Night Film

by Marisha Pessl

  “That you’re crazy mad in love with her.”

  “Hey. No one’s crazy or mad or in love with anyone here.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder, a look of evident pity.

  “You need to move on with your life. She’s happy.” And with that, she took off merrily down the hall, leaving me staring after her.

  32

  Hopper was waiting for us on the corner by the HSBC bank, smoking a cigarette, the serious, hollowed-out expression on his face suggesting that he’d barely slept in the two days since we’d seen him.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked him.

  “Remember what Morgan Devold said? He thought Ashley had to play the piano every day?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yesterday I started thinking, if Ashley came into the city to track someone down, if she wanted to play, where would she go?”

  “Jazz clubs. Juilliard. A hotel lobby? It’s hard to say.”

  “None of those places would let a stranger off the street just sit down and start playing, uninterrupted. But then I remembered, I got a friend who’s big into the classical music scene. If you’re really good, the showrooms on Piano Row let you come in and play as long as you like. This afternoon I went into a bunch, asked around, and a manager in one of the shops actually recognized her. Ashley came in twice the week before she died.”

  “Nice work,” I said.

  “Right now he’s waiting to talk to us. But we have to hurry because they’re about to close.” He chucked the cigarette onto the pavement and took off down the sidewalk.

  I’d never heard of Piano Row. It was a splinter of Fifty-eighth Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, where delicate piano stores had tucked themselves between hulking sixties apartment buildings like a few sparrows living among hippos. We hurried past a small shop called Beethoven Pianos, posters taped in the windows advertising Vivaldi concerts and voice lessons. Inside, identical shiny baby grands were lined up, lids open, like hefty chorus girls awaiting a cue. Hopper shuffled past the Morton Williams supermarket and crossed the street, passing a fire station, and then pausing in front of a shop with a dirty green awning that read KLAVIERHAUS.

  I held the door open for Nora and we entered. Unlike Beethoven Pianos, there were only three pianos on display. The store was empty, without a single customer or employee. It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.

  Hopper emerged from a door in the very back with a middle-aged wisp of a man sporting brown corduroys and a black turtleneck, a weedy patch of gray hair sprouting off his balding head. He looked like a classical music man-child. You could spot these Mahler-loving men within a ten-block radius of Carnegie Hall. They tended to wear earth tones, have on DVD all of public television’s Great Performances series, live alone in apartments on the Upper West Side, and have potted plants they spoke to daily.

  “This is Peter Schmid,” Hopper said.

  “The manager of Klavierhaus,” Peter added with pride.

  Nora and I introduced ourselves. “I understand Ashley Cordova came in here a few weeks ago,” I said.

  “I had no idea who she was at the time,” Peter said eagerly, clasping his hands together. “But based on Mr. Cole’s description, yes, I believe she came to Klavierhaus.”

  He was one of those people you initially believed had a foreign accent, though it turned out he was American, only spoke delicately, as if every word were something to be carefully dusted off and held up to the light.

  “Did the police come here to ask about her?”

  “No, no. We’ve had no police. I had no inkling of who she was until Mr. Cole came in this afternoon. He gave me her description, and I recognized her immediately.” Peter glanced at Hopper. “The dark hair. The red coat with the black detailing along the sleeves. The beauty.”

  “When exactly did she come in?” I asked.

  “You need the precise date?”

  “It’d be helpful.”

  Peter hurried into the administrative alcove along the opposite wall. After fumbling down behind the counter, he produced a large leather calendar stuffed with papers.

  “It was almost certainly a Tuesday, because we’d just had our weekly concert salon,” he mumbled, flipping open the cover. “Usually it’s over by ten-thirty. On this night, around eleven, I was in the back cleaning up when suddenly I heard the most exciting interpretation of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. I’m sure you know it?”

  We shook our heads, which seemed to concern him.

  “Well. I’d forgotten to lock the door.” Scrutinizing the calendar, he frowned, thoughtfully pressing a finger to his lips. “It was October fourth. Yes. That has to be it.”

  Smiling, he slid the calendar around for us to take a look, tapping the day in question with his index finger.

  “I hurried into the showroom, and I saw her at the piano.”

  “Which one and where?” I asked.

  He pointed toward the front. “The Fazioli. There in the window.”

  I strolled over to it, Nora following me.

  “Is it a good one?” I asked.

  Peter chuckled as if I’d made a joke, heading after us. “Faziolis are the best in the world. Many professionals find them superior to Steinways.”

  I studied it. Even by my amateur eyes, it was a gorgeous, intimidating instrument.

  “Pianos are like people,” Peter noted softly. “Every one has a different personality. They take time to get to know. And they can get lonely.”

  “What personality does this one have?” Nora asked.

  “Her? Oh. She’s a bit of a diva. If she were in high school, she’d be the prom queen. She can be moody, imperious. Take over if you’re not careful. But if you show her a firm hand, she’ll dazzle you. All piano soundboards are made of spruce. Well, Fazioli uses spruce from the Val di Fiemme forest in Northern Italy.”

  He awaited our amazed reaction, but we could only stare back blankly.

  “It’s the same timber the Stradivari family used to craft their legendary violins in the seventeenth century. It produced an opulent velvet sound that can’t be replicated by any other manufacturer today. It’s why Stradivarius violins today sell in the millions.”

  “What did you do when you heard her?” I asked.

  “I intended to tell her she’d have to come back tomorrow. We were closed, after all. But her playing was”—he shut his eyes and shook his head—“electrifying. I could tell she’d been trained by a European, due to her take-no-prisoners, blustery articulation perfectly balanced with profound intimacy, which brought to mind some of the greatest pianists of all time. Argerich. Pascal Rogé. I couldn’t bear to interrupt. Genius doesn’t keep to business hours, n’est-ce pas? I didn’t speak to her until she was finished.”

  “How long was that?” I asked.

  “Approximately a minute and a half. She looked so familiar, in a very distant way. Like a tune you suddenly recall from childhood and yet you can’t remember the lyrics or really anything beyond a handful of mysterious notes.” He sighed. “Now I realize it was Ash DeRouin. All grown up. I’d heard from one of our owners, Gabor, that she used to come in here and play years ago, as a teenager. But I didn’t make the connection.” He paused, his face pensive. “When she finished, she asked me politely if she could play the entire suite, the Assez Lent through the Epilogue. The performance takes about fifteen minutes. Naturally I said yes.” He smiled. “If she’d have asked to play every one of Beethoven’s sonatas, I’d have agreed. When she finished, she raised her head, gazing at me. She had a very piercing stare.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She thanked me. She had a low voice. Hoarse. A sor
t of swanlike way of moving. Immaculate surface. No idea what’s going on beneath. She sat there a moment saying nothing. I sensed it was difficult for her to speak. I wondered if English wasn’t her first language. She picked up her bag, and then …” His eyes drifted away from the piano, as if imagining Ashley there now, walking to the door. “I tried getting her to stay, but when I asked her name she said, ‘No one.’ And then she left.”

  “What was her demeanor?” I asked.

  “Demeanor?”

  “Did she seem depressed? Mentally unwell?”

  “Apart from her hesitation with talking? No. Not this time. This time she was quite satisfied when she finished. The way one might feel after a vigorous swim in the Pacific. Musicians feel that way after a good practice.” He cleared his throat, turning to stare out the window at the empty street. “I watched her drift down the sidewalk, as if she weren’t quite sure where she was going. Finally she moved west toward Broadway and was gone. That night when I got home, I remember very distinctly I couldn’t sleep, not the whole night. Yet I felt great calm. I’d been dealing with some personal issues of late, the details of which I’ll certainly spare you. But her sudden appearance for me was a gift. Part of it was because only I’d seen her. She could very well have been a figment of my imagination. One of Debussy’s demoiselles. I doubted I’d ever see her again.”

  “When did she come back?” I asked.

  He seemed saddened by the question. “Three days later.”

  “That would be October the seventh,” I said, making a note of it in my BlackBerry. “Do you remember the time of day?”

  “An hour after closing. Seven o’clock? Again, I was the last one here. Even our intern had disappeared.” He turned, gesturing at the large antique-looking leather notebook open on a table along the back wall. “We ask everyone who comes into Klavierhaus to sign the guestbook. If an artist has signed the Klavierhaus guestbook, it’s believed to help future recitals and technique. A sort of baptism, if you will. We’ve had all the legends sign it. Zimerman. Brendel. Lang Lang. Horowitz.”

  When it was clear the names meant little to us, he inhaled sharply, disheartened, and pointed over his shoulder to the administration alcove.

  “I was typing up the addresses and names when there was a knock on the glass. Technically, we were closed. But when I saw who it was, of course I let her in. As soon as I unlocked the door, however, I realized something was terribly wrong.”

  “What?” asked Hopper.

  Peter looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think she’d had a shower—perhaps hadn’t even taken off that coat—since I’d last seen her. Her hair was disheveled. She reeked of dirt and sweat. The cuffs of her jeans were filthy. Mud from the country, I thought to myself. She seemed drugged. It occurred to me she must be homeless. We’ve had quite a few vagrants enter the shop. They wander down here after sleeping on the steps of Saint Thomas on Fifth. The music draws them in.” He sighed. “She asked if it was all right if she played. I said yes. And she sat down right there.” He indicated the same lustrous Fazioli piano, gazing down at the empty brown leather seat. “She ran her hands over the keys and said, ‘I think Debussy today. He’s not so mad at me.’ Something to that effect. And then she—”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “She talked about the composer as if he were an acquaintance?”

  “Sure,” Peter said with a blithe nod.

  “Isn’t that a little strange?”

  “Not at all. Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can’t help it. Classical music isn’t just music. It’s a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song ‘Cosmic Love,’ she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, disorienting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. ‘The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.’ Well. It’s no different with Beethoven and Ravel. Into their music these composers poured their fiercest beings. When a pianist memorizes a piece, he or she gets to know the dead man intimately—giving rise to all the pleasures and difficulties such an intense relationship implies. You learn Mozart’s trickery, his ADD attention span. Bach’s yearning for acceptance, his intolerance for shortcuts. Liszt’s explosive temper. Chopin’s insecurity. And thus when you set out to make their music come alive in concert, on stage, in front of thousands, you very much need the dead man on your side. Because you’re bringing him back to life. It’s a bit like Frankenstein resuscitating his monster, you understand? It can be an astonishing miracle. Or it can all go horribly wrong.”

  I glanced at Hopper. He continued to stare at Peter, the look on his face something between absorption and skepticism. Nora was spellbound.

  “What happened this time?” I asked.

  “She began playing. The opening parallel fifths of La cathédrale engloutie—”

  “The opening parallel what?” interjected Nora, frowning.

  “La cathédrale engloutie. The Sunken Cathedral.”

  Peter, noting our obvious ignorance, beamed, unable to restrain his delight.

  “Claude Debussy. The French impressionist. It’s one of my very favorite preludes. It tells the story of a cathedral submerged at the bottom of the sea. On a clear day, it rises up out of the churning waves and fog, bells chiming ecstatically, to rest for mere seconds in the air, shimmering in the sun, before sinking down again in the fathomless depths, out of sight. Debussy instructs the musician to play the final chords pianissimo, at half-pedal, so it truly sounds as if there are church bells deep underwater, notes colliding, before fading and ending as all things do—as we all do—with a few reverberating chords and then silence.”

  He paused, his face darkening.

  “She couldn’t do it. Her playing—so revelatory before, such melting lyricism, such romance—was disturbing now. She tore into the music, but the notes eluded her. It was erratic. Despairing. And when she looked up at me, I …” He swallowed loudly. “Her eyes were bloodshot. They actually looked to be bleeding. I was filled with such horror by her face, how it had transformed so from the time I’d seen her before, I instantly left to phone the police. I left her playing here in front. But just as I entered the back room, she stopped. There was only silence. I peeked my head out. She was sitting very still, watching me with those eyes, as if she knew what I was doing. Suddenly she grabbed her bag and left. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “It was what truly frightened me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He wrung his hands, uneasy. “She moved like an animal.”

  “An animal?” Hopper repeated.

  Peter nodded. “It was too fast. It certainly wasn’t normal.”

  “Which direction did she go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I returned to the front, but there was no sign of her. I even stepped outside to take a look. She wasn’t anywhere. I locked up the shop immediately. I didn’t want to be in the store alone.”

  He lapsed into melancholic silence, staring at the floor. “She never came back. I thought about her. But I hadn’t told anyone until you came in.” He looked at Hopper. “I was relieved when you asked about her, so happy to know I hadn’t dreamt her out of thin air. I’ve … I’ve been under some pressure of late.” He flushed. “To say the least, it was nice to know I wasn’t going crazy.” His gaze returned to the piano. “She was a bit like that cathedral. Rising up, stunning me, decaying, and then vanishing, leaving only her echo. And me, so uncertain of what I’d seen.”

  “Do you have video surveillance in the store?” I asked.

  “We have an alarm system. But no cameras.”

  “Did she mention anything else? Where she was staying?”

  “Oh, no. We didn’t speak beyond what I told you.”

  “And she left nothing behind? No personal items?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Nora had moved over to the small table along the wall with the open guestbook, tu
rning back the pages.

  “That’s really all—oh, do be careful with that.” Peter scurried after her. “The pages are quite fragile, and it’s our only copy.”

  “I’m just wondering if she signed it,” said Nora, Peter looking on nervously over her shoulder.

  Hopper had stepped up to the Fazioli that Ashley had played, solemnly running his hand along the gleaming keys, playing a few sharp notes.

  I strode over to Nora. Having found the page marked October 4, she was running her finger down the list of scribbled names and addresses.

  “Daniel Hwang,” she read. “Yuja Li. Jessica Song. Kirill Luminovich. Boris Anthony.” She turned the page rather roughly, and Peter touched his forehead as if he might faint. “Kay Glass. Viktor Koslov. Ling Bl—”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Viktor Koslov.”

  “Before that.”

  “Kay Glass.”

  I stepped closer, incredulous, staring down at the page.

  It was scribbled in black pen, that familiar handwriting, identical, I was certain, to the note that Morgan Devold had shown us—and maybe even the envelope mailed to Hopper.

  “That’s her,” I said.

  33

  The streets were narrow, shriveled bodegas and faded walk-ups packed shoulder to shoulder. Upstairs windows, filled with plants and shampoo bottles, were lit up like dirty fish tanks in electric greens and blues. Every now and then we passed someone walking alone, usually Chinese, carrying orange plastic shopping bags or hurrying along in a down jacket. Almost everyone turned to stare in at us as if they knew—probably because we were riding in a taxi—we were trespassing.

  Our driver turned onto Pike Street, a wide, four-lane boulevard. To our left was a low brick building—MANHATTAN REPAIR COMPANY, read the sign—and on our right, what looked to be a public school.

  “That’s Henry Street,” Hopper said suddenly, craning his neck to make out the street sign. The cabdriver made the left turn.

  HONG KONG SUPERMARKET. JASMINE BEAUTY SALON. It was after seven o’clock, and every shop was closed, metal grates pulled down, padlocked.