In the Fall They Leave, page 29
After crossing the rue Royal, she enters the rue de la Régence. At no. 30, she hesitates before entering a courtyard embraced on two sides by the wings of a red brick and stone building. Five elaborate pediments hold sculptures honoring Orchestration, Composition, Performing Arts, Poetry, and Instrumental Music. As she stands there, students walk around her and continue on toward the entrance, satchels at their sides. Her heartbeat quickens. She breathes deeply, then proceeds through the open gate.
Inside the building, memory meshes with reality and finds no discrepancy. The parquet floor in the hall, the varnished doors, the dry churchy air—all the same. She ascends staircases and traverses a hall to its far end and stops before one of the last doors on the right. The bench alongside the door is also the same, its threadbare cushions a faded azure, its bowed legs cream colored with gilt veining. Suddenly she is sixteen again and terrified. She shakes her head to clear away the sensation, then sits, deliberately, where she always had, at the end farthest from the door, her music satchel on her lap. Oddly, fingers have retained warmth. There are no heart palpitations. And her senses are unblurred by incipient panic. Scuff marks on the floor resemble scudding clouds. Sunlight forms a golden splotch on the oak flooring at the end of the hall. Soon the muted notes of a Scarlatti sonata come through the door. Someone is doing well with it. The staccato exuberance, the balance and cohesion, clarity and assurance. The flow. Bien. Très bien. No despair accompanies this thought, as often happened in the past.
Soon the room is quiet. Madame, she knows, must be speaking. Her voice was always low and melodious but difficult to hear, at least to someone whose ears were blocked by terror. Marie-Thérèse remembers having to lean forward while being so afraid of missing any word, and then missing most of them.
Finally, footsteps, and the door opening outward. The student—a girl of about fifteen—glances at Marie-Thérèse without appearing to really see her.
“You did well, mademoiselle,” Marie-Thérèse says just above a whisper.
This startles her and she hurries away without replying. Marie-Thérèse takes her satchel and knocks on the door.
“Entrez!” she hears.
The seated woman at the far end of the room says without turning, “You are ahead of schedule, Anton. When will you learn to tell time?”
“Bonne après-midi, Madame Gonczy.”
The woman turns. She raises her gold lorgnette.
The leather armchair the same, but the woman is not. Marie-Thérèse observes that she has lost at least a quarter, if not more, of her mass. Slack skin drapes the facial bones. Skin appearing hardened in place, like dried clay. But the eyes…the eyes haven’t changed. There is still the intensity Marie-Thérèse had always feared. And the censure. Her heart gives a flutter of recognition. Madame Gonczy, they used to say, regarded mistakes at the keyboard the equivalent of sins. But an elderly woman now, possibly ill and not having much longer to live. The sensation washing through Marie-Thérèse isn’t fear, she realizes, or even pity, but something closer to—could it be?—love.
And as always, madame’s right hand rests clawlike over the silver bird ornamenting the top of her walking stick.
“You are new? Are you lost?”
“Madame, pardonnez-moi. I am Marie-Thérèse Hulbert, a former student. I studied here before the war.”
The eyepiece magnifies madame’s eyes.
“What do you want?”
The woman’s voice is still low, yet Marie-Thérèse has heard each disapproving word veneered with annoyance. “I wish to play for you and then, if you will allow, I have one question.”
“What a mystery you present! If you wish to ask me something, ask, and then leave. I am expecting a student.”
Marie-Thérèse extends an arm toward madame’s Bösendorfer, its top closed and the surface a sheet of light. “May I, please?”
“Not anything long, then. I do not wish to critique anything long. Hulbert, you say? Hulbert. And your mother the ballerina? Am I correct?”
“You are, madame.”
“If memory serves, you were only a mediocre pianist. I cannot imagine that you have improved in the intervening years. Have you?”
“Perhaps not. I don’t know. But if you will allow just a few minutes?”
Madame Gonczy juts her chin in the direction of the Bösendorfer, assumes as much of her old upright posture as she can manage, and slips into her legendary trance of concentration.
At the last moment, Marie-Thérèse decides against removing the sheet music from her satchel. Instead, she places the satchel flat on the floor, next to the bench. She doesn’t hurry, as in the old days at auditions for madame’s class, when she had been so afraid of annoying the woman all the more. This time her actions are focused yet languid. There’s no need to announce the title of her piece. Madame will know it from the first note. She will also know when Chopin composed it and when he had first played it and who was there to applaud his new gift to the world.
Marie-Thérèse sits with head bowed for perhaps thirty seconds, allowing emptiness to enter her, and then she begins filling it with music.
They are all there—her audience of the living and the dead. For them, she plays with a light touch, right hand offering the simple melody, the left its repetitive ladder of ascending chords in slow waltz rhythm, with demanding flats and naturals that never sound demanding when played well, but rather something of utmost simplicity. Multum in parvo, Madame Gonczy used to say. Multum in parvo! Do you understand? Marie-Thérèse never had…before. Much in little; greatness in smallness. One might think Chopin had offhandedly written this piece in a few minutes. His genius had been to find a simple way into depth and contemplation. Night comes, a simple thing, a beautiful thing (those graceful mordents). A time of quiet. Of being in darkness, in memory, in loss of the day, in acceptance. No pyrotechnics, no rage, no bitterness, no glorious rapture. Those found their way into other compositions but not this one.
And then, too soon all the same, the closing measures—again repetitions: two of harmonious notes, pianissimo, with right hand and left forming chords, and then three of full chords, bright to dark, in a whispered double pianissimo, with the final one held for six beats, time slowing, slowing, to the point of nothing. The Bösendorfer hums its fading resonance.
She releases the final chord and then slowly raises her hands from the keyboard.
Madame is still sitting hunched forward, hand on cane. With her other, she raises her lorgnette. “With whom have you been studying?”
“No one, madame.”
“Impossible!” Into this exclamation the woman puts all the volume she can command now, which is not much.
“No, madame. I have been…nursing. I am a nurse.”
Judging by the woman’s contorted expression, this might have been uttered in Greek.
“Nursing…people?”
“Oui, madame. I was a student of nursing after I left the Académie and now I am a nurse.”
“Why?”
Marie-Thérèse smiles at the woman’s childlike incredulity but has no answer. The why of it too large to be encapsulated in a few sentences, or even paragraphs, and in any case would only bore the woman.
“Madame, I have come to ask if you will have me as a pupil. Briefly. For six months. Perhaps eight. Once a week.”
“Je ne comprenez-vous! You should come back here and study. And not just with me.”
“I wish only six or at the most eight months, madame, with you. I have a certain…obligation to fulfill and must prepare.”
“Can you tell me about this obligation of yours?”
“Later. If you agree. I will tell you then. At the end of my preparation.”
“Are you planning to give a recital, mademoiselle?”
“In a way, yes. One could call it that.”
“Why do you need me? You are a decent pianist already. Surely good enough.”
“Because I wish to prepare some difficult Schubert, madame. Only you can help me.”
“Ah. Schubert but not Chopin?”
“Possibly Chopin. Yes, I think so. The Grand Polonaise, for one.”
“What made you chose the Opus 9, No. 2 today, mademoiselle?”
“I chose it because…I love it.”
The woman stares for three slow beats. “Bien. Come next Wednesday at four o’clock.”
“Merci, madame. Merci beaucoup.”
“Tell him he may enter now.”
In the hall a young boy is sitting on the bench, kicking his short legs back and forth. Seven years old? Six? A pang of envy strikes, a small pang, before quickly fading.
“You may go in now, monsieur. Madame is ready for you. Bonne chance!” She holds the door for him.
He gives her a wide smile as if proud of his missing front teeth, grabs up his music, and clatters into the salon.
“Anton!” she hears madame scold. “Why must you run everywhere? Always in such a hurry! The pianoforte is not going anywhere. You see? It’s right over there. It’s not running away.”
Marie-Thérèse stands outside the door a while as Anton begins Schubert’s Allegretto für das Pianoforte componirt. Listening, she thinks Madame Gonczy must be in heaven.
The day’s fitful clouds have disappeared, and the early evening air is still. Marie-Thérèse tips her small-brimmed hat slightly farther over her left ear and slows her pace. The pavement across the street is crowded with outdoor tables, most of them filled. A girl of about fifteen is carrying a tray of cups to one of them. Her honey-colored hair is gathered in a long plait. Marie-Thérèse walks on, her heart thudding. At a break in the traffic, she pauses, undecided, then dashes across the street and seats herself at a cleared table. When the young girl approaches, Marie-Thérèse, gripping her hands underneath the tabletop, smiles up at her. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Elli.”
The girl’s eyes widen.
“I’ve come to visit as I promised. I’m so sorry to have startled you. I should have telephoned. Please forgive me.”
“Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse? You are not a ghost?”
“A bit pale, perhaps, but no, not a ghost, ma chérie. Not a ghost at all! Could you possibly take a little rest? Is Janine here? Could we all have some chocolat chaud and a pastry?”
“I must ask Grand-mère, mademoiselle. One moment!”
The words hurt somewhat but still Marie-Thérèse smiles, and soon the three of them are seated at the outdoor table, eating bichon au citron Elli said they helped make. Janine, hardly recognizable at ten years old, says they want to become pâtissiers, like Grand-père. And all the while, Madame LaBreque keeps an uneasy eye on them from inside the shop. Marie-Thérèse has apologized to the woman for not telephoning first. It hadn’t been an oversight, though. She’d been afraid madame would try to dissuade her, that there would have been words, tears, importuning. But now here at last, Marie-Thérèse is struggling to restrain her own tears of joy.
“Tell us, Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse,” Elli says in her young lady’s voice, “exactly where you have been and what you have been doing. We want to know everything!”
“As I do, mes chères.”
“Please tell us first. Grand-mère told us you were living in the Netherlands, and she gave us your letter, but, you know, we still couldn’t be sure. We worried.”
“I’m sorry you worried. So. I will begin first, as you wish.”
The chairs’ shadows lengthen, creating intricate geometric patterns in the low evening sun. The girls’ faces are ruddy, golden, and intense as Marie-Thérèse narrates bits of her story and then they do, telling about school and the patisserie, Grand-père and Grand-mère, who survived terrible illnesses, and Donnie who came to live with them though not Jackie, who had died, sadly, and all the while the light deepens to lavender, patrons leave, and Monsieur LaBreque brings out omelets, coffee, and glasses of milk, then slips back into the shop, where the lights are on now, and Madame LaBreque sits reading her newspaper and resting her feet before the night’s work.
“Phantasie”
May 1921
Private Schalk writes that he’s married now and the father of a little boy. His innate exuberance surfaces in Berlin when Marie-Thérèse visits him there. He tells her how he’s coaching a swim team, the same one that competed in the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp that year. “Imagine, Fräulein! Antwerp! Perhaps you attended?” She’s ashamed to say that she hadn’t, she’d been so engaged in other matters. But of more importance to him, it seems, is that he’s also teaching his three-year-old son to swim and how much the boy loves the water. “A great gift! The greatest gift!” Yes, she thinks, and may it always be.
Her visit with Rani, now a nurse at St. Hedwig’s Hospital, is more fraught. Their time together in Brussels, the duplicity, their arguing that last day—it’s all there, in their embrace. Rani becomes tearful, over coffee and rolls, when Marie-Thérèse tells her about Papa, the matron, the prison, and her own escape.
“I shouldn’t have left,” Rani says after a silence. “I read about the execution and couldn’t believe it. It was sickening. Terrible. A travesty. I should have stayed and helped somehow. It was wrong to have run away. I think about it all the time. And about Madame Depage and her courage. And yours, Marie-Thérèse.”
Marie-Thérèse tries to console her by saying that it had been a hard time for everyone and that Rani had simply followed her heart.
“I followed only my anger.”
Never argue with a patient. Marie-Thérèse reaches over and pats her arm, as in the old days. After a lengthy silence, she asks, in French, if Rani thinks the rolls are anything like those they’d had in Brussels.
“Non! Pas aussi bon!” Not nearly! It makes them laugh, finally. Rani accompanies Marie-Thérèse to the train station and waits while she purchases a ticket to Coblenz. It evokes that other time, but neither comments on it. This time there are no stretcher bearers and on handcarts, only luggage. And this time they promise to keep in touch.
Concentric rows of red and yellow tulips surround a pool with a stone cherub pouring water from a shell. A scented breeze sends white petals scattering over a brick walkway. Seated on a bench, Marie-Thérèse is thinking how beautiful spring is. She’s also thinking that what she is about to do is the last thing in the world she wants to do. In an hour, however, it will be over. She tries to knead warmth into her fingers.
The fountain plashes. Tulips sway in the breeze. A sparrow alights. And then it’s time.
The street door has beveled glass and gold lettering. Fischer Pianos. A bell tinkles as Marie-Thérèse steps inside a showroom where pianos in sizes ranging from spinets to medium-sized grands return glittering light from several chandeliers. A clerk enters from the back and wishes her a good morning. A younger man who doesn’t resemble Rudi in the least but of course brings him to mind. At her hotel the night before, she had all but convinced herself that Rudi would be there. Somehow he escaped and would be working with his father. And it would be a joyful, tearful reunion. Seeing this young man now puts an end to that fantasy. Or nearly.
In German she gives her name and says she has an appointment with Herr Fischer.
“Ah. He is expecting you, mademoiselle. Please be seated if you wish.” He indicates a grouping of chairs and a settee. “May I bring you coffee? Or tea?”
“Nein, danke.”
He bows and leaves the showroom. She sits at the edge of one of the upholstered chairs and squeezes her hands and fingers. She takes long deep breaths. The silence in the showroom is becoming ponderous. She thinks of leaving but then Herr Fischer is walking toward her, and she stands. He’s a small man with white hair and Rudi’s wide-set eyes but in a rounded pink face. The hair’s comb marks reveal a pink scalp. Despite careful attention to grooming and clothing, he is a man in the shadows. Shoulders sagging, eyes dim. Had it not been for this appointment, she thinks, he might have been on the work floor with his pianos, where he could forget, for at least minutes at a time. Some promises perhaps shouldn’t be kept.
“Please,” he says. “Let us sit a moment. I believe you wish to tell me something more about my son. Since you corresponded, I was informed that they will not be returning his body to us. My son, they say, is buried somewhere in Belgium. I have been trying to learn where. One day I would like to visit the gravesite and, if possible, have the body brought home. Do you know anything of this matter?”
Even then she thinks it can’t be true. Another part of her writhes with the agony of guilt and self-recrimination, all of which she confessed to Herr Fischer in her earlier letter.
“Sir,” she begins, “I am sorry. I know nothing about that. I have come to tell you something your son wishes…excuse me, please…wished you to know. He asked me to promise that I would tell you something of great importance. I agreed, but putting it in a letter did not seem fitting.” She takes another long breath. “Sir, he wished you to know that he…loved you very much and that he was so sorry for having disappointed you. He wanted you to know how much he admired you for your passion and how much he wished it could have been his own.”
