The Silver Swan (11 page)

“A fine review. All one could hope for,” Mariana said. “I enjoyed his performance. He’s an exceptional cellist in the Feldmann tradition.” She returned the newspaper to Baum and rose to leave. “I’ll come back in a while, Hanns. We still have decisions to make about the copies.” She was aware she was offering him nothing. The copies meant little without the great Swan.

“Stay a moment longer to refresh my memory. Let’s see, there are nine copies here on my list. Let me ask Pierre to join us. He knows much more about the copies than I do, having worked on and adjusted them all so many times. I’ll give him a ring.”

Instants later, Pierre Fernand appeared in Baum’s office. “ ’Ello, Mariana.” He blew her a kiss. “I hear you have come to play the Swan. How do you find her?”

“Nonpareil, as ever.”

“She needs a face-lift.” He winked. “At a certain age, so do we all.” Pierre assigned genders to the instruments he worked on — the Swan was female. “I sink she will be so much more beautiful when I have restored her.”

“We are discussing the copies, Pierre. What can you tell us about them?”

“The copies, they are of different caliber, of course, though they are good enough instruments to play. Many young cellists would be happy with any one of them — particularly with the pedigree, the imprimatur of Feldmann. They have a certain value, after all, some of them better than others. I think none is better than your Vuillaume, Mariana, both to the eye and the ear, although of course this is a Frenchman speaking and a French opinion. Why don’t you bring them here and we play them together and decide what is to be done? You surely don’t intend to keep them all?”

“We would be happy to help you,” Baum said.

“The copies are in my father’s house in the Berkshires,” she answered.

“Ah, such a beautiful place, Swann’s Way.” Fernand smiled. “I had pleasant visits there over the years. Have you been back since he died?”

“No. I haven’t the heart to go back since I closed up the house in January. The memories are too raw.” She paused. “And when will Claude Roselle take the cello back to Switzerland?”

“I have his promise he leaves it with me until I complete the restoration, as your father wished. It will take several months. Then he will return for it. But don’t stay away, my dear. You, above all, will have to be the judge of my work. Young M. Roselle will have little basis to make the comparison. I shall always ask you to come and visit her as I work.”

“Yes, we’ll all be happy to have the Swan in America awhile longer. Don’t hurry, Pierre,” Baum said.

On her way home, Mariana decided to walk past the apartment she had shared with Anton during the six years of their
affair. The memories of those years both soothed and pained her. Soaring above Lincoln Center, the apartment, in a shining glass tower with views of the Hudson River, was on a dizzyingly high floor. It had a large living area and two small bedrooms that faced east and the rising sun. Anton had covered the walls, helter-skelter, with contemporary Russian paintings, and left the rest of the décor to Mariana. He did not care much about his surroundings, she learned, as long as they were comfortable and possessed of the finest sound systems. He listened to music constantly, sitting at the dining room table with a score in front of him, a pencil perched on his ear.

She and Anton had nested there whenever they shared time in New York. When he was away, she felt secure in his imagined presence. And when she was away on tour, she had only to conjure up the apartment to feel rooted.

Shortly after Mariana met him the first time, Pietovsky had had a heart attack. His doctors made him give up rich foods, tobacco, and alcohol. When, at twenty-five, Mariana met him again, he was slim and sober and had no recollection of their first meeting.

In their life together, Mariana watched over him with concern. “Have you taken your heart medicine yet?” she asked Anton one morning, emerging from their darkened bedroom into the blinding sunlight.

Anton leaned over the score of a Mendelssohn symphony, a cup of tea at his elbow. He was to conduct that night. Looking up, he beamed at her.

“Ah, at last, here is my beauty, my rising sun. No, I have not taken my medicine. I enjoy it more when you bring it to me and feed me each one.”

“But what do you do when I’m not here or you’re away from me?” she asked, laughing.

“I prefer to have heart attack and die!”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, moving toward him. She fell into his embrace. With great tenderness, he kissed her and led her to the couch.

“Now, you sit here. I bring coffee. When you sleep so long, I miss talking to you.”

“You talk to me anyway; you know, you talk in your sleep. All night.”

“And what do I say?”

“Lento, allegro, con anima, andante — I don’t know.” Mariana smiled and patted his hand. “You’re always conducting.”

“I should say
appassionata
,” he joked, “when I am lying with you. Now, sit here, I make coffee.” A tea drinker, Anton had never properly learned to make coffee — grounds scattered all over the kitchen and also in her cup. The coffee was either brutally strong or watery, but she drank it gratefully in either case. Traveling with Mariana and living in hotels, Anton would call room service in the morning and, when the waiter appeared with breakfast on a rolling table, it would amuse him to ask Mariana, very formally, how she took her coffee, as if this had been their first night together and he hardly knew her. She would answer, “Oh, Maestro Pietovsky, please, with sugar and milk,” and they would giggle after the waiter left the room.

Mariana stretched out on the couch and awaited her coffee. Anton returned with the morning’s nasty brew and settled next to her. He lifted her legs across his lap, massaging her feet. “So, my treasure, my Fabergé egg, will you come tonight to my concert?”

“Of course,” she answered. “I love you and I love Mendelssohn. How could it be better?”

“Could be better if we never left this apartment, we just stayed together here and made love and music.”

“You’re such a romantic,” she answered, smiling, “but I quite agree. That would be a heavenly life.”

“Ho, but the world would be deprived of your talent, Mariana. No more concerts. That would not be so good. Everyone would be angry with me. They would say, ‘That old man, he stole the light from us. He stole the jewel, the beauty from our lives.’ ”

Mariana put her cup on the coffee table and, swinging her legs off his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck. She stared into his eyes and said gravely, “Anton,
you
are the jewel. You’ve made me understand how it feels to be loved and treasured, to be respected for my playing … 
You
are the genius and I’m the lucky one … whatever happens.”

“But what will happen, darling? What could ever happen?”

She drew back and studied his face but gave no answer. At twenty-seven, she had few illusions. She had not given up her own rent-controlled apartment; he had, after all, a wife.

At seven forty-five, Mariana rushed into Cafe Luxembourg. She hadn’t meant to keep Claude waiting but had been unable to find a taxi. That afternoon, she’d shaved her legs, washed, creamed, scented, and polished every inch of her body, then chose her clothes with care. She was radiant as she hurried into the restaurant, scanning the crowd at the noisy bar on the right. She did not see Claude, who would, at his height, have stood out. Anxiously, she looked around the room.
There
he was, sitting at a table in the far corner, chair turned so his legs could comfortably cross. He had a drink in one hand and his cell phone in the other. Seeing her, he snapped it shut and rose, as the waiter guided her to the table. She felt excited, too excited. He pulled out her chair, the one nearest his own, and she ordered gin on the rocks.

“I read the excellent review of your concert in the
Times
this afternoon. Congratulations. You must be thrilled and gratified.”

“Yes, so much better that than a humiliation. Particularly if you want to impress a beautiful and knowledgeable woman.” He smiled, his right cheek dimpling. “If the review were bad, then I would have had to sit here wondering if you would still come this evening!”

“Forgive me. There were no taxis.”

The waiter brought her drink. Claude toasted her. “I’m very happy you came to hear me play, and on such short notice. I only wish I could return the favor. I have always heard you were the greatest talent of your generation.”

Briefly, Mariana felt vexed. Was he suggesting that they, merely three years apart, were of different generations? She let it pass.

“And by giving up performing, you have cleared the way,” Claude hastened to add, “for us lesser mortals to fight for your title.”

Ah, she thought, he notices things. “Yes, it’s interesting to see how legends grow, despite a lack of evidence. My reputation has only improved since I quit. It’s amusing, but not something to take seriously!”

Claude took her hand. “I won’t ask you why you stopped performing, since I don’t yet know you well enough, but I
hope to know you well enough very soon, and then I’ll ask you to tell me. Your father must have been
désolé
. He was so proud of you.”

She laughed. “Oh, yes, he moped and nagged. He claimed he was terribly disappointed in me and had wasted his time teaching me. But he was also competitive, you know? A very conflicted man.”

Claude, puzzled, asked what she meant. Mariana said, “Let’s not be serious tonight.”

The waiter appeared and they ordered a second round of drinks, then appetizers: Mariana chose smoked salmon, and Claude, snails. Claude asked for the wine list. He moved his chair closer to hers so they could look at it together. “You’re wearing a beautiful scent,” he said, tucking back a straying wisp of her hair and dipping toward her neck. “You must tell me what it is so I can always bring it to you.” He was flirting with her and she enjoyed it, but at that moment she remembered Anton. He had made the same promise.

They sipped their drinks and Claude asked, “Do you ever even touch the cello anymore?”

“Of course. Just this morning, I went to Baum & Fernand to play the Swan one last time.”

Claude, surprised, said, “But I was there this afternoon! We could have gone together …”

“Did they tell you I had visited?”

He shook his head. “And why one
last
time, Mariana? You know I’ll always share the instrument with you. We are now linked forever through the Swan. It would have been yours had you continued to play. That was always your father’s intention, as I understand it.”

“Perhaps.” Her answer was cool. “In truth, I knew very
little of my father’s intentions or, for that matter, of his life. He was a man of great charm, mystery, and contradictions.”

Claude was thoughtful. “Maybe that’s implicit in the nature of a great artist …”

“What?”

“The quality of mystery, privacy — a focus on one’s art that makes one inaccessible.”

“Maybe. Or possibly he was just a manipulative, selfish bastard who needed to control everything and everyone. Could that also be in the nature of a great artist?” She hoped this would shock him.

Claude’s answer was self-deprecating. “Well, if that’s the case, I shall always be at best a mediocre artist …”

As dinner progressed, Mariana grew warmer. They had much to talk about. She offered him a portion of her smoked salmon and he fed her snails, extracting them from their buttery shells, lifting them to her mouth. The waiter poured Pouilly-Fuissé. They discussed the Libbey dinner the previous night, the art collection, the ancient lady’s amour propre, and the charms of Zena Padrova.

“It was very puzzling, you know,” Claude confided. “My mother cried when she talked with Padrova at dinner. I’ve never seen her cry in public.”

“Do you wonder what troubled her?”

“Yes, a little. But I’d never ask. I don’t like to pry.”

They continued talking about the music world, the careers of other cellists, what it was like to work with William Rossen, and Claude’s immediate plans. In a week he was embarking on his first American concert tour, performing the Schumann concerto in six cities. Over a shared dish of bouillabaisse, she asked about his parents’ relationship.