The Silver Swan (14 page)

“How long will you stay?” He paused. “And will you go alone?”

“Yes, I’ll go alone and stay until I’m too sad and too resentful to bear it any longer. You know, one of my friends suggested I just throw everything into a dumpster. She said I’d done enough for him.”

Claude was shocked. “But of course you couldn’t do that, could you?”

“I’m rather tired of making my father my life’s work,” she answered dryly, “but no, no I couldn’t.”

“I’m sure the papers and scores, all these things will be valuable. Some library will want them.” He was silent for a while. “Perhaps I could join you there for a few days.”

“I thought you had to rush back to Switzerland.”

“I have a little time to visit you, but only if I have the discipline to prepare for my next concerts while I’m there. You must force me to work. In any case, I’ve always wanted to see Swann’s Way. Your father spoke of it very often.”

Mariana felt a rush of joy. “I’ll wait to go up there until you’re finished with the tour. And I’ll whip you if you don’t practice.”

“I wish you would.”

They agreed he would come after his last performance in Baltimore and she would pick him up at the Albany airport. “Ah, Albany,” he said.

Mariana drove to Stockbridge on a bright, spring morning. It was easier to return to Swann’s Way, high on a mountainside and far from town, knowing Claude would join her. She’d always been nervous about staying in this remote place alone. As she parked her car next to Alexander’s old Cadillac and let herself into the house, she felt a wave of fear and grief. She brought her cello and suitcase into the foyer and wandered through the house, studying each room from its doorway, the photographs and paintings and mountain views, as if there were a velvet rope preventing her from entering.

That afternoon, she met Claude at the airport. They embraced and hurried to the car. As they drove through Albany, past the huge towers of the state office buildings, Claude asked, “Now where exactly was your father born?” When Mariana said she had no idea, he was silent.

She said, “This is not a pilgrimage, darling.”

They crossed the Hudson River, and city gave way to countryside. Claude admired the picturesque white frame houses, churches, low stone walls, open fields rising to the base of green mountains. Mount Greylock appeared in the distance. The town of Williamstown, he said, was nearly as well tended as a Swiss village.

Turning south on Route 7, she asked, “How long can you stay?”

“I’m not sure — about a week, not more.”

He put his hand on her leg and stroked it. They were quiet for a while, passing through the Berkshire towns. Noticing the sign for Tanglewood, Claude asked if they could visit. “Did you ever play there?”

“Sure,” she answered. She wished they were already at Swann’s Way so she could press her body against his and puncture the fragile membrane that seemed to separate them after two weeks apart. “I played in the student orchestra for years, I played chamber music, and I took lessons every summer, at first with my father’s students. Later, as you know, I went to study with János Starker at Indiana University.”

“Oh, yes, Starker. How did your father react when you decided to become a Starker student? It seems to me they had very little in common musically.”

“My father acted morose and petulant, but proud that I’d been accepted to Starker’s class.” She paused. “So often he was like that — impressed but resentful, almost competitive, all at the same time. I found it hard to know how to succeed, how to please him. He would reinforce my belief in my own talent, only to chip away at it.”

She focused on the road ahead. “When I was young, he expected me to attend his master classes, but if I spoke up, even just to express an opinion I’d heard him expound one thousand times, he would contradict me harshly in that public setting to humiliate me, never mind that I was only repeating his own idea. I was not to steal one watt from his limelight. And yet he pushed me to achieve, to become famous, but only as the inheritor of his own talent.”

“Which you certainly are known to be,” Claude said gently. “But then you stopped playing.”

“I’d been traveling a great deal, giving recitals and playing with orchestras. Finally, in 2002, I was deemed important enough to make my first solo appearance here with the Boston Symphony to play the Saint-Saëns concerto. But six
months before the concert, I had to cancel. As you can imagine, that put a dent in my popularity.”

“I can imagine,” he said.

“I really had no choice, even though no one believed it.” She paused. “My father certainly didn’t.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not just yet.”

Although she would not tell Claude about it, Mariana remembered all too vividly the beginning of the end of her solo career. In late 2001 she had arrived in Frankfurt for a performance of the Elgar concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Anton would conduct, and they were to go from there to Italy for a brief vacation before he went to visit his wife in Moscow. These visits, Mariana had — for lack of choice — come to accept.

In her dressing room on the night of the concert, she had just slipped into a shimmering gown when there was a tap on the door. She turned and saw Zena Padrova peeking in, her pale blue eyes twinkling.

“I may come in, dahling? Before the concert?” She was already entering the small room, her plump body clad in an elegant dark red dress, her jewels immensely bright at ears and throat. She carried her long mink coat, which she dropped on a chair by the door.

“Of course.”

“I come to have a moment with you by myself, but I won’t stay long. I remember one wants to prepare in the head.” She smacked her own head, smiling. “Here” — she
moved toward Mariana — “I help you to close your gown in back.”

“How wonderful to see you, Zena. What brings you to Frankfurt?” Mariana was again facing the mirror. She tried to hunch down so the much shorter woman could reach the fasteners. Mme Padrova looked around the small room. “I should get the chair, Marushka, to reach you. You know,” she confided, “I never wore underwear when I played concerts.” Mariana looked surprised. “It was so much more comfortable, and under so many layers of fabric in those big gowns, who would be able to find anything of interest?”

“But didn’t it tickle?”

“Oh, yes. But nicely.” She smiled mischievously and Mariana laughed, tossing back her head. Her long, curling hair slipped back over her shoulders. Finished with her task, Mme Padrova stood back and admired the bronze silk gown, which glowed even here in the dull light of the dressing room.

“You know, my dear,” Mme Padrova continued, “long ago when I used to go to Bergdorf to try on concert gowns, I would ask for a chair to put in front of the three-way mirrors. Then, once I had on the gown, I would sit down and put apart my knees as wide as I could to make sure the cello would fit between. One time there was a new sales consultant who watched me do this. She said, ‘Madame,’ very indignantly, ‘we don’t allow such clientele here at Bergdorf Goodman,’ and ran away to find her manager.” Mme Padrova roared with laughter and plucked at Mariana’s arm. “You can imagine how angry was the manager when she came and saw it was me. ‘You stupid woman,’ she said to the shopgirl, ‘this is great Russian cellist Mme Zena Padrova. Do you even know what is a cello?’ The poor young thing burst into tears. It was so funny. This I always remember.”

Mariana smiled and looked anxiously at the clock on the wall. Through the filthy yellowed glass, she could see that the time of her performance was approaching and she could hear the loud applause for Anton and the orchestra as he finished the opening piece. Next it would be her turn. She faced the mirror to brush her hair and apply the lipstick and dark mascara one must never put on before the gown.

Mme Padrova reached down for her coat and moved toward the door. “I go now, Mariana, and come back after. You look like goddess. Your father would be so impressed if he could be here to listen. Break a leg, dahling. We talk later.”

The door burst open and Anton, in concert tails, mopping his brow with an ironed handkerchief, hurried in past Mme Padrova, giving her a nod. He offered Mariana his arm. She picked up her Vuillaume and the bow, navigating through the narrow door as her guest made way for her. Minutes later, the conductor swept her onto the stage, stepping back as the crowd rose to welcome her with a standing ovation. The orchestra members tapped their bows on the music stands and stamped their feet.

Mariana blinked at the bright stage lights and smiled, bowing only slightly to keep her gown in place. In her high heels, she made her way toward her chair on a raised platform just below Anton’s, stopping to shake the concertmaster’s hand and to receive a reassuring kiss on her own hand from Anton, now on the podium and barely taller than she. After the audience quieted, she looked up at Anton, raised her bow high, and attacked the opening solo phrase of the El gar concerto.

Alexander had had a student, a charming fellow named Stefan, from Poland, who could entertain people by imitating
the performance styles of all the great cellists. He was an astute mimic. Alexander often asked him to entertain the other students during master classes. “There is a lesson in this,” Alexander told Mariana, in private. “You see how silly one can look onstage if one doesn’t master one’s gestures. All that smiling to oneself and frowning and furrowing and humming and flinging about of the arms, it’s distracting and undignified. And,” he continued, “in case you think Stefan doesn’t imitate me out of fear, I assure you this is not the case. It’s because I am a bad subject, as you should be also. One must keep facial expressions and mannerisms to a minimum and give such clowns no material to work with. One must play with restraint so the audience can focus on the music.” Mariana had learned this lesson well.

Onstage that night, she played with no histrionics, despite her fierce concentration. With only an occasional nod to Anton, and with eyes mostly closed, she used the strength of her muscled arms and back to extract a powerful sound from the Vuillaume. Her performance was masterful, nuanced and sensitive. When she finished, satisfied with her playing, she flashed her broad grin at the audience, bowing in all directions as they stood to applaud. Anton stepped down to embrace her.

The audience shouted and whistled. This was the prize, the gold ring captured. To receive this gratitude and appreciation was thrilling. But recently she had felt herself losing confidence that she would arrive at this moment without mishap. The more widely she traveled, the more important the concerts she was invited to play, the more fearful she became, unless she were with Anton, whom she trusted and whose mere presence with her onstage restored her nerve.

In the beginning, their affair had been the subject of endless gossip. Now, after five years, no one but her father cared. He seemed to feel excluded from his old friendship with Anton and jealous of Mariana’s admiration for him. He also resented how obviously she had replaced him on Anton’s concert stage. About this, she felt guilty, but her father was now eighty-one years old. He had had his great career.

After the Elgar and the many returns to the stage demanded by her audience, she and Anton retired to their respective dressing rooms for the intermission. She was finished. He had ahead of him the Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F Major. She poured herself a tall glass of iced water and unfastened her dress, though she did not remove it. Then she settled in her chair and closed her eyes to relive the performance. As the music began again onstage, she heard another tap on the door and Mme Padrova appeared again. “May I?” she asked. Mariana gestured an invitation. In the warmest terms, she congratulated Mariana on her superlative performance. Then she drew up a chair and faced Mariana, knees to knees. Taking her hands, the elderly woman looked up into Mariana’s face. “I come to tell you something, my dear, that you may or may not yet know, but yet you must know it, and though you may think it is not my business, I have always loved you since you were a very little girl and I still do. You are my best friend’s daughter.”