The Brahms Deception (16 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

BOOK: The Brahms Deception
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No! No!
It was no use. She lost her hold. She was outside again, hovering above the fortepiano, formless, powerless. Helplessly, she gazed down on the limp form of Clara Schumann.
Hannes bent over her, gathering her slight body into his arms. Frederica clung to the fortepiano for dear life. She felt pulled, stretched, as if someone cruel and strong had taken hold of her ankles and someone equally cruel was tugging on her wrists. It was like being caught in an undertow, buffeted by waves of merciless power. She would be swept away in another moment, dragged out of this world as if she were a disobedient dog!
She knew what they had done. They had used the pulse. They had shot an electromagnetic burst into her brain without her permission, without the slightest thought for the risk to her mind or her body. They didn't care about her at all! They meant to force her to do what they wanted, no matter what injury it might cause.
If they thought they could control her, they were mistaken. No one—
no one
—could dictate to Frederica Bannister. Not her father, not her mother, not her teachers or her advisers. She had never tolerated such domination, and she would not begin now.
She had to find a way to resist. She had to be stronger than they were.
She cast about for a way to stabilize herself, even while she felt the force of the pulse blurring her perception, rocking her brain. God, if she could only rip off the damned cap!
But she couldn't. At this moment, there was nothing physical she could do. She needed something else.
Hannes was lifting Clara now, carrying her to the wing chair. He called, “Nuncia! Nuncia!”
The cook came running in, wiping her wet hands on her apron. She exclaimed,
“O, la signora!”
and bent over Clara's still form.
Clara looked deadly pale. Frederica began to fear she had stopped breathing. If she died—if the pulse killed Clara—she would
have
to go back! She would hardly want to live in the body of a middle-aged cook!
Clara's arms were limp, her hands trailing to the floor. Her head fell to one side, as nerveless as if her neck were broken. The sight filled Frederica with fury. Already she had begun to feel that was
her
body, that what happened to it was meant to hurt
her
.
How dare they? How thoughtless and selfish could they be, trying to wrest from her the one prize she craved, the first real experience of her life?
She cudgeled her brain for a way to hold on. She spun from one side of the fortepiano to the other, searching.
Her eye fell on the manuscript.
She fixed her attention on it. There were differences there, details of the music no one had ever seen, because he had rewritten it, revised it, dropped some notes and added others. She flew to it, and hovered before it, focusing with all her might on one of the chords she knew had not survived in later versions. That chord didn't fit in her own time. In
their
time. It belonged only to this one.
She filled her field of vision with the scrawled notation, sang it in her mind. She closed out everything else, ignoring the wrench of the reversal, the distraught voice of poor Hannes calling Clara's name. She did her best to
become
that chord, to the exclusion of everything that was herself, her history, her personality, even the driving need that had brought her here.
Frederica no longer felt the tick of seconds, the passage of minutes. She vibrated with the sound of that chord, immersed herself in its frequencies. She was not Frederica, nor was she Clara. She was not the mapping of herself held in the transfer clinic. She was the chord, that chord that had not survived into her own time. She became the essence of it, the specific and characteristic vibration that belonged only in 1861, that would be gone by the next year. She felt the thrum of it as if she were the body of a cello, her strings singing beneath the bow.
It no longer mattered what they did, what they tried to do to her. She would never give in. They couldn't force her! She would not leave until she was ready.
After this, in fact, she might choose not to leave at all.
 
Kristian, horrified, hung back from the scene around the transfer cot. The readouts above Frederica's head danced and flashed. Her blood pressure, her temperature, the map of her brain waves shot this way and that, as if an electrical problem had disrupted every wire, every tube, every program. Her body convulsed, limbs twisting, hands and feet rigid. Her face contorted until it was unrecognizable.
Kristian, helplessly watching, muttered, “Oh, my God.”
Chiara ordered, “Max! The sedative!”
Max leaped forward, a syringe ready in his hand. Chiara tried to steady Frederica's arm, but he had trouble fitting the needle to the Y-port of her IV. It seemed to take forever, while she thrashed this way and that, shivering and shuddering with seizure.
“Hold her!” Max cried. “Someone!”
Kristian stepped forward to seize Frederica's ankles, but still her body quaked. Her legs thrashed beneath his hands.
Elliott muttered, “Jesus Christ.”
Max, the emptied syringe in his hand, said, “Can you stabilize the cap?”
Elliott was at the computer, tapping keys, glancing up at the readout. “Goddammit,” he said. “I don't know whether to try to put her back, or bring her here.”
Chiara said, “It is too late. Do nothing now.”
Kristian could see it had been wise not to call the Bannisters to witness this. Frederica's body, which had lain as still as a corpse for days, went on jerking and quivering as the jagged electrical impulses from her brain fired her muscles and nerves.
“Maybe a muscle relaxant . . . ,” Max began.
Chiara said sharply, “No! We have caused enough trouble. We must wait, and watch.”
Elliott stepped back from the computer keyboard, and gazed helplessly at the screen above it. “I have to call Chicago.”
“Go ahead,” Max said. “Tell them what happened, and don't hold back.” His mouth was set in a hard line that looked foreign to his cheerful face. He took Kristian's place at Frederica's feet, pressing down on her ankles to stop the spasms of her legs. Chiara stayed by her head, gripping her wrists. Frederica's features twisted, her mouth stretching. She gasped like a fish out of water.
“God,” Elliott muttered, “I wish she'd stop that.”
Kristian stared at Frederica, too, but he didn't see the unprepossessing face of a girl from Chicago. He saw the beautiful features of Clara Schumann, distorted by suffering, and none of it of her own making. Poor Clara, buffeted and tortured by forces she could never understand. What was happening to her as Frederica fought them?
Kristian had no doubt at all that Frederica was fighting. Max and Chiara saw a seizure. Elliott saw a technical problem. But he, Kristian, saw a battle joined, and in this struggle Clara Schumann had no champion but himself.
 
Clara's heart clutched, its beating ragged. The darkness that had enveloped her for hours grew thicker and heavier. Even the demon seemed to have abandoned her, left her limbs nerveless, her eyes blind. After that first terrible pain, like a boulder crushing her chest, there was nothing. No awareness, no hearing, no feeling. She could not draw breath. She could not sense Hannes. She wanted to cry out for her children, for her beloved Marie, but even that seemed beyond her power.
Her sin, it seemed, had been greater than she thought. She ceased struggling, and slipped into oblivion.
 
Long minutes passed before Frederica's legs and arms and face ceased convulsing. Chiara had finally sent Max for a crash cart, but with a sigh of
“Grazie al cielo!”
she saw she would not have to use it. Frederica's thrashing limbs stilled, her face calmed, and the erratic readings above her head smoothed and steadied, bit by bit. Max sat next to the cot, his head in his hands. Chiara rearranged Frederica's tumbled blanket and checked her catheter and her IV, straightening tubes that had been jostled. She gently lifted Frederica's head to replace the pillow that had gotten pushed to one side. As Chiara tried to smooth the tangle of her hair beneath the transfer cap, Kristian caught a good look at her face. Her lips were pinched, her brow furrowed. She was as worried as Max.
Kristian said, “Send me back. Let's hurry, before the Bannisters come down.”
Elliott had the phone in his hand, and he held it out in mute appeal.
“I don't give a damn about Braunstein,” Kristian said roughly. “Or Gregson, either. Imagine what would have happened if Bannister had watched that!”
Max lifted his head. “Kris is right,” he said. “We should just do it. Let's send him back for the next day. We'll use the same settings we did the first time.”
When Frederica recognized me
. “Perfect,” Kristian said.
He started toward the second transfer cot, already unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up above his elbows. He sat down, kicked off his shoes, adjusted the pillow. He was reaching for the blanket to pull it over himself when the phone in Elliott's hand rang.
“Don't answer it!” Kristian pleaded, but he was too late.
Elliott spoke into the phone, then cradled it against his chest as he looked at the others. “They're sending someone else,” he said. “Another researcher.”
“No!” Kristian said.
Elliott gave a sorrowful shrug. “Yes. We're supposed to wait until he gets here.”
“But we can—”
Elliott shook his head, and put the phone back to his ear. He spoke some responses, then broke the connection. “We don't have any choice, Kris.”
“You do have a choice. You can send me back now, before this other person arrives.”
“We can't do that,” Elliott said. “Not against Braunstein's orders.”
“Sorry, Kris,” Max said, and Kristian gave him a reproachful glance.
For a long moment he lay where he was, staring up at the ceiling, trying to control the temper flaring in his chest. His hands shook with adrenaline as he thrust away the blanket and pushed himself up. Chiara stood beside Frederica's cot, hugging herself, watching him. He avoided Elliott's eyes, Max's, even Chiara's, as he stalked away from the cot and out of the transfer room.
Not until he reached the porch did he allow himself to let out the breath he was holding and whisper his curses into the night air.
10
Frederica slowly, gingerly, allowed the chord to fade from her mind. Her heart had ceased its painful spasms, and the world righted itself around her as the vertigo subsided. She could still hear the sound of the music she had concentrated on. Indeed, it seemed to resonate in her skull, as if by the strength of her imagination she had brought it all the way into reality.
Daddy always said she was the most strong-minded person he had ever met. He smiled as he said it, of course. He was proud of it, proud of her strength of purpose, her determination to get what she wanted. He had remarked once that he thought his daughter might be nearly as ruthless as he was himself. She could almost laugh at that now. Even he would be shocked at how ruthless she could be.
She opened herself to the world around her once again, but cautiously, warily. She had no way to judge how much time had passed. She felt in control again, but it was too soon to know if there might be residual problems. She imagined them huddling around her, back in the transfer clinic, worrying over what harm they might have done, lamenting their foolishness in using the pulse when they didn't know what it might do. Let them agonize over it! It served them right.
She released her hold on the music, and turned to see what was happening. Clara still lay on the chair, her head falling back against the arm, her legs dangling over the edge. She lay unmoving, pale as ice. Hannes knelt beside her, chafing her wrists. As Frederica watched, Nuncia bent over Clara to hold a little bottle of smelling salts beneath her nose.
Clara drew a shuddering breath, and her eyelids flickered. Frederica moved toward her suddenly, propelled by a feeling of urgency.
There was no time to lose! If Clara woke, if she found herself once more in control of . . . of
their
body—
Frederica couldn't take time to consider the irony of that thought. She thrust herself forward, past Hannes, past the cook's outstretched arm. She sank back into the body with a movement now familiar to her, and she took control one more time.
The sharp ammonia scent of the smelling salts stung her nose, and she gasped. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she saw the whiskered chin of Nuncia just above her. Her hands were cold, but Hannes's hands were warm and strong, cradling them. The brocade of the wing chair was cool and smooth beneath her.
Hannes breathed,
“Gott sei Dank!”
She was back. And Clara's feeble protests were no more than the distant squeaks of a mouse scratching at a wall.
Nuncia lifted the smelling salts away. “Clara!” Hannes exclaimed. “What happened?”
Frederica raised one pretty white hand to her forehead. “I—I hardly know, Hannes. One moment I was feeling fine, and the next—why, I suppose I fainted after all. How strange that is!”
He put an arm around her, and helped her to sit up, while Nuncia arranged a cushion at her back. “We had better call a doctor,” he said worriedly.
“No, don't call anyone,” she said. “I will be perfectly fine. I was just a little overtired, I think.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “I suppose I overdid things yesterday, Hannes. I—it was excessive, perhaps.”
His frown smoothed, and his eyes softened. Softly, he said, “Perhaps so,
mein Engel
. Perhaps we should not . . . not be so—”
She put her fingers to his lips. “Don't say it,” she whispered. “We have so little time. It's only that I'm not used to it.”
He caught her hand to his lips, and kissed her fingers.
Nuncia said,
“Si sente meglio, no?”
Hannes looked blank, and Frederica chuckled. “Yes,” she said in German, for his sake, though it was Nuncia's turn to look blank. She smiled. “I feel much better. And rather hungry.
Ho fame.
” The cook, nodding, dropped the bottle of smelling salts into her apron pocket, and bustled away toward the kitchen.
Frederica, feeling strong now, energized, started to rise from the chair. Hannes pressed her down, saying, “No, no. Rest a little.”
She smiled up at him. “Whatever this was, Hannes, it has passed. I feel certain it will not come again.” She stood up, and straightened her skirts. She caught the loose strands of her hair and tucked them back into their combs, then reached out a hand to him where he still knelt beside the chair. The morning sun slanted through the branches of the olive tree, filling the salon with pale gold light. “Come,” she said, with perfect confidence. “A little stroll in the garden. All I need is a bit of fresh air.”
It was time, she thought, to test the perimeter of the transfer.
If they could not control me with the pulse—
she felt a laugh bubble up behind her carefully demure expression—
they can't control me at all.
 
A chilly rain began to fall, squelching Kristian's thought of going for a head-clearing, temper-settling walk. He stood on the porch, staring out into the wet darkness, seething. The security guard arrived, and spoke to him briefly, but Kristian's terse responses put him off. He stood there, alone, until the door opened behind him and Chiara came out.
“Kris,” she said. “It's cold. Come inside.”
He said in a tight voice, “I'm so angry, Chiara.”
“Of course you are angry! Why should you not be angry?”
“I'm afraid I'll say something I shouldn't.”
She made a small noise, and when he turned to look at her he saw she was trying not to laugh. “What?” he demanded.
“You Americans!” she said. The giggle escaped her, and she gave her head a shake, as if trying to disperse it.
“What's funny about being angry?” he demanded.
“It is not funny to be angry!” She spoke with asperity, but she was still smiling. “It is funny that you think not to show it. Why not just—” She waved one hand, as if searching for the word. “Just . . . speak it! Raise your voice! We Italians do this—we speak loudly; we argue—and then it is over.”
“You don't know,” he said. “My temper gets me in a lot of trouble.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps you are like a pot with hot water. If you do not lift the lid once in a while, it boils over.”
A retort was on his lips, but even as he opened his mouth to speak it he realized how absurd it would sound. “Maybe the Italians won't mind if I yell a bit,” he said. “But the Americans—”
Juilliard. Catherine.
He made a sour face. “I have a bad reputation.”
“Come in, Kris. I am going to prepare some dinner. We can talk it over, you and Elliott and Max and I.”
He tried to smile, but his face felt stiff and he doubted it was convincing. “Dinner would be great. I'll meet you in the kitchen in a moment.”
“Come very soon,” she said, and disappeared back inside.
Kristian turned back to contemplate the rainy evening. He felt the guard's eyes on him, but he kept his face turned toward the neutral darkness. Anger still burned in his chest, very like the boiling pot Chiara had described. He wasn't sure she was right. His fear was that if he lifted the lid off his temper, what boiled underneath it would explode.
It had done just that, his last day in the dean's office. His temper had exploded. He had destroyed his opportunity, and fled without looking back. There was no chance of rebuilding. He had managed to ruin his future at Juilliard very shortly after ruining his future with Catherine.
If he half-closed his eyes and let his mind drift, he could see Catherine's face against the backdrop of rain. It still had the power to hurt him.
 
He should, he supposed, have known better than to fall in love with someone like Catherine Clark. He had been twenty-five, old enough to understand her. He should have sensed her singleness of purpose—the same purpose Clara Schumann had shown throughout her life. There had to be, he supposed, a certain selfishness in anyone who could make a great career—and Catherine would, like Clara, make a great career. He expected it.
He had thought they would do it together.
He had met Catherine in the voice studio, his first term at Juilliard. Part of his fellowship duties was to accompany voice students. He enjoyed it, liked listening to what the teachers had to say, liked hearing the students progress. He loved the excitement that centered around Catherine, with her big, dark soprano voice and the intense presence that served her so well onstage.
When Catherine asked for extra practice time, he was only too willing to agree. She gave him stacks of difficult music to learn for her recital and for her auditions, and he accepted them without question. He coached her in German, and sometimes they practiced Italian together. They spent hours in each other's company, in the practice room, in the library, taking long walks through the city. Before long, they were spending afternoons together in bed in his cramped apartment, their lovemaking accompanied by the constant rumble of the subway beneath them.
He shouldn't have been surprised, he thought, by the drama of his final scene with Catherine. She was an opera singer, after all. She did everything on a grand scale.
He had told her the bad news even before he called Erika, blurted it out when he met her outside the library. They had rehearsal time scheduled on the stage of Alice Tully. “I lost it!” he said miserably. He was still reeling from the impact of Gregson's phone call, and unspent fury burned in his chest. “They gave the transfer to someone else!”
She had a stack of music in one arm, and she shifted it to the opposite side. She wore a wool scarf around her neck against the chill of the winter afternoon, and she looked distracted. “I don't know what you mean, Kris.” She gazed past him to Lincoln Center Plaza, where tourists were wandering past the fountain, stopping to stare up at the Met, at Alice Tully Hall, at the façade of the Juilliard School. “How could they give it to someone else? Didn't you have a contract or something?”
“Catherine, there was no contract. It's an award, like a scholarship or a grant.”
She brought her gaze back to his, briefly. “You signed a stack of things, I saw you.”
“Release forms. Health affidavits. Waivers. I told you at the time!”
She looked beautiful, as she always did, her lips glistening with freshly applied lipstick, her eyes perfectly made up. The white wool scarf set off her olive skin and dark hair. Other people turned to admire her, something that usually gave him pleasure. At that moment, though, he wasn't thinking about how she looked or how she sounded. At that moment, he needed warmth. He was wounded, and he needed comfort.
He didn't understand at the time that Catherine didn't have warmth to offer him. It took him a long time to understand that passion can be cold. She tossed her head, making her hair ripple over her shoulders. “That's too bad, Kris. There'll be another chance, right? Come on, or we'll miss our rehearsal time.”
“Another chance?” The heat rose up from his chest and into his throat, flaming in his cheeks. “Have you been paying any attention at all?”
Her perfect lips twisted. “Come on, Kris. It's bad luck, but it's not the end of the world. Come on, now, we—”
He snarled, before he could stop himself. “Can't you think about someone else for once in your life?”
She stiffened, and took a step away from him. “For God's sake, Kris, grow up! So you had a disappointment! You have to get over it sooner or later—might as well be sooner!”
“Get over it! For Christ's sake, Catherine—”
“Dammit, Kris, we're going to miss our slot. Are we going to practice, or not?” She stamped her foot, glaring impatiently at him.
He stared back, stunned. “Catherine—”
“What?” Someone spoke to her, and she turned to toss a brilliant smile over her shoulder. When she turned back, the smile had vanished as if it had never been. “So do I need to get someone else?” she said with icy disdain.
He stammered, “S-someone else?”
She gestured toward the stack of music she was carrying. “Look, this is tough for you, I get it. But I have a recital in two weeks, and I have to focus on that.”
His temper burst into full flame, and the heat of it felt infinitely better than the cold disappointment of his loss. He said, “You know, Catherine, sometimes you're a real bitch.”
She tossed her head. “Come on, Kris. You're acting like a loser.” She spun away from him, and marched across the plaza toward the concert hall. He—miserable, furious—threw his own copies of her music onto the pavement, a shower of printed notes spreading over the plaza, blowing in every direction to be stepped on and torn by people's feet. It was a grand gesture and it was appropriate to the moment, but the sudden finality of it shocked him. Someone bent and picked up a page, started toward him, holding it out. He shook his head, and spun away before he could do anything else irreversible. He stamped away from the plaza, afire with anger, and walked through the city streets until he was exhausted.

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