Ghost Music (10 page)

I raised my glass. “Terrific. Never quite tasted anything like it.”

“Be careful,” he cautioned me. “It's strong. We don't want you falling over.”

The fire blazed more fiercely. One of the logs began to make a high, piping noise, like an asthmatic child fighting for breath.

“You still haven't told me why Kate invited me here,” I coaxed him.

He looked me in the eye for the first time since he had started to light the fire. “You have to witness what happened for yourself. There is no other way around it. I cannot explain. I cannot accuse.”

“Accuse? I don't understand you. Accuse
who
? Of what?”

But before he could answer me, Kate and the girls came into the living room. The girls were dressed differently from before—Elsa in a scarlet sweater and a short denim skirt, Felicia in a skinny blue sweater and jeans. Felicia kept putting the neck of her sweater into her mouth and chewing it, the way kids do.

“It's all coming together in the kitchen,” said Kate, perching herself on the arm of my chair and running her fingers into the back of my hair. “How are you two getting along?”

“Well, we're trying to find some common ground,” I told her. “Gynecology and song writing—they're kind of opposite ends of the conversational spectrum. Unless you count, ‘Yes, Sir, She's My Baby.'”

I was trying to lighten the mood, but Axel didn't seem to get the joke. “Elsa—Felicia—” he said. “Please set the table in the dining room.”

“Which place mats, papa?”

“Any you can find.”

Once the girls had gone, Kate and Axel and I sat together in front of the fire. I tried to think of a way to explain that I had talked to Elsa and Felicia here in the living room, before they had actually come home. But Axel had talked so gravely about protecting his children that I thought he would probably find it unsettling, rather than amusing.

And who could say for sure if I had really seen them at all? Maybe I had experienced some kind of weird déjà vu. After all, it
might have been 4:00
PM
in Stockholm, but it was still 10:00
AM
in New York.

“So, Gideon!” said Axel, summoning up a smile. “You must play us some of your music this evening, and sing us some of your songs.”

“Of course. I promised Elsa that I would make up a special song, just for her.”

Axel looked quizzical. “You did? When did you do this?”

Oh, shit. “I mean, when I heard you had two daughters, I promised myself that I would make up a special song for them.”

“That is very thoughtful of you, Gideon. We look forward to it.”

Kate took hold of my hand and squeezed it, and smiled at me. Maybe
she
knew what was going on here. I was double-damned if I did.

* * *

As far as our conversation was concerned, our meal that evening was like
A Dream Play
, by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, which is all about a girl who comes from another world to find out if life is really as difficult as people make out. The characters change their identities, and merge, and say things like, “Who lives in the tower?” “I can't remember.” “I think it's a prisoner and he wants me to set him free.”

In other words, one of those plays that you can't make heads nor tails of, and makes you wish you'd stayed at home and watched
The Simpsons
instead.

But the food was tasty, and the dining room was wonderfully gloomy and atmospheric. Although the ceiling was so high, Axel lit only two candelabra on the table, with five candles in each. The cutlery and the glassware sparkled, and the white linen shone, but we were surrounded on all sides by darkness, so that it was more like a séance than a supper.

“Tilda,” I said, forking up another mouthful of meatball. “You are the best cook I ever met in my life. These meatballs are out of this world.”

“I miss to make them,” she said.

“Don't you make them very often? If I could make meatballs like this, I'd be cooking them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day.”

Tilda shrugged. “They are a good family meal, when everybody is together.”

“Well, you have a great family. Two beautiful daughters.”

Elsa and Felicia giggled again, but Axel turned away, frowning, as if he thought he could see something in the shadows that he didn't like the look of.

Kate took hold of my hand. “Glad you came?” she asked me.

“Of course I am. Sorry if I'm a little laggy. I don't know where you get all your energy from. Did you fly in yesterday?”

She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “You're not going to be too tired to play for us, are you? I love
The One-Handed Clock
.”

“Sure, I can play that for you. And I promised Elsa that I'd make up a special song for her.”

Elsa smiled at me, her eyes bright in the candlelight. Tilda smiled, too. Axel, however, was still staring into the corner of the room, although all I could see in the darkness was a high-backed chair, and a painting of a lighthouse, beside a bleak gray ocean.

* * *

In the living room, between the two tall windows, stood a Malmsjo upright piano. I sat down, opened up the lid, and played a few scales. The piano was slightly off-tune, but it was overstrung and underdamped, and had a very sweet tone to it, just right for
The One-Handed Clock
, and a sentimental song about people who are lost and can never find their way back.

Kate sat next to me on the long piano stool, while Tilda and the girls arranged themselves on one of the sofas. Axel stood alone by the darkened window, staring out at the harbor lights. He had hardly spoken a word since we had finished our supper, and he definitely seemed to be anxious about something.

Again, I felt inspired, and the music that came out of my fingers was so perfect and so poignant that I found it hard to believe that I had composed it myself. For Elsa's song, I plagiarized my own score for Mother Kretchmer's Frozen Scrapple. Apart from making you want to buy frozen scrapple, it was one of those melodies that make you feel warm and secure, and hopeful, too.

“I call this song ‘The Pointing Tree,'” I announced, and played a soft, slow introduction. “I wrote it especially for a lovely young girl I met in Stockholm . . . a girl I will always remember for her laugh and her smile . . . and the way that her younger sister was always hiding her prawns.

“‘I don't know how it happened . . . I didn't mean to roam . . . but I was walking through the forest . . . and I lost my way back home . . .'”

“Oh, Gideon,” Kate teased me. “This is so
sad
.”

“It's meant to be. But listen.
‘I came into a clearing . . . and there in front of me . . . was a tree that pointed homeward . . . and a skylark sang to me . . .

“‘The Pointing Tree will guide you . . . along the forest track . . . your loved ones soon will weep with joy . . . so pleased to have you back.

“‘The forest may be tangled . . . but every time you stray . . . you can always find a Pointing Tree . . . to help you find your way.'”

I played a last gentle scattering of notes, and then sat back.

“What do you think?” I asked Elsa.

But it was Axel who answered me. “There is no such tree. Once you are lost, there is no way back.”

“Hey . . . it's only a song.”

“Yes. But songs put hope into people's hearts. Even when there
is
no hope.”

“I'm sorry, Axel. I didn't intend to upset you. Listen, if you
know any really miserable Swedish songs about people who get lost and can
never
find their way home, I'd be happy to play them for you.”

“I
liked
my song,” Elsa protested. “And I think there
is
a Pointing Tree.”

“It's absurd,” snapped Axel. “And look at the time. You girls should have gone to bed an hour ago.”

“What difference does it make?” said Elsa.

“The difference is that I am your father and you have to do what I tell you.”

“Why? What can you do to me if I say no?”

“You know the answer to that,” Axel told her. I couldn't believe how agitated he had suddenly become. He was breathing hard and he kept jerking his head to one side as if he were suffering from some sort of spasm. “It is the family . . . it is your mother and your sister . . . you want them to suffer forever? Do
you
want to suffer forever?”

Kate stood up and went over to Axel. She took hold of his arm and said, “Axel . . . don't get so upset.
Please.
Everything's going to work out fine, so long as you're patient.”

Axel lowered his head for a moment, although he was still breathing like a man who has run up three flights of stairs. “You ask me to be patient? I do not believe that I have a second of patience left in me. Not a second.”

Tilda came up to him, too, and said something soothing in Swedish.
“Du mÃ¥ inte oro sÃ¥ mycket . . . vi all älska du . . . flikama och jag.”

“I know,” Axel told her, patting her hand. “But sometimes I cannot believe that this will ever end.”

That night, well past eleven o'clock, we could hear Axel and Tilda having an argument, although the apartment walls were too thick to be able to make out anything but muffled shouting. After ten minutes or so, their bedroom door was noisily opened, and we heard Axel shouting,
“Vill du tro pÃ¥ vad hon saga? Jag inte!”
But then the door was slammed shut again.

“Do you know what he's saying?” I asked Kate.

She nodded. “He's asking Tilda if she believes what I've been telling them. He says that
he
doesn't.”

“So what
have
you been telling them?”

“I've been telling them to keep the faith, that's all.”

“But why? What's bugging Axel so much? They seem like a perfectly happy family to me.”

“That's the trouble.”

I was sitting up in bed, watching Kate brush her hair in front of the dressing table mirrors. I could see three Kates—four, if you counted the real one as well as the reflections. She was wearing a simple white nightdress with a scalloped lace collar, which made her look even younger and more enchanted than ever.

The bedroom suite that Axel and Tilda had given us was huge, and dimly lit. We had a massive four-poster bed, with green tapestry hangings, and a couch like a Viking longboat heaped with cushions. Next door, the bathroom was vast, more like a green-and-white-tiled cathedral than a bathroom. We had sat together in foaming pine-scented water, right up to our necks, and sung an
echoing duet of “
love . . . ageless and evergreen . . . seldom seen by two
. . .”

But now that we were alone together, there were so many questions that I needed Kate to answer for me; and as tired as I was, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get to sleep tonight until she did.

I climbed off the bed and stood close behind her, so that there were three of me as well as three of her, and I laid my hands on her shoulders. They were so bony, under her thin linen nightdress, and she smelled of flowers.

“I know what you're going to ask me,” she said. “You're going to ask me the
real
reason why I invited you to come here and meet the Westerlunds.”

“That, and a few other things, yes.”

“Will you be angry if I ask you to wait and see?”

“Angry? I don't know about
angry
. Confused, yes. And more than a little spooked, if you want to know the truth.”

“Spooked? Why should you be spooked?” “Well . . . you're probably not going to believe this, but I met Elsa and Felicia in the living room, about five minutes before you guys got home from your shopping. You don't think
that's
spooky? Because I sure do.”

She turned around and looked up at me. “Is that what happened?”

Now, if somebody had told
me
that, I would have said, “Say again?” or “You're
shitting
me,” or “How many glasses of schnapps did you drink at supper?” But Kate seemed completely calm about it.

“I thought I might have been dreaming,” I told her. “Or jetlagged, maybe. Or God alone knows what. But I swear on my mother's life that when I first arrived here, I walked into the living room and there were Elsa and Felicia, playing chess.”

“Did you talk to them?”

“Sure. Felicia told me that she had won a singing prize at school,
and Elsa told me that she wanted me to write a song for her. Then the front door opened and you came in, with Axel and Tilda, and with Elsa and Felicia, too. I looked into the living room, but Elsa and Felicia weren't there anymore—and the chessmen were right back where they had been before. Now is that spooky or is that spooky?”

Kate turned away for a moment, the same way that Axel had, at supper. Then she said, “What's
your
explanation?”

“
My
explanation? I don't have an explanation. That's why I'm asking
you
.”

She looked back up at me. “You didn't mention it to Axel or Tilda.”

“Are you putting me on? I didn't want them to think that I was out on license from Bellevue psychiatric wing.”

“Perhaps it
was
a dream. Or a kind of a dream.”

“Oh, yes? And maybe I can fly back to New York and get there before I leave.”

Kate stood up, and gently touched my face, as if she were blind, and she was trying to discover what I really looked like. God, I loved those eyes. They reminded me of gray days and walks along wintry seashores, and that time of day when it gradually grows too gloomy to read, and you don't switch on the light, but close the book instead.

“Do you trust me?” she said, and there was a little catch in her throat, which she had to cough to clear.