You Are My Heart and Other Stories (20 page)

She took out a cigarette, handed Bart a matchbook so he could light it for her. “We decided to go ahead with the tour, Eugene and I—Eugene is Alex's brother, our violinist—and all things considered, this seemed best.”

“I see that I've been indiscreet,” he said. “I should leave.”

“Why?”

The crisp directness of her question set him at ease. “I'm Bart Schneider,” he said, and he reached across the table to shake her hand. “I'm a physician. My wife and I are here for a few months, on a mini-sabbatical. I work with AIDS patients.”

“You have a wife?”

“Why yes—I thought I mentioned her.”

“But only four times.” She laughed, and when she did, Bart found himself laughing with her.

“You look younger when you laugh,” Leah said. “Before his death, Alex had not laughed for eight months.”

“You kept count?!”

“Of course not,” she said. “My goodness, but you're literal.
Je rigolais avec toi.
”

“I don't understand.”

“I was playing—making a joke with you,” she said. “You speak French, don't you? I would have thought, watching you with the waiter, that you did.”

“I did—I do,” he said. “Look—can we start over? Your husband died five weeks ago. What then? I mean, did you return to the States? Was there a funeral—a service of some kind?”

“I sent Alex home—his body, that is—but kept his cello. It's a Goffriller, and quite valuable. It's probably worth more than the two of us—the
three
of us, for that matter—alive or dead. Shall I tell you about it?”

“If you want.”

He sat back and, while she talked, he watched her mouth. Her lips—thin, wide, sharply articulated and slightly bow-shaped—reminded him of Garbo's, and he made a mental note to say this to her later on. It was the supreme and ever effective compliment—to compare a woman's features to that of a movie star, especially to one from a bygone era: Lombard, Astor, Del Rio, Harlow, Bacall, Hayworth, Gardner, Brooks…

“Alex's instrument was built in Venice, in the early eighteenth century,” she said. “The body, neck, ribs, and scroll are of maple, the top is of spruce, and the end piece, tail piece, and pegs are of rosewood. Am I boring you?”

“Not possible.”

“The soul of the cello, however—” she said “—the technical term is just that—
l'âme
—a slender piece of wood that determines tone and timbre, perhaps a quarter of an inch thick, and set into the body between the back and the belly just below the foot of the bridge, is of pine.” She drew in on her cigarette. “Alex often said that a fine cello is like a good woman: warm and capricious. Nor does it like to be forced. The less power you apply, the more you get.”

“I was remembering the photo on the poster—for your concert,” he said. “It seems to have been taken some years ago, yet I was thinking of how much more attractive you are now.”

“So what I've been wondering about is this,” she said. “Do I,
at the start of my career as widow, remind you of women in previous generations, afflicted with TB—the Camilles of their time, who, flush-cheeked and dying, represented an ideal of beauty? Will AIDS now do for some of us what TB used to do?”

Bart felt himself stiffen. “Hardly,” he said. “AIDS ravages all those it visits in godawful ways, though if you were in the early stages, there would be no visible difference. AIDS has a long incubation time, thank the Lord.”

“Have I offended?” she asked. “I am often more direct than is necessary.”

“One of my most extraordinary patients was a musical savant,” Bart offered.

“
Was?
”

“He passed away several years ago, when he was twenty-four. His name was Ethan Goldfarb.”

“His instrument?”

“Yours—the piano—which is why he came to mind. Most musical savants are, of course, autistic.”

“When we traveled by plane or train,” Leah said, “we'd buy a seat for Alex's cello, and, on wide-body planes, for example—across oceans—it would sit between us.”

“As if it were your child?” Bart asked.

“More as if we were a
ménage à trois
,” she said. “But tell me about these musical savants.”

“Though many of them can hardly speak or sign their names in any but the crudest way, they can, after listening to a sonata a few times, reproduce it faithfully, and with what seems genuine musical feeling. Most show this talent before the age of one, most are male, most are visually impaired, and they
all
play piano.”

“You've studied them obviously.”

“I knew Ethan.”

“Do you know all your patients in the way you knew him?”

“I hope so, though often AIDS patients will wander from clinic to clinic and doctor to doctor, with stops in between that
further debilitate them. And there's also this, that doctors have favorites too. Ethan was a favorite.”

“If you'll permit me a somewhat cold calculus—like Ethan, the other patients who come to you with AIDS—they all die, don't they?”

“No. Things have been changing in recent years. Antiretrovirals have made an enormous difference. Ethan, sad to say, was one of the last patients I lost.”

“Yet it seems wonderful to me to have known so many people in their time of dying,” she said. “I'm envious.”

“Don't be,” he said. “I don't miss attending funerals, and I attended hundreds of them. No pleasure, believe me, although I admit that I do sometimes find myself missing the years when the epidemic itself was exploding—when there was a sense of camaraderie among the doctors and nurses I worked with that was exhilarating
,
when we were discovering things nobody knew anything about, when we were desperate to save the world.” Bart stubbed out his cigarette. “But it was a terrible, godawful world.”

“So it would seem.”

“But you and I—this conversation—we're going down a road that's much too dark for such a pretty day, don't you think?”

“It occurs to me that where Alex is now, he and Ethan may have found one another, and that the boy may have replaced me as Alex's accompanist.”

“How long will you be staying in Grasse?”

“We don't stay here. We
play
here. We're staying a few miles away, in Tourettes-sur-Loup. Do you know it?”

“My favorite in the area, actually, whereas Grasse, which has its merits, is—”

“Is what?”

“Camus called it the capital of barbers' assistants,” Bart said.

“We're here until Sunday. There's our concert tomorrow night, and on Sunday morning we leave for Genoa.”

“And between now and tomorrow night—?” Bart waited,
and when she did not respond, spoke again: “You and Alex's brother must be practicing together more frequently now that you have a new repertoire—”

“I should revise what I said before, about your young man being Alex's accompanist. In the beginning, you see—in the time of Corelli, Mozart, Haydn—it was the violin and cello that were considered to be accompanying the piano.”

“Have you thought of going on tour as a soloist?”

“To be alone on a stage, or on tour, has always seemed to me a kind of death. At the same time, I do dread the possibility that I may now be linked to Eugene forever, without Alex between us.”

“Eugene is difficult?”

“Eugene is in love with me.”

“And—?”

“And I'm not in love with him, though on the day of Alex's death I was a bit out of my mind, so that when we were alone after the ambulance had taken Alex away, and Eugene comforted me…” She stopped. “But why am I telling you this? Can you explain that for me, doctor?”

“Trust,” Bart said. “Or an intimation of trust.”

“I doubt it. That's a very romantic notion—a very
male
romantic notion, I've come to believe.”

“You've clearly been through an ordeal, and—”

“Eugene and I have a practice scheduled for later today.” She glanced at her watch. “We prefer early mornings or late afternoons, so what I was wondering is this: We can continue our conversation here, or—if you have the time and interest—I could make you a cup of coffee. The apartment I'm staying in has a splendid view—and that way you would also get to see Alex's cello.”

 

When he woke, Leah was sitting a few feet from the bed, reading, and he saw, with relief—the shutters were open—that
it was still daylight. Leah wore a thin, peach-colored robe. The cello, resting upright in its stand, was beside her.

“I can't make a decision,” he said, “as to which is more beautiful—you or the cello.”

“Well, given its age, the cello certainly has shown itself to have greater staying power,” she said. She set her book down. “But we need to do something for you before you return home. Stay here, please.”

She returned a minute later carrying a basin and pitcher. She poured water into the basin, dipped a washcloth into the basin, squeezed out excess water, and, starting with his toes, began washing him. The washcloth was warm.

“There's nothing quite like it, is there, when it's good the first time,” she said.

She dipped the cloth in the basin again, began washing his thighs and groin. Bart moved his hand so that it rested between her legs. She lifted his hand, set it back on the bed.

“Your hands are very strong,” he said.

“We have Messrs. Czerny and Hanon to thank for that,” she said. “I enjoy caring for you, you see—allowing myself to be tender. When I have this—you and me, in this way—I feel I can go on. Much of the time, of course, the prospect of joining Alex seems quite natural and inviting.”

“I don't understand.”

She stood. “I'll make coffee,” she said. “You need to be alert on the drive home.”

When she returned with coffee, he sat up. “The French are a very practical people,” she said. “It's not the night of love that matters most, they say, but the cup of coffee in the morning.”

“But it's not morning.”

“You would notice that, wouldn't you,” she said. “But while you were sleeping, I found myself thinking about divorce. In the States these days, five minutes after a married man or woman falls in love with someone else, they divorce, and the family is
destroyed, the children affected for the rest of their lives. Here, though things are changing—Americanizing, if you will—a man can still have his
petite amie à coté,
a woman can have her liaisons—her
cinq à sept—
and families stay together. Much more practical—much more
sane
—don't you think?”

“I've been married to the same woman for nearly forty years.”

“Which reminds me,” Leah said. “Tomorrow night, after the concert, please don't come backstage to congratulate me.”

“Because—?”

“Because if you do, your wife, who I assume is a not unperceptive woman, will know at once.”

“And tomorrow, before the concert? I could—”

“I am occupied all day tomorrow.”

“Then this afternoon was—?”

“Yes.”

He set his cup down on the night table, pulled her down to him.

“You have an admirable quotient of violence in you,” she said a short while later. “I like that.”

“I noticed.”

Bart tried to pull her to him again, but she stepped away from the bed.

“I think we should leave things as they were,” she said. “You should go now. The afternoon has been wonderful. You are a dear and fascinating man. I will think of you often.”

“Do you say that to all the boys?” he asked.

“Don't be vulgar,” she said. “Please. What we had
was
wonderful. Now it's over, and we must be practical. I will think of you often, and with great kindness.”

T
hrough the many months of what their hospitals called ‘assisted reproductive services,' my daughters Carolyn and Michelle kept me informed about ‘options': in vitro fertilization, embryo cyropreservation, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, intrauterine insemination, donor oocytes, donor sperm, electroejaculation, and a long menu of other high-tech procedures.

What I insisted on—my only condition for the zero-interest, zero-repayment loans I offered—was that if child number one came into the world whole and healthy, they would each promise to try to have at least one additional child.

“What you want to do,” I said, “is to keep a spare on hand,” to which suggestion they asked if I was joking, and did I really take such a pessimistic (‘tragic' was Carolyn's word) view of their futures. Or: was I recommending they have more than one child because of my experience in having been an only child?

That probably had something to do with it, I admitted—how not?—but this was about them, not me, and I was just trying to be practical.

All went well. Carolyn (at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York City) had a boy, Michelle (at Beth Israel, in Boston) had a girl (the babies born four months apart), and two years after their first children were born, they became pregnant again (within a month of each other), and the second time around, and without benefit of assisted reproductive services, things reversed: Michelle had a boy, and Carolyn had a girl.

My first two grandchildren, Amos and Shira, were born eight years ago, two years after their grandmother, Helene, my wife of thirty-two years, passed away. The next two, Deborah and Saul, were born five years ago, and the happy endings to these chapters in our lives—four healthy grandchildren, two fit and healthy mothers—enabled me to return certain memories to where they'd been living for most of my adult life: in a seldom visited, windowless room of my mind.