“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.
David and Herbert looked at each other, then looked away. “Calm yourself, my darling,” Herbert said mildly, patting her hands.
“Everyone always loved my parties,” she said. “And you will, of course, play for us after the concert.”
The members of the Tolstoi Quartet were beginning to feel uneasy.
“Yes, of course they will,” Herbert said.
“Herbert,” commanded Adeline, her voice rising. “You stupid little man. What are you doing, just sitting here? What are you waiting for? Go off and find the nurses and get me out of here.”
Herbert hesitated.
“Do what I say this time, for once,” she said impatiently. “Ohh!” She looked at David. “David, go home and tell your wife that your mother is coming back to live. Go on!” She pushed him gently. “I am fine now. I am well. I want to see my grandchildren.”
As David hesitated, she reached out and took him in her arms. “My darling boy. You will see, we will be happy together. Ilse needs the help; the children need someone to oversee their education.”
David doubted that, but now was not the moment to say anything. He would just have to break it to Ilse somehow. He looked at his father, but his father’s face and hooded eyes warned him. Obey.
Adeline turned to Herbert, who sat helpless, looking at the equally helpless Tolstoi Quartet. “Men,” said Adeline, “have they no sense?”
She looked at the men around her. “There is so much to do,” she said. “Pick up our lives. Prepare for your magnificent debut in New York. The guest list. We do not have much time. We are not getting any younger. Herbert.” She shook her dazed husband. “Do you hear me? I want to live our days together, not rot here in this hellhole.” She gestured to the ward.
Michael tightened his grip about her neck.
“I know,” she muttered impatiently. “But the past is past.” She willed herself into clarity. “It is time to go home,” she commanded.
Home! A complicated concept.
Chapter 27 DIVERTIMENTO
Home. A difficult concept in a new world. How to find oneself at home again? America banged with the sound of its newness. Far away, the blanketed cities of Europe huddled, the rust of blood on their stones. All that dark tragic history, that sense of cynicism and fatalism, led to a point of view that would be known, in the more dignified sense, as “European philosophy.” All founded on certainty, fear, and the inability to prevent death. Europe reeked of death. As it did of philosophy about death.
Here hopes rained like gold, promises burned the land to a crisp, and there was no history to be seen in the hastily thrown-up houses of the United States of America. “Thank God, no history,” thought the refugees. By which they meant, no history from which to hide.
The major parts of their lives were lived in the key of Memory, the darkest chord of all. They were to resonate to that combination of notes for the rest of their lives, even their children, and those children’s children, would always feel in themselves that urgent straining, moaning sound. Lives lived in the key of B minor.
So to find again the concept of home. Would they ever? And did it matter, finally, in the end? Home would be burdened, secretive and surreptitious, dark and quarrelsome, with moments of coziness and even, if one dared, a little tenderness. And in the end, they would have lived together, grieved, loved one another to the best of their abilities, and survived the Old World and the New.
Herbert’s ears, large and translucent, thrummed to the A sound. In the New York Public Library, hunched though he might seem, his heart fluttered with excitement, even when he seemed most humble. He floated on the stairway, or slightly above the floor of the reading room, close to the angels of libraries, the angels that bent over the newspapers draped on the racks and whispered “Shush, shush” soothingly. Herbert was near them, supported by golden light. Herbert vibrated to the A of Animus, of Angel.
Was he, as rumored, the Grand Vizier of the International Society of Freemasons? A former minister? The keeper of the ward room? Was he the former head groom of the stables of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Was he the undersecretary of trade? Or the valet of that undersecretary? He floated joyfully on the universal tone of the A, the tone of the new world. A for Aid. A for Adjust. For Antagonist. A, also, alas, for Appease, his basic nature. A for Arms.
“I am Alive.” Herbert’s blood sang, “I am useful. Use me, my dear people. Ask me. As long as I Am, I shall Assist. This is my reason for being.” He bent his head in gratitude. How else to repay the debt of being Alive?
How could it be that he lived and his younger son did not? Herbert would have exchanged places — he saw always the eyes of his grieving wife — but fate had not decreed this. His purpose was to stay Alive, to bring his family and others to the new land, to quiver to the universal A, to refuse to submit to B minor. “Lord, you ask too much of me!” Herbert’s shabby shoulders hunched under their burdens.
“Only what you can support,” was the answer that came, sealed by that heavy ring, the moist lips upon it, his papery, dry hands seized between the clutching hands of others. The wet, too-prolonged kiss, the reverent but insistent pleading. Did no one but he sense the deep irony of it all?
“Lord, I am just a little man.”
“My servant.”
Herbert knew he was addressing a void. An atheist from early childhood, a rationalist, a believer in Esperanto and the goodness of man, a believer in rational solutions to the world’s conflicts, he was ironic enough to know that beliefs ultimately meant nothing. He was not afraid to express, even to himself, that there was no God. Even if, sometimes, he prayed to this No-God, involuntarily, trying to impress his own will on circumstances. Herbert believed in power. It was only power that could command, from time to time, a power made of money and threats and goodwill and the gift of his personality.