The Silver Swan (12 page)

“It seems to me really more a working friendship than a marriage, but they are very close, as friends, I mean.” He stared at Mariana intently. “This lack of passion would not satisfy me, but they seem to enjoy their independence.”

“How very Swiss,” she said, and realized she might have insulted him. Of course
he
did not know about his mother’s “intense and passionate” love affair with Alexander. Her own knowledge, acquired so recently and shockingly, was a card best kept in her deck.

Claude poured more wine. “I realize this is a delicate subject, but I want to tell you I’m aware of what you and your mother sacrificed so that your father could purchase the Swan. He often talked about the enormous expense, and how for many years your resources went largely to paying off the cost of the instrument. The Swan was a member of your family.”

“We did not suffer,” she lied.

“Do you now feel very upset with him?” He took her hand. “Or with me?”

Her answer was dismissive. “Don’t let that trouble you. Why would I be angry with
you
? Although it came as a surprise, as you noticed in Boston, I understood I could lose the Swan. My father was never very good at keeping his promises.”

“This was not my impression.”

“At least he left it to you and not to one of his mistresses.” Feeling the imminence of tears, she tried to sound nonchalant. Claude raised an eyebrow but did not probe further.

After a long silence, she continued, “I do have one favor to ask. I would prefer that people think my father and I made the decision
together
to give you the cello. That he consulted me.”

“Of course, but may I ask why?”

“Because it would be tiresome to have people constantly asking how I feel about my father’s decision. If they think I made the decision with him, they’ll be satisfied.”

“I assure you, then, that’s what I will say. And I will tell my mother never to discuss it with anyone. I’ll forbid her to.” He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek. “I know it’s bold to ask you so many questions so soon, but I’m eager to know you, and to know you very well. If you won’t yet tell me why you stopped performing in public, will you tell me if you were very much in love with Pietovsky?”

Mariana was taken aback. She paused and looked into his eyes. “Yes, yes I was,” she answered. “Very much.”

“Ah.” He sighed. “So difficult. I myself have never been very much in love. Not yet. Was it terrible when his wife —”

“Enough talk,” Mariana said abruptly.

“I quite agree. Enough, at least for tonight. We have come a certain distance to knowing each other. Now to something more pleasurable even than talking with you.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at her watch. “I must get home and you must get some sleep.”

She pushed back her chair. Impulsively, he leaned down to kiss her, putting his arms around her neck and pulling her toward him. She did not want to resist. “I don’t need sleep, Mariana. I know what I need. We must gather up our things and go back to my hotel.” He kissed her again, lingering. “Must I wait to pay the bill or shall we make a dash for it?”

“Pay quickly, please.”

Roselle waved for the waiter and the check.

“How was your evening, darling?” Francine was packing for her return to Lugano, her large suitcase open on the bed. In her pink dressing gown, wearing no makeup, Claude thought she looked much older.

“Very pleasant,” he said, settling into a wing chair by the window. He cast a leg over the side. “We ate at Cafe Luxembourg. I must say the food was marvelous.” He looked out at Park Avenue. “It was Mariana’s suggestion.”

Folding her evening dress, Francine paused to study him. “You had dinner with Mariana? I hadn’t realized she’d invited you …”

“No, Maman, it was I who invited her.” He opened the
New York Times
. “Had it been the reverse, she would of course have invited
you
also.”

The hotel room was furnished in mahogany and chintz. It strove for Old World elegance and, to a degree, attained it. “I’m not so sure,” said Francine.

“Will Papa be home when you return?”

“Are you changing the subject?”

He smiled at her. “I am.”

She packed a stack of blouses: pastel pink, white, blue, and lemon yellow silk. “Yes. He finishes in Zurich and arrives just as I do, so we’ll have time together before he goes again to Vienna.”

“That’s nice. You’ve seen so little of each other these past months.” Claude turned a page. “And what did
you
do last night?”

“I had dinner with the Kappelmans, old friends of Alexander’s.”

“Then they must be very old,” he teased. She glared at him.

“They were his colleagues at Juilliard. Far younger than he — as, in the end, was everyone. The death of his friends disturbed and saddened Alexander very much — to see his generation pass away …”

“I can imagine,” Claude said, his leg jittering over the chair arm.

“I’m not at all certain you can.”

“Come, Maman, finish packing and get dressed. Then we’ll have breakfast. You need some nourishment; you seem a little grumpy. I’ll just sit here and finish the paper, so I don’t distract you.”

At Le Pain Quotidien on Lexington Avenue, they took a table for two in the rear. Once the waiter had taken their order, Francine asked, “And what did she have to say for herself? Did you learn anything interesting?”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Mariana. Mariana Feldmann.”

“She’s very charming. We had a lovely time.”

“Oh?”

Claude spoke carefully. “She’s the daughter of my great teacher and your beloved friend. Poor Mariana has lost her
mother, her father, and now the Swan. I think we owe her some consideration. She was upset, we could see, by her father’s decision to leave the cello to me.

“There’s one more thing, Maman. I promised Mariana that neither you nor I would mention that this decision came as a surprise to her. We are to make it clear, instead, that this was a decision she participated in and sanctioned. It means a great deal to her.” He studied Francine’s face. “It will keep people from asking unpleasant questions. I hope you understand.”

“I really can’t see what difference it makes. Does she want to be known as your generous benefactor? It was Alexander’s gift, not hers —”

Claude interrupted her, his voice stern. “I made her this promise. Both you and I must keep it. There is nothing to discuss.”

They walked in silence back to the hotel and, as they parted, Claude bent down to kiss her. “Have a good flight; all my best to Papa. I’ll be home in a few weeks.”

Hurrying from the taxi the night before and rushing down the corridor to his hotel room, he and Mariana had flung themselves across the bed. She had wrapped her legs around him, pulling him against her, greedy and urgent, perhaps a little drunk. But so was he. Her black hair splayed over the bed. They undressed each other with haste and made love for much of the night. Briefly, at two o’clock, he slept. When he woke, she was stroking him so lightly his flesh prickled. Then she straddled him, staring down from her dark height with an inward-facing half-veiled gaze. She asked him what he wanted from her. Whatever he wanted, she said, was what she wanted too.

“To spend this week in bed with you,” he answered.

In the morning, Mariana took a rapid shower and brewed a cup of coffee from the room’s two-cup electric pot, then dressed herself once more in the previous evening’s finery. When she was a college student, she told Claude, this was called “the walk of shame.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know. When your clothing makes it clear you’ve slept in someone else’s bed.”

He laughed. “You mean, gold sandals and a beaded bag are not the usual morning wear in Manhattan?”

“Here, perhaps, but I was a student in Indiana.”

“My mother leaves this afternoon,” said Claude. “Her flight’s at three o’clock, I think. I’ll spend the morning with her and when she leaves for the airport, I’ll call you, if that would be all right with you.”

He hoped she wouldn’t run into Francine in the hotel lobby. His mother would be distressed and disapproving. It would be such a bore to have to calm and reassure her before her flight departed.

She stroked his bare chest, letting her hand drop to his thigh. “See you tonight, then?”

“Certainly tonight.”

“Shall we try another restaurant,” she asked, “or do you want more of the same?”

“Much more of the same.”

Once Francine left, Claude moved to a less expensive hotel on the West Side, the Beacon, on Broadway and within walking distance of Mariana’s apartment. Trees were thickening
into leaf and early spring flowers bloomed in the park. At his invitation, Mariana stayed with him. They made short forays to museums, to Central Park, and to Zabar’s up the street. They ate out or brought picnics of fruit, pâté, cheese, and wine to the hotel, and Claude brought her roses each day. In bed, they made love and talked.

“Were you very fond of my father?” she asked one morning.

“He was always special to me. But to be honest — until I was old enough to understand how great a musician and teacher he was, how lucky I was to study with him — I mostly looked forward to his visits because he arrived with chocolate éclairs. Little éclairs from the bakery in Montagnola — in a white box with string he let me untie.”

“How sweet!” She was sarcastic. Claude seemed not to notice.

“And I liked him because he made my mother happy. Funny that a child would know that, but she did seem so different when he visited — gayer, lighter, more lenient with me. They laughed a lot together,” Claude continued, “much more than she did with my father. My mother liked to have fun, to go out. I often imagined, when she and your father left our house in the evening, they were about to go dancing in some cabaret. Your father dressed with so much style. He had such worldly elegance — to me, he looked like a movie star. Did you feel the same way?”

“Oh, I did. He had that effect on everyone, it seemed. He was all charm, handsome and debonair. Yet he was a boy from Albany.”

“What’s Albany? I don’t know it. What does it mean to be from Albany?”

She ran her fingers through his curls. “Only that he wasn’t
exposed to much besides music as a kid. His parents were shop owners, immigrants, Jews from Vienna. They loved music and gave the children lessons, but they didn’t envision a life in music for their son. His father hated the idea. He wanted his children to have secure, middle-class professions. So Alexander had to break away. At sixteen, he went by himself to New York. The rest you know …”

“Yes,” he answered, enfolding her hand in his own. “Of course, as a little boy I heard so much about you from your father. I knew, for example, that this mysterious girl named Mariana played the cello well, extremely well, better than I could hope to.”

She propped herself up on her elbow. “And
your
father?”

“What about my father?”

“Did he like Alexander? Were they friends?”

“They were very cordial. I don’t remember that he was much around when your father came. But I don’t think they were unfriendly. My father too was busy, conducting all over Europe, and he was usually away when your father arrived. My mother, at those times, would stay home so I could have my lessons. I think M. Feldmann was always more my
mother’s
friend.”