Unspeakable Things (21 page)

“A
deline.” Herbert took the thin hands of his ailing wife in his. “Wake up. I have news.” Beside her bed, David watched, as if from a distance, his mother and father.

Adeline stirred, as if to avoid the two men. Perhaps she had been dreaming. “Open your eyes, my dearest,” Herbert coaxed.

The frail woman moved her head again, as if in protest against this harsh presence, this intrusive light that tingled at her eyelids. She moved her thin hands.

“Look,” Herbert said, awed. “She is practicing.”

“Mother…,” David began timidly. But he was frightened of her, this old woman with the savage ability to wound.

“My little girl.” Herbert seized her hands in his and kissed them. Adeline withdrew her hands and regarded him suspiciously. If she squinted, she could make him out to be a total stranger, an intrusive one. Not the one she had loved best. No, not that one.

“You did this!” she hissed to him, malevolent as a goose, indicating with her fierce gaze the entire women’s ward. “Look at me. I am nothing!”

In despair, she sank again into her sallow reverie. But her fingers plucked on, practicing the piano on the top of the folded sheet.

“Stop that, my darling.” Herbert again took her two hands in his. “I have something to tell you.”

She did not respond. “Something remarkable. Something marvelous,” Herbert coaxed. “A surprise for you.”

David turned away, impatient. He hated his father’s cloying way of humoring his mother, who, for as long as he could remember, had always been impossible. What hypocrisy, their formal relation. “I grew up without love,” he thought for a moment, and tears sprang to his reddened, exhausted eyes. He was condemned to care for these two mad old people forever.

“So when am I going to get my turn to live?” he demanded of the silent, invisible Michael. “It’s your fault, leaving me with them like this. ‘When?’ I ask.” The spirit of Michael said nothing, curled slyly around the steam pipes.

Herbert was still leaning over Adeline’s bedside, whispering soft, crooning words of love and encouragement, and Adeline shook them away. “No,” she said to Herbert impatiently. “Leave me alone to sleep.”

David sighed, forced once again to witness his elderly parents in their approach-avoidance dance. “Papa, get to the point,” he interjected impatiently.

The two old people hardly noticed him, so intent were they on playing their script. “Look,” said Herbert finally, cupping Adeline’s chin in his hand. “David’s here.”

“David?” Adeline’s wondering gaze fell on him. Did she see him at all?

The ghost of Michael smiled in its sly way and slithered closer.

“I’m so tired of your suffering,” David said to his dead brother. “That eternal suffering. Always. Where is the place for me in this family? You’ve taken all the air. Oh,” thought David, exasperated, “just as you always have. It was always you. Michael the gifted, the special, the sensitive! How I have hated you.”

“Brother, I forgive you, for you know not what….” Michael wreathed himself closer to his family in a sanctimonious, ingratiating way.

David tried to get a hold of himself. “I forgive you, too,” he thought, feeling guilty at once for the fact of his ruddy survival.

He thought of his younger brother. “How could you be so different from me? Mama’s favorite. You should have been the same. But Mama divided us.” The steam pipes hissed in the bare room. In the nearby beds, troubled old women tossed and muttered.

Now the spirit of Michael wreathed itself about the body of David. “That is true, my brother. We were different. Now you are alive, and you must live for me just the same.”

Together, the brothers, one dead, one alive, regarded their aged parents, the tableau they made on the bed. “Take care of them for me,” said Michael.

David brushed away the smoke that was his brother and tears sprang to his eyes. “My brother,” he whispered, overcome by tenderness. “It was always you I loved best.” He thought of the golden-haired boy who had been Michael.

Michael ruffled David’s thinning hair. A gust of heat—or was it a current of air?—from the pipes caressed David’s neck.

Adeline opened her eyes and stared at her grown son beside her. This time, her eyes were lucid, focused. “David. What are you doing here at this time of day?” she asked accusingly. “Why aren’t you at work?” Adeline turned to Herbert. “Why isn’t he at work?” Then turning back to David, she asked harshly, “And how are Ilse and the children?”

“Fine, Mama. Just fine. Maria’s at the top of her class, and Philip will be starting kindergarten soon.”

Adeline fell back on the pillow again and allowed her eyes to fog. “That wife of yours, is she still working as hard? She ought to be home with your children. The woman has no sense.” Her hands resumed their plucking.

“I’ll tell her,” David muttered.

Herbert shot him a glance. Then, as if barely tolerating this interruption by his elder son, Herbert leaned forward and began again. “Listen to me.”

Adeline said nothing, but it was clear in her grouchy demeanor that she was temporarily in truce mode.

“Are you ready, my darling? Because I have brought some special visitors to see you today.”

“No visitors!” Adeline hissed, turning her aristocratic head away from her husband. But it was too late. “Why do you always bother me?”

“Too late,” cried Herbert, the magic maker. He sprang to his feet and twirled twice on his toes, then extended a raggedy arm toward the doorway. “Come in, my good fellows.”

The members of the Tolstoi Quartet, who had been waiting outside in the hospital corridor as if in the wings of a great hall, entered the room. They walked briskly, their newly shined shoes making a brisk staccato on the tile floor. They were dressed today as for a performance, wearing their suits with tails, their best ones, and the shirts starched to the chin. They carried their instruments unsheathed in gloved hands.

Adeline’s mouth fell open. “Prop me up,” she commanded her husband, and suddenly she was imperious and ramrod straight against the pillows.

“The Haydn,” the first violinist said as he tucked his violin firmly under his chin. He nodded to the others, who immediately assumed their positions, the cellist sitting on the bed next to Herbert as if he had every right.

The first violinist plucked a string delicately with one gloved finger, and the others tuned quickly. “Now,” said the leader. There was no hesitation. They began.

Like butter, like warm golden light, like prayers, like small white shining doves, the notes flew upward to the vaulted ceiling of the grimy psychiatric asylum.

It was heavenly music—that is to say, music that was always meant to be, music that existed even before the first notes sounded. The notes carved a place for themselves in the universe, just by their sounding, which had always been there. It had been the listening world that had been hollow, waiting to receive them.

“We are here; we are together once again.” The musician’s gloved fingers found their way over the strings with ease, as if there had never been a period of silence.

Adeline clutched her frayed pink bed jacket to her throat. For once, she forgot to complain. Herbert held her other hand in his. The two old people watched and listened to the Quartet with baby-shining eyes. David, watching them, saw how it was between them, how it had been. These two people who had happened to be his parents, who had happened to have their world destroyed.

“I am listening,” whispered Michael from under the bed. Did David imagine that whisper? No matter. Haydn sang of different times, of happiness, a reality without words, a moment of sunshine and flowers. Music issuing into a garden where a child sat frowning at a chessboard.

“Forget!” sang the music. The first violinist caught David’s eye while he played and, from his stance on tiptoe, winked at him, smiling. The instruments swayed like Thoroughbred horses, and the musicians rode them, rode the music.

All over the ward, old ladies were sitting up in their beds, forgetting to whimper or moan. Birds dipped and swooped through the room, silver light, like drops of water falling, shining, from a waterfall of sound. The instruments gleamed, their varnish catching the dazed morning light and sending it back upward in sheets of unison, of sound.

Adeline allowed herself to look directly at her husband, her eyes luminous. Herbert’s eyes replied, “Do you see how I have always loved you?”

“Oh yes,” Adeline’s gaze replied. “And I you. My darling, it was always you I loved best. Always.” Her eyes were steady.

“You are my dearest. My only one.”

David caught all this, though not a word had been said, though above it all the music soared, singing its own crescendo of joy. The woody notes rippled.

How had David managed not to see the love that had always been there between his father and his mother? The world that had been jagged healed itself in that moment. He longed to throw himself on the hospital bed beside them both.

As if reading his mind, Adeline said, “Come here, my David.” She motioned to him, patting the bed next to where the cellist was happily playing. “Come here, our darling.”

Now David held himself, softened, his head in his arms, next to his mother and father.

Adeline stroked his head. Haydn played a counterpoint to his emotions.

“Our boy,” said Herbert also, patting his grown son’s thinning hair.

David wept, finding his way back.

The last notes of the Haydn finished with an upswept flourish. The sound, shivering, hung in the air after the musicians had lifted their bows, their arms lofting the final notes upward. There was a silence, the memory of sound.

The old ladies of the ward burst into feeble applause, the ragged sleeves of their nightdresses fluttering. “Bravo!”

But the family did not move: David, Herbert, and Adeline, bent in tableau. David lay with his head buried in his mother’s lap while she absently stroked him with restless fingers. Beside her on the bed, Herbert, too, sat with his surviving son. It could have been a stable: the old ladies, watching figures in a child’s Christmas crèche, the musicians in obeisance like wise men. “Only…only, the religion is wrong,” thought David, “and the setting as well. From whence came the metaphor? Abraham and Isaac? Cain and Abel?” “Bless me, Father…,” he murmured into the bedclothes. “Forgive me, my brother.”

The musicians removed their gloved hands from their instruments’ strings and bowed. Like plunging horses, the instruments also bowed their necks, whinnying slightly. The men began to speak in perfect thirds. The faint after-harmony floated, winged black notes, upward into the room. “We can play again!”

“All thanks to Herr Hofrat.” The first violinist did not say more, as if knowing this was a private topic.

“And thanks to the young Hofrat, too,” the second violinist added, holding up a gloved hand and wagging it.

“A miracle,” echoed the other two men.

“No.” Herbert hunched his shoulders humbly.

“Yes.” Adeline caressed his cheek. “It is a miracle.”

“So now”—the first violinist beamed, rising on his toes again—“we prepare for Carnegie Hall.” He turned to Adeline. “And you, dear lady, will, I hope, accompany us?”

Adeline turned to Herbert, cupping his chin in her hands and forcing him to look directly into her eyes. “Herbert, are you mad? What are you thinking of? How could you imagine I would be capable?”

Turning to the Tolstoi Quartet, she added, “My husband must have been insane ever to promise you such a thing.” She softened a bit. “I am an old woman now. It is a long time since we played together in Vienna, and now I beg you to excuse me.” The queen, refusing to carry money.

“My darling,” Herbert remonstrated.

“No, Herbert,” said Adeline firmly. “Be quiet. Stop exaggerating.” Turning again to the Quartet, she was coy. “You see, I prefer at this time in my life to play only for my husband. I am not interested in the public; not at all.” She gestured disdainfully at the ward, at the old women now nattering themselves to sleep again. “That world is not for me. I want only the private world of my family now. Don’t argue with me,” she snapped at Herbert. “My mind is made up. I shall go home to live with my husband and son and grandchildren,” she announced. “It is time to pick up our lives again. And I shall play the piano again. But no, gentlemen, not for the public. Never. I despise the masses too much.”

Adeline’s eyes changed. “My Herbert, my David,” she whispered.

“Say ‘My Michael!’ ” the steam pipes pleaded.

“Michael.” Adeline’s heart groaned. “My Michael. Come.” She opened her arms. “It is you, dearest child, I have always loved best.”

“I am here,” said the steam.

“It is you whom we always loved best,” David and Herbert echoed silently. “Stay with us. Always.”

“I will,” the ghost of Michael promised.

The doors of the train closed, the train pulled out of the station, and their pale, frightened boy tried desperately to tear open the doors again.

“Look!” The first violinist was holding up his gloved hand, interrupting their joint reverie. “Our hands are as good as new.”

“Better,” added the second violinist.

“Only, the strangest thing…,” the first man continued. The rest of the Quartet, instruments included, watched him expectantly. “You see,” he said, “our fingers are fine now. But our repertoire has changed.”

“We were rehearsing the other day and—”

“Amazing,” said the cellist, sounding the bass notes.

“We found that—”

“Everything came perfectly.”

“But we can no longer play modern music,” the first violinist said.

The four men nodded in agreement. “Yes, it is true.”

“From now on, we play only the classics. Haydn. Schubert. Bach. Beethoven. Mozart, of course. Dear Mozart. And in exactly six months, we shall play in Carnegie Hall. It’s all arranged. So you see, Herr Hofrat,” he concluded with a flourish of exactitude, “the Tolstoi Quartet is, as usual, right on schedule.”

“Are you certain you will not join us onstage, dear lady?” the first violinist asked once more, for form’s sake.

“No,” replied Adeline regally. “I shall be in the first row to hear you. And afterward, I shall give a supper for the Tolstoi Quartet. A magnificent supper.” Her eyes brightened. “Everyone will come. Champagne. Caviar!” Her eyes glittered and she spoke more quickly, feverish, as she began to mutter her guest list.