The Brahms Deception (33 page)

Authors: Louise Marley

BOOK: The Brahms Deception

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They had not spoken a word sinceâsince it happened. She didn't know if he understood. Indeed, she hardly understood herself. There was no time to explain herself, to make him understand that it had not been she who had behaved in such a disgraceful manner, that she would never have done the things the demon did....

Hannes might not believe her, in any case. She wished she knew what legacy the demon might have left behind. Hannes was looking at her so strangely, as if it were
she
who were the alien, instead of the awful being that had stolen a week of her life. She glanced up at him from beneath her thick veil. His eyes were shadowed beneath the brim of his hat, and his full lower lip protruded in that way it did when he was worried about something. He walked slowly, almost as if his legs hurt.

They left Claudio with the luggage cart, and approached the ticket window. There was a little queue, but instead of joining it, Hannes took her arm and pulled her aside a little way, where a marble pillar blocked them from the jostling crowds. She welcomed the cool stone at her back, steadying her, supporting her. The trembling of her hands began to ease, and the thudding of her heart to slow.

He looked at her, but his gaze was guarded and his face stiff. “What ticket shall I buy for you, Clara?” he said in a low tone.

“What do you mean, Hannes?”

His hand under her arm tightened, pinching her skin. She put her hand over his, and loosened his fingers. “Hannes, what is it?”

“You said . . . you insisted thatâ”

Clara released his hand. She lifted her veil and folded it back over the brim of her bonnet so she could look up into his face and let him see her own. “Something happened,” she breathed. “I don't know how to explain to you, dearest Hannes, butâ”

“Just tell me,” he said again. His jaw was set, his eyes cold. “What ticket shall I buy?”

“Why, I must go to Berlin, of course. The children are expecting me. Marieâ”

His eyes widened. “Berlin? Not Hamburg, with me?”

She shrank back a little, watching his face change. “Hannes! No, my dearest. You know I cannot! I have engagements to fulfillâLeipzig and Kassel. And the childrenâ”

The change in his face, in his eyes, was miraculous. He seemed to look younger, all at once, as if ten years of worry dropped away from him. He caught her two hands in his, and brought them to his lips. He covered the fingers with kisses, then bent and kissed her forehead, a lingering touch that made tears start in her eyes. “What happened to us,
mein Engel?
” he whispered hoarsely. “You were so strange I hardly knew you! You were set upon coming with me to Hamburg, abandoning the children, your concertsâI didn't know what to think. And then Iâas we were leaving Castagno, something . . . something happened to me. Something awful, so that I . . . I lost control of myself, as if I wereâ
mein Gott,
Clara, as if I were possessed!”

“Oh, no, dearest Hannes! You did not have a demon, also?”

He clutched at her hands so hard her fingers ached. “A demon?”

“I have felt as you describe for these seven days, Hannes. I thought it was a judgment from God, for coming away with you this way. I thought it would kill me. Indeed, it tried to do so. But something came to my aid, some otherâsome other spirit, I suppose! I can't know, but it was like an angel had come to rescue me!” She closed her eyes against the hot tears that filled them and spilled over her cheeks. “Hannes, I was so afraid! And so alone!”

He brushed her tears away. His hand was shaking, too. “A spirit,” he said softly. “I suppose it must have been. It did not try to kill me. I don't think it meant to hurt me, indeed, only toâto
borrow
me.”

“Oh, Hannes! I'm so sorry about everything!”

“No, no,
meine Schatz
. It was not your fault. Not your fault.”

He took her in his arms, and held her gently. The crushed hat fell to one side, and she let it go. She thought she would leave it right there, on the marble floor of the Pisa train station.

She rested her cheek against his chest, and sighed. “This will not come again, my dearest,” she murmured. “I cannot risk it.”

He held her a little tighter. “I know,” he said. His voice rumbled in his chest, vibrating against her cheekbone. She could have stayed that way, in his embrace, for a very long time.

But time was her enemy. It had always been so. Her time with Robert had been all too short, and she had never had an abundance of time to spend with her children. She had little time enough even to spend with herself, much less trying to find another space of time to be alone with Hannes. There was no point in lamenting it. It was her life. At least, since the visit of the spirit who had saved her, it was her own life again.

Reluctantly, but firmly, she extricated herself from Hannes's embrace. Her throat ached, but her tears had dried, and her voice was steady. “Will you secure my ticket, please, dearest Hannes? I'm ready to go home.”

When Kristian swam up from his drugged sleep to a tenuous consciousness, for a moment he thought he was still confused. He heard Chiara's voice, but she was speaking to someone else, someone familiar. That couldn't be. She was in Boston. He was in Castagno still, unless he had lost even more time.

He stirred, and opened his eyes. “Rik!” he said. He meant it to be an exclamation, but it was more of a gasp. His throat was painfully dry.

Erika was at his bedside in a moment, turning her wheelchair so she could reach his hand. “Kris, thank God! I didn't think you were ever going to wake up!”

“Whatâhow did you get here?” He blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision.

Chiara came to stand beside Erika's wheelchair. She bent forward, too, to take a closer look at him. In his cloudy vision their two heads nearly blended together, the fair and the dark. He rubbed his eyes, and tried to swallow.

Erika said, in her familiar, clear voice, “How I got here was in an airplane, of course, silly.”

“Butâby yourself?”

“Airlines can manage wheelchairs, you know. And Dr. Belfiore met me in Pisa.”

“The money . . . ,” Kristian said.

Erika clicked her tongue, and it was such a familiar, comforting sound that Kristian almost laughed. “I called the Remote Research offices, and informed them they were buying me a ticket.”

Now he did laugh. “That worked? Wow, Rik. You're a force to be reckoned with.”

“That I am,” she said firmly. “And I'm going to take you home. I made Dr. Gregson agree to a business-class ticket, so you'll be comfortable.”

Chiara said, “How are you feeling now, Kristian? Stronger?”

“Absolutely.” He pushed himself up in the bed. “I want to get up.”

When he stood up, though, his head spun, and he sank back down. Chiara brought him a glass of water, which he drank in one swift gulp. “I need that walk,” he said.

She smiled, but as his vision cleared he saw she was worried. “That was more than twenty-four hours ago, Kristian.”

He grinned at her. “I still need it.”

His cockiness faded, though, when he found himself outside, with no memory of having dressed or come down the stairs. The three of them were moving slowly down the lane into the village. The air was cool and damp, but the sky was clear. Kristian took a noisy breath, and Chiara said, “What is it?”

He didn't want to admit how bad the time lag was. He started to shake his head, and then realized Erika was walking, her cane in one hand, the other hand braced on Chiara's shoulder. “Rik! Don't you need your chair? I would have thought, with the flight, and the time changeâ”

She grinned at him with the same bravado he had used on Chiara not so long ago. “I told you,
Mother
. I'm fine.”

He appealed to Chiara. “She overdoes it,” he said. “But she won't let me help her.”

Chiara's dark eyes flashed up at him, and he had to grit his teeth to stop from seeing Clara Schumann's eyes instead. “Erika will tell you if she needs help,” Chiara said. “Would you want to be dependent on someone whenever you wanted to move?”

As I was on Brahms
.

He didn't know if he said that aloud. He blinked, and found them all standing in front of Casa Agosto. He must have lost at least ten minutes as they walked. There was movement in the narrow house now and a light on in the little front room. He wondered what they used it for. He wished he knew what had become of the fortepiano.

Chiara was saying, “This is the house Kristian visited, in 1861.”

“Is it the same, Kris?” Erika asked.

“No,” he said. “There was an old olive tree with very wide branches, and a painted bench. A low stone wall, and roses everywhere . . .” He felt a wave of nostalgia for the house as it had been, for the charming picture Clara Schumann made when she was seated at the fortepiano, playing from Brahms's manuscript. That moment was as real to him as this one, and it unsettled him. He wondered if he would ever again have his feet securely planted in his own century.

Chiara said, “There will be roses in the spring.”

He said, “The scent of them was in everything.”

Erika cast him a startled look. “The scent? You couldn't smell it, could you? I thought you could only look and listen. Like watching television!”

Chiara raised her eyebrows, watching him. “Where were you, Kristian? When you pushed Frederica out of the transfer?”

He hesitated, and Erika said to Chiara, “Is he losing time again?”

He said, “No, I'm not.” And to Chiara, “I think you've guessed.” She raised her eyebrows in a cryptic expression. “You think I did something awful,” he said.

“No, no, Kristian, of course I do not.” She lifted her hands in that supremely Italian gesture. “What else could you do?”

Kristian and Erika stood beside the pillars in the entrance to the transfer clinic, and watched as Frederica Bannister was carried out on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance. Her mother hovered over her. The transfer cap and the wires and tubes of the transfer cot had been removed and replaced with others. Chiara gave instructions to the medical staff. Max would fly with Frederica and her parents in a chartered plane. Chiara had made arrangements for the supplies he would need and spoken at length with the airport to make certain everything was there and ready to be brought on board.

They stood beside Erika's wheelchair, but she wasn't using it. She hadn't needed it since the first day of her arrival, which she considered a triumph. It meant, she said, that she could travel wherever she wanted to. She was leaning on her cane, but lightly, her other hand resting on the chair. “Mrs. Bannister looks terrible,” she said.

It was true. Bronwyn Bannister had grown even thinner and paler, and the skin of her face crinkled like paper when she spoke.

Kristian said, “Chiara tried to help her.”

“Nothing can help, Kris. She's lost her daughter.”

“She could wake up one day.”

“Do you think so?”

He shrugged. “I just don't know, Rik. She was a very unhappy girl, I'm afraid. I'm not sure she wants to wake up.”
Or that she can find her way back.

Erika made a small gesture, indicating the elaborate and clearly expensive preparations for moving Frederica. “With all of those advantages? Why should she be so unhappy?”

“Money can't buy what she needed,” Kristian said. He stepped back as the stretcher was carried down the steps. He could see that Bronwyn had done her best. She had brushed her daughter's hair back and tied it with a girlish pink ribbon. She had washed her, put some sort of cream on her face, clipped her fingernails. She had managed to get fresh clothes on her, a sweater and slacks and thick socks. The socks in particular made Kristian sad. Bronwyn was trying, as best she could, to make her daughter comfortable, to protect her. It was all so pointless, and so pitiful.

Frederica, where are you?
He would never know now. It was eerie, seeing her so still. She had done something terrible, but she had been intensely alive in 1861. He couldn't help remembering, over and over, that ghastly moment when he had thrust her out of Clara Schumann's body. He would never recall it without a feeling of revulsion.

Had there been anything else he could have done? He didn't know. He supposed he would always wonder.

He gritted his teeth, and thrust the memory aside. He was learning to train his focus on his surroundings, to resist the time lag that made the scene flicker and shift around him. He had lost a lot of time over the past three days.

He felt Erika watching him, and he grinned at her. “I'm fine,” he said. “I'm right here.”

With some fuss and a lot of Italian conversation, the stretcher was stowed safely in the ambulance, and Bronwyn Bannister, looking as frail as a bundle of sticks tied together, was helped in to sit beside her daughter. The drivers and Max took their places, and then had to wait for Frederick Bannister to come out.

He came, at last, with Lillian Braunstein and Elliott beside him. Elliott cast Kristian a speaking glance, and Kristian shrugged. Tension lay like a cloud over both Bannister and Braunstein, and cast its shadow onto those around them. Elliott paused at the top of the steps to hold out his hand to Kristian.

They shook. “You did all you could,” Elliott said. “I hope you're not going to worry about it.”

“I feel sorry for the Bannisters,” Kristian said.

“Yeah. Yeah, we all do.”

“What's going to happen to her?” Kristian asked, nodding toward the ambulance.

“Max says they'll set up home care. Around-the-clock nurses, that sort of thing.”

“All they can do, I suppose.”

“What about you?” Elliott asked. “Is the time lag getting better?”

“A bit.”

“It should wear offâI hope.”

Kristian laughed. “Me too, Elliott. Time passes quickly enough without losing big chunks of it.”

They watched as Frederick Bannister climbed into the ambulance after his wife. Lillian Braunstein stood back, her arms folded, her face like stone.

“What are you going to do, Elliott? Is the Foundation still going to function?”

Elliott sighed. “It's pretty much a mess. I suspect I'm out of a job. This will be the end of remote researchâlosing someone like this.”

“There will be plenty of people still willing to take a chance.”

“Yes, but there's going to be a nasty lawsuit. Dr. Braunstein can't talk Bannister out of it. And there's the bill before Congress. Without Bannister's support, that will pass. The Foundation will collapse.”

“Someone else will want to use Dr. Braunstein's process. You could work for them.”

Elliott shook his head, and the lines in his cheeks deepened. “I couldn't do it, Kris. Look at that girlâshe's barely alive. I can't take that responsibility again.”

“Not your fault, Elliott.”

“I know. Thanks.” Elliott turned his mournful gaze toward the waiting ambulance. “It's really too bad, the way everything turned out. It would have been so much better if you'd just had the transfer in the first place.”

“No argument there.”

“It's really a shame. You came all this way for nothing.”

Kristian didn't answer. At that moment, he couldn't answer. Clara Schumann's delicate features swam before him, and for an instant he was once again in the cart outside the train station in 1861, with Clara in his arms, Clara pressing her lips to his. He blinked, and swallowed. He gripped the back of Erika's chair, and forced himself back to the present moment.

Elliott couldn't know, of course. No one could. He had not come to Castagno for nothing. He had gotten what he came for, and more. He had learned what
p dolce
meant to Brahms, lifted it right out of the Master's memory. He would make the most of that.

And he had met Clara Schumann. He had held her in his arms for a precious fraction of a second. That was a memory he would treasure all of his life.

Chiara, Kristian, and Erika squeezed into the Fiat for the trip back to the Pisa airport. The wheelchair, folded flat, just fit into the backseat, where Erika insisted on sitting. Kristian sat beside Chiara, intensely aware of her small, compact body, the deftness of her hands on the wheel as they drove down the hill toward San Felice under a sunny sky. The skeleton vines of roses, which would bloom in the spring, drooped over every garden wall and along the fences. He watched the little town slip by, feeling a twinge of nostalgia.

“I'm going to miss it,” he said. “Though I hardly saw anything beyond the twelve houses.”

Chiara, pushing back a tangle of hair that had fallen over her forehead, cast him a sidelong look. “You can come back,” she said. “Come to my family's home in Florence. I want to show you Assisi,
ti ricordi?
” Then, with a flush of her cheeks, she glanced into the rearview mirror. “And you, too, Erika, please. You would be welcome.”

“Thanks,” Erika said in a dry tone, making Kristian turn in his seat to look at her. She raised her eyebrows in what he knew was meant to be a meaningful look. He just grinned, and turned back to watch the road spin past. The three of them chatted about nothing during the drive, laughing a bit, exclaiming over the tilting tower in the distance, avoiding the subject of Frederica Bannister.

At the airport, once the wheelchair had been unloaded and opened up and Erika held one duffel on her lap, with another stowed behind her, Kristian turned to Chiara. She had managed, for once, to clip her hair into place, and she stood looking up at him, assessing him. “You are all right?” she said. “No time lag?”

“It's better every day. Don't worry.”

“It is all right to let people worry about you, Kristian.” She turned to Erika, and bent to press her cheek to hers. “Keep an eye on him,” she said. “If he seems worse, call me. You have my number in your bag.”

“I do,” Erika said. “Come and see us in Boston. Just for a visit.”

Chiara straightened, and turned back to Kristian. Her gaze was frank. “I might do that,” she said.

“I hope you will,” he answered, but he knew his response sounded hollow. He didn't know why. He liked her, had liked her from the first. He wanted to see her again.

She put out her hand to him. On impulse, he held out his arms instead and hugged her. For a moment he pressed his cheek to her cloud of hair, and found it surprisingly soft. Something stirred in his belly, something sweet and new, but there was no time to examine it or to think about it. Time. That was always the issue. He wished he could hold on to it. He wished he could extend this moment, this feeling. With Chiara in his arms, he felt he knew for certain just
when
he was. It was comforting.

“
Grazie,
Chiara,” he whispered.

“
Prego,
Kristian.” She released him rather too quickly. As she stepped back, he tried to read her expression. She didn't meet his eyes, and he suspected hers were a bit shinier than they should have been. He wanted to take her in his arms again, repeat the invitation to come to Boston. He even opened his mouth to do it, to set things right between them, but time got away from him.

The next thing he knew, he and Erika were in the security line. Chiara was already gone. He had lost the minutes in which they said good-bye.

It was strange to Kristian to be in a Boston taxicab. They had arrived very early in the morning, and they drove through a cold mist down nearly empty streets. If he closed his eyes, he could see the twisting lanes of Tuscany instead of the straight gray streets of his own city, but he knew that wasn't a good idea. He needed to stay in the present, needed to concentrate on what was real, what was in the moment. He kept his eyes open, and made himself focus on the familiar harbor, the white skyline, the Bunker Hill Bridge with its lights looking ghostly in the fine rain. The cabbie listened to the news as he drove. They heard the headline about the Remote Research Foundation before they reached their apartment, with the news that a remote researcher, a young musicologist from Chicago, had failed to wake up after her transfer.

A copy of the
Globe
was waiting for them at their doorstep. Erika opened it on the kitchen table, and the press photo of Frederica smiled up from the first page. “They're closing down,” she called to Kristian.

He was in his bedroom, turning his duffel upside down to empty it. “They have to,” he said. He came out of his room, passing her wheelchair resting empty in the hallway. He found her in the kitchen, in one of the straight chairs there, her cane propped beside her. She had the paper spread out in front of her.

“I can't believe how well you're walking,” he said.

She gave him an absent smile. “The vacation did me good.” She turned back to the paper.

“Vacation! Seven hours in a plane, twice in four days?”

“Listen, Kris. This article says Bannister is suing the Foundation, and that Congress will probably pass the bill outlawing remote research.”

Kristian leaned wearily against the doorjamb, his arms folded. “You know, Rik, I think that's good. It should be illegal. Even now, Braunstein doesn't really understand what happened, and that means it could happen again.”

Erika folded the paper and looked up at him. “Aren't you going to tell them?”

“Elliott will. He's the tech, and he can explain it better than I can. At least, I think so. He and Max believed me, which is pretty amazing. I'm not sure I would have believed a story like that.” His eyes burned with fatigue, and he rubbed them with his fingers. “God, I'm exhausted.”

“Are you going to tell Elliott what
you
did?”

He straightened, and stared at her. “Rik! How do you know what I did?”

She gave him a wry look. “Chiara was right, you know, Kris. You didn't have any choice. But I want to hear what it was like. I meanâBrahms, for heaven's sake!”

He hesitated. “I'll try to tell you, but honestlyâI'm not sure I can describe it.”

“It must have been so odd.”

“Rik, it wasâit was the weirdest thing I've ever felt in my life. It was sort ofâobscene, really. Not something I'd want to do again.”

“I'm damned glad
you
came back, Kris.”

“There was never any risk there. I wanted to come back.”

“And you think she doesn't.”