Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (15 page)

David made calls well into the early-morning hours. Then, when Annette fell asleep on the sofa, he went out on the streets. Jerusalem was a quiet city after dark. All the excitement, the nightlife, the cafés were in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem seemed to be weighted down by prayer. The Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, all fighting over the land, supplicating their gods. During the day it was such a beautiful city, tantalizing, full of light, but at night it became a solemn place. Laughter sounded offensive, like blasphemy.

David stood at the spot where the police said they had found the stroller and glanced helplessly around him, willing the street to give up its silent knowledge. Once he heard a baby's cry cut through the stillness, and he followed it down the street to a block of buildings, but by then it had ceased.

The ransom note they were awaiting never arrived. No demands were made, no communication was ever attempted and there was never a trace of Violette or Magda. The police followed leads that dead-ended and plumbed sources that came up empty. After two weeks of anxious, terrified waiting, all the while suffering the intense scrutiny of the press, David and Annette returned to Paris.

The last night she spent in the King David Hotel, Annette dreamed of wandering through an oppressively dark, filthy place with many rooms. In one of the rooms she found a baby lying on the cold stone floor; she picked it up and held it, but it wasn't hers; then the baby disappeared and she was the one lying there on the hard stone. She lay there all alone, unable to utter a word, grieving for her parents.

She awoke to a heavy sadness, and her heart exploded with a silent wail so desperate that even the angels cried.

Chapter 16

Ethan Brown rose and went into the bathroom. He poured the cold coffee out of his mug and rinsed it. He took a deep breath before returning to his office.

Annette Zeldin was leaning back in her chair, taking a long drag on the cigarette she had just lit. It had been months since she had smoked.

"I'm sorry," she said, peeling the blanket off her legs. "I forgot. You should have said something. I'll go outside."

"It's raining," replied Ethan.

"I don't mind."

"Sit down."

She took the ashtray he held out to her and leaned back in the chair.

Ethan didn't care much for Scotch, but he poured a couple of fingers into his mug and took a drink.

Annette was calm now. His coat had slipped a little and there was an illusion of nakedness about her. He got up and went around behind her and quietly pulled the coat over her shoulders.

"Ethan, the authorities believe she was stolen for adoption. I have to believe that. That's the only answer. Not a day goes by when I don't pray for her. Every night and every morning the first thoughts that run through my head are prayers for her. I pray she's in a family, a good family. Someone who loves her. But then at times I have this feeling, this gut feeling, that something went horribly wrong. Sometimes I read stories in the news about the horrible things people do to children and infants... sick people..."

"Stop it, Annette. You can't think like that."

"I know. But then, I begin to think it's an illusion. The idea that she's happy and healthy somewhere with loving, kind parents. Perhaps the truth was ugly and sick. And here I am living my life believing a lie."

"It's the only way to stay sane."

"It tore the heart out of our family. She was our heart and soul, and she was gone."

She told him how David had wanted another child. Right away. But she only wanted to keep moving. She took any engagement she could get. She would go anywhere in the world. She found respite from her misery only when she was performing. And she looked for her daughter everywhere. In every country, every city, she approached the consulates and embassies. She took pictures of Violette with her. She located authorities and filled out papers, wrote letters, opened investigations.

Steadily, quietly, their marriage fell apart. When they were home together, an inescapable emptiness blanketed their conversations. Overnight, it seemed, they became strangers. As suddenly and inexplicably as they had become lovers. A year after Violette's disappearance, David filed for divorce.

"David never uttered a word of accusation. I was to blame and yet he never blamed me."

"You weren't to blame."

"But I was. He had an intuition and he was right."

"Only in retrospect. You couldn't have known."

"I believe sometimes we know things outside the scope of conscious awareness. David rarely talked about feelings, but he had strong intuitions. Perhaps he picked up on something about Magda. I don't know, but I should have trusted him that night. And I didn't."

It was in Johannesburg that she was asked to perform Sibelius' violin concerto again. When Ernst Rodine saw her, he hardly recognized her as the same woman who had played with his symphony several years before. When she took her place onstage he noticed the pencil-thin arms as she raised her instrument to her chin, the sunken, empty eyes, the raw smile. During the first part of the performance, the shoulder of her black satin gown kept slipping, and backstage during intermission he found a safety pin and pinned the top tighter for her. With an embarrassed laugh she told him she had dropped two dress sizes and had already had the gown altered once.

When they returned to the stage and he lifted his baton, he saw Annette suddenly turn to look at the audience. And she was a breath slow on the pickup. Then he noticed the way she was holding her head, as if she was listening for something beyond the music.

Annette first heard it in the seconds of silence preceding the opening chords. Faint but distinct. From that moment on she played mechanically; her bow ripped across the strings as if wound up by a malicious spirit, and with her entire being, detached, she tuned her ear to the sounds beyond her own music and listened. Then, early on in the allegro, she heard it again. Her heart leapt. From his podium, Ernst threw her an alarmed look. She was picking up tempo. He tried to catch her eye but she wouldn't look at him. During a pause, she listened again, intently. Her acutely trained ear searched the audience, the balcony, and her eyes swept the shadowy faces in the deep cavernous hall before her, but she knew the cry didn't come from this place. Then came her solo. She watched her fingers and her bow flying over the strings but she heard not one note of the music she played; she heard only the sound of her baby's piercing cry. She remembered all the times she had heard that heart-wrenching wail, and the ways she had rushed to calm it. The way she had brought the baby to her breast, hurriedly, eagerly, fumbling with the buttons on her blouse, her nipples taut, warm and full, barely able to hold back their milk. She remembered looking down at Violette's eyes, bright and alert in the middle of the night as she rocked her and sang to her. She remembered those eyes. Their lightness, their intelligence, their inarticulate knowledge. But now the cries wouldn't cease. There was nothing more she could do. So she listened, and she played on.

Her cries turned to long staccato sobs and her heart fluttered as rapidly and perfectly as a bird's. Her lashes, heavy with tears, closed upon her blinded eyes. Then her tiny hand released its prisoner, her delicate body shuddered and her heart ceased to beat.

The orchestra had stopped. The musicians were staring at her in disbelief; the first violinist had tears in her eyes. An embarrassed murmur passed through the audience and someone coughed nervously. The conductor's hands hung defeated at his sides. In the back of his mind he marveled that she was still going on, at a tempo none of them could match, a delirious speed, and yet she was playing brilliantly.

Suddenly she stopped. She lowered her violin, and her bow slipped from her hand. It clattered to the stage, drawing a collective gasp from the audience. She raised her eyes and took a step toward the conductor, her hand outstretched for help, and then she collapsed.

* * *

Annette fidgeted with the silky blue binding on the blanket.

"I heard her, Ethan, as clearly as you hear my voice now, I heard her. Why it was given to me, that awful punishment of hearing her suffer, I don't know." She looked up at him. "Everyone thought I was hallucinating. Perhaps I was. But I believe she's at peace now."

Ethan poured a little more Scotch in her mug and held it out to her.

She told him how the doctor in Johannesburg had put her on medication and advised a rest cure; several days later she flew to Montreux, Switzerland. Her hotel room had a small balcony overlooking Lac Léman and the Alps, and she would sit there and read, wrapped in blankets against the chill, steeping herself in long, ponderous works by Flaubert and Tolstoy. She read voraciously and through the power of words was able to keep the ghosts of her own life in abeyance. She lost herself in stories that were situated in worlds and times vastly different from her own.

Music was conspicuously absent from her life. The hotel was old, elegant and purposefully lacking in technology. The rooms had no Internet, and she asked the management to remove the television monitor. Aided by drugs, she slept soundly, and she rarely recalled her dreams. She wrote no letters; writing would mean reflection, which she couldn't bear. However, she kept a journal, where she recorded her daily activities—the books she read, what she ate for dinner. She noted her walks in the mountains, her morning excursions by bus into Montreux, where she purchased more books and browsed through the open-air markets; she noted her afternoons at a café with an open terrace overlooking the lake, where she read newspapers and drank tea, and no one noticed her.

Then, after three weeks, one Saturday morning she woke up restless. She dressed and went down into the town for her coffee instead of taking it in her room as she usually did. It was still very early and the café in Montreux was deserted. She gazed out over the splendid blue lake, at the blue mountains rising above the far shore, and for the first time in her life she experienced a pang of wanderlust. Purpose had always guided her movements, and ever since she could remember, music had been her purpose. Nothing had ever appealed to her for its own sake but only through its relationship to her music. When she left Kansas it was to study at Juilliard in New York. When she traveled it was to perform. Music had even been central to her marriage. But for over a month now she had not lifted a violin, or listened to a recording, or attended a concert. She had shut music out of her life as she had shut out David. It was the last link to the nightmare, and the nightmare was just beginning to fade.

What took its place that morning as she looked out over Lac Léman was a curious excitement about the unknown. An urge to venture without a purpose to guide her. She walked to the train station and paused in the main hall to read the schedule of departures. As she stood there, a train pulled in and a rush of travelers streamed past her and began to board. She waited a moment and then struck out down the platform. Her heart began to pound, and on an impulse that felt wonderfully reckless, she climbed aboard. The train was crowded, and she maneuvered down aisles, around passengers fussing with their bags and looking for seats, crossing through car after car until she came to a first-class carriage and found an empty window seat. Her heart was still beating wildly when the train began to glide out of the station. The platform slid away, and the town sped by. As the train curved around the lake and she caught sight of her hotel perched on the side of the mountain, an exhilarating sense of freedom hit her. She suppressed a smile at the thought of all her belongings back at the hotel room, at the maid who would turn back her bed that night, at the small, round table in the corner of the dining room that was always reserved for her, which would be empty this evening.

They were just out of Montreux when the conductor came down the aisle checking tickets.

"I'm afraid I don't have one," she said a little giddily when he asked for her ticket.

"You'll have to pay a fine," he said curtly.

"That's quite all right."

"Where are you going?"

"Where's the train going?"

"Geneva."

She frowned. "I didn't really want to go to Geneva. Does it make any other stops?"

"Vevey and Lausanne," he whipped back, annoyed.

"Is that all? It doesn't go any farther?"