The Silver Swan (29 page)

“Tonight, Mariana Feldmann is here with us once more. Ms. Feldmann is a renowned cellist, teacher, and coach, invited all over the world to give master classes, teaching young cellists in the great tradition handed down by her father. Also with us tonight,” Macintosh continues, “is the esteemed Swiss cellist Claude Roselle, a student of Feldmann’s who has an international concert career and plays the Silver Swan on loan from our museum. He and Ms. Feldmann have made possible this great gift to the Mertens collection.

“Heretofore, the Batta-Piatigorsky Stradivarius of 1714 was the jewel of our collection. Now it’s my honor to introduce you to a second great example of the master’s craft — one built two years earlier by the great maker of Cremona, Anno Domini 1712. No other institution can lay claim to such a pair.”

Claude and Mariana sit together on the small stage; the audience rises to applaud. In a gesture at least in part sentimental — though there is also an element of pride in her choice — she wears the floor-length silver gown she wore here with her father in 2000. It fits her still. Claude has a first touch of gray in his curls — but he is only thirty-nine and will retain his matinee-idol appearance for years. They make a striking pair.

“In truth, this great museum seeks to collect exactly what Alexander Feldmann sought in a long quest that ended in the dusty cabinet of a private house near Strasbourg: excellence in art. He wanted to find the instrument that best gave voice to his own sound, his musical ideas. For Piatigorsky, it was the Batta; for Bernard Greenhouse, the Countess of Stanlein; for Feldmann, the Silver Swan. Vowing to cherish and protect it forever, he hoped to ensure that this magnificent Stradivarius would be untarnished, its integrity unmarred. That will now be the responsibility of the Mertens Collection. Claude Roselle will keep its sound alive in concert halls — long may he do so! — and when he ceases to perform, the Swan will come back to this gracious room, for future admirers to see.

“You have come,” Andrew Macintosh continues, “to hear these two fine artists play the greatest of instruments, not to listen to me. Now Ms. Feldmann and M. Roselle will play for you, together, the piece she and her father played when they were last here, the Sarabande of the Bach D-Minor Suite. M. Roselle will perform on the Vuillaume and Ms. Feldmann will play the Silver Swan.”

Mariana stands and takes up the cello. The sheen of the wood retains the bright beauty that had cast its spell on her when young. There, on the right rear, is the faded patch where someone once spilled brandy and left a heart-shaped stain. Here, where Alexander rested his hand, there is an equivalent fading and, almost invisible because of Fernand’s expert restoration, the sealed back crack.

She says, “My father dedicated his life to music. This splendid instrument was his friend, his constant companion for over forty-five years. He was a fortunate man to have had this honor. For him, the Stradivarius was only half itself when
looked at and not heard; it was intended to be played. Hence, the museum, understanding this, has been generous in offering the Swan to Claude Roselle for the duration of his lifetime in music. This great cello, the Silver Swan, was my father’s voice. Now it will sing for M. Roselle and, we both hope, for many generations to come.”

As has been her lifelong habit, she touches the silver medallions fashioned by Cellini. After a long moment, Mariana raises her bow. She sits again. Her eyes meet Claude’s, and they begin to play.

Mariana is sitting by the pool in the garden at Swann’s Way. The air is still and warm. She wears a faded sundress, from which her long legs extend over the end of the chaise longue. Her bare feet rub together to disturb a fly. It is mid-June and the effulgent peonies, which ran riot over her garden, have started to droop, the bees clustering to them as they flop over. She won’t cut them back until fall; nothing about nature is unsightly, she believes. Nonetheless, the limp, dead flowers make her sad. The ground is carpeted with curled and fading petals, once so bright.

She hears the porch door open. A young woman wearing an apron approaches, notebook in hand. She crosses the garden to Mariana’s chair.

“I have a few questions, Ms. Feldmann. I hate to disturb you.”

“Don’t be silly, Betty,” Mariana says. She smiles up at her housekeeper. “I’m really just daydreaming.”

“Do you have a final head count for the party tomorrow night? It’s time to set the table.”

“Final count, twenty. Unless Mr. Roselle’s plane is delayed, then it’s nineteen. But set a place for him, I’m fairly sure he’ll get here in time.”

“Fine. There won’t be any weather problems, that’s for sure. It’s going to be a perfect summer day.” She has written “twenty” in her notebook. “Also, I’m sorry to say your strawberries aren’t quite ripe yet. Should we change our plan for dessert?”

“Whatever you think, Betty. You’re in charge.”

“It’s hard to believe summer’s here again, isn’t it, Ms. Feldmann? Seems like you give this party every other month, not just once a year.”

Mariana opens the Tanglewood season every year with a grand dinner. Although she tries to coordinate with Claude’s arrival, it’s not always possible. She enjoys the yearly return and sojourn of her half brother. He comes for two and a half months to participate in the Tanglewood Festival, to play at Ravinia in Chicago, Mostly Mozart in New York, at Caramoor, and in other summer concert series.

Despite Francine’s disapproval, Claude and Mariana remain friends; they are comfortable with each other. Francine made only one attempt to communicate with Mariana, in 2011, sending her a note that said, “I always, for all those years, tried to do what was best for your family.” Mariana did not answer. She and Francine do not speak, and Claude no longer allows Francine to mention his half sister’s name; in her old age, she must accept things as they are.

Mariana makes her home at Swann’s Way. A year after her father’s death, she began to teach. Her reputation has grown and she is now in great demand, training the next generation of cellists. During the year, she travels to give master classes
in America and Europe, but she is always grateful to return home. She has made Swann’s Way her own and treasures the mountains’ silence, which she hears as music.

Summers with Claude in residence are full and pleasurable. Once he arrives, after a year of concertizing, they have their routines. The Swan resumes its place on the Steinway’s paisley cloth. During the week they walk together and practice their instruments, then share lunch on the back porch — fully restored since the fire. In the afternoons, they go to work, Claude to rehearse and Mariana to meet her classes at Tanglewood. In the community, the nature of their relationship is a matter of interest and speculation.

This summer, for the first time, Claude’s son, Martin, will come for two weeks. Age seven, Martin studies the cello, and he has — his father says with pride — a special talent. Mariana looks forward to getting to know the boy and hearing him play.

Although it causes Claude some discomfort, he is pleasant, if not cordial, to her suitor, Nathan Epstein, a professor of French literature at Harvard. Engaged in writing an extensive and, he hopes, definitive literary biography of Proust, Nathan’s curiosity had been aroused when he noticed the sign for Swann’s Way while driving along the back roads of Stockbridge. Who would name a home after Proust’s great novel? He turned up the driveway and knocked on the imposing front door. Mariana appeared. She told him of the Silver Swan and explained that her father had never read Proust, but he liked the conflation of the Swan, his famous cello, and Proust’s
Un amour de Swann
. They shared a laugh. She invited him in for coffee. That was two years ago.

Nathan spends long weekends with Mariana, returning to Cambridge during the week to teach and write. When Claude
arrives, he and Nathan speak to each other only in French. Mariana finds this frustrating; her own fluency is limited. But she accepts it as the nature of the friendship between these two men.

Now Mariana lies on her chaise, eyes closed against the brilliant sun, musing about Alexander. After all, she thinks, he had not deserted her or her mother. She had heard him describe himself publicly as a devoted father and husband. But so often when he spoke of himself, he sounded to Mariana as if he were describing someone else. How well did Alexander understand himself? she wonders. She thinks the answer is that he didn’t know himself at all, not because he was incapable but because he simply had no interest in or gift for introspection. He studied only what he cared about — music, the making of music.

And what had he given her? she asks herself. If not attention, if not his interest in her life or a notion of happiness beyond the fulfillment of her talent as a cellist, if not the Silver Swan itself, what had he given her?

Slowly sitting up, she finds the answer. Alexander gave her music. Not the music she performed on stage, not the career, not the search for fame, but exquisite music itself — the capacity to hear it, feel it, play it, and be transported by it to a place of beauty and solace. “These gifts from Alexander,” she tells herself, “are not nothing.”

Swinging her legs off the chaise, she goes to the house to make place cards for the dinner. Before entering the kitchen, she sits on a porch rocker and brushes the grass off her feet.

The whole hillside is ablaze. Strands of small white lights line the driveway and twist around the branches of the trees
and the bushes surrounding the house. Mariana has turned on lamps in every room and thrown open the double front doors. The chandelier illumines the foyer and the grand winding staircase. It is eight o’clock. The sky has turned a dusky purple, though to the west the mountaintops are still rimmed in rose.

Wineglass in hand, she stands at the doorway, enjoying the evening air before her guests arrive. At forty-six, Mariana Alexandra Feldmann believes one must
learn
to be happy. Like music, it takes discipline, commitment, and desire. Her work has been fruitful. Peering into the growing dark, she sees the headlights of the first car winding up the side of the mountain. It churns the driveway’s gravel and comes to a stop. Behind it, a parade of cars slowly climbs toward her, lights flickering through the trees. She descends the front steps to welcome her friends.

To my beloved, late mentor, Mary Delia Flory, who, in the autumn of 1960, presented me with a journal of blank pages in which she had written, “For your first novel,” I express my deepest gratitude. Huge thanks as well to Alison Hine, my teacher and guide of many decades, for her encouragement. And in remembrance of my parents, Bernard and Aurora Greenhouse, who surrounded me with music and whom I miss every day.

I offer my heartfelt gratitude to dear friends, John and Nina Darnton, who introduced me to my agent, the inimitable Kathy Robbins, who introduced me to the remarkable publisher of Other Press, Judith Gurewich, who introduced me both to this new adventure in publication and to her wonderful husband, Victor.

For her thoughtful and sensitive readings of
The Silver Swan
, I am indebted to Kathryn Frank, editor and dear friend extraordinaire. And to the many lovely people at The Robbins Office and Other Press — Yvonne E. Cárdenas, Marjorie DeWitt, Katherine DiLeo, Micah Hauser, and Anjali Singh — I am grateful for your time and help. To my family of
writers: Francesca (fiction), Andrea (journalism), Nicholas Stoller (movies), and Alexander Shalom (legal treatises); and to my granddaughters, Anna, Penelope, Rosalie, and Frederica, thank you for giving meaning to all the hours of my life.

And to Nicholas Delbanco, my husband of forty-four years and friend for ten before … oh, where to begin? With love from start to finish.