I still didn’t know how I felt about the music, or what it meant about my talents. In another, prettier life it would have been marvelous to explore the significance of it, to share with the rest of the world this incredible thing that had happened to me. But in our situation, the manuscripts had another function that was far more important. To display the manuscripts and confess to having copied them would stop Bridget for good and save us from her once and for all. After that, she would never be able to push Humphrey out on stage again.
And Bridget would know all that, the instant she got a glimpse of the music.
“Come. I show,” said Laszlo, starting for the hall. “Is upstairs.”
“She’ll destroy it, you idiot!” I bellowed. “Don’t you understand?” I grabbed his coattails and pulled him away from the door.
“Luc. Humphrey. Get him,” ordered Bridget.
I fought like a wildman, but I was no match for the two of them. In a moment they were both sitting on me.
“Oh, Laszlo, don’t you see, don’t you see what she is?” I wept. “She’ll destroy it, she will, she will, she will …”
He watched me curiously.
“Come on, show me,” Bridget said.
“But I want to see it, too,” said Luc.
“Me, too,” said Humphrey.
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to find some way to keep Sam under control,” said Bridget from the door. “Knock him out or something.”
“But … how?” Luc wondered, kneeling across my thighs.
Humphrey, straddling my chest, didn’t need to ask. I saw his big malformed fist come swinging down toward the side of my head. Then I didn’t see anything for a while.
15
THE VOICES seemed to be coming from a great distance, calling my name. My head hurt. I groaned. I knew there was some urgent reason to wake up, only my eyes didn’t want to move.
But consciousness trickled slowly back, and with it came the miserable awareness of what had just happened. Then I smelled smoke. At that point, I saw no reason to open my eyes at all.
A cold and slimy liquid splashed across my face— stale sugary tea. It was disgustingly sticky. I blinked, lifted my head and tried to wipe it away. Humphrey and Laszlo loomed over me. The world was blurred, but I could see the tears on Humphrey’s cheeks.
“Sam, wake up, wake up, they’re burning the music!” he wailed.
“Do you serve towels with your showers, Humphrey?” I said.
“But Sam! That music proves you’re the special one, the one with Magyar’s ghost!”
“Here. Drink,” Laszlo said. He extended an ancient bottle toward me. It didn’t smell like formaldehyde. I drank.
I yelped and sat up, almost knocking him over. “What’s that?” —
“Is brandy from plum pit Very special.”
“Sam, they’re burning it!” Humphrey said.
“What the hell did you expect them to do?” I said, rubbing my head. “You didn’t have to hit me so hard.”
“But now no one will ever believe what really happened,” Humphrey whimpered. “Or how special you are.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re both wrong, you dumb jerks.” Anger at their stupidity was taking the fuzziness away. “Anyone who saw that music would think I just copied it It’s the only logical explanation. Think about it. It would make them stop believing.” My head throbbed, and I groaned. “Then Bridget would have to stop pushing you, Humphrey. You wouldn’t have to perform all the time. You could do whatever you wanted. But now she can go pushing us around forever. That’s why she’s burning it Get it? Everything’s … Oh, God … It’s just going to be the same.”
“You mean … you would lie about what happened, about the music, tell them it was fake, just to help me?” “I might have.”
Laszlo drank deeply from the bottle and smacked his lips. “Good stuff all right,” he said.
“Damn you!” I snarled at him. “Why did you … " But then I felt too hopeless to go on being angry. “Oh well, I guess you didn’t know. How could anybody know what she’s like? I never had a chance to tell you.”
Laszlo took another snort and corked the bottle. “Come, we go now,” he said.
“But Mama and Papa …” Humphrey was bewildered. “How can they burn it? They can do that? They don’t even care what it means?”
“Yeah, they can do that, Humphrey. Don’t you know them by now?”
“Come, we go, must go,” Laszlo said more urgently. “They finish soon.”
“Go where?” I said. “What difference does it make?”
“Is that why you told me everything? To try to stop them from using me?” Humphrey said, screwing up his face as he puzzled it out.
The brandy had made me a little drunk, and it seemed too difficult at this moment to say anything but the truth. “I mostly did it to hurt you. I was jealous, like you said. But also, yes, I couldn’t stand the whole thing any more. I thought that was the way to stop it. What a laugh.”
Laszlo tugged at my shoulder. “Pliz, must go, fast, go quiet and fast.” What was he afraid of, anyway?
“But how could they just go on lying to me that way?” Humphrey said woefully. “And you stopped lying, Sammy …”
My feelings for him always seemed to emerge at the oddest moments. With one arm I weakly embraced him. “I’m sorry, Humphrey. I wish I’d never been a part of it. It’s rough. They’re … But I care about you, I love you, anyway. I know it sounds funny, but I do. Whatever that’s worth.”
“You told me, you told me.” The tears made Humphrey’s eyes unaccountably beautiful. “You did want to stop it. You were the only one who cared.”
“Yeah, but you liked it, Humphrey. For you, it was fun.”
“Sort of, at first. But then it got different. I didn’t even know how much I hated it.” He looked up at the ceiling. We could hear footsteps and voices. There seemed to be wisps of smoke drifting through the cracks between the boards. “They … how can they? Now no one will believe you.”
“Come, come we go! Pick him up, Humpy. Is more important than you know!”
I didn’t relish the idea of staying to witness Bridget’s triumph. “Oh, all right, all right,” I said. Humphrey gently helped me to my feet. A fact was coming back to me that had only begun to assume importance in the moment before Bridget and Luc had arrived. “But Humphrey, you know what? I think maybe you’re special, too, I think—”
“Yeh, yeh, yeh, outside.” Laszlo was twitching around now in an agony of impatience. “Is more to tell! Must get outside now!”
My legs were shaky. Humphrey helped me down the stairs. We were even slower than Laszlo, who waited for us, hopping, at the front door. He pushed us out, then turned back to lock the door carefully. “Will be time before they get out,” he said. “Come.”
In the alley their cab was still waiting, which seemed amazing until we saw that the driver had fallen asleep. “Quick, inside,” said Laszlo.
“We don’t have any money,” I informed him.
“Is no problem, money. Inside.”
“Don’t tell me you have enough to pay for a cab!”
“I pay. We go.”
I didn’t believe him but saw no reason to refuse. We crawled in. Laszlo nudged the driver until he jerked awake, then babbled at him in German. The car shuddered and lurched down the alley.
After several sharp turns, Laszlo stopped looking behind and sank back into the seat, rubbing his hands and cackling.
“You’re taking this whole thing very lightly,” I said, bothered by his good humor. Didn’t he care about the music?
“Is adventure, yeh?” he said.
I couldn’t figure out what was the matter with him. “Sure, until they find us again. You said you had more to tell. So out with it.”
“Aha, yeh.” He took hold of Humphrey’s hands. “And how you feel, when you play Laszlo Magyar music, yeh, Humpy?”
“Huh?” said Humphrey stupidly.
“Oh, t
hat’s right.” It was the fact I hadn’t had a chance to mention, back in the house: The unexpected artistry with which Humphrey had performed the Magyar pieces. “You played that music really well, Humphrey. It was the only music you ever played like a musician.”
“Yeh, yeh! How you feel when play?” said Laszlo, bouncing up and down on the seat
“Well, I …” We passed a streetlight, and I saw Humphrey’s brow wrinkle the way it did when he was thinking hard.
“Did you feel difterent than when you play Bach?” I asked him. My interest was purely theoretical; it was too late for the truth, however miraculous, to make much difference.
“Oh, yeah,” Humphrey said. “I guess I didn’t think about it; I just did it. Everything else I played, I thought about it all the time. But that music I didn’t worry about … about Papa, or anything. I just had fun with it.”
Laszlo clapped his hands. “See? See? Is influence here too, yeh? This also we explore.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” His meaningless enthusiasm only made me more bitter.
“We three. We go together, away from them. Work for ourselves, together. No make concert. We explore. We learn. We solve deep mystery.”
“Oh, stop it! You’re just making it worse.” Of course I had considered running away many times, but Bridget had always squashed that idea. Humphrey and I had no money, we had no way of earning money without them, unless we wanted to dig ditches or wait on tables, as Bridget frequently pointed out. The only realistic thing to do was go back and keep playing along with their filthy scheme, soul-destroying though it was. “We can’t go away, and we’ll never solve any mystery,” I said. “We don’t have anywhere to go, or any money, or anything.” I was feeling more miserable by the minute. “This dumb cab ride that we can’t pay for is the whole adventure.” I looked dully out the window. “Where are you taking us, anyway?”
“To train, to boat,” he said gleefully.
He must have really flipped his lid. “Come off it. Who’s going to pay? We have nothing, and you don’t even have enough to buy a new pair of pants.”
His laughter now had the same abandon as Bridget’s, only it wasn’t proud and triumphant, it was warm and full of fun. I shrank back against the door and scowled at him. He really was a lunatic after all.
The thought of going back to Bridget made me want to curl up and die. But what else was there to do? Even if I ran away, what would I do with Humphrey? Rotten as it was for him to be with Bridget and Luc, it was probably better than living homelessly from hand to mouth with me.
“Who wants new pants? Why waste money o pants? I have plenty money for important things,” Laszlo cried. “How you think I travel around, follow you? Money from father, of course. How you say? Ah yeh. Royalties! Inheritances. And now we make more money, by sell music. Music I been saving long, long time for … How you say? … Oh, yes, for rain of day.”
“Now what are you talking about?”
“Last compositions of father, last seven compositions, yeh? Very valuable.”
Now I saw what effect their crime had had on him. The loss of that precious music had made him mad. “They burned it up, don’t you remember?” I said cruelly. “It’s gone, forever.”
“No, no, only copy. They burn copy.”
“What?” Humphrey and I cried.
“You think I stupid, leave precious music there, in house in town? Oh, no, no.” He wagged his finger at me engagingly. “Maybe person can break in and steal. Oh, no. I write out copy, soon as he die. I keep copy, have with me. That my writing, not his.”
“You mean you have the originals somewhere else?” I was still refusing to let it sink in.
“Yeh, yeh, of course. I save for day of rain. In safe place, very very safe place, no one find ever.”
I glanced at Humphrey as we both bent over the old man. Humphrey was looking at me in a new way, as though I were an equal, neither better nor worse than him. The electric excitement that crackled between us was more than a physical sensation; I felt as though I were really waking up for the first time in my life. “Where?” I said with difficulty. “Where is the music?”
“Wonderful safe place, inherit from father. My father leave me house, money, but also leave me another place, secret place. Is safe there, music. Is safe on island.”
16
NOW WE ARE on the island.
It’s a small island, a rocky meadow pushed up out of the Danube like the last ragged squirt of a giant toothpaste tube. The endlessness of water and sky is everywhere around us, and the wind. Nothing crowds in on us at all. Humphrey says it’s a lot like the island in his dream. I haven’t gotten around to thinking much about that.
Actually the most dreamlike thing about the place is the house, which Magyar had built to look like a miniature gothic ruin. The arched hall and the two little towers aren’t particularly cozy. But that couldn’t matter less—Magyar’s stolen Bösendorfer grand is still in excellent condition.
It’s been almost four months since Laszlo brought us here, picked up the scores, and then went off to arrange a fast, lucrative deal with his father’s German publisher. The publicity Humphrey had achieved only added to the value of the music, of course. Laszlo let the publisher handle the press, but waited around just long enough to collect a good sample of the results. Then he rushed back to us with the papers, as well as several cases of Coke and a few other necessities.
It was a curious experience to sit in the little gazebo on the water’s edge and read about Laszlo’s fraudulent plot—and Bridget and Luc’s complicity, of course. Humphrey, being a malleable child, escaped much of the blame, and I was barely mentioned at all. Laszlo was accused of sullying his father’s name by using Humphrey to boost the value of the scores he had been planning to release all along. Bridget and Luc were censured for involving their child in this sordid scheme. But their treatment was mild compared to what they would have received if we’d told more of the details. Bridget knew they were getting off easy. She made no counterattacks, no denials, only “no comment.” After the publisher produced the authenticated scores, accompanied by Laszlo’s confession of the “arrangement” he had made with her, what else could she say? That we had somehow innocently come up with the music ourselves, without knowing of the scores’ existence? She knew no one would fall for an alibi so fantastic and pitifully transparent.
The helplessness of her position must have been frustrating for her to say the least, and I wondered how she was taking it out on poor Luc. I also wondered about her own interpretation of the events. Once she had taken the immediate practical measure of burning the copies, had she ever allowed the fact to sink in that they were real evidence of the supernatural? Or was that phenomenon just another messy elephant to be made invisible by the power of her will?
Humphrey, certainly, was plagued by the irony of the situation. Having been gifted by the supernatural, I was now sitting by and allowing the world to dismiss it as a commonplace case of fraud. He saw it as a tremendous sacrifice that I had made in order to rescue him. He couldn’t get over it at first and wouldn’t stop talking about the unfairness of life. Unlike me, the past hadn’t conditioned him to accept injustice.
I finally calmed him down by promising that we would tell the real story eventually, that someday we would get in touch with Nitpikskaya, perhaps even offer ourselves as subjects at the institute in Moscow. We had plenty of time for all that; we would never lose the knowledge of what had happened to us. What mattered most at the moment was that Laszlo had gotten the money from the music quickly—without trying to make any supernatural claims about it—and Bridget had been exposed. Best of all, by releasing the music as we had, we had put a stop to Humphrey’s performing. As I had hoped, the scandal had wrecked his career for the time being. Even if Bridget should find out where we were hiding, it was too late for her to put him back on the concert platform.
Neither of us wanted to be with Bridget and Luc. Humphrey had been hurt badly by the knowl
edge of how they had duped him and made use of him. Then, to see them cold-bloodedly burn that music had been enough, to blacken whatever good feelings were left. It was painful for him just to think about them, let alone go back to live with them. They had taken so much from both of us that now we had nothing left to give them, and certainly they had nothing to offer us any more. All they could do was interfere with our mutual healing process. Perhaps at some time in the future we would recover enough to face them again, but for the time being they had severed the bonds between us as completely as the trolley wheels had severed Magyar’s head and hands.
I was eighteen and legally free of them, but Humphrey wasn’t By law, they could get him back—if they could find him. Fritz at the hotel had told them how to get to Laszlo’s house, but the island was another matter. It had been Magyar senior’s secret retreat in the last century; even then, hardly anyone had known of its existence. Now only Laszlo and a handful of dour river boat men could locate the place. These he paid enough to bring us the supplies we needed and to keep their mouths shut. Even the publishers didn’t know about the island, but they had told the press, at Laszlo’s instruction, that Humphrey and I were safe and well. Bridget and Luc know we’re all right, and that’s about as much as we feel we owe them.
Now that we’ve had a chance to calm down, things are really pretty nice. There’s so much space here, and Laszlo seems genuinely thrilled to have us. He never married or had any children, and he claims this is the first time in years that he hasn’t been lonely. Certainly he couldn’t find a more receptive audience for his stories about his father, which he can tell by the hour. It seems that Magyar was hardly an ideal parent himself, by the way. His attachment to his son was as sporadic as his interest in his various lovers. But he did, at least, leave him the royalties from his music, as well as the house in Vienna, the island, and those last seven compositions. And Laszlo adores him. He’s even beginning to write another book about him.
Fingers Page 15
