Violin (30 page)

“He had to do that,” Stefan murmured. “Poor Paganini. What is that to me, Hans? I don’t care.”

“Stefan, I’ve brought a cloak for you, a big cloak with a hood, and some money to get you out of Vienna.”

“Where did you get it?” Berthe asked with alarm.

“Never mind,” the man said, glancing at her dismissively, “except to say that everyone in your family is not heartless.”

“Vera, my sister. I saw her. I saw her when they tried to
catch me, she ran in front of them. Oh, my sweetest Vera.”

“Vera says you must go away, go to America, to the Portuguese Court in Brazil, anywhere, but go where your hands can be properly set and where you can live, or there is no life! Brazil is far away. There are other countries. Even England, go there—to London, but get out of the Hapsburg Empire, you must. Look, we’re in danger, helping you.”

The young woman became furious. “You know the things he’s done for you!” she said. “I won’t give him up.” She glared at Stefan, and he tried to stroke her with the bandaged hands but stopped, like an animal pawing the air, his eyes suddenly dull from pain or simple despair.

“No, of course not,” said Hans. “He is our boy, our Stefan, and always has been. I only say that it is a matter of days before they find you somewhere. Vienna is not so big. And you with your hands like clubs, what can you do? Why do you stay?”

“My violin,” said Stefan in a heartbroken voice. “It’s mine and I don’t have it.”

“Why can’t
you
get it?” said the woman to the chubby little man, glancing up at him. She wrapped the gauze around Stefan’s left hand still.

“Me? Get the violin?” asked the man.

“Why can’t you go into the house? You’ve done it before. See to the confection tables yourself. See to the special tarts. God knows, when someone dies in Vienna it’s a wonder everyone else doesn’t die from eating sweets. Come with the bakers to see that all is right with the sweets yourself, it’s simple enough, and slip upstairs and into the death room and take the violin. They stop you? Then say, you search for one of the family to beg
news, you loved the boy so. Everybody knows it. Get the violin.”

“ ‘Everybody knows it,’ ” he repeated. It was these words that disturbed the little man who went to the window and looked out. “Yes, everybody knows it was with my daughter he spent his drunken hours anytime he wanted.”

“And gave me beautiful things for it, which I have still, and will on my wedding day!” she said bitterly.

“He’s right,” Stefan said. “I have to go. I can’t stay here and endanger both of you. They would think to come here, to watch …”

“Not so,” she said. “Every servant to the house and merchant to the family loves you, and doted on you, and all those French women, that trash that came with the conqueror, they keep a watch on them, yes, because you are so famous with them, but not with the baker’s daughter. But it’s true what Father says, you have to go. What have I told you myself? You have to go. If you don’t leave Vienna, it is only a few days before they catch you.”

Stefan was deep in thought. He tried to rest his weight on his right hand, then caught the error and slumped back against the wooden bedstead. The ceiling was sloped above his head, the window tiny in the thick wall. He seemed so vivid amid all this, too long, too sharpened, too brilliant and fierce for such a small chamber.

The young image of my ghost who walks through great rooms and down broad avenues.

The daughter turned to her father.

“Go into the house and get the violin!” said the daughter.

“You are dreaming!” said the man. “You are brainsick with love. You are a stupid baker’s daughter.”

“And you, who would be a fancy gentleman, with your fancy café in the Ringstrasse, you don’t dare.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Stefan said with authority. “Besides, Hans wouldn’t know the violin from any other.”

“It lies in the coffin!” she said. “They told me.” She bit the cloth with her teeth, and tore it in two and made another tight knot beneath his wrist. The bandage was already bloody. “Father, get it for him.”

“In the coffin!” Stefan whispered. “Beside him!” It was full of contempt.

I would have closed my eyes, but had no such control over any physical body. I held this violin, the one of which they spoke, I had it in my arms, and I thought now, so this thing, this thing we follow through this bloody history is at this time, give it 1825 or more, lying already in a coffin! Has it been sprinkled with holy water, this thing, or will that only happen at the Last Rites, and the Requiem, and will that be beneath a Viennese church with gilt-and-sugar angels?

Even I knew the little man could not get the violin. But he struggled to defend himself, both to them and to his own heart, turning, pacing, lip jutting, glasses flecks of light.

“Why, how, you can’t just walk into a room where a Prince in his coffin lies in state …”

“Berthe, he’s right,” said Stefan gently. “It’s unspeakable that I allow him to take such a risk. Besides, when could he do it? What is he to do, walk boldly up and seize the thing from the dead man’s grasp and rush out with it?”

Berthe looked up; her dark hair was a frame for a white face, her eyes beseeching but clever. She had long lashes and a lush thick mouth.

“There are times,” she said, “late in the night when the
room will be nearly empty. You know it. When men will sleep. And only a few say their Rosaries, and these even most likely close their eyes. So, Father, you go in to tend the tables. When even Stefan’s Mother sleeps.”

“No!” Stefan said, but the thought had found a fertile place. He looked forward, absorbed in his plan. “Go up to the coffin, take it from him, it lies with him, my violin.…”

“You can’t do it,” Berthe said. “You have no fingers with which to hold it.” She was horror-struck. “You can’t go near the house.”

He said nothing. He glanced about himself, once again leaning on his hands and then quickly straightening on account of the pain. He saw the clothes that lay ready for him. He saw the cloak.

Then: “Tell me, Hans, tell me the truth, was it Vera who sent the money to me?”

“Yes, and your mother knows of it, but if you ever broadcast this, I will be destroyed; don’t brag on this kindness with any other secret friends. Because if you do, neither your sister nor your Mother will have the power to protect me.”

Stefan smiled bitterly and nodded.

“Did you know,” said the little Hans, pushing his glasses up on his stubby nose, “that your Mother hated your Father?”

“Of course,” said Stefan, “but I have hurt her far worse now than ever he did, haven’t I?”

He didn’t wait for the little man to find an answer. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. “Berthe, I can’t put on these boots.”

“Where are you going?” She ran around the bed, to assist. She helped him with each foot, and then to his
feet. She gave him his black wool frock coat, fresh and clean, supplied no doubt by his sister.

The chubby little man looked up at him, full of pity and sadness. “Stefan,” he said, “there are soldiers all about the house, the Russian guard, Metternich’s private guards, and police everywhere. Listen to me.”

The little man came up to him and put his hand on Stefan’s hurt hand, and when Stefan winced and drew back the wounded hand, the little man stopped, apologetic and full of shame.

“It’s nothing, Hans. You have done kindness for me. I thank you. God can’t look unkindly on that. You did not murder my Father. And my Mother put her blessing on all this, I see. That’s my father’s finest cloak, lined in Russian fox, you see? How she thinks of me. Or did Vera give it to you?”

“It was Vera! But mark my words. Leave Vienna tonight. If you are caught there will not be a trial for this! They’ll see to it you are shot dead first before you can speak or anyone can speak who saw him hurt you.”

“I have been tried in here,” said Stefan, touching his coat with the wrapped hand. “I killed him.”

“Leave Vienna as I told you. Get to a surgeon who can yet mend your fingers. Perhaps they can be saved. There are other violins for one who plays as you play. Go across the sea, to Rio de Janeiro, go to America, or east to Istanbul where no one will ask who you are. In Russia, have you friends, friends of your mother?”

Stefan shook his head, smiling. “All cousins to the Czar or his bastards, every one,” he said with a small laugh. It was the first time in this ghostly life that I had seen this Stefan truly laugh. He looked carefree for a moment, and happiness took all the lines from his face
and made him, as it customarily does to people, perfectly radiant.

He was full of quiet gratitude for the flustered little man. He sighed and looked about the room. It seemed the unadorned gesture of a man who might soon die and looks at all the simple things with loving regard.

Berthe tied his frills, made his collars peaked and straight against his neck. She knotted the white silk tie in front. She took a black wool scarf and wound it round his neck, lifting his groomed and shining hair and letting it fall down. Long, yet trimmed.

“Let me cut it …” she said. More disguise?

“No … it doesn’t matter. The cape and the hood will hide me. I have no time left. Look, it’s midnight. The long deathwatch has probably begun.”

“You can’t!” she cried.

“But I will! Will you betray me?”

The thought stymied her, stymied her father. They shook their heads, silently and obviously vowing that they would not.

“Goodbye, darling, would I could leave you with something, some little thing …”

“You leave me with all I’ll ever need,” she said softly. There was resignation in her voice. “You leave me with some hours that other women must make up or read about in stories.”

He smiled again. Never in any setting had I seen him so perfectly comfortable. I wondered if the bleeding hands hurt him, because the bandages were bad already.

“The woman who fixed my hands,” he said to Berthe, sticking to his point, “she took my rings in payment, all of them. I couldn’t stop her. But this is my last warm room for the night, my last unhurried moment. Berthe,
kiss me and I’ll go. Hans, I can’t ask you for a blessing, but a kiss, I do.”

They all embraced. Stefan put out his arms, as if he could lift the cloak with the clubby hands, but Berthe was quick to get the cloak, and the man and the woman together put it over his shoulders and brought the hood up over his head.

I was sick with fear. I knew what was to come. I didn’t want to see it.

13

The vestibule of a great house.
The undeniable ornament of the German Baroque, gilded wood, two murals facing each other, a man, a woman, in powdered wigs.

Stefan had gained entry, his hands tucked inside his coat, and still spoke sternly in Russian to the guards, who were confused and unsure about this well-dressed man who had come to pay his respects.

“Herr Beethoven is here? Now?” asked Stefan in this sharp Russian. A divertissement. The guards spoke only German. At last one of the Czar’s private men appeared.

Stefan played it to the hilt, without removing his bandaged hands, making a deep Russian bow, the cape falling around him on the tiled floor, the chandelier above lighting the dark, near monastic figure.

In Russian, he said, “I have come from Count Raminsky in St. Petersburg to pay my respects.” His confidence and bearing were perfection. “And also to convey a message to Herr van Beethoven. It was for me that Herr Beethoven wrote a quartet which was sent to me by
Prince Stefanovsky. Ah. I beg you to allow me a few moments with my good friend; I would not at this hour disturb the family, only I was told that the watch was all night, that I might call.”

He was on his way to the door.

A great formality descended on the Russian guards and was immediately adopted by the German officers and the wigged servants.

The servants trailed after the guards, then hastened to open doors.

“Herr Beethoven has gone home some time ago, but I can escort you to the room where the Prince is laid,” said this Russian official, obviously in some awe of this tall imposing messenger. “And I should perhaps wake …”

“No. As I have already explained, I would not have them disturbed at this hour,” said Stefan. He glanced about the house as though there was nothing in its regal dimensions that was familiar to him.