Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
I wanted to say that clothes didn't matter, but Al-Cerraz was our showman. "We'll find you something better," he told her, pinching the sleeve of her dress.
It turned out that the Beethoven ladies' young niece, who was traveling with them, had a green gown that she was willing to take in at the waist. Wielding a pincushion, the two of them crowded with Aviva into Al-Cerraz's large cabin—he'd taken the captain up on the offered upgrade—while Al-Cerraz and I hovered near the doorway. One of the ladies held the sleeveless gown in front of Aviva's torso. Aviva turned to look at me, lips parted, eyebrows tilted upward in an expression of confusion, nausea, or both.
Then the door closed.
"She was fine at rehearsal," I said.
"I don't think she's nervous about playing, I think it's just the attention. And maybe the dress. It's somewhat revealing. One of the ladies told me she grew up in a convent."
"Not fair, is it? You and I aren't planning on wearing anything revealing."
"Thank goodness," he said. "People don't want to see any more of me than they already do. As for you—you're invisible. Don't argue with me. When you're playing, you hardly look up from the floor. There's not much to see but the slump of your shoulders and the shine of your head. But they'll be staring at her, one way or the other." He added, "
You
stare at her, even when she's not playing."
After a few minutes, it dawned on me that we both looked like nervous bridegrooms, pacing outside the door. I, for one, chose to leave.
And regretted my decision deeply, when I returned an hour later.
Al-Cerraz's cabin door was closed. I figured the volunteer seamstresses were gone by now and Aviva was finishing her toilette. I put my ear to the door. There was some knocking and bumping, and then Aviva's voice, high and strained: "It hurts."
"Hold still," came Al-Cerraz's voice, followed by a grunt. "I'm not going to tell you again."
Perspiration sprang from my temples, chest, and armpits; even from the soles of my feet.
"It doesn't feel good—please!" she said again.
"Maybe it has to hurt. That's what my mother said." His mother, the worn-out courtesan?
Dios mío.
I started to knock, but then I heard Aviva say, "I want to put my clothes back on."
My knuckles hovered against the door; my hand paused above the knob. Why couldn't I act when it mattered most? But this was Al-Cerraz. Granted I'd witnessed many of his countless seductions, in small towns across Spain, but he 'd never take a woman against her will. Or would he?
I heard him groan again. Please, I thought, just hit him. Kick. Scream. He's hopeless, once he's flat on the ground. Just push. But no sound from Aviva.
The back of my hand brushed the door, faltering. I cleared my throat loudly: no scuffling response inside. Then a sharp feminine yelp.
Without thinking, I grabbed the doorknob, turned, and fell forward. The door hadn't been locked. Aviva was sitting awkwardly on the edge of a bed in the green gown, hunched forward, while Al-Cerraz knelt on the floor before her, grasping one of her slender arms. They turned to look at me, but only for a second. Then Al-Cerraz resumed what he was doing, grunting and pulling. And what was that in his hand?
"Aviva," I said. She winced and looked toward me, but she didn't spring to her feet or burst into grateful tears.
"Hold still," Al-Cerraz said again. And gave the half-lemon another turn, grinding it onto her elbow.
He leaned back on his haunches. "Maybe milk would have worked better. I remember my mother using milk, too. At least I think I do. Haven't you ever seen a lemon before, Feliu? And shut that door."
"He won't rest until he's satisfied with my appearance." Aviva extracted her arm from Al-Cerraz's grasp. "Now look. The skin isn't white—it's all red."
"Better than black." He laughed. "Now we know why she didn't want to wear a sleeveless gown. She has a tomboy's arms, dark and rough as wood from all those years of climbing trees."
"Walls. We 'd climb the convent walls, I said."
I closed the door and leaned against it, weak-kneed.
"He's teasing me, Feliu." She looked uncomfortable using my first name, but there—she had said it. "I hate my arms. They're too hairy from the elbows down—like a little monkey, a teacher once told me. I can't believe I'm talking about this. I've never gone without sleeves in my life." Now she was laughing, holding her red elbow and laughing.
"And this," she pointed to a little gold cross at her neck. The same niece who'd loaned her the gown had insisted on loaning her jewelry, too. "I didn't want to offend her, but I can't wear this. How did I get mixed up with you both?"
She laughed again, then stopped herself, hand patting her neck as if she had swallowed a fishbone. But my expression must have looked even more pained. She reached a hand toward me: "Mr. Delargo, are you all right?"
The concert was a resounding success, followed all too quickly the next day by our arrival in port. Before we knew it, we were walking down the gangplank and into the darkened harbor on clumsy, sea-adapted legs. In a waterfront café we attempted to delay our final leavetaking. Al-Cerraz went in search of a long-distance telephone service. Dark fog blocked our view of the water. Aviva and I sat inhaling the damp air, which smelled of fish and fuel.
The night before, after the concert, some of the wealthier passengers had crowded around her, asking about her plans. The captain had hinted that she was bound for Germany, a report that she'd confirmed reluctantly. She'd barely gotten the words out before they pressed bills upon her, praising her performance and saying it was the least they could do to further her career.
Now, over coffee, I pushed her for details, which she provided just as reluctantly. "My contact is Herr Weill. He had offered a job before, and I realized, when I reached New York, that I should have taken it."
"That's something. Isn't it?"
"Yes, but it doesn't start for six months. It begins just ahead of the school year. I'll be touring from school to school with the national music-education program."
We sat for a while without speaking, until I finally said, "I still don't understand. You had a great job waiting for you in New York, starting immediately, and you'd already traveled all that way. Why change your mind?"
She rested her cheek in one hand. "That's a long story."
"I've got nothing to do until Justo gets back."
She bit her lip, considering. "May I ask you a question?"
"I'd be honored."
"It may be a question you hear all the time."
"I don't mind."
"Why the cello?"
I paused, rubbing my chin.
"You don't have a stock answer?"
"I suppose I do. If I were trying to gain your sympathy, I'd tell you I was weak as a boy and needed an instrument I could play sitting."
"That isn't true?"
"It
is
true, but it's a stock answer. If I were trying to be flirtatious—and I'm not—I'd say it's because the cello is shaped like a woman."
"But that's still a stock answer."
"Yes."
"It's all right if you don't want to tell me."
"I
do
want to tell you." I cleared my throat and pushed my coffee cup to one side. "I want to tell you that the cello has the most human voice of any instrument—Sir Edward Elgar once told me that. I want to tell you that it reminds me of my mother's singing before she stopped, and my father's humility—or what I remember of it. That when the playing goes well, I can't tell where I end and where the cello begins. But what I most want to tell you—"
A man squeezed past our chairs and Aviva tapped a spoon against the table nervously, waiting for the stranger to pass. Before I could continue, she said, "You're much more talkative when your partner isn't around."
"He has a way of talking for both of us. And he hasn't really been my partner for about eight years."
"He's very charming."
I tried to suppress a twinge of irritation. "What I most want to tell you," I continued, my voice lower, "is that I don't always know
why
I play the cello. I tell myself various reasons, but I don't know whether they're rational, or true. Sometimes I wonder whether we have feelings and then invent reasons to fit them—or have reasons, and then invent the feelings."
Aviva was staring into her cup determinedly. "But you're something of a statesman, aren't you? In public, you seem to know exactly why you do everything you do."
I pressed my fingers against my temples and chose my words carefully. "Yes, that's right. I've managed to give that impression." I tried to laugh. "But—do you know?—I've lost my train of thought. I was really trying to talk about you."
She shifted in her seat.
I persevered, "What I meant to say was—I was attracted to you when we met because you
do
seem to know why you play your instrument."
She bowed her head slightly at the compliment.
"I've seen ambition before, of course, and focus—but rarely have I seen perfect focus without professional ambition. Am I insulting you?"
"No."
"Did I answer your question?"
"A little."
"Will you answer mine?"
She looked up. "Which one—about why I play, or why I turned back from New York?"
"I thought I might get lucky," I said. "I thought one answer might lead to the other."
"I don't think it will. Not today." She squinted out into the fog, which obscured all but the fuzzy white lights of ships docked for the night. "Why is Justo taking so long?"
"Anytime someone recognizes him, he'll stop and chat. It can take him an entire evening to cross a town square, if he's in a good mood."
"Why should he be in a good mood? It seems he has lost his money, like all the Americans."
"He's in a good mood because we met you."
She looked away. "I'd like to say a proper good-bye to him. I'd like to say a proper thanks and good-bye to you both."
"But until then?"
She sighed deeply, set her cup aside, and put her hands in her lap. "I suppose it's easier to tell this kind of story to someone I'll never see again.... "
She was born in 1910, she said, to a musical family in an Italian mountain village near Bolzano, on the Adige River, closer to the birthplaces of Handel, Mozart, and Bach than to Rome. Innsbruck was a hundred kilometers away by train, Munich and Salzburg another hundred kilometers beyond to the north and northeast, though she never saw those places as a child. Her family was poor, and poorer yet after her parents died—her father in the war, her mother from tuberculosis a few years later. Unlike most of the other children she knew, she was an only child. She lived alone with her grandmother until the age of thirteen.
That's when the music teacher came—the one who first recognized her talent, and persuaded Nonna to let him show her off, in small recitals in Verona and Brescia and later Bergamo. Aviva wouldn't say his name even now, not because she'd hated him—quite the contrary. He loved music history, and he'd told her stories about all the Italian virtuosi; he took her for carriage rides even when they weren't touring. He backed her up against the wall of the little room in his house where she sometimes slept, when they'd gotten back into town late from a performance, and made charcoal marks on the wall to show how much she'd grown. He held out his hand and pressed it against hers, marveling as her slim fingertips grew beyond his, rising crescents that, with every new half-centimeter, might stretch to reach new positions without shifting. He did not make her feel guilty for growing up, as her griefstricken and ever-fearful Nonna did. He filled her with hope.
She was fourteen when he took her to Bologna, to perform for a family that was interested in sponsoring her. They left before dawn in a horse-drawn carriage, Aviva peppering him with questions as they bumped along in the dark.
"If they bought me a violin, would it really be mine, or theirs?"
"Theirs. But you'll be the one to play it. It doesn't matter."
"Remember Paganini? He borrowed that violin for a concert and loved it so much he refused to give it back."
"Paganini could get away with such things," he said, but without any severity. She knew he liked to hear her talk about the gaunt maestro, whose impossible-to-play caprices were among her teacher's favorites. And it wasn't just Paganini's music he worshipped, but the man himself. Her teacher had a hundred-year-old snuffbox from Vienna with Paganini's scowling, hollow-cheeked face on the lid, under a thick coat of lacquer.
"Will they send me to a conservatory?"
He squeezed her chin without answering, and it occurred to her that she shouldn't sound so cheerful about being sent away, beyond the reach of his tutelage.
"One more question?"
He yawned—effortfully, theatrically. In truth, he didn't look fatigued at all. One hand was cupped tensely over her knee. His own narrow legs were clenched together, kneecaps tight against the thin shiny cloth of his trousers.
"Go ahead."
"Will they mind that I'm not Christian?"
"We won't mention it."
"And if they find out later?"
But in the end, the question of religion never would even arise. She would play terribly that afternoon. Signor Magione would agree to lend her a slightly better violin and ask to see her again, to discuss her future education, when he visited Bolzano on business in six months' time. Perhaps, he said hopefully, she would have matured a little more by then.
As it turned out, in six months she would have matured too much, and she wouldn't be able to play for him at all.
But all that was still to come. First, her teacher had a stop to make, at a graveyard in Parma that he was raising funds to improve. She knew he was a member of various men's associations and active in all sorts of civic and Church-related causes, and she assumed that he had a personal connection, perhaps family buried there.
The morning still felt like night: A pale moon bulged low on the horizon, the unkempt grass was stiff with frost. The cemetery gate was locked but her teacher drew from his vest pocket his own key, a benefit of his philanthropy. They made their way between the stones. He didn't speak. She searched for his surname among the inscriptions, wanting to be helpful by spotting the correct section first. But he knew where he was going and didn't need her help.