The Silver Swan (23 page)

“You must sign these papers,” the man said, “to take it away.”

Claude looked at the papers, which simply said “violoncello.” Stunned, he signed and left the bank, carrying the bright blue case.

After Claude deposited her at the Barcelona Airport, Mariana walked straight to the first shop that sold tobacco. She bought a pack of Dunhills, pulled off the cellophane wrapping, and stepped outside to light up. She had stopped smoking more than a decade ago, and she’d made Alexander quit as well. But now she badly wanted a cigarette and felt she deserved it. The first puffs made her so dizzy she had to find a bench to sit on. She smoked two cigarettes. The traffic was constant and loud, the fumes dense. People hurried past.

Claude had been a contemptible coward. He hadn’t said one word. She had waited three and a half days — eighty-four hours — for him to work up the courage to confess that he was going to get married. She had even asked, point-blank, if he had anything to tell her. And he said nothing at all. Of course it would have hurt her; he’d had reason to be reluctant. But he owed it to her. His silence was dishonorable,
despicable
, she told herself. What was he planning to do? Send her a wedding announcement? Did he feel nothing for her? She knew she could not have asked him directly without breaking down, losing her dignity and composure. And what if he had lied?

As she approached security, her cell phone rang. It would be Claude, no doubt, calling en route to the bank. She turned off her phone. Let him register
her
silence, as during the weeks of his long tour she had been forced to endure his. She too could play a waiting game. She too could not be reached.

On the plane, Mariana sank into her seat and shifted toward the window, turning her back to the man beside her as if
he
had given her cause for offense. Once she recovered from her affair with Claude, once she had evened the score, she’d be done forever with men. Perhaps there were other kinds of men, but those she knew were contemptible — their ambition, their egotism, their self-love and, above all, their ability to live with lies. Only Anton had been straightforward and honest with her, but he too had cheated on his wife.

Mariana thought, with regret, of her mother’s unhappy life. At last, the drone of the plane, now airborne, put her to sleep.

More content in Stockbridge than New York, Mariana’s mother had tended her flower garden in her sun hat and shorts. She practiced yoga early every morning and read for hours at a time on the kitchen porch. Zeiss binoculars in hand, she would feed and watch the birds. She could name them all. The phone rarely rang for her; she had few friends and hardly ever went anywhere with her husband. Alexander had built a large addition to Swann’s Way, a kitchen wing, full of light, which thrust out fifty feet into the gardens behind the original house, with a porch that ran the length of it. The porch, like those of the old houses in town, had rocking
chairs and Pilar’s collection of pinecones, gourds, and fronds in large baskets. Over the years, her mother went less and less frequently to Tanglewood, and Alexander hired help for the house so they could entertain. Pilar no longer cooked and refused to give the hired maid and cook any instructions. This was Alexander’s job.

Mariana would hear him in the mornings giving orders for dinner, listing what needed to be bought, what sheets would have to be changed, what guests were arriving or departing. As her mother grew more reclusive, Mariana eagerly took up the role of her father’s companion during the hectic summer social life of the Berkshires. She attended concerts and parties with Alexander at which he introduced her, without irony, as “the next great Feldmann.”

One night, Alexander and Mariana returned from a performance at Ozawa Hall and a postconcert party. It was well past midnight. They came through the door arm in arm, tipsy and giggling like children, to find her mother standing spectral, at the top of the stairs, her face dark and fierce. When they looked up, she turned away, walked down the hall, and slammed her bedroom door.

Alexander, chastened, said, “It’s late,” and hurried up the stairs. Mariana went to her own room and got ready for bed. Ten minutes later, her mother, wearing a white cotton nightgown, wrenched open her bedroom door and stalked in. Her low voice rasped and her hands shook with rage.

“Listen to me, young lady,” Pilar hissed, “I know what you’re up to.” She pounded her fist on Mariana’s bureau. “You’d better stop right now.”

“What do you mean, Mama? And why are you so angry? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, you know all right. You’re flirting with your father. You’ve been doing it for years. You’re seductive with him, and he encourages you. It’s disgusting — the two of you carrying on, going out together. You’re competing with me, your own mother.”

Mariana stared at her. “You believe that?”

“Just because you went to college and you play the cello, you think you’re better than me. Because you travel around, giving concerts, speaking French, having everyone tell you how talented you are. You think you’re so damn beautiful every man is after you. You’re young, but you’ll get old. It’s only a matter of time.”

Mariana was horrified. She could think of nothing to say and wouldn’t let herself cry. Her mother looked deranged, her hair tangled, dripping gray coils down her back. “That’s a terrible thing to say. You’re scaring me. Have you been drinking?”

Pilar wasn’t finished. “You think just because you play the cello and he puffs you up and tells you how great you are, you think you’re really something. You only play to get his attention. Do you think I don’t know? I won’t have it, young lady!”

“Why do you want to hurt me, Mama? You’re hurting me.”

Her mother approached, looking straight into Mariana’s eyes. “Because you’re coming between me and your father. You want me out.” Pilar stamped her foot. “But I’m not going. You can’t push me out.”

“I’m going to get Papa.” Bursting into tears, Mariana tried to reach her bedroom door. “
He’ll
tell you it isn’t true.”

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare even talk to him, you troublemaker.” Pilar pushed Mariana back against the bed.
“Go to sleep. And mind your own business from now on. Just take care you behave yourself …”

Regally, Pilar stepped through the doorway and walked down the hall to her own bedroom, like a queen approaching her throne. Her nightgown was transparent, and Mariana clearly saw how bone-thin her mother had grown. She closed the door and cried all night, both repelled and appalled by her mother’s attack. But in the morning neither mentioned it, and the episode was buried.

Mariana returned from Barcelona in the middle of the night, hauling her bag up the dark, narrow stairwell, trying not to awaken her neighbors. The air felt hot and stale. She had closed the shades before she left, and now it felt as if she were entering a cave or crypt. Raising the blinds, she switched on the window air conditioners. The light on her answering machine blinked, as she had known it would. Her cell phone, too, registered calls from Claude. She’d let him wait. A bottle of Rémy Martin stood on the table beside the bay window. Next to it stood the Vuillaume’s empty case. She poured an inch of brandy into a snifter and took it into her bedroom. Soon, in all her clothes, she fell asleep.

By morning, the apartment had cooled down. Mariana made coffee and listened to her messages, pressing Erase and Skip. The last three were from Claude. She could sense his attempt to control his voice, to be civil and calm — yet he sounded almost hysterical. In the first message he told her that she’d brought him the Vuillaume, not the Stradivarius. Perhaps, in her excitement, she had made a mistake, he suggested. But hadn’t Baum himself delivered the Swan to her
taxi as she left for the airport? Could she call him, please, the minute she arrived?

In his second message he told her he was leaving for Lugano, carrying the Vuillaume with him, of course. He knew she might not yet be home but hoped she’d call just as soon as she could. By the third message, several hours later, he was desperate. He wondered where she was and why she wasn’t answering. He had checked and found out her plane had landed. The shoe was now — Mariana looked at her toes — on the other foot. She erased Claude’s messages, showered, dressed, and went out to have breakfast at the diner on the corner. Sitting in her favorite booth, she indulged herself with waffles, grapefruit juice, and coffee.

Beyond the window of the diner on this summer Saturday morning, young couples were out walking dogs or pushing kids in strollers, holding tennis rackets and baseball bats, on their way to Central Park. Strolling home, Mariana smoked another cigarette — her last, she told herself. Where doormen had hosed down the pavement, it steamed.

This was the time of day she practiced. As she mounted the stairs to her apartment, she felt a rush of pure exultation. This morning, she would play on the Swan.

Claude had left another message while she was out. He said he could not make contact with Baum & Fernand. The receptionist informed him that they were both away from the office that morning. What should he do? he asked. Should he come immediately to America? He could bring her back the Vuillaume and retrieve the Swan. He knew this would be “sorted out.” Again, he pleaded with her to call as soon as possible.
She listened to his message several times and, by the last time, heard only the sound of his voice, not the message. Slowly, her pleasure at her lover’s distress turned to confusion. He seemed so trusting, so earnest, so entirely in the dark. There must be a missing piece.

That afternoon, the phone rang and she glanced at the caller ID. It was Heinrich Baum. He invited her to meet him. “Best to talk outside the shop,”

They met at a bistro on West Fifty-fifth Street. Mariana, late as usual, arrived in a sundress and sandals, drenched in sweat. Baum, formally dressed as always, looked cool and composed. He did not smile. To steady her nerves, she ordered a mimosa. Baum was kind but stern. “I’ve just spoken with Roselle. What have you done with the Swan?”

She considered what to say. “What do you mean, Hanns? You know I have it.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Mariana. You cannot keep the cello. You must bring it back to me at once. I haven’t told Roselle what you’ve done, but I will have to or he’ll think it was my own mistake.”

“I’ll never return it.”

“Don’t be foolish. You can’t keep it,” he repeated, trying to reason with her. “Where is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You told Roselle you picked the Swan up directly from me in a locked case.”

“I did.”

“What if he thinks
I
have it? That
I
was responsible? Be reasonable, Mariana.”

“You can tell him whatever you want, Hanns. Tell him the truth, I don’t care. I want the Swan.”

“I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“I thought you would be on my side.”

“Once upon a time, I would have been.”

Mariana stared at him coldly. She picked up her bag and left the restaurant, canceling her order as she passed the waitress headed to their table bearing a mimosa on a tray.