Chamber Music (11 page)

I searched the downstairs, knowing he could not have climbed the stairs. Desperate to find him, I disturbed Robert in the only place I had not been, the music room. Robert was resting on his couch at that hour, his eyes closed. But he was not asleep.

“Of course he is not here,” he said, sounding irritated. I knew he hated to be disturbed during the day. He once told me he listened in his head, during his afternoon rest, to what he had written that morning. But he was upset enough at Paderewski's disappearance to come outside in his shirt sleeves to help me search.

We walked around the house, calling his name. Never, until that day, had that tributary name seemed so unsuitable for a dog. To be calling for a renowned, middle-aged pianist in the steaming Saratoga woods: I felt foolish. But he was nowhere near the house. We started to walk down the long, dusty Farm road—the road that was later to be given Robert's surname by an edict of the town council. But I think I may have already written this.

We rounded the bend in the road from which it is possible to see the avenue beyond. Coming toward us were two men, carrying on a board between them what we could tell at once was the bloodied fur and crushed head of Paderewski. They were evidently summer visitors. Their straw boaters, white duck trousers, and striped linen jackets marked them apart from the native men who rarely dressed this way in midafternoon. Robert ran ahead to them.

“What happened?”

“Is this your dog?” one man asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

The man—we were later to learn his name was Henry Huddleston Rogers—his face troubled and solemn, said, “It was entirely my fault. Entirely. I did not see him standing in the road until the horses were almost upon him. I shouted. I tried to rein them in, but it was too late. I am entirely to blame. What can I say?”

Robert seemed stunned, yet ready to agree with the poor contrite fellow, I thought. I intervened: “No. Don't think that. He never leaves the house. He must have wakened and been confused by a dream, or something like that. He's never done this before. Usually I've had to half carry him out.” I knew I was rattling on foolishly.

“Oh, be still, Caroline.”

Robert pushed me aside. He lifted the dead dog from the board into his arms, staggering under the weight. Somehow he managed to turn and walk back to the house, bearing Paderewski in his arms.

The man who had not spoken tipped his hat to me and started back down the road to the avenue, carrying the bloodstained board.

Mr. Rogers said, “This is terrible. I wish I could do something.”

In the distance we could hear the roar of the crowd. Down the hill at the track the first race of the afternoon must have started.

“I'm Mrs. Maclaren.”

“The composer's wife?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I'm so terribly sorry for this. That must have been the … your husband. This is terrible. Will you tell him again how sorry I am?”

“I will. But don't blame yourself. The dog was old and almost blind.” I put my hand out. “Good-bye, Mr. …”

“Rogers.”

“Mr. Rogers. Good-bye.”

I almost ran back. Robert had taken the massive burden into the house: the front door was open and there was a light smear of blood on the middle panel where he must have brushed against it. I found them in the music room. Robert had put the dog down on the top of the closed piano, where he lay, already stiffened, his blind eyes opened to a new dark, his once-handsome coat suffused and beaded with blood and dust. Around him the piano cover, at that time, I remember, a fringed shawl I had brought back from Frankfurt, lay in contrasting splendor to the mangled Paderewski. Already he seemed to have shrunken, a mass of confused hair, paws, ears. Only his fine long narrow aristocratic muzzle remained intact.

Robert insisted on keeping him there for one whole day. I was reminded of Professor Watkins and his finch. Uncharitably, I thought of how anachronistic his attention to the dead dog was: for several years he had not allowed the animal in that room. Robert did not work the rest of that day but walked about the room, his hands behind his back, circling the piano, his eyes often on the now redolent carcass. I mourned Paderewski alone in my room, remembering all the haptic pleasures of that silken fur, the firm softness of his long, sleek, sensitive head and ears and nose.

Robert was more silent than ever at dinner that evening, and I suppose I, too, was absorbed in my own grief. I was full of it, ready to break down at the thought of losing the companion of my solitude, my walks and rests, in all those years since Germany.

On the second day Robert called our groundsman, Edward Collins, to remove the dog. Edward had dug a grave on a grassy little hill at the far end of the property. He brought a wooden box he had made to convey the body in. Robert would not watch the removal and conveyance. He refused to see Paderewski buried. I followed the farm wagon to the grave and stood at the side of the small, deep trench as Edward put the box into it, covered it with dirt and placed squares of sod over the raw spot.

“Will we want a marker for it, ma'am?”

“I'll ask Mr. Maclaren tonight what he wishes done.”

“Very good.”

But somehow Robert and I never mentioned Paderewski to each other again. Ida told me she had been unable to remove the bloodstains from Robert's shirt even after three washings, so I gave the shirt to Edward, who seemed very glad to have it. Robert did not ask after it. The piano shawl had to be disposed of.

The grave was never marked. I walked often to the place after that. From it there was a lovely view of the Adirondacks to the west, and the wooded hills of Highland Farm on the other side. I thought Robert had forgotten the place—he rarely walked that way alone that I was aware of, and surely never with me. But he must have remembered it. For later, in a cubbyhole in his desk, Anna Baehr found a small piece of staff paper on which he had written:

We did. Robert lies there now. We did not disturb the small box Edward uncovered when he dug Robert's grave. The granite marker, elaborate and imposing, was put in place by the Maclaren Foundation in the years when it had the money to do that sort of thing. It is imposing, with Robert's name and dates, and my name and birth date. Only the final date is missing. Soon it, too, will be chiseled into the stone. Then we shall both lie beside our dog.

The letter said:

The trustees and the President of Columbia University are pleased to inform you that the University wishes to bestow upon you the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at the Commencement on June 5, 1905
,

and went on to give the details of the time and the arrangements that would be made for the comfort of those to be honored.

Robert showed it to me at dinner one evening and wondered if he ought to go. “Of course you must go. It is a great honor. You will enjoy yourself, and it's been so long since we have been to the city.”

“But, Caroline, so long a trip? How will we travel? How much time will we have to spend in New York?” He was full of anxiety, his voice so low I could hardly hear him.

“A week, perhaps. Oh, Robert, you will enjoy it, I'm sure. We can hear some music and visit the galleries. Some of your former pupils live there, and your friends, friends from Hoch and Boston. Churchill teaches at Columbia. We can see him. Oh, Robert, let's go.”

I watched him struggle to decide. He seemed worn out and very tired: The dog's death has diminished him, I thought. His work, all the copying it required, seemed to take him longer and longer, he stopped earlier than he used to. More and more often when I came to call him to dinner I would find him stretched out on his couch, exhausted. Lately, he said, he would lie down to rest at three. When I came at six, he was still there, inert and half-asleep.

How old and frail he looked to me now! His hair was more gray than russet, and very sparse. After that strange illness it had never returned to its full, thick, youthful growth. No trace of the old, charming smile remained, for he never smiled now. Looking at him, I was reminded of Paderewski, for Robert was like him: prematurely old at thirty-three, spent and lusterless, a used-up man.

Our preparations for the trip took almost a week, the packing of the grips, the arrangements made for a landau to convey us to the railroad depot in Saratoga Springs, the purchase of our tickets. For Robert it would have been a wearying series of chores, so I spared him everything but his actual presence at the departure. For me it was a great delight.

The season was just beginning. The arriving trains were full of stylish-looking visitors. Outside the depot the roads were crowded with omnibuses, dogcarts, and phaetons waiting to take travelers to the Grand Union and the United States hotels. I remember that the bells in the depot cupola rang as a train approached or departed. Robert disliked the racket and cringed against the terrible noise, but I enjoyed it all: the bells, the sounds of cars and horses, the shouts of Negro porters, train whistles, all making a fine cacophony of active, alive sounds.

We took a Pullman room. But Robert hardly slept. I stayed awake with him while he went over and over his short acceptance speech. He was trying to commit the ten or so sentences to memory, but he seemed unable to do it. I felt an uneasy surprise at this, at Robert who, a few years ago, could conduct the Brahms
Fourth
and the Beethoven
Seventh
symphonies together in one evening's program without the scores.

In those agonizingly long hours, traveling through the dark state along the Hudson River, past the dim, sleeping river towns (for Robert would not permit me to draw the shades over the windows: he said he felt very confined in the small room allotted to us), I realized for the first time how much he had failed. In our house at the Farm surrounded by familiar objects and secluded by the custom and routine of our quiet lives, I had not noticed, or perhaps I had not looked closely. My own days and nights were of an unchanging sameness which I must have extended to his. Now in this unfamiliar, moving place I could see how far down he had gone. Can I be blamed for my blindness? When he was sick he would not tell me until it was unavoidable, as though there was a shame in admitting to bodily weakness. And even then, he resisted having a physician called to see him. He must have hidden his symptoms and his debility to have grown so old, so quickly, so soon.

I had written ahead. In the morning, among the crowds of persons milling around the Grand Central Station, we found Churchill Weeks and his wife, Catherine. They were at the barrier to meet us, to arrange with the porters for our baggage, to take us to our hotel, which on that occasion was the Chelsea. Catherine, whom we knew only slightly, said nothing. It seemed to me she found our arrival a trial, as though she were not accustomed to such heavy responsibilities. She was a thin, neurasthenic, almost flat woman whose body seemed concave at the front. Her brown hair was pulled tightly back from her thin face and fastened at the nape of her neck in the style of those days. She had the look of someone waiting always for something unpleasant to happen, always expecting a repellent flavor as she looked at her food. When she spoke to her husband her voice was sharp and impatient as though his very presence were an annoyance to her. Try as I might for Churchill's sake and Robert's, I could not like her.

In our rooms at the hotel Churchill said, “We'll leave you now. You must be tired from the long journey. Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable before we go?”

“We are expected to lunch with the faculty at twelve sharp, Churchill,” said Catherine, in her rough, edgy mid-western voice.

“Nothing. Nothing at all, thank you,” said Robert. “You are very good.” He spoke as though he had not heard the asperity in Catherine's voice, and perhaps he had not. His own voice was distant and weary. He smiled at Churchill his half-smile, his eyes lighting up as he looked at his friend. “We will rest and perhaps take a walk and wait for you to come.”

Churchill had looked at Catherine as though he were preparing to strike her, but when Robert spoke, he smiled at him. For one moment, I thought, the old ineffable love seemed to hover in the air between them. Neither sharp Catherine nor birdlike Caroline was present to them.

Catherine stared stonily at her husband. I thought, What a strange marriage this is, without even the pretense of civility before others. Or perhaps I was oversensitive to the import of the looks they exchanged and to the overtones of her words, because my own marriage had no resonances except for the echoes of wordlessness. It must have been that.

They left us. Robert lay down on the bed and slept almost at once. I lay beside him, careful not to disturb him by my motion, listening to his almost silent breathing and hearing beyond the hotel windows (we were on the second floor, we never stayed above the second floor, because Robert was afraid of fire and so feared to sleep in a room on a higher floor) the continuous roiling sound of traffic on the street below, and the shouting, and the clanging of wagons and motorcars. I felt exhilarated to be in a city.