Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (21 page)

“Yes, I understand exactly where you are. It won’t be easy, but you can do it. Definitely, you can do it. Let’s start with the Britten. Play it again, just the first movement, and then we’ll talk. We can work through this together, a little at a time.”

When he heard this, he felt an impulse just to pack away his instrument and leave. But then some other instinct—perhaps it was simply curiosity, perhaps something deeper—overcame his pride and compelled him to start playing again the piece she had requested. When after several bars she stopped him and began to talk, he again felt the urge to leave. He resolved, just out of politeness, to endure this uninvited tutorial for at most another five minutes. But he found himself staying a little longer, then longer again. He played some more, she talked again. Her words would always strike him initially as pretentious and far too abstract, but when he tried to accommodate their thrust into his playing, he was surprised by the effect. Before he realised, another hour had gone by.

“I could suddenly see something,” he explained to us. “A garden I’d not yet entered. There it was, in the distance. There were things in the way. But for the first time, there it was. A garden I’d never seen before.”

The sun had almost set when he finally left the hotel, crossed the piazza to the cafe tables, and allowed himself the luxury of an almond cake with whipped cream, his sense of elation barely contained.

FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS
, he returned to her hotel each afternoon and always came away, if not with the same sense of revelation he’d experienced on that first visit, then at least filled with fresh energy and hope. Her comments grew bolder, and to an outsider, had there been one, might have seemed presumptuous, but Tibor was no longer capable of regarding her interventions in such terms. His fear now was that her visit to the city would come to an end, and this thought began to haunt him, disturbing his sleep, and casting a shadow as he walked out into the square after another exhilarating session. But whenever he tentatively raised this question with her, the replies were always vague and far from reassuring. “Oh, just until it gets too chilly for me,” she had said once. Or another time: “I guess I’ll stay as long as I’m not bored here.”

“But what’s she like herself?” we kept asking him. “On the cello. What’s she like?”

The first time we raised this question, Tibor didn’t answer us properly, just saying something like: “She told me she was a virtuoso, right from the start,” then changing the subject. But when he realised we wouldn’t let it go, he sighed and began to explain it to us.

The fact was, even at that first session, Tibor had been curious to hear her play, but had been too intimidated to ask her to do so. He’d felt only a tiny nudge of suspicion when, looking around her room, he’d seen no sign of her own cello. After all, it was perfectly natural she wouldn’t bring a cello on holiday with her. And then again, it was possible there was an instrument—perhaps a rented one—in the bedroom behind the closed door.

But as he’d continued to return to the suite for further sessions, the suspicions had grown. He’d done his best to push them out of his mind, for by this time, he’d lost any lingering reservations about their meetings. The mere fact that she was listening to him seemed to draw fresh layers from his imagination, and in the hours between these afternoon sessions, he’d often find himself preparing a piece in his mind, anticipating her comments, her shakes of the head, her frown, the affirming nod, and most gratifying of all, those instances she became transported by a passage he was playing, when her eyes would close and her hands, almost against her will, began shadowing the movements he was making. All the same, the suspicions wouldn’t go away, and then one day he came to the room and the bedroom door had been left ajar. He could see more stone walls, what looked to be a medieval four-poster bed, but no trace of a cello. Would a virtuoso, even on holiday, go so long without touching her instrument? But this question, too, he pushed out of his mind.

AS THE SUMMER WENT ON
, they began to prolong their conversations by coming over to the cafe together after their sessions, and she’d buy him coffees, cakes, sometimes a sandwich. Now their talk was no longer just about music—though everything always seemed to come back to it. For instance, she might question him about the German girl he’d been close to in Vienna.

“But you must understand, she was never my girlfriend,” he would tell her. “We were never like that.”

“You mean you never became physically intimate? That doesn’t mean you weren’t in love with her.”

“No, Miss Eloise, that is incorrect. I was fond of her, certainly. But we were not in love.”

“But when you played me the Rachmaninov yesterday, you were remembering an emotion. It was love, romantic love.”

“No, that is absurd. She was a good friend, but we did not love.”

“But you play that passage like it’s the
memory
of love. You’re so young, and yet you know desertion, abandonment. That’s why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it’s not about joy, it’s about the memory of a joyful time that’s gone for ever.”

They had conversations like this, and he was often tempted to question her in return. But just as he’d never dared ask Petrovic a personal question in the whole time he’d studied under him, he now felt unable to ask anything of substance about her. Instead, he dwelt on the little things she let fall—how she now lived in Portland, Oregon, how she’d moved there from Boston three years ago, how she disliked Paris “because of its sad associations”—but drew back from asking her to expand.

She would laugh much more easily now than in the first days of their friendship, and she developed the habit, when they stepped out of the Excelsior and crossed the piazza, of linking her arm through his. This was the point at which we first started noticing them, a curious couple, he looking so much younger than he actually was, she looking in some ways motherly, in other ways “like a flirty actress,” as Ernesto put it. In the days before we got to talking with Tibor, we used to waste a lot of idle chat on them, the way men in a band do. If they strolled past us, arm in arm, we’d look at each other and say: “What do you think? They’ve been at it, yes?” But having enjoyed the speculation, we’d then shrug and admit it was unlikely: they just didn’t have the atmosphere of lovers. And once we came to know Tibor, and he began telling us about those afternoons in her suite, none of us thought to tease him or make any funny suggestions.

Then one afternoon when they were sitting in the square with coffee and cakes, she began to talk about a man who wanted to marry her. His name was Peter Henderson and he ran a successful business in Oregon selling golfing equipment. He was smart, kind, well respected in the community. He was six years older than Eloise, but that was hardly old. There were two young children from his first marriage, but things had been settled amicably.

“So now you know what I’m doing here,” she said with a nervous laugh he’d never heard from her before. “I’m hiding out. Peter has no idea where I am. I guess it’s cruel of me. I called him last Tuesday, told him I was in Italy, but I didn’t say which city. He was mad at me and I guess he’s entitled to be.”

“So,” said Tibor. “You are spending the summer contemplating your future.”

“Not really. I’m just hiding.”

“You do not love this Peter?”

She shrugged. “He’s a nice man. And I don’t have a lot of other offers on the table.”

“This Peter. He is a music lover?”

“Oh … Where I live now, he would certainly count as one. After all, he goes to concerts. And afterwards, in the restaurant, he says a lot of nice things about what we just heard. So I guess he’s a music lover.”

“But he … appreciates you?”

“He knows it won’t always be easy, living with a virtuoso.” She gave a sigh. “That’s been the problem for me all my life. It won’t be easy for you either. But you and me, we don’t really have a choice. We have our paths to follow.”

She didn’t bring Peter up again, but now, after that exchange, a new dimension had opened in their relationship. When she had those quiet moments of thought after he’d finished playing, or when, sitting together in the piazza, she became distant, staring off past the neighbouring parasols, there was nothing uncomfortable about it, and far from feeling ignored, he knew his presence there beside her was appreciated.

ONE AFTERNOON
when he’d finished playing a piece, she asked him to play again one short passage—just eight bars—from near the close. He did as asked and saw the little furrow remain on her forehead.

“That doesn’t sound like us,” she said, shaking her head. As usual, she was sitting in profile to him in front of the big windows. “The rest of what you played was good. All the rest of it, that
was
us. But that passage there …” She did a little shudder.

He played it again, differently, though not at all sure what he was aiming for, and wasn’t surprised to see her shake her head again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You must express yourself more clearly. I do not understand this ‘not us.’”

“You mean you want me to play it myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

She’d spoken calmly, but as she now turned to face him, he was aware of a tension descending on them. She was looking at him steadily, almost challengingly, waiting for his answer.

Eventually he said: “No, I’ll try again.”

“But you’re wondering why I don’t just play it myself, aren’t you? Borrow your instrument and demonstrate what I mean.”

“No …” He shook his head with what he hoped looked like nonchalance. “No. I think it works well, what we’ve always done. You suggest verbally, then I play. That way, it’s not like I copy, copy, copy. Your words open windows for me. If you played yourself, the windows would not open. I’d only copy.”

She considered this, then said: “You’re probably right. Okay, I’ll try and express myself a little better.”

And for the next few minutes she talked—about the distinction between epilogues and bridging passages. Then when he played those bars once more, she smiled and nodded approvingly.

But from that little exchange on, something shadowy had entered their afternoons. Perhaps it had been there all along, but now it was out of the bottle and hovered between them. Another time, when they were sitting in the piazza, he’d been telling her the story of how the previous owner of his cello had come by it in the Soviet Union days by bartering several pairs of American jeans. When he’d finished the story, she looked at him with a curious half-smile and said:

“It’s a good instrument. It has a fine voice. But since I’ve never so much as touched it, I can’t really judge it.”

He knew then she was again moving towards that territory, and he quickly looked away, saying:

“For someone of your stature, it would not be an adequate instrument. Even for me, now, it is barely adequate.”

He found he could no longer relax during a conversation with her for fear she would hijack it and bring it back onto this territory. Even during their most enjoyable exchanges, a part of his mind would have to remain on guard, ready to shut her off if she found yet another opening. Even so, he couldn’t divert her every time, and he’d simply pretend not to hear when she said things like: “Oh, it would be so much easier if I could just play it for you!”

TOWARDS THE END OF SEPTEMBER
—there was now a chill in the breeze—Giancarlo received a phone call from Mr. Kaufmann in Amsterdam; there was a vacancy for a cellist in a small chamber group at a five-star hotel in the centre of the city. The group played in a minstrels’ gallery overlooking the dining room four evenings a week, and the musicians also had other “light, non-musical duties” elsewhere in the hotel. Board and accommodation terms were available. Mr. Kaufmann had immediately remembered Tibor and the post was being held open for him. We gave Tibor the news straight away—in the cafe the very evening of Mr. Kaufmann’s call—and I think we were all taken aback by the coolness of Tibor’s response. It was certainly a contrast to his attitude earlier in the summer, when we’d fixed up his “audition” with Mr. Kaufmann. Giancarlo, in particular, became very angry.

“So what is it you have to think over so carefully?” he demanded of the boy. “What were you expecting? Carnegie Hall?”

“I’m not ungrateful. Nevertheless, I must give this matter some thought. To play for people while they chat and eat. And these other hotel duties. Is this really suitable for someone like me?”

Giancarlo always lost his temper too quickly, and now the rest of us had to stop him from grabbing Tibor by his jacket and shouting into his face. Some of us even felt obliged to take the boy’s side, pointing out it was his life, after all, and that he was under no obligation to take any job he was uncomfortable with. Things eventually calmed down, and Tibor then began to agree the job had some good points if viewed as a temporary measure. And our city, he pointed out rather insensitively, would become a backwater once the tourist season was over. Amsterdam at least was a cultural centre.

“I’ll give this matter careful thought,” he said in the end. “Perhaps you will kindly tell Mr. Kaufmann I will give him my decision within three days.”

Giancarlo was hardly satisfied by this—he’d expected fawning gratitude, after all—but he went off all the same to call back Mr. Kaufmann. During the whole of this discussion that evening, Eloise McCormack had not been mentioned, but it was clear to us all her influence was behind everything Tibor had been saying.

“That woman’s turned him into an arrogant little shit,” Ernesto said after Tibor had left. “Let him take that attitude with him to Amsterdam. He’ll soon get a few corners knocked off him.”

TIBOR HAD NEVER TOLD
Eloise about his audition with Mr. Kaufmann. He’d been on the verge of doing so many times, but had always drawn back, and the deeper their friendship had grown, the more it seemed a betrayal that he’d ever agreed to such a thing. So naturally Tibor felt no inclination to consult Eloise about these latest developments, or even allow her any inkling of them. But he’d never been good at concealment, and this decision to keep a secret from her had unexpected results.