In the music room the Mendelssohn continued as Leo fiddled away. Set out in a mulberry bowl on the Chinese shawl, a cluster of winter cherries bobbed on their stems, marking the change in the seasons. Also marking, Leo hoped, the change in his fortunes. And he wondered how he had ever made the difficult passage from Gallop Hill in Saggetts Notch, from the stone-cold rooms of Pitt Institute, to Dagmar Kronborg’s Castle.
His present state of near-equilibrium had not been easily won. Murder – that was what he’d done: committed murder, though all he remembered, really, was the figure of Rudy looming above that of Emily, knife poised over her heart. But it hadn’t been Rudy – only Reece, dressed up like Rudy, play-acting; a little joke meant to drive Wacko nuts, a gag that had backfired and ended up with Reece dead and Leo having killed him. He didn’t like to think about Reece being dead, but it was hard not to when your mind made up pictures, your brain ticked with memories, and your fears were like so many vultures, with hard hooked beaks; or maybe crows, a flock of them with black wings beating around your head. But in time… in time…
From the corner of his eye he glimpsed someone watching him from the hallway: Dagmar. How long had she been there? Did she approve of what she’d been hearing? How did it sound?
“That last needs work,” she said, marching briskly up to the piano. “You’re letting your tempo lag. Why don’t we try it together?”
She adjusted the metronome weight from allegro to allegretto, then, smoothing the folds of her skirt along her backside, she slid onto the bench, toes seeking the pedals. “Keep your mind on your notes, Leo,” she remarked wryly, for she knew that on such days as this it was hard for a boy to attend to his work, when the whole outdoors beckoned with its red-and-gold glory and the pungent smell of autumn smoke in the air. There were woods to tramp, creatures to hunt, caves to explore. But not if a boy wanted to be a great violinist, not if he wanted to play on the radio with Maestro Toscanini.
With a quick, decisive gesture, she shed her rings and dropped them into the ashtray, then poised her fingers above the keyboard. “Play for me as you would if the professor were here,” she commanded. “Now, all together, one, two, three…”
Her joke. Leo knew.
She smiled and nodded as, together, they began to play, picking up the downbeat and setting off to a lively start, the notes and chords tumbling over one another ih their eagerness to be expressed and heard. From time to time as she played, Dagmar tucked her chin under and worked her brows, her eyes sparkling with that keen, alert pleasure that is given to those who make music and make it well.
A boy could let himself sink back into the darkness, there to be seen no more, or he could make his way up into the golden blaze of noon, into the night’s starred firmament, where the air was nimble and buoyant as the salty sea and carried you along, a feather in the wind. As the notes swelled, Leo felt a welcome lightening of spirits. He imagined himself being carried away in a kind of rapturous flight, up, up on white feathered wings, unfettered and unleashed. High above the treetops a lone bird idled in its vast blue domain, climbing higher and higher, growing smaller and smaller, until it was only a daytime star, winking there, and disappearing into the empyrean.
Icarus.