"Tomorrow and Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sheffield Charles)

Chapter 2

“O! call back yesterday, bid time return.”

Tom was gone before ten o’clock. He could tell that Ana, who had been putting on her best front just for him, was exhausted.

Ana went off to bed as soon as Tom had left. Drake followed, half an hour later. She was already asleep. He lay down beside her without undressing, convinced that would be a waste of time. His mind was too active for any form of rest.

He closed his eyes. He imagined Ana, as she had been when they’d first met.

He always told people that he had loved her before he even saw her. The occasion of their first meeting was an end-of-term examination. Drake, as Doctor Bonvissuto’s star pupil in musical composition, had been taking a test alone, in a small room next to Bonvissuto’s austere office.

It was not the ideal setting for concentration, but Drake had been through the routine several times before. While he was setting down the parts of a fugal theme provided by his teacher, Bonvissuto was interviewing would-be choral scholars and students in the next room.

The test material was not inspiring work, and Drake could do it almost automatically, using sheets of lined score paper and a pencil. Bonvissuto scorned computers and all other aids to the rapid writing out of music.

“You think you need computer to write fast, eh?” He had scowled at Drake on their very first session together. “Handel, he write Messiah, every note, in twenny-four day. You do as good in two-three month, I don’t grumble. You want computer to help? Fine. Provided you write more and better. Better than Bach. Better than Monteverdi, better than Mozart. They had no computer.”

From Bonvissuto, that counted as mild comment. But he meant what he said. Drake slaved away at the test, without benefit of centuries of technological development, while in the next room a succession of young men and women came and went.

Most of them, Drake knew, arrived prepared to sing as Brunnhilde or Tristan or the Queen of the Night. Bonvissuto would have none of it.

“Something simple. Not the grand opera. The simple song, the folk song. You sing that real good, a cappella, then maybe we think about Verdi an’ Mozart an’ Wagner.”

They would sing unaccompanied, often off-key and loud. And Bonvissuto would comment, equally loudly.

“What key did you think you were in at the end there? And what language? Did you ever hear about diction? This song is in English, for Christ’s sake. Listening to you it could have been in Polish or Chinese or anything.”

Bonvissuto reversed the traditional pattern. When he was angry and excited, the Italian accent disappeared. In its place came perfect English and a Kansas twang. The same thing happened during his lessons with Drake, who had once been unwise enough to mention that fact. The teacher had winked at him and said, “Whoever heard of an Italian from Kansas? Whoever heard of a composer from Kansas?”

Drake finished writing out the fugue, turned the page, and went on to the final question. “Provide a suitable melody to go with the given accompaniment.”

He looked at what followed and realized that the question was going to be a snap. He knew the original piece. He was looking at the piano part of “Erstarrung,” the fourth song from the Winterreise song cycle. All he had to do was write out the vocal part. The accompaniment happened to be given in A-minor, up a tone from the version that he was most familiar with, so he would have to transpose; but that was trivial.

He read the question again to be sure. “Provide a suitable melody.” It didn’t say, “Compose a suitable melody of your own.” And he certainly could not improve on Schubert.

As he wrote in the vocal line he heard the door open again in the next room. There was a mutter of conversation, then a single chord, E major, on Bonvissuto’s piano.

A woman’s contralto voice began to sing, “Blow the wind southerly.” It was a strong, true voice, slightly husky in the lower register and with just a touch of an attractive vibrato on the high notes. Drake paused to listen. After the final note there was a pause, then again a single chord on the piano. It confirmed what Drake already knew. The woman had finished exactly on E natural, in the key where she had started. She had been right on pitch all the way through.

Drake heard another muttered sentence or two spoken in the next room, then the door opened and closed again. He waited, writing in the last few bars of the exercise. Surely Bonvissuto hadn’t sent her away, just like that, without talking to her some more. Drake wanted to hear her sing again.

On an impulse he collected his answer sheets, stacked them neatly, and walked across to the connecting door. He turned the doorknob and went through without knocking.

He braced himself. Anyone who entered Bonvissuto’s office uninvited could expect a hot welcome.

The expected blast did not come. Professor Bonvissuto was not there. Alone in the room, standing by the piano and staring at him uncertainly, was a slim, blond-haired girl.

He stared back. Her hair was cut a little lopsided. She wasn’t very tall, maybe five four, and her pale blue dress didn’t look quite right on her. Drake, no connoisseur of clothing, did not realize that it had been intended for someone a couple of inches taller. But the most striking thing about her, far more significant than clothes, was her age. She looked about fifteen. It was hard to believe that the mature contralto voice he had heard came from her.

“Are you next?” she said finally. “I thought I was the last one. He won’t be long.”

He realized that he had been staring, but so had she. She must assume he was there for a vocal audition. He thrust his sheaf of papers out toward her. “I’m not here to sing. I was taking an exam. I’m one of Professor Bonvissuto’s students. Was that you?”

“What me?”

“Singing. ‘Blow the wind southerly.’ ”

“Yes. Why?”

“It was good.” He wanted to add that it was wonderful, heart-stopping, soul-searing. Instead he said, “Where is he?”

“The professor? He went to register me. I didn’t think I’d be accepted, and it’s the last day to sign up. He said he could push it through.”

“He can. He knows how.” Drake, not knowing what to do next but reluctant to leave, sat down on the piano stool.

She asked from behind him, “Do you play?”

“Yes. Not very well.” He was convinced that he could feel her critical stare burning into the back of his head. Music was full of prodigies: tiny infants picking out chord sequences, concert performers under ten years old, composers who wrote great works in their teens. And here he was, over eighteen and still a student. He wanted to blurt out that he had started late, that his family had been too poor to think of music lessons, that he had come to music only when he found that, almost against his will, melodies arose in his head to go with poetry that he was reading.

He couldn’t say any of that. Instead, to hide his self-consciousness, and with “Erstarrung” still in his head, he began to play the restless, uneasy triplets of the song’s introduction.

“I’ve heard that a couple of times,” said the voice behind him. “But it’s a man’s song. Do you know ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’?”

“ ‘Margaret at the spinning-wheel’?” Drake was much more comfortable with the English translation. He paused for a moment, then began to play a steady, pulsing figure.

“That’s it,” the girl said at once. “Did you know that Schubert wrote it when he was only seventeen?”

“I know.” It was a possible criticism, making the point that Drake was a lot older than seventeen and had done nothing. But before he could say more she went on: “It’s a little bit high for me. But I can handle it. Start over.”

After the four brief figures of the introduction she began to sing, “Mein Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer.” “My peace is gone, my heart is heavy.” Drake, understanding the German words only vaguely but feeling the strong musical rapport between them, put all his mind into his playing, sensing and adapting to her vocal line.

They performed the whole song. After the final slowing chords on the piano there was total silence. He turned and found a smile on her face that matched his own delight. Before they could speak, a sound came from the doorway: four steady hand claps.

“You know, don’t you, the penalty for playing my Steinway without my permission?” Bonvissuto walked toward them. “What are you doing in here, Merlin?”

Drake picked up his exam papers and held them out. “I finished.”

“Yeah?” Bonvissuto skimmed the sheets for a couple of seconds. He snorted. “I told Leila Nielsen, using ‘Erstarrung’ was one dumb idea, you were sure to know it. No matter. Plenty of stuff you don’t know for next time.” He smiled sadistically. “How’s your Webern?” And then, before Drake could reply, “Go on, go on. Out of here, both of you.” He waved his hands at them. “Merlin, we’ll discuss your test tomorrow morning. Werlich, I registered you. You’re legal. You come in at one tomorrow, we’ll work on your middle register. Now, go. What you waiting for?” And then, when they were almost out the door, “Since you two are going to be performing in public together, you’d better practice. You need polish.”

Drake knew her name, or at least part of it. Werlich. And she knew his. They stood in the corridor, staring at each other.

“Did you hear that?” she said at last. “Performing together. Do you think he meant it?”

“I don’t know.” Drake had played before small groups only. The idea of a public concert froze his blood. “But he usually means what he says when it’s about music.”

She held out her hand. “I’m Anastasia Werlich. Ana for short.”

“I’m Drake Merlin.” He took her hand and felt an odd compulsion to admit his secret “It’s actually Walter Drake Merlin, but I really hate Walter.”

“So don’t use it. You didn’t pick it. I’m not too fond of Werlich.” She frowned. “How much money do you have?”

The question threw him. Did she mean in the world, or in his pocket? Either way, it was an unsatisfactory answer.

“I have four dollars.”

She nodded. “All right. And I have nine. So I’m the rich one. I buy you a Coke.”

“I don’t drink Coke. Caffeine doesn’t agree with me. It gives me the jitters.” Drake wondered why he was saying something so terminally stupid. Here he was, keener to continue a conversation with Ana than he had ever been with anyone, and he sounded like he was freezing her off.

But all she said was, “Sprite, then, or 7UP,” and she steered them off toward the cafeteria at the end of the building.

They talked through the rest of the afternoon and all evening, so absorbed in each other that the presence of others in the cafeteria was totally irrelevant.

It had pleased Drake at first to learn that she was as badly off as he was. Her fluent German and knowledge of the world came not from an expensive private-school education in Europe, but because Ana was an army brat, whose tough childhood had dragged her from school to school all over Europe and most of the rest of the world. Like him, Ana was poor, too poor to attend a university without a scholarship.

And then, after just a few hours together, money or the lack of it didn’t matter.

What did matter was that they were so keen to talk and listen to each other that Ana came close to missing her last bus home. What mattered was that when they were at the bus stop she said, with the directness that she would never lose, “I’ve been waiting to meet you since I was five years old.”

What mattered was her face, gray eyes closed, upturned for a brief good-night kiss. When the bus drove away Drake felt the deepest loss of his eighteen years. He knew, even then, that he had found the girl he would love forever.

That first day set the pattern for all their time together. They were with each other every moment that they could manage. When Ana had an out-of-town performance she would return home on the earliest possible flight. When commissions or premiere performances took Drake away to New York or Miami or Los Angeles, he chafed at the obligatory dinners and cocktail parties that were part of the deal. He didn’t want free dinner and drinks or extravagant praise of his talents. He wanted to be with Ana. Even in the early days, when they were desperately poor, he would go without dinner so he could take a taxi rather than a bus, and be home an hour sooner.

Drake recalled one day when Ana was involved in a major traffic accident on the Beltway. He was in bed with a fever of 102 when a telephone call came in from a total stranger, telling him about the accident but assuring him that Ana was all right.

He did not remember getting out of bed or dressing or driving to the scene. He recalled only the terrible feeling of possible loss, of doom hanging over him until he had his arms around her. Her car was totaled, and he didn’t notice or care. He had been consumed with the fear of losing her.

And now…

Drake looked at the illuminated face of the bedside clock. It was past midnight, almost one o’clock. He rose, went through to the bathroom, and flushed the prescription for tranquilizers that Tom had given him down the drain.

There would be opportunity for sorrow later. Now he had work to do, and little time to do it. He needed all his faculties, unblurred by drugs. For twelve years he and Ana had done their thinking and planning together. It couldn’t be like that this time. She needed all her strength to fight her disease. It was up to him.

He didn’t know what he would do, or how he would do it. He only knew he would do something.

Ana was his life; without her there was nothing.

He could not bear to lose her.

He would not lose her.

Ever.