Violin (35 page)

I lay in half-sleep, the too exhausted thin sleep, a net of anxiety preventing a luxurious descent, an irritable sleep in which each voice is sharp and rubs the pores of the skin.

The warmth was modern and delicious. Double casement windows kept out the Vienna cold, windows dressed in sumptuous finery. Open the window, and then open the window. Heat droned from concealed or inconspicuous fixtures, filling up the spacious volume of the room.

“Madame Becker, Count Sokolosky, he wants you to be his guest here.”

“I gave you my name.” Did my lips move? I looked to
the side, at a double sconce of gold with two candlelight bulbs burning brightly against the plaster, baubles hanging from the shining brass. “There’s no need for the gentleman’s kindness.” I tried to make my words clear. “Please, if you will, call the man I told you about—my lawyer, Grady Dubosson.”

“Madame Becker, we have made these calls. Funds are on the way to you. Mr. Dubosson is coming for you. And your sisters send you their love. They are greatly relieved to discover that you are safe here.”

How long has it been? I smiled. There came into my mind a lovely scene from an old film of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
, Alastair Sim, the British actor, a dancing Scrooge on Christmas morn having awakened a changed man. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the spirits.” Happy, happy ending.

There was a white desk, a chair of midnight blue silk and wood, a soaring plant, the thin sheers parted to let in gray light.

“But the Count begs you to be his guest. The Count heard you play the Stradivarius.”

I opened my eyes wide.

The violin!

It was beside me, lying on the bed. I had my hand over the strings and the bow. It was dark brown and shiny against the white linen, nestled in the pillow near me.

“Yes, it is there, madam,” said the woman in perfect English made all the more rich by her Austrian accent. “It is by your side.”

“I am so sorry to be so much trouble.”

“You are no trouble, madam. The Count has looked at the violin, not touched it, you understand. He would not do that without your permission.” Softer, the Austrian accent really, than German, more fluid. “The Count is a
collector of such instruments. He begs that you be his guest. Madam, it would be an honor to him. Will you take some supper now?”

Stefan was in the corner.

Pale, hunched, faded, as if the color had bled out of him, staring at me, a figure obscured by mist.

I gasped. I sat up, clutching the violin to me.

“Don’t fade, Stefan, don’t become one of them!” I said.

His face, full of sadness and defeat, didn’t change. The image seemed meager, wavering. He lay against the wall, his cheek to the damask panel, ankles crossed on the parquet, resting in mist and shadow.

“Stefan! Don’t let it happen to you. Don’t go.”

I looked to right and left for the lost dead, the dreary shades, the mindless souls.

The tall woman looked over her shoulder. “You are speaking to me, Madame Becker?”

“No. Just to a phantom,” I said. Why not be done with it? Why not say it? I had probably registered myself with these kind Austrians as one of the highest rank of the mad. Why not? “I don’t speak to anyone, unless, that is, unless you see a man there in the corner.”

She looked for him and couldn’t find him. She turned back to me. She smiled. Consumed in courtesy, she was uncomfortable and not knowing what to do for me.

“It’s only the cold, the trials, the journey,” I said. “Don’t worry the Count, my host, with all this. My lawyer’s coming?”

“Everything is to be done for you,” said the woman. “I am Frau Weber. This is our concierge, Herr Melniker.”

She pointed to the right. She was a handsome woman, nobly tall, her black hair drawn back into a bun from her
young face. Herr Melniker was a young man with ice blue eyes who looked anxiously at me.

“Madam,” he said.

Frau Weber tried to delay him with a dip of her head and a rise of her hand, but he pressed on.

“Madam, do you know how you came to be here?”

“I have a passport,” I said. “My lawyer will bring it to me.”

“Yes, madam. But how did you get into Austria?”

“I don’t know.”

I looked at Stefan, pale, leaden with despair, his face bleached, only his eyes inflamed as he looked back at me.

“Frau Becker, do you remember perhaps anything that you …” The man stopped.

“Perhaps she must take supper now,” said Frau Weber, “some soup perhaps. We have excellent soup for you, and some wine. Would you like some wine?”

She broke off. They both stood fixed. Stefan looked only at me.

A thumping noise drew closer and closer. A man with a limp and a cane. I knew the sound. I rather liked it, the thump, the shuffling step, the thump.

I sat straight. Frau Weber hastened to plump up the pillows behind me. I looked down to see I wore a bed jacket of padded silk, tied at the neck, and beneath that, white flannel, very fine. I was modest. I was even clean.

I looked at my hands, then realizing I had let go the violin, I snatched it up and held it.

There had been no hasty movement on the part of my tragic ghost. He had not stirred.

“Madam, you are safe. That is the Count, in the drawing room, would you please to let him in?”

I saw him in the open doorway; the beige doors were leather and thickly padded, and they came in two sets, to
seal off all sound perhaps when these rooms were locked apart. He stood there with his wooden cane, the old gray-haired man I had seen on the pavement below, with the white beard and mustache, an old-fashioned figure and pretty, actually, like the venerable old actors in black-and-white films, so divinely Old World.

“Are you well, my child?” he asked. Thank God it was English. He was very far away. How big these spaces were, big as the spaces of Stefan’s palace.

Blast. Flames. Old World.

“Yes, sir, I am, thank you,” I said. “I’m relieved that you speak English. My German’s wretched. I thank you for all your kindness to me. I don’t want to be the slightest burden to you.”

It was enough to say. Grady could pay the bills. Grady could make everything plain. That’s what came with money, that others did the explaining. Karl had taught me that. How could I say I did not need this man’s hospitality, his charity? There was some greater, finer point to be made.

“Please do come in,” I said. “I’m so sorry, so sorry …”

“For what are you sorry, child?” he asked.

He made his limping path towards the bed. Only now I saw the curlicued footboard. And beyond, the chandelier of the other room. Yes, a palace, the Hotel Imperial.

The old man wore some sort of medallion around his neck, and his coat was trimmed in black velvet. It hung unevenly from his shoulders. His white beard looked brushed.

Stefan didn’t move. I looked at Stefan and Stefan looked at me. Defeat and sorrow. Even in the angle of his head I saw it, the way he rested against the wall, as though whatever particles were left to him could know fatigue, or knew it even more now, and were knit together
ever more precariously. His lips moved just a little as he eyed me, a face speaking to a face, his, mine.

Herr Melniker had rushed to get a big blue velvet fauteuil for the Count, one of the many white and gold chairs scattered about on the inevitable Rococo tiptoe.

He sat at a polite distance.

A pleasant aroma came to me.

“Hot chocolate,” I said.

“Yes,” Frau Weber said. She put the cup in my hands.

“You are so very kind.” I clasped the violin with my left arm. “If you would set the saucer there.”

The old man gazed at me in adoring wonder, the way old men would look at me when I was a little girl, the way an old nun had once looked at me on the day of my First Communion. How well I remembered her wrinkled face, and her ecstatic expression. That was at the old Mercy Hospital, the one they tore down. She had been dressed all in white, ancient, and she had said, “You are pure on this day, so pure.” I was being taken round to visit as they did it then on the day of one’s First Communion. Where had I put that Rosary?

I saw the cup of chocolate trembling in my hand. I looked to the right at Stefan.

I took a drink; it was the perfect temperature. I swallowed the cup, thick and sweet with cream. I smiled. “Vienna,” I said.

The old man’s brows came together. “Child, that is a remarkable treasure you possess.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” I said. “I know, a Stradivarius, a long Strad, and this, the bow of pernambuco.”

Stefan narrowed his eyes. But he was broken.
How dare you?

“No, madam, I don’t mean the violin, though that is as fine an instrument as I’ve ever seen, and far more nearly
perfect than any I have ever sold or been offered. I mean the gift in your playing, what you played outside, the music that brought us out of the hotel. It was a … it was a naïf rapture. That is the gift.”

I was afraid.

You should be. After all, why should you be able to do it alone? Without my help? You’re back in your own world with the thing? You can’t do it. You have no talent; you rode the wind of my sorcery and now you crawl again. You’re nothing.

“Let’s see,” I said to Stefan.

The others glanced at one another. To whom did I speak in the empty corner?

“Call it an angel,” I said, looking up to the Count and gesturing to the corner. “Do you see it standing there, this angel?”

The Count moved his eyes over the room. So did I. I saw for the first time a fancy dressing table with folding mirrors, such as a lady would love, much finer than mine at home. I saw the Oriental rugs of worn blue and rust; I saw again the thin pale sheers that draped the window beneath deep scallops of brocaded silk.

“No, my dear,” the Count said. “I don’t see him. May I tell you my name? May I be your angel, too?”

“Perhaps you should,” I said, glancing away from Stefan and to the old man. The old man had a large head and flowing hair. He had the same cold blue eyes as young Melniker. He had about him a pearlized whiteness in old age, but a keen expression in his eye, and white eyelashes.

“Perhaps,” I said, “I need a better angel in you, for that I think is a bad angel.”

How can you tell such lies. You steal my treasure. You break my heart. You join the ranks of those who made me suffer so.

Again, no movement from the ghost’s lips, and the lazy posture didn’t change, the lazy miserable air of weakness and lost courage.

“Stefan, I don’t know what to do for you. If I only knew the good thing to do, the good thing—”

Thief.

The others whispered.

“Frau Becker,” said the woman, “this gentleman is Count Sokolosky. Forgive me that I did not make a proper presentation. He has lived here in our hotel a very long time, and is so happy to have you with us. These are rooms seldom opened to the public, so that we may keep them for just such an occasion.”

“But what is that?”

“Darling,” said the Count, cutting her off but very gently and with the calm unmalicious license of old age. “Would you play for me again? Is that impertinent of me to ask?”

No! Only vain and useless!

“Oh, not now,” the Count hastened to add, “when you are ill and need nourishment and rest and for your friends to come to you, but when you feel you can, if you would … only a little more for me, that music. That music.”

“And how would you describe it, Count?” I asked.

Do tell her, for she will need to know!

“Silence!” I glared at Stefan. “If it’s yours, then why don’t you have the power to reclaim it? Why is it in my keep? Oh, never mind, forgive me, forgive all this. Forgive this manner of speaking aloud to invented images and dreaming in a waking state—”

“No, it is quite good,” said the Count. “We ask no questions of those who are gifted.”

“Am I so gifted? What did you hear?”

Stefan sneered with aggressive contempt.

“I know what I heard when I played,” I said apologetically, “but if you would, tell me what you heard.”

The Count pondered.

“Something wondrous,” said the Count. “And wholly original.”

I didn’t interrupt him.

“Something forgiving?” He went on. “Something mixed and full of ecstasy and bitter endurance.…” He took his time, then went on. “It was as if Bartók and Tchaikovsky had walked inside you, and were one, the sweet Moderne and the tragic Moderne, and in your music there was a world displayed to me … the world of so long ago, before the wars … when I was a boy, a boy too young really for such sublime remembering. Only I do remember that world. I remember it.”

I wiped my face.

Go ahead, tell him, you don’t think you can do it again. You don’t know. I know. You can’t.

“Says who?” I demanded of Stefan.

He stood up straight, arms folded, and in his anger flashed a brighter color. “Oh, it’s always a matter of anguish, isn’t it, petty or great? Look at you, how you blaze now! Now that you drive the doubts into me! What if your very challenge gives me the strength?”

Nothing can give you the strength. You are beyond my power now, and the thing is deadwood in your hands; it’s dried wood, it’s an antique instrument, you cannot play it.

“Frau Weber,” I said.

She stared down at me amazed, anxiously glancing at the seemingly empty corner and then back to me quickly with an apologetic and protective nod.

“Yes, Frau Becker.”

“Do you have a robe I might wear, something decent
and loose? I want to play now. My hands are warm, they’re so warm.”

“Perhaps it’s too soon,” said the Count. However, leaning heavily on his cane, and groping for the hand of Melniker, he was already struggling to his feet. He was brimming with anticipation.

“Yes, yes, indeed,” said Frau Weber. She gathered up the garment from the foot of the bed, a simple flaring robe of white wool.

I turned and placed my feet on the floor. My feet were bare and the wood was warm and the gown came down to the insteps of my feet, and I looked up at the ceiling, at all this splendid molding, and ornament and loveliness, this dreamy regal room.