The Life of Elves (11 page)

 

“I saw her when I was playing,” she told the Maestro the next morning, “and I saw her again during the night.”

“But she cannot see you.”

He listened while she described the dinner, and the men and women around Maria, their shared laughter and the stones that were alive and protective. Then they began the lesson with a piece which seemed more flat and dreary to her than the open plains.

“Concentrate on the story and forget the plains,” said the Maestro. “You're not listening to what the score is telling you. Travel is not just through space and time—above all, it is in the heart.”

She made her playing slower, more delicate, and she felt that a new channel was opening inside her, overflowing the landscape of the plain, tracing a network of magnetic points around which a story was wound, a story that only music could unwind. And so she found Maria again. She was running beneath clouds so black that even the rain was dark silver. She saw her fly like an arrow across the farmyard, fling open the door then stand for a moment facing the dumbfounded company of a postman and four little old ladies. Finally she went in, held out her hand and took hold of the letter. Clara saw the downpour suddenly retreat skyward and evaporate in the return of silence and sunshine, and Maria read the two lines that were inscribed on the paper in the same manner as on the musical score from the patio.

 

la lepre e il cinghiale vegliano su di voi quando camminate sotto gli alberi

i vostri padri attraversano il ponte per abbracciarvi quando dormite

 

Clara felt the emotion that Maria had yet to discover in the poem, then she looked up at the Maestro and held the two perceptions together in a union through which she could see both here and elsewhere, the practice room in town and the foreign farm, like motes of dust in a beam of light.

“That is your father's power,” said the Maestro after a moment's silence.

She felt something brush by her, light but urgent, an unaccustomed presence.

“Do you see what I see?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I see Maria just as you see her. Whoever sees also has the power to make others see.”

“Was it you who sent the poem?”

“It establishes the connection between you,” he said. “But the poem means nothing without the gift thanks to which your music connects souls that are seeking one another. The wager we are making may seem mad, but every new event seems to confirm that we are right.”

“Because I see Maria.”

“Because you see Maria outside the Pavilion.”

“Outside the Pavilion?”

“The Pavilion where our kind can see everything.”

Then she asked one last question, and a strange ripple went through her before disappearing like a dream.

“Will I see my father one day?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I hope so. I believe so.”

 

A new era began. Clara spent her mornings working in the practice room, then went back to the villa with the patio
 
for lunch, which was always followed by a siesta; after that, Leonora came for tea and to listen to her play. In addition to her Italian friend she was now fostering an affection for the little French girl and her incredible grannies, for the vision of Maria was constant now, and living with her had become as natural as breathing. Thus the hours spent with the Maestro's wife were combined with the hours on the faraway farm in a blaze of light that rendered the old ladies from Burgundy as familiar as the high society lady from Rome. All day long she followed them from kitchen to garden and from chicken coop to storeroom, as they prayed or saw to their sewing, as they concocted a meal or hoed a border, and as she studied their sorry faces eroded by age and toil she learned their names, softly repeating the unusual sounds to herself. It was Eugénie she liked best of all, perhaps because she talked with the rabbits while she fed them in the same way she spoke with God when she prayed; but she also liked the father with his fierce silences, and she understood that the trust that bound him to Eugénie and to the little girl extended far below the surface of their land, like a subterranean affinity spreading beneath the fields and forests that might one day re-emerge into the daylight through the soles of their feet. Where Rose, the mother, was concerned, however, it was quite different: she spoke a strange language of the sky and clouds and she seemed to be somewhat estranged from the little community on the farm. However, it was first and foremost Maria whom Clara followed from dawn to dusk and far into the night; Maria opening her eyes wide in the dark and looking at her without seeing her; Maria who touched her heart as she walked through her countryside, making it shine with an ineffable glow.

 

Then the new year came, and a very cold January, gripping Clara with painful apprehension. On a dawn so bleak that she thought, darkly, it suited the dead stones of the city perfectly, she ventured to share her feelings with the Maestro, while they were working together.

“Our protection is holding,” said the Maestro.

He looked again through Clara's vision and, wiping his brow, gave a sigh and seemed suddenly very weary.

“But perhaps the enemy is stronger than we imagined.”

“It is so cold,” said Clara.

“That is his intention.”

“The Governor's intention?”

“The Governor is merely a servant.”

Then, after a pause, “In ten days we will celebrate Leonora's birthday and several friends will come to dinner. I would like you to choose a piece and prepare it, to play for us that evening.”

 

Clara did not see Leonora again before the evening of the birthday dinner, but she thought of her every second of her days, devoted half the time to the piece she had chosen to play, and half the time to Maria, who seemed to be feverishly striding across her pale landscapes. She worked at the villa with the patio, and did not go to the practice room, all the more alone in that Pietro, too, had vanished, and did not reappear even on the day when she was escorted to the other hill. All morning she had been suffering from the same painful premonition, and it had grown so pressing that she had the feeling it was as hard to breathe as on the day of her arrival in the city. All this time Petrus, unswerving in his habits, had snored away in his armchair with little regard for her torments. But just as she was getting ready to leave for the Villa Acciavatti, in a confused and mainly anxious mood, he appeared in a black suit that was in sharp contrast to his ordinarily neglectful allure. He noticed her look of surprise.

“It won't last,” he said.

And as she was still looking at him, taken aback, he added, “The clothes. It's a strange thing, all the same. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.”

 

It was even colder than on the previous days, and an insidious little drizzle was falling that went straight to the bone. The road wound its way through the night and she heard the song of the water, elevated by winter to its highest melodic level. For some unknown reason, her chest felt even tighter but she did not have time to think about it, because they had reached the steps, where a man with familiar aquiline features was waiting for them. He was extremely elegant, wearing a formal tailcoat with a silk square tucked in the pocket, but the nonchalance of his distinguished gestures seemed to relax his clothing, making them like a second skin despite the gala masquerade. It was obvious that such grace must be inborn, source of great ecstasy and endless ardor, and Clara knew he was handsome because he breathed the way trees do, with a fullness that gave him both airiness and stature. It was through this solar breathing that he was wedded to the world, with a fluidity that human beings rarely attain, and that he entered into a harmony with air and soil that made him a magnificent artist. Then came his fall, when he was judged by a species with little understanding of the fervor of great gifts; but that evening Alessandro Centi—for it was he—was again the man he had once been.

“Well, my little one,” he murmured, “here we are together, such perfect timing.”

And he led her away, beginning to tell her a story whose words she did not hear, for she was lulled by the elation in his voice. Behind them, Petrus was mumbling enigmatically but she had no time to understand why, because they had arrived in the grand candlelit drawing room, and her chaperone made a beeline for a tray filled with amber goblets. Gustavo and Leonora were talking with a dozen guests, who kissed Clara on the cheek when she was introduced as Sandro's niece and also as a young virtuoso pianist. Clara liked the people gathered there. They were close friends, who all seemed to have known Alessandro for a very long time and were pleased to have him among them again; from the snatches of conversation she heard here and there, she understood that most of them were artists. She was surprised to learn that Alessandro was a painter, and several times she heard people suggest that he ought to take it up again and stop being afraid of the dark. The wine they served was golden, there was laughter and conversation, a mixture of seriousness and whimsy in which Clara felt herself gradually drifting off into a blissful sensation she could not recall ever having felt . . . the grandeur of communities woven with similar inclinations, added to the protective warmth of primitive tribes . . . men and women bound by the shared awareness of their naked fragility and a collusion of desire that brought them together in the exaltation of art . . . and it was the same waking dream, the same abysses and the same appetites that had convinced them one day to write down their stories with the ink of fictions of colors and notes.

 

Leonora came to speak to her and the guests clustered around them to listen to Clara's answers to the questions she was asked about her piano and her time spent working with the Maestro. But when Gustavo came and asked her to play, she stood up, her heart pounding, while the premonition that had haunted her all day long now overwhelmed her a hundredfold.

“What are you going to play?” asked one of the guests.

“A piece I composed,” she replied, and she could see the Maestro's surprise.

“Is this your first composition?” asked a man who was himself a conductor.

She nodded.

“Does it have a title?” asked Leonora.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don't know whether I ought to tell you.”

Everyone laughed and Gustavo raised an amused eyebrow.

“This is an evening of great indulgence,” he said. “You can tell us your title if you play the piece afterward.”

“It's called,
For his sins, the man was German,
” she replied.

The assembly burst out laughing and Clara understood she was not the only intended recipient of the Maestro's witticism. She saw he was also laughing whole-heartedly, while at the same time she could detect that same emotion he had shown when he said to her, “That's typical of your lot.”

 

She played and three things happened. The first was that all those present at the dinner were held in thrall: Clara's playing transformed them into pillars of salt. The second was the amplification of the sound of rain on the stones in the garden, which blended so perfectly with her composition that she understood she had been living in this music from the moment she had first heard it. And the third was the arrival of an unexpected guest, suddenly outlined in the doorway.

 

Handsome as an angel from the great dome, Raffaele Santangelo was smiling, looking at Clara.

S
he knows that the stones are alive. Even in the city she doesn't forget it. And she plays miraculously. But she is still too much on her own.”

“Leonora is there, and Petrus is keeping watch.”

“He drinks too much.”

“But he's more dangerous than a whole cohort of abstinent warriors.”

“I know, I've already seen him drink and fight, and win over phalanxes of hostile councilors. And Clara's powers are growing. But how much time do we have? We may not even be able to save our own stones.”

A
fter the eventful month of April with its letter from Italy, there were a few months on the farm as flat as a loaf without yeast. One season passed, and another came to replace it. Maria turned twelve and it had not snowed. The summer was unusual. They had never before seen such unpredictable, chaotic weather, as if the sky were in two minds about which path to take. The Saint John's Day storms broke too early. Warm evenings followed upon autumn twilights during which you could sense the season was changing. Then summer came back with a vengeance, and the dragonflies arrived in hordes.

 

Maria continued to converse with the animals in the woods. Rumors of shadows intensified in the community of hares: these creatures seemed more sensitive to them than others. But the stags, too, spoke among themselves of a sort of decline in supplies. The latter were being spoiled by something, though it was impossible to know how. For the time being, the village carried on with everyday life regardless, but Maria noticed a surprising paradox: the countryside was indeed in decline, while the old women's gifts were intensifying.

 

Proof of this came at the end of January, on the evening of Leonora's birthday. All day long, Jeannette had had not so much as stepped away from her stove, which had been transformed into an alchemist's laboratory, because that evening they would be hosting one of the father's brothers, and his wife, who had arrived from the far South. The dinner consisted of a truffled guinea-fowl set amid a liver terrine, and pot-au-feu en ravigote (all of it garnished with cardoons that had been so well caramelized that the juice still ran down one's throat, despite the vin de côte), and it was a dazzling triumph. When the meal was brought to a close by a cream tart served with Eugénie's quince jellies, all that remained in the room was a row of bellies all as happy and stupid as can be—before the onset of indigestion.