Part 3 (1/2)
Suzanne hears his steps climb the other side of the wall and then move overhead, in the apartment above his shop. He returns in a few minutes, handing a viola to Suzanne as casually as he would pa.s.s an umbrella. The instrument's most unusual feature is its scroll, which is carved to resemble a young woman with large, almond-shaped eyes and a slim waist. But she sees the viola is also notable for the quality of its finish and color-a strangely bright amber.
”A Stainer replica?” she whispers, her pulse quickening.
”The real thing. Your hand already knows it. So play us something pretty and don't tell anyone I let you touch it.”
”Whose is it?”
Doug grins. ”Lola Viola's.”
It was only a week or so ago that Suzanne heard Lola Viola interviewed on the radio, saying, ”I traded my real name for real fame” and talking about her new record and her million Twitter followers.
Doug's eyes tilt, just barely, toward Adele. He tips his chin at her, looks down, his smile winning against the gravity always dragging at his face. ”It's tuned and everything.”
Suzanne holds the viola to her chin, the bow to the strings, and opens Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Second Sonata for Solo Violin. A test for Doug, who listens with head c.o.c.ked. When she finishes she tells him what a beautiful thing he has let her play.
”You know the story, right?” he asks. ”About Jascha Heifetz? Someone walked up to him and said, 'What a beautiful violin you have.' He held it to his ear and said, 'I don't hear anything.'”
”Sometimes it is the player, but the instrument sure helps. I'd never let anyone but you near my viola with a mallet, that's for certain.” Suzanne tucks her hair behind her ear, bow still in hand. ”But you're stalling. Tell me about the composer.”
”Let's see. A deep sadness tempered by innate buoyancy, though some of the sadness was coming from you, I think. So hard to subtract out the performer.” He pauses to make eye contact before continuing. ”A man-definitely a man, which makes it easier of course. A man with a deep desire for repair. A taste for the programmatic, possibly because of his time but also maybe because he likes stories or comes from a storytelling culture. Or he uses stories to make sense of his life. A Jew? Definitely listened to Shostakovich, maybe even in person.”
”Bingo,” Suzanne says. ”Family members killed in pogroms and then most of the rest in the Holocaust. Emigrated to Russia, proved remarkably resilient, found some happiness in life and marriage, and mostly avoided trouble for a while.”
”And Shostakovich?”
”Loved Shostakovich, who later tried to get him out of jail, but what saved Weinberg was Stalin's death. He was out in a month. You already knew that stuff, right? You recognized the piece?”
Doug is already reaching for the Stainer. ”Nope. You know me, I don't know my music history hardly at all. I'm just a technician.”
”No just just about that, but, Doug, you're all theory these days anyway. Seriously, did you really glean all that from the music itself?” about that, but, Doug, you're all theory these days anyway. Seriously, did you really glean all that from the music itself?”
”It's as good a way as any. I'm not always right, of course, and the women composers are much harder, more complicated, but I'm getting better and better. I think I'm going to write a book on it.”
”Just don't start writing letters to the editor.” Suzanne smiles. ”Anyway, it's a game composers would hate, don't you think?”
”Not to mention music critics.”
It feels good to be talking to someone she knows but not too well, to share some banter, to be thinking about something other than her own life. Yet she cannot help herself and says, ”Up for one more?”
He hands the viola back to her, and she plays a stretch of the music she continues to think of as Subliminal Subliminal, mimicking its thrust as best she can with a single instrument. The viola is suited to the task. She understands now how Lola Viola can sound like an entire ensemble all by herself, which, combined with her beauty, is the secret to her enormous commercial success-a rarity in their line of work.
”Wow.” Doug stares when she finishes. ”Feels like a trick question, but okay. I'll try. Contemporary, obviously. Innovative but with a strange conservatism. A streak of traditionalism, but not reactionary.”
”You're describing the music itself.”
”I'm working my way to the composer through the music. Very well-trained, especially in composition theory. Fair-minded but incredibly stubborn and sometimes blinded by it. Emotionally restrained-incredibly so-but not without some emotion. The emotion is there but suppressed, consciously maybe, but not uniformly. Someone who uses intellect to translate emotion because the emotion frightens him. I'm guessing a comfortable childhood but with a tragedy of some kind. A deep point of pain.”
”Disappointment?”
Doug shakes his head. ”Someone not unhappy with how his life has turned out, though maybe only because he didn't expect more.” He shakes his head. ”It's not that simple. The music pulls in more than one direction, even more than usual. I'm starting to think the composer is a woman, which throws everything off.”
”You're a s.e.xist, Doug.”
”I guess, if you mean that I think men and women are different, and that women are more nuanced and complex.” He combs his hair with his fingers, slightly clumsily, as though he has a new haircut and his fingers expect longer hair. ”I'm stumped, I guess. Dedicated is the best I can come up with, yet also detached. An oxymoron, I guess. I'm sorry.” He looks as though he really is.
”No, I'm sorry,” Suzanne says. ”It was a trick question. It's a collaboration: not a woman but two men.”
Doug laughs in his deep ba.s.s. ”I'm relieved. I was about to toss my book proposal in the trash.”
Suzanne turns to case her bow and sees Adele, her teary line of sight following the beautifully carved Stainer across the room as Doug leaves with it. Suzanne cups Adele's face, presses her palm into the soft skin of her cheek, rea.s.sured by its softness and warmth.
Adele speaks, forcing out the awkward syllables, something she almost never does when her hands are free. ”I want to hear you play. I want to hear my mom play. I want to hear Ben.”
Now they are both nodding, Suzanne whispering, ”I know, I know.”
Doug returns and takes the check Suzanne signs for him. He shakes her hand, then bows low to Adele, pops up, smiles. ”What's this?” he mouths soundlessly as he reaches behind Adele's ear and produces a quarter, which he places in her palm.
Five.
Suzanne and Adele arrive home to find Petra and Ben watching baseball. Lounging on either side of the sofa, separated by a bowl of popcorn, they could be college roommates. Petra wears flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top ringed with condensation from the bottle of beer she steadies on her stomach. Her feet, stretched out to rest on the coffee table, turn out from her early ballet training, but she is otherwise boyish.
It is a rare moment: Ben and Petra fully at ease with each other.
”Who's winning?” Adele signs.
”Suzanne's team,” Petra answers, grinning her support for the city where they met.
Petra pushes the popcorn toward Ben and pats the open cus.h.i.+on next to her. Adele fits herself onto the sofa, leaning into her mother, no longer Suzanne's ward.
With popcorn in her mouth and her eyes on the television, Petra says, ”Oh, did you hear about that Wikipedia thing with Alex Elling?”
Suzanne, who was poised to leave the room, settles her weight evenly across both feet, holding still, swallowing away the catch in her throat.
”A bunch of his obituaries had this sappy line about music being a healing force, right?”
”I hate that kind of thinking,” Ben says, his eyes also on the baseball. ”Music is notes on paper, value-neutral.”
”Yeah, yeah,” says Petra, ”and apparently the dead guy agreed with you. Turns out two Canadian journalists were proving a point. They were waiting for someone to die who was famous enough to have obituaries written but not superfamous. When Elling died, they planted that line in the Wikipedia entry on purpose because they thought journalists would go for the schmaltz and they wanted to see how many would pick it up. Trying to prove a point about sloppy reporting, I guess. Turned up in something like ten obits. Brilliant.”
”That's a pretty mean thing to do.” Suzanne's voice sounds weak, but at least it does not quaver.
”Journalists should know better, right? Check their facts.”
”I mean a mean thing to do to Alex Elling.”