The Silver Swan (15 page)

Mariana smiled warmly. “Yes, I know. And I feel close to you.”

“I have heard through endless Russian grapevine that Anton will finally bring his wife to America. He has taken apartment in New York for her and him. And I also have heard that she has made him promise to give up love affair with you.”

Mariana blanched. “He has said nothing of this to me, Zena. Why would he not tell me, if it were true?”

Madame Padrova shed small tears of sympathy. “Because, like most men, he is coward when it comes to such things. And because he loves you. This he says always. But he has been married many years and also he loves his wife. She is older than you, though not as old as he. And he loves his daughters and their babies. He will not leave her.”

“I see,” Mariana said quietly. “If it’s true, I should thank you for telling me.”

“Is true.” She paused. “Do you want to talk, Marushka?”

“No. Not now. Not yet.” She looked up. “Have you told my father?”

“Of course not. It is for you to know first.” Mme Padrova gathered up her things and, kissing her, left Mariana in the dim room.

That evening after the concert, she and the conductor attended the reception. Back at their hotel room, they packed. They were to spend the next three days together in Italy, taking a late-night flight to Milan. Mariana folded the bronze gown into her suitcase and changed into jeans. She was quiet while Anton prattled on about the Brahms, which she, lost in thought in her dressing room, had not heard. They taxied to the airport and went to the executive lounge. Anton stashed their bags in the luggage closet at the entrance, and Mariana, carrying her cello, went to find a place to settle. She heard Anton’s hearty laugh and looked back to see him chatting with someone she didn’t know. The man held a violin case. When Anton joined her, he sank into a chair and smiled at her.

“You know, feels like living room in these airport clubs. Is where I most often see old friends these days — other
musicians coming and going, everybody traveling. Just last week I met, in airport in Zurich, the conductor Bernard Roselle with his son, Claude — a promising cellist but not so good as my Marushka. These clubs are like little salons, little chamber music halls. Here we should play concerts.” He looked around, then laughed. “Ah, of course, no pianos.”

“I hope you won’t meet anyone else tonight,” she said as she rose to bring him tea and mix a packet of hot chocolate for herself. She placed his cup on the table between their chairs, brushing off crumbs. Then she sat beside him.

“Anton, Zena Padrova came to tell me you will be bringing your wife to America soon. Is it true?”

He looked at her sadly and lowered his balding head. He was shaking, and when he looked up again, he appeared stricken. “Yes, my pet, my Marushka, it is so. She should not have told you. I planned to tell you in Italy.”

Mariana believed him.

“Olga long has wanted to come. Her career no longer keeps her in Moscow. It is largely over. And though the children and grandchildren will stay, she is ready to be with me and travel to visit with them. You know, I am getting old and she is not so much younger. It is time we take care of each other. And you, you are so young. Is not right for you to take care of another old man.”

“Is she very angry with you about me?”

“She will forgive me if it is over, really over. We’ve been married for many years, more than forty years. I think she knows how I love you. She chose to stay in Moscow when I came to America. She will recover.”

“Will I?” She began to cry, awaiting his answer. He nodded his head slowly. “Yes, my pet, you will. You are young.
You have everything — beauty and talent and passion. You are a special woman, Marushka; you will be loved. Very much loved.”

“Anton, you have given me courage, belief in myself. How will I have it without you?”

“You will find it, and it will be your own,” he answered. “And you will have me always in your heart and I will have you in mine.”

She pressed his hand to her heart. He looked suddenly amused. “And think how happy this will make your father!”

They sat together quietly until they boarded the plane to Milan.

Passing Tanglewood, Claude opened the passenger window to breathe in the mountain air. “Have you been forgiven for canceling your concert?”

“Oh, yes. It was so many years ago. And after a while, the talk and speculation died down and people seemed to forget I’d ever been asked to play. They stopped asking if I would perform again.”

They drove down the main street of Stockbridge and, two miles west of town, turned left toward Swann’s Way. In the lengthening afternoon shadows, light filtered through the woods. The trees, leafing out weeks later here than in Central Park, wore a pale, lacy green. They entered the long, unpaved driveway and began the steep ascent.

The house stood, its four brick chimneys raised like outstretched arms, in a high clearing, atop a large expanse of rolling, rising lawn. The long path from garage to house was bordered by stone walls and stately maples. Dappled light
flashed off the patterned slate roof. “Come into Feldmann’s palace,” she said, leading Claude to the door, “where celestial music is made.”

She walked him through the rooms. He wanted to examine everything — each chair, each bed, each bookshelf — but she said there would be time for all that. He picked up a photograph of her as a child; in it she looked fragile. Then he looked at a photograph of Pilar and whistled. “What a beauty!”

“Yes, she was. She once was.”

“Did you have great times with your father when you were young? When he came to Lugano, he was always so much fun. He liked to make me laugh. But only when we weren’t working.”

Mariana was thoughtful before answering. “When I was a kid, I loved it when he came home. Life got so much more interesting. Sometimes, on Saturdays or school vacations, I would get dressed nicely and he would take me around with him to the luthier shops, orchestra rehearsals, or lunch in fancy restaurants, or even to the tailor who made his clothes. I thought he was very handsome and everyone we met seemed so pleased to see him. I felt very important to be with him.”

“I can imagine,” Claude said.

“But he wasn’t home very often, and even when he was, he didn’t have much time for me.”

As the sun dipped toward the western mountains, Mariana took Claude to her father’s studio, where she removed the copies of the Silver Swan from the safe Alexander had installed. For insurance purposes, and in order to protect the instruments from fire, flood, or theft, he had built a steel room within the room. She removed two oil paintings and
slid open the false wall panel behind them. The heavy door behind the panel bore a combination lock — its code the date of his debut recital and her birthday. She opened it. Inside, in a climate-controlled vault, eight copies of the famous Strad hung on velvet straps. The Stradivarius was of course in New York with Baum & Fernand, but these mute versions — lined up like soldiers, as if they waited for someone to say “at ease” — were still hers.

Claude sat on a chair in the living room. One by one she pulled the celli down and brought them to him, crossing and recrossing the large entrance hall. She placed the copies, as well as the Vuillaume she’d brought with her, in a circle — their scrolls resting on couches and chairs, their end pins pointing in. One by one she tuned them as Claude watched. She would ask him to play each one for her.

Surveying the circle of touching pins, she suddenly remembered a dinner she and her father had been invited to in Stockbridge. She told Claude the story.

“After a Tanglewood concert, we drove together to this vast house, on Main Street, where the Turnbulls, our hosts, live. They’re a very old New England family — quite pleased with themselves. Our host wore a velvet smoking jacket and dainty satin slippers, which my father much admired. Mrs. Turnbull served roast lamb and sweet potato soufflé, and, for dessert, something called a ginger fool, which she proudly explained was an early American confection her family had prepared for hundreds of years.

“I really can’t remember why, but Richardson Turnbull started talking about the family plot in the nearby Stockbridge cemetery. The Turnbulls, he announced with pride, were buried in a large circle with toes all pointing inward,
kind of like these cello pins. This way, he said, on Judgment Day, when they arose, they would see only each other, all Turnbulls, a circle of only those deserving enough to look at each other for eternity and share their ascent. He said there was still room for him and for his wife, though their children would have to begin a new circle. Unfortunately, my father and I laughed and laughed, assuming he was joking. We were very embarrassed when we realized he was serious. ‘How very original,’ my father had managed to say.”

“You Americans,” Claude said, smiling. He rose from the couch. “You make so much of this brief history of yours.” Pointing to the circle of celli, he said, “This is for tomorrow.” He took Mariana’s hand and led her back up the stairs to the room where she’d told him to leave his suitcase and cello. Waiting no longer, he took her to bed.

What Mariana felt as an absence was, for Claude, a welcome presence. When she led him through the house, he felt that he could
hear
his teacher’s voice. In the master bedroom, a pair of suspenders still hung from a hook. Claude smoothed the coverlet lovingly, as if the old man might return for his daily nap. In the dining room, he could almost believe the maestro had just left the table, having eaten the same stew and sipped the wine he and Mariana now shared. The smell of the hallway, the feel of the carpet and wide-plank floors, the texture of the plaster and the wainscoting and curtains — these were things Feldmann had once owned, and now Claude took possession of them too.

The phone rang rarely and no one dropped in. No one knew they were there. Mariana prepared delicious little feasts for two. They drank wine from Alexander’s cellar. For lunch, they ate leftovers, on a picnic blanket in the garden, out by the old empty swimming pool. When weather permitted, they napped together in the warm May sun.

Claude, leaving so soon for home, wanted all of her. He wanted her in every room, in every corner of the house. He
wanted to absorb everything this week could give him of Mariana and her father, to share and become heir to the legend of this place and its late owner. While he practiced, Mariana sat with him, at his insistence, and critiqued his playing. He wanted every last drop, every last bit of musical insight, channeled from his master through his master’s child.

Each afternoon they went for sunlit rambles through the sweet-smelling grounds, resplendent with birds and blossoming lilacs and lilies of the valley. Only when Mariana withdrew each day to a far corner of Swann’s Way, out of his hearing, to play the Vuillaume, was he alone. Then he checked his cell phone, taking note of the many calls from his mother and the few from Sophie. He did not return them. He wanted no interruption, no more than what he had here. It would so soon be over.

Toward the end of the week, Mariana received a call, an invitation from Tanglewood to dinner at the Koussevitzky mansion, a “prelude” supper for donors and sponsors to inaugurate the season. They were sorry to invite her so late, they said. They’d only just learned that she was back at Swann’s Way. Claude, hearing about the invitation, suggested it could be fun to go to the party together. “When will it be?” he asked.

“The weekend after you leave,” Mariana said wistfully. “It’s really too bad. I’d so like the Tanglewood brass to meet you.”

“But do you think I would be welcome to go with you?”

“Of course. You’re Claude Roselle, Feldmann’s foremost student.”

Was she mocking him?

But Mariana took his hand. “I
do
wish you could come.”

This made him think. He really didn’t need to be back in Switzerland so soon. After all, he had been practicing here,
and her coaching was invaluable. He might perhaps meet the people who could engage him for a concert here in Tanglewood. Claude decided he would postpone his departure. He reserved a new return flight to Lugano to buy himself ten more days at Swann’s Way. Somehow he would have to explain this to his mother and to Sophie as well.

“I feel I’ve gotten a reprieve,” Mariana told him. “Ten more days before the noose!” Her joy gave him pleasure. Perhaps, he thought, I share this joy. Am I falling in love?