“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.”