Night Film(58)

“She thanked me. She had a low voice. Hoarse. A sort of swanlike way of moving. Immaculate surface. No idea what’s going on beneath. She sat there a moment saying nothing. I sensed it was difficult for her to speak. I wondered if English wasn’t her first language. She picked up her bag, and then …” His eyes drifted away from the piano, as if imagining Ashley there now, walking to the door. “I tried getting her to stay, but when I asked her name she said, ‘No one.’ And then she left.”

“What was her demeanor?” I asked.

“Demeanor?”

“Did she seem depressed? Mentally unwell?”

“Apart from her hesitation with talking? No. Not this time. This time she was quite satisfied when she finished. The way one might feel after a vigorous swim in the Pacific. Musicians feel that way after a good practice.” He cleared his throat, turning to stare out the window at the empty street. “I watched her drift down the sidewalk, as if she weren’t quite sure where she was going. Finally she moved west toward Broadway and was gone. That night when I got home, I remember very distinctly I couldn’t sleep, not the whole night. Yet I felt great calm. I’d been dealing with some personal issues of late, the details of which I’ll certainly spare you. But her sudden appearance for me was a gift. Part of it was because only I’d seen her. She could very well have been a figment of my imagination. One of Debussy’s demoiselles. I doubted I’d ever see her again.”

“When did she come back?” I asked.

He seemed saddened by the question. “Three days later.”

“That would be October the seventh,” I said, making a note of it in my BlackBerry. “Do you remember the time of day?”

“An hour after closing. Seven o’clock? Again, I was the last one here. Even our intern had disappeared.” He turned, gesturing at the large antique-looking leather notebook open on a table along the back wall. “We ask everyone who comes into Klavierhaus to sign the guestbook. If an artist has signed the Klavierhaus guestbook, it’s believed to help future recitals and technique. A sort of baptism, if you will. We’ve had all the legends sign it. Zimerman. Brendel. Lang Lang. Horowitz.”

When it was clear the names meant little to us, he inhaled sharply, disheartened, and pointed over his shoulder to the administration alcove.

“I was typing up the addresses and names when there was a knock on the glass. Technically, we were closed. But when I saw who it was, of course I let her in. As soon as I unlocked the door, however, I realized something was terribly wrong.”

“What?” asked Hopper.

Peter looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think she’d had a shower—perhaps hadn’t even taken off that coat—since I’d last seen her. Her hair was disheveled. She reeked of dirt and sweat. The cuffs of her jeans were filthy. Mud from the country, I thought to myself. She seemed drugged. It occurred to me she must be homeless. We’ve had quite a few vagrants enter the shop. They wander down here after sleeping on the steps of Saint Thomas on Fifth. The music draws them in.” He sighed. “She asked if it was all right if she played. I said yes. And she sat down right there.” He indicated the same lustrous Fazioli piano, gazing down at the empty brown leather seat. “She ran her hands over the keys and said, ‘I think Debussy today. He’s not so mad at me.’ Something to that effect. And then she—”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “She talked about the composer as if he were an acquaintance?”

“Sure,” Peter said with a blithe nod.

“Isn’t that a little strange?”

“Not at all. Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can’t help it. Classical music isn’t just music. It’s a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song ‘Cosmic Love,’ she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, disorienting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. ‘The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.’ Well. It’s no different with Beethoven and Ravel. Into their music these composers poured their fiercest beings. When a pianist memorizes a piece, he or she gets to know the dead man intimately—giving rise to all the pleasures and difficulties such an intense relationship implies. You learn Mozart’s trickery, his ADD attention span. Bach’s yearning for acceptance, his intolerance for shortcuts. Liszt’s explosive temper. Chopin’s insecurity. And thus when you set out to make their music come alive in concert, on stage, in front of thousands, you very much need the dead man on your side. Because you’re bringing him back to life. It’s a bit like Frankenstein resuscitating his monster, you understand? It can be an astonishing miracle. Or it can all go horribly wrong.”

I glanced at Hopper. He continued to stare at Peter, the look on his face something between absorption and skepticism. Nora was spellbound.

“What happened this time?” I asked.

“She began playing. The opening parallel fifths of La cathédrale engloutie—”

“The opening parallel what?” interjected Nora, frowning.

“La cathédrale engloutie. The Sunken Cathedral.”

Peter, noting our obvious ignorance, beamed, unable to restrain his delight.