MARIE (Laundress at the boarding house in Clarens, Switzerland)

    Of all the characters in “Fate,” Marie might be thought of as one of the last ones to ever be chosen for a character analysis.  Her somewhat brief (but important) appearance in the story might even convince readers that she is a fictionalized character inserted for the sole purpose of showing Tchaikovsky’s valet, Aleksei as having firm heterosexual tendencies.  The fact is that Marie, the shy laundress in Clarens to whom Aleksei is passionately attracted, was very real indeed. 

It was necessary for me to write her as realistic as possible, especially since she was a living breathing person whose path crossed so significantly with Tchaikovsky’s. I merged  the daily flirtations of Marie and Aleksei with the composer’s rehearsals (with musician Yosef Kotek) of the famous Violin Concerto.  After all, there was more than just music practice going on that spring. How do we know this? I will explain.

Found in some of Pyotr’s diaries is the evidence that Aleksei was responsible for the pregnancy of the young girl.  The two men got news of it after they returned to Russia and while Aleksei never saw Marie again, a monetary connection was established.  Pyotr felt somehow responsible for the girl’s plight and supported her financially for many years.  

I was tempted to include this information in my novel but finally decided that it wasn’t necessary. I felt I had painted Tchaikovsky’s  “good character” and “self respect” sufficiently enough to where this particular generosity would have simply been redundant. I hope readers enjoyed learning about it here.  All the best, Adin Dalton

[NOTE: I thought it might be helpful if I posted in-depth information about some of the main characters in “Fate.”  Since these characters are based actual living, breathing people in the 19th-century, scholars do know something about their points of view, attitudes, and general personalities.  I had the honor of tweaking these attributes further in my novel of course, and so it will be my take on them that I write about here.  I will do many of these over the coming weeks, continuing on from the last one which featured Tchaikovsky’s possible nemesis, conductor Eduard Napravník.]