone again, “so it seems, he was already sick.”

“Oh he was sick? And went to Vienna for an opera?”

“Yes so he was sick, oh, wait and he’d warned the audience,” I kept reading from the website, “and then he was replaced by another baritone HE HAD ALREADY ORGANISED A REPLACEMENT!”

“Oh what a shame and I wasn’t there to comfort him!” she clapped her hands together and looked at me with a cheeky smirk. Then I raised my head and broke a smile – we both burst out laughing…. Heads back a good belly laugh imagining Irene with Placido.

“I would have gone you know, I wouldn’t want him to feel bad, he’s so lovely. He’s my favourite…. Oh Placido.

“Always so welcoming so gentle and sweet it’s like he would bring the people into his singing and include them on the stage, and get them to sing with him. So beautiful.

“Not like that Pavarotti, all airs and pomp! 

“Ah but Placido Domingo, so lovely, loved the women too you know!”

“I’m sure,” I said vaguely, bringing to mind a suave grey haired, tanned man but failing to really recall his face in any detail or even hear a song playing from the imaginary record collection of the mind. 

“It’s a shame Irene,” I said, “you could have gone to Vienna for a visit! He could have used the support.”

She smiled and looked at me again, happy with the company, she hadn’t left her apartment for nearly two years now my next-door neighbour, but never failed to open the door and give me a good history lesson whenever I came by. 

We both loved cats you see. 

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  • Alia (Aglaia) Papageorgiou is Consultant Strategic Communications. She holds a bachelor’s degree of Laws in European Law (University of Kent at Canterbury) and a Master of Cybersecurity, Strategy and Diplomacy (University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy). Alia is a board member of Journalismfund Europe since March 2023 and elected President of Press Club Brussels Europe (pressclub.be). Alia is a longtime journalist, speaker and Director of the Writers Festival of Belgium.