Unfinished Sympathy

by Andy Conway

  The daughter that would die? thought Mitch. There had been two daughters, and one had died. Alma had blamed Gustav for killing her. He’d written those three hammer blows into his Sixth Symphony. He’d willed Fate to take their daughter. Had this already happened? Was this the surviving daughter?

  He looked back to Mahler, who still stared at the space where his daughter had been. Misery was fresh on him, and on Alma too, now that he remembered. In the alley, as he’d kneeled over her — not just her black dress — he’d sensed the bitter aura of mourning on her.

  He closed his eyes and tried to shut it out. Their feelings, their grief, would destroy him if he let it in. He closed himself off to them. He shut down the screaming, clawing neediness of the outside world and became a boy in a bubble — seeing but not feeling.

  “By God, Boy Jones, I’ll murder you, so I will.” Gilhooly grabbed his collar and shook Mitch’s eyes open.

  Mahler was closer, examining the flyer, turning it over in his hands. Bitten fingernails, Mitch noticed.

  “I say let the police have him. They’ll throw away the bloody key.”

  “I didn’t attack your wife,” Mitch blurted out.

  Mahler looked up from the flyer.

  “I heard her scream. I ran to help her. There was another man. She was fighting him.”

  “I saw no other man, you scutter. Tell me another spoof and I’ll clatter you into the middle of next week. What’s your name?”

  “My name is...’ Could he say Raheem? No one had called him that for years. Was it safe here, to be Raheem? “My name’s Mitchell.”

  “Well, Mister Mitchell, I hope you like prison food.”

  — 7 —

  THE DOOR BEHIND MITCH opened and he twisted to see the gentleman who entered. A short, slight man in a black overcoat and spats, his dark moustache waxed to points. A sophisticated air, dripping with money. Not a bruiser or a policeman.

  “Maestro, I came as soon as I heard. How is Madame Mahler?” He spoke with a thick German accent, and it was noticeable that Mahler, by contrast, didn’t. Perhaps a more musical ear made one better at accents.

  “She is fine, Herr Kahn,” Mahler said, taking a handkerchief and patting his brow, as if to show that he too had been through an ordeal. “Doctor Fraenkel is with her.”

  Kahn followed Mahler’s hand and looked to the door of the adjoining suite, where the girl had stood watching. He stepped forward and peered eagerly into Mitch’s soul, as if seeking the truth in his eyes. “Is zis the man?”

  “He says he saved Alma from the real assailant,” Mahler said.

  “He’s a blasted liar,” Gilhooly grumbled. “And English by the sound of him. You can’t trust the English.”

  Kahn did not take his eyes off Mitch, his suede gloved hand gripping his gold-tipped cane as if he might strike him with it. “How distressing. New York is von of the safest places on earth, but zer are certain areas a lady should not venture unattended. The zo-called ‘Tenderloin’, I’m afraid, is von of them. I shall haff my secretary draw up a list of forbidden areas.” Kahn turned to Gilhooly. “Why were you not with Madame Mahler? It is your job to protect her, is it not?”

  Gilhooly puffed his chest up and spluttered a fleck of spittle on his moustache. “She gave me the slip, I tell you. I was right behind her, which is how I caught this one in the act.”

  “We must call the police,” said Mahler.

  Kahn shook his head. “Maestro, no. Such a scandal. The patrons of the Met vould not tolerate such a thing!”

  “But my wife has been attacked.”

  Kahn put his suede-gloved hand on Mahler’s shoulder and said something in German.

  The door to the adjoining room opened. It was not the girl, or the governess, but a tall man in a baggy grey suit, his shock of wild brown hair swept high on his head. He looked like Abraham Lincoln, but with a bushy grey moustache instead of a beard.

  “Doctor Fraenkel,” Mahler cried.

  The doctor stepped forward, a curious smile on his lips, and said in a deep, sonorous voice, “I have looked at Madame Mahler and she is absolutely fine. She is a strong, formidable woman of great fortitude and an inner spirit that is resilient. She is resting. Suffering from shock and a bruised wrist, nothing more.”

  “And this is the dirty dog responsible for it,” Gilhooly barked. “By God, I’ll take him outside and kick his soul right out of his carcass.”

  Fraenkel stepped forward, his smile widening to an astonished O. “Now who have we here? How very, very curious.”

  Mitch shifted uneasily in his seat.

  The doctor produced a pair of enormous tortoise-shell spectacles and looked him up and down, as if examining a rare species of beetle under a microscope. “Quite extraordinary. Something so out of place, and only half in this moment.”

  Mitch glanced at the others. Gilhooly rolled his eyes, but Mahler and Kahn both seemed intent on the doctor’s observation.

  Fraenkel stuck his hand out. “Doctor Fraenkel, at your service.”

  “Mitchell. Pleased to meet you.”

  “You must come to my house, Mister Mitchell. I would have much to discuss regarding the nature of the universe and your place in it.”

  “He’s going to jail. That’s where he’s going.” Gilhooly grabbed Mitch by the collar again and yanked him to his feet.

  “Leave him!”

  They all turned to the door.

  Alma, in a black dress that clung to her frame, accentuating her heaving bosom. One hand on the door jamb, the other clutching a silk handkerchief. A woman risen from her sick bed.

  All the men turned to her and Mitch was aware of the power of the male gaze on her, as she, Alma, would have felt it. Her presence drew every man’s eyes to her.

  “This man saved me,” she said.

  Mahler stepped towards her. “Is this true, Almschi? Did he save you from the true assailant?”

  Gilhooly shoved Mitch back with a jolt. “This is ridiculous. She can’t have—”

  “This man saved me,” said Alma, “where you failed!”

  Gilhooly’s face puffed up like a prize beetroot.

  “He is a good man,” said Fraenkel. “Anyone can see that.”

  “He should be rewarded for saving me, not bullied and beaten in this despicable way!”

  She buckled and Mahler rushed to her side to hold her up. For a moment they looked absurd, she taller and larger than him to such a degree that she dwarfed him, the great composer.

  The governess came rushing from the adjoining room, taking Alma’s other arm, and she and Mahler eased her back to her sanctuary, but Alma shook them off.

  “I am not a child!” she cried out.

  The governess shrank back and bowed her head. At an almost imperceptible nod from Mahler, she retreated.

  Alma strode into the room, stumbling a little as she held out her hand to Mitch.

  Mitch stared, unsure of what to do, knowing he should stand for her but aware that Gilhooly might punch him in the face.

  He held a hand up to Gilhooly and pushed himself up from the velvet sofa. Alma’s hand was resting limp in the air between them and he was about to shake it when he realized that was not what she intended.

  “Madame Mahler,” he said, raising her hand to his lips. “Mister Raheem Mitchell, at your service.”

  Should he click his heels? Would that be too much? He decided to throw that in. What the hell, she would probably like it.

  Alma smiled with delight. “Indeed, you may be of service.” She turned to Kahn. “This man has saved my life and should be rewarded. Indeed, he can be rewarded this man’s position, if it pleases him.”

  Gilhooly spluttered again. “What?”

  Kahn stepped forward, swiping his felt homburg from his head. “Alma, please. I very much think zis is unvise. This man may have helped you, but ve know nothing about him; his credentials, his standing, his trustworthiness. No. I cannot permit it.”

  “I trust him more than this man,” Alma sai
d.

  Gilhooly bristled, his fists balled, as if he might punch her. “I did my job. No man can say I didn’t. And what’s more, why is the person I’m supposed to be guarding giving me the slip like that? And what is she doing in that part of town, eh? That’s what I want to know.”

  “I simply had an address,” Alma cried. “I did not know the character of the street!”

  There was honesty in her eyes. Genuine hurt. Mitch allowed his guard to drop and felt the sincerity radiating off her. She was not lying.

  “This is none of your business.” Mahler took his wife’s arm again.

  Mitch eased himself round the back of the sofa, to edge clear of Gilhooly, and to be nearer to the door that offered escape.

  “Oh, isn’t it now?” Gilhooly laughed. “And if it isn’t my business, then whose is it?”

  Kahn patted the air with his suede glove. “Ve shall not haff this conversation now. I suggest ve discuss this again tomorrow. Meanwhile I shall take Mister Mitchell here to—”

  “Shut up!” Alma screamed.

  She wheeled away, the silk handkerchief to her brow, and Mitch noticed the concerto of glances that passed between the men in the room.

  Fraenkel, still smiling, reached for Alma’s free hand but she shook him off.

  “I am tired of being bullied by so many men! My safety has been compromised. None of you is qualified to advise me on this, having failed in your duty of care!”

  “But Madame Mahler,” Kahn pleaded.

  “Enough,” said Mahler. “My wife was not protected, and she trusts this man more than your man. I stand by my wife’s decision. The matter is closed.”

  Gilhooly looked from one face to the other, like a drunk waiting to have the punch line of a joke explained to him, just so he might laugh.

  Kahn would not look at him, and it dawned on Gilhooly that it was over. He swallowed, grimaced and stomped to the door, slamming it behind him.

  Mitch wondered how soon it might be safe to follow through the same door, and when he turned, everyone in the room was looking at him.

  — 8 —

  “MISTER... HERR MAHLER,” Mitch blurted out. “May I say what an enormous fan of your work I’ve always been.”

  No one said anything. It was as if he’d said it in Hungarian.

  Mahler looked at Alma. It seemed neither of them understood.

  He had offended them. No. Confused them. Talked in a strange dialect, inappropriate to high society. Feeling his cheeks flush with colour and brushing non-existent lint from his pin-striped trouser leg, he cursed himself for saying too much.

  “Fan?” said Alma.

  “I’m sorry. It’s an English idiom. I mean I’ve always been a supporter of your work. An appreciator. A lover of your music.”

  Everyone nodded. Yes, now it made sense.

  Mahler gave a chuckle. “So, you fall on this side of the Tristan divide.”

  They all laughed. This was good. Perhaps.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” said Mitch. “Tristan?”

  “Tristan and Isolde,” said Alma.

  “Oh, you think I mean your conducting. No,” said Mitch. “I meant your composing. Your symphonies, Mister Mahler. That’s what I meant.”

  And their laughter stopped. He’d said the wrong thing again. Was it impolite to call him Mister? No, it was something more than that.

  Alma and Gustav exchanged a look that at once betrayed astonishment, puzzlement, shock and, in the laugh that escaped Alma’s throat, which she hurriedly covered with her gloved hand, almost delight.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mitch. “Have I said something wrong?”

  “No, no. no,” said Alma, rushing to her husband’s side and linking her arm in his. “Mister Mitchell. So very few people talk of my husband’s true work.”

  Of course. No one talked about him as a composer, outside a handful of close friends and fanatical admirers. Gustav Mahler was one of the greatest conductors in the world — a mere interpreter of the great composers — but a man whose own musical compositions were a pale shadow of the greats he conducted. No stranger had ever talked of him as a composer of genius. No one would for fifty years after his death.

  Kahn looked at his spats. This man from the Metropolitan Opera didn’t care that Mahler was quietly, in his time off work, composing the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century, the symphonies that would define the twentieth century. He only cared about him coaxing a good performance of Wagner out of a bad orchestra.

  There was no air in the room. It was suffocating, like chloroform. Mitch swiped his handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped his brow and went to the window. A desperate desire to open it.

  He was looking down on... was that Central Park? No air. So hot.

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry, for everything.”

  He pushed through them and stumbled around the sofa.

  His hand was on the door when Alma dragged him back. “Please, Mister Mitchell. I would like to reward you for your service. Please stay.”

  He looked back at Gustav Mahler, almost silhouetted in the stark white light from the window. He couldn’t stay here, but good God, look at that. He was in the same room as Mahler.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  He turned and staggered out, slamming the door behind him.

  — 9 —

  ACROSS A PLUSH VESTIBULE of maroon and gold. Elevators. He stabbed at the button. He was on the 11th floor. This must be a hotel. Yes, the Mahlers had lived in a hotel in New York. That made sense.

  The doors opened and a black man in a purple suit and cap pushed back a concertina gate.

  Mitch stumbled in. “Ground floor.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  They rattled down, slowly descending. Mitch searched the bellboy’s face for a sign. Might it be Louis Armstrong? No, was he even born yet? Maybe just a boy now, not an old man they called boy.

  “Thank you,” he said, falling out into the foyer. Was he supposed to tip him? No money, anyway. He had to get back.

  He ran through the foyer and out onto the street where carriages waited in a line, the cold making him gasp like a deep sea diver coming up for oxygen.

  The hotel entrance was on the side street, not the main boulevard. Central Park was to the right. Above the entrance, gold lettering on white marble, was the legend: Hotel Majestic.

  He ran twenty yards to the corner. An ornate street sign said 72nd Street.

  A few horse-drawn carriages clopping by, up and down the snow-covered boulevard, but this might have been a country scene.

  If he was this far up from the Flatiron, thirty or more blocks, they must have put him in a carriage and bundled him up to the Mahlers’ suite.

  He ran across Central Park West and veered left to the park entrance. A few couples strolling here and there. He ducked into the bridle path, the little walkway edging the park and looked back up at the hotel building. It was two wide towers, almost like two separate buildings.

  Up there was Gustav Mahler and his wife. He had saved Alma Mahler. Alma bloody Mahler.

  He wiped thick snow off a park bench with the sleeve of his jacket and slumped, not caring if the icy coating stained his overcoat.

  Taking in deep breaths, trying to calm the palpitations, wanting to throw his guts up. Relax. Find the moment, then somehow think your way back home. Or to Eleanor. Or home. Or Eleanor.

  He flopped back, his hat almost falling off his head.

  Another building next door to the Majestic, just as tall, with three gabled turrets. Familiar. Surely it was the Dakota.

  Yes, overlooking Central Park, on the west side. He remembered the Dakota from the Jack Finney novel he’d devoured as a youth — yes, at the same time as devouring Mahler’s Tenth — where Si Morley travels back in time in a room at the Dakota. Starting out in 1970, he walks out to 1882. The Dakota was still there in 2018, but the Majestic wasn’t, he knew. The old Majestic hotel had been replaced by another Maje
stic building, a twin-towered apartment block.

  Could he use the Dakota to get back to the present? Like Si Morley in reverse. Could he walk in there and, if he thought hard enough, walk back out to yellow cabs and wailing sirens.

  And no passport. Stuck in America, as stranded as he was right now. He needed to feel his way back to England.

  He opened his shirt button and felt for the locket.

  Not there. Gone.

  Animal panic. Was it back in the hotel suite? His mind rushed back to when he last had it. In his hand, covered in ash, just before...

  He dug in his coat pocket and felt the cold silver, pulled it out. Sweet relief. There. Eleanor’s face.

  He hadn’t lost it.

  He sank back and breathed out to the white sky.

  Peaceful here. No cars, no skyscrapers crowding round the edges of the park, no noise.

  But it was down there. He’d seen it and felt it overwhelm him. The crowd of life around the Flatiron. The swell of humanity, the grime and noise. It was just a few blocks downtown, a whirlpool pulling him in.

  He had to get back home. He didn’t belong here. He had to get back to Eleanor.

  No more adventures. No more travelling in time and playing at being some sort of time mechanic. And the gods too. Those ridiculous notions he’d had of ancient gods struggling to be born again in human form. All of that had to end.

  Only Eleanor. He had to get back to her.

  She gazed back at him from the photograph.

  He reached out for her, remembering the scent of her, the timbre of her laugh, the taste of her kiss.

  But there was nothing.

  — 10 —

  A SHUFFLING ON THE bridle path. A figure coming close. Someone sat next to him on the bench, plumping themselves down with a hump.

  Gustav Mahler was sitting next to him. He was wearing a thick overcoat, a homburg hat and a paisley-patterned scarf. He dug into his overcoat and pulled out a silver case, lit a cigarette and offered the case to Mitch.

  “No, thank you.”