Dan felt a need to gain the wisdom of Mueller’s counsel. He chose his words with care. “Reverend Mueller, what would you say if a scholar discovered a lost work . . . a work that was morally disturbing, and which should be condemned, but was composed by Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven? Or written by Shakespeare? Or painted by Raphael, Michelangelo, or Leonardo?” Dan attempted to make the question sound hypothetical. “Do we suppress the work? Or do we bring it out for public scrutiny and discussion?” Dan was taking a risk: he hoped Mueller wouldn’t, with his long experience as a pastor, notice the old tactic of a friend of mine has this problem.
“A scholar’s role is to pursue knowledge wherever it leads,” Mueller said. “My role is different.”
“That’s what I’m asking: How do you see it?”
“My role is to promote my religion. I can’t answer in specifics without knowing more.”
He waited for Dan to respond, but Dan didn’t want to tell him more.
“These issues seem very personal for you.”
Dan said nothing.
“I’m always here to talk.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you ever wondered why I attend conferences like these?” Mueller asked.
“Love of Bach’s music. Is any other explanation needed?”
“In my case there is a further explanation. For me, Bach’s cantatas and Passion settings are not museum pieces. They’re a living part of the liturgy. They teach my flock today very much as they taught the Lutherans of Bach’s day. I need to understand them, even if some of their messages are troubling.”
He stopped, clearly hoping Dan would engage with him on this issue, but Dan looked out across the bare meadows.
“How long is it, since Julie passed?”
It was a year and nine months, but Dan didn’t want to say it.
“Work, that’s the ticket,” Mueller said as if giving a cheer at a football game.
Mueller must have misinterpreted Dan’s silence for despair.
“Johann Sebastian Bach worked nonstop, even though he must have felt discouragement enough for all of us. His first wife died, ten of his children died, he was orphaned when he was young. Still he found a way to keep going.”
Dan felt compelled to respond, to maintain at least a semblance of courtesy toward this man he’d known for years, this man who was trying, in his own way, to help him. “That’s right.”
“He felt joy, also. Joy in faith.” Warming to his theme, Mueller continued, “Excluding our Lord, who was divine, Johann Sebastian Bach was the greatest genius in the history of humanity. He enjoyed beer, rich food, a good smoke, and strong coffee, with a coffee cantata to prove it. And he enjoyed sex, too, with twenty children to prove that. I’d advise you to remember this. You’re still young. You have another lifetime ahead of you.”
Mueller took a drag on his cigarette.
“This is my advice to you today: live in the image of our hero, no matter what modern medicine has to say. Rich food, strong tobacco, stronger coffee, good German beer, and frequent sex—within the sanctity of marriage, of course.”
“I suppose we could do worse,” Dan said.
The bell rang, calling them back for the next session.
Chapter 25
On Friday evening, Scott Schiffman sat on the balcony of the Metropolitan Museum and enjoyed a mojito. He’d arrived early and secured a terrific table, at the balustrade on the left side, from which perch he could look down on the Great Hall and watch people coming and going. Monumental, shadowed, airy, this was most romantic place in Manhattan for a drink, especially at the beginning of a relationship. Scott said this with authority, having investigated many such places over the years. He’d arranged this meeting to bring Susanna up to date on his research. He also wanted to encourage in her a sense of connection to the MacLean.
Who was he kidding? He wanted to get to know her better. She’d sparked his interest.
There she was, walking across the Great Hall toward the central stairway. He willed her to turn and look up, to see him waiting. He stood. She did turn, scanning the balcony. He waved.
She didn’t see him. She joined the admissions line and disappeared from his view.
“Hello.”
She was before him. She put out her hand, deflecting his instinctive move to give her a hug. He shook her hand.
“Hope you didn’t have trouble finding me,” he said.
“Not at all. You’re exactly where you said you’d be.”
Scott wondered if he might have done better to sit somewhere else and keep her guessing. A black-clad server arrived to take their drinks order. Susanna asked for white wine, and Scott, a second mojito.
Susanna perused the menu. “Let’s try the ‘Cabrales blue-cheese-stuffed Medjool dates with Serrano ham, roasted almonds.’ That sounds great.”
Precisely the type of adventuresome choice that boded well for the evening, in every way. A woman who was attracted to Cabrales blue-cheese-stuffed Medjool dates with Serrano ham and roasted almonds—God alone knew what else she’d enjoy. Scott’s imagination took flight.
“I’m glad you suggested that we meet here,” she said. “I used to be a docent on the weekends until . . .” He heard the odd pause in her phrasing. “My divorce. I’d like to begin again. Now that . . .” Again the pause. “It’s resolved.”
“I grew up a few blocks away,” Scott said, joining her in covering over whatever she wasn’t saying.
“Did you take the museum for granted, growing up nearby?”
“My sisters were constantly bringing me here when they were theoretically babysitting me. They’d sit outside smoking and gossiping with their friends while I was supposed to wear myself out by walking up and down the front steps.”
“Could be fun.”
“I heard a lot of foreign languages, I’ll say that. I was under strict instructions never to tell our mother about these excursions, under penalty of death by pinching.”
The conversation flowed from there, lighthearted, stressless, like a dozen conversations he’d enjoyed here in the past. Their appetizer was even more luscious than Scott had expected. After finishing their drinks and splitting the check (at her insistence), they went to see a much-heralded Picasso exhibition. Scott didn’t like it. The exhibit was too large, without a central organizing principle. The MacLean did better with its exhibitions, creating small presentations focused on one narrow topic.
He didn’t say this, however, because Susanna appeared to be, if not exactly enjoying the show, examining the paintings with interest. As they neared the end, Susanna circled back to a grim portrait of a woman laundress bent over an ironing board. Woman Ironing, painted in 1901. Scott stood beside her, but Susanna didn’t seem to be present to him anymore. She studied the woman’s face, which to Scott held a dreamlike expression. The woman might be bent double from her burdens, but in her mind, she was far off, in another, better world.
“I think we’ve seen enough of this show,” Susanna said, walking toward the exit with a resolve that made Scott fear she’d seen enough of him, too. Once they were out in the main corridor, she seemed to revive. “Whenever I’m here, I like to visit my favorite painting.”
From her ease, Scott understood that she wasn’t annoyed with him. “Which is?”
“You’ll see,” she said in a playful tone that pleased him.
“I’d love to be introduced to your favorite painting.” Scott heard himself sounding a little too eager, but she rewarded him with a smile.
Off they went, through a maze of large rooms overflowing with European paintings and sculpture . . . Ingres, Toulouse-Lautrec, Redon, Degas, bronzes and paintings of ballet dancers wherever he turned. He wondered if she’d lost her way, but no, she strode before him with confidence. They entered a smaller, darkened room. The painting in the far corner seemed to glow, drawing him close.
“Here it is,” she said. “Moonlight, Strandgade 30. It was done by a Danish painter, Vilhelm Hammershøi.”
The p
ainting measured about sixteen by twenty. The palette was in shades of gray. The image showed a nineteenth-century interior, with moonlight pouring through a long window. Disturbingly, there was no view out the window. Scott read the label, which described Hammershøi as a painter of silence and light. The window, according to the label, looked out onto a loggia.
“It’s so lonely,” Scott said.
“It’s peaceful,” Susanna said.
“The window doesn’t open onto the outside.”
“But the room is filled with light.”
Scott certainly wouldn’t have chosen this as the one he liked best.
“I always expect to see a woman in the painting,” Susanna said. “A woman with her back to us, staring at the moonlight—that’s how I see the painting in my memory. One day I realized that I’m the woman missing from the painting. Not me personally. Everyone who views the painting inhabits that room.”
“I don’t think I do,” Scott said.
“The question for me is, how does an artist portray our inner lives? Like this, I think: by creating a place of peaceful reflection.”
Scott sensed a sadness in her that the painting comforted.
He wanted to comfort her, too.
The room was deserted. Even the guard, a stout woman, stood at the entry to the next room. Scott decided to take a risk. Not a wild or outrageous risk. In fact, it wasn’t a risk at all. It was a normal step along a road he’d traveled many times. They were standing side by side, and gently he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. She turned toward him, as he expected.
And pushed him away.
“What are you doing?” she said in a museum whisper filled with anger. She stepped back and held her hands up, as if to defend herself from him.
“Hey, it’s okay.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Who gave you the right?” She looked shocked, whether from what he’d done or from her own reaction, he couldn’t tell. “Stay away from me.”
“Okay, I will.”
This had never happened to him before. He had no idea what he’d done wrong. He hadn’t been aggressive. He’d put his arm around an available woman. Plenty of women had responded positively to this move over the years, and the ones who hadn’t—a simple step away sufficed to show that his advance wasn’t welcome and no hard feelings either way. Susanna’s reaction was way overblown. Scott couldn’t understand it. She didn’t look like an innocent. Far from it. And besides, he hadn’t even meant the gesture in a sexual way. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You did upset me.”
“Hey, all you have to do is say no.” Now he put his hands up, defending himself. “No is no.”
“I trusted you.”
“It’s not like I attacked you.”
“You’re right. Thank you for not attacking me.”
Scott was flummoxed. Thank you for not attacking me? “I don’t need to attack you or any other woman. To be frank, the problem is usually the other way around.”
This made her laugh. “I can well imagine.” She had a gentle laugh, and she looked even more lovely now that she wasn’t frightened. Yes, frightened—that’s what she’d been. This worldly woman had been frightened of him. Why?
“We’re in a public place. There’s a guard at the door.” Scott gestured toward the entryway, and as if on cue, the guard turned, her eyes glancing over them as she scanned the room.
“Yes, a public place. I know.” Susanna spoke more calmly now. “I think we’d better go.”
She walked back the way they’d come, toward the central corridor, ignoring the artistic masterpieces crowded around them. He hastened to join her.
When they were side by side, she said, “I need to apologize.” She stared ahead. “The problem is I was attacked, about a year and a half ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was raped.”
He was horrified. He wanted to grab her arm, bring her to a stop, and ask for a full explanation. But clearly she didn’t want that. “Did you know the guy?” He regretted the question and didn’t know why he asked it, except it was the first thing that came to his mind. What happened was terrible whether she knew the guy or not.
“He was a stranger. He grabbed me on the street, on the same block where I lived then. Not long afterward, my husband left me.”
Her voice carried a savagery that Scott had never expected from her. She seemed to be defending herself from her own pain, as if the brutal tone set up a barrier between what she’d suffered and her real self.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” he said. “I’m sorry I surprised you. Thank you for explaining.”
They reached the museum’s central stairway. Scott had a vision of himself at four or five years old, proudly walking down the stairs by himself, hand on the railing, his mother following behind him. As he stood next to Susanna, the memory saddened him, both because of the passage of time and because his life had been so easy, so innocent.
“So you see,” Susanna said, taking on an objective tone, “my reaction had nothing to do with you personally. It’s a problem I’m working on, not appropriate for discussion during a visit to the museum. We should continue our evening as if nothing happened.”
“That’s what you want to do? Pretend it never happened?”
“Yes.”
But that wasn’t right, Scott thought as they walked down the steps.
“Let’s tour the Greek and Roman wing,” she said, taking charge, reminding him of his elder sister, Lara, during her head-girl phase at prep school.
He wasn’t going to press her to discuss what she didn’t want to discuss, but as they walked across the Great Hall, his regret increased.
The Greek and Roman galleries were filled with images of naked men and women: stiff Archaic-period sculptures of nudes; sensuous painted nudes decorating terra-cotta vases; bronze nudes holding up incense burners; idealized, voluptuous Hellenistic nudes in polished marble. Scott felt awkward, and wondered if she did, too. Evidently not.
“Greek and Roman art was one of my specialty areas when I was a docent,” Susanna said. “I’ve always loved this part of the museum.”
Scott stood beside her as they gazed at a more-than-life-sized statue of Aphrodite, a Roman copy of a Greek original. The marble was so smooth he felt an urge to run his fingertips over it. To caress the sculpted breasts.
Glancing at Susanna, who appeared to be reviewing the descriptive label with genuine interest, he felt an unexpected desire to protect her. Even as he maintained the distance that he’d determined to be correct, approximately fifteen inches away, he felt close to her, closer than he’d felt to a half-dozen women at least, around whom he’d invitingly wrapped his arm while touring these very halls.
Chapter 26
LEIPZIGERSTRASSE 3
BERLIN, PRUSSIA
September 1826
Seeking solitude, Sara left the reception on Lea’s terrace. She was in an odd mood, and she wanted be on her own. Her life was filled with too much talk. Because she knew essentially everyone at Lea’s gathering today (indeed had hosted many of them at her own home last night), Sara felt a freedom to wander alone, trusting no one would take offense. Refusing the refreshments offered by the hovering footmen, she followed the paths that meandered among the shade trees.
When Lea and Abraham bought this estate, with its palais and seven-acre garden, the house had been in a shambles. They’d spent a fortune rebuilding it. The estate was in an undeveloped section of the city, near the Royal Porcelain Factory. The factory’s chimneys rose in the distance.
With thick shrubbery now lining the paths, Sara could no longer hear the merriment on the terrace. A clearing opened before her.
And there they were, Lea’s children, although they were hardly children anymore. Each held a book, and as Sara drew closer, she realized they were reciting Shakespeare.
“Fare thee well, nymph. Er
e he do leave this grove, / Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love,” said Paul, a dark-haired, serious boy who would turn fourteen this year.
“Re-enter Puck.” Rebecka gave the stage direction succinctly. At fifteen, Rebecka was plump and sweet-tempered.
They were performing Ein Sommernachtstraum, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare was en vogue since the recent publication of the collected plays translated into German by August Wilhelm Schlegel, the brother-in-law of the children’s aunt on their father’s side; such was their tightly knit community.
“You play Oberon now,” Paul said to Felix. “I want to be Puck.”
“No, I’m playing Puck.” At seventeen, Felix seemed young for his years. His formal clothes looked too large for him, as if they were a theatrical costume.
“You were Puck before,” Paul said.
Fanny, almost twenty-one and apparently filling the role of director, stepped forward: “Felix, you’ll play Oberon now.” As the eldest, Fanny was generally the sibling in charge of their games. Poor Fanny was a phrase that Sara often heard whispered at gatherings. Even Lea privately admitted that her eldest daughter didn’t meet society’s standard for prettiness.
“Oh, all right.” Felix found the lines: “Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.”
“Ay, there it is,” Paul said.
“I pray thee give it me,” Felix said, continuing: “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows . . .”
“Tante!” Fanny interrupted her brother. “Come and join us. You can play Titania.”
Sara walked closer. “I don’t think so, my dear.”
“We need you. My sister is hopeless as Titania.”
“It’s true,” Rebecka said. “But only because I am the perfect Helena. I’ve also performed Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, all to great acclaim,” she added with a dramatic gesture of her hand.
“You are kind to ask, but I cannot play Titania.” At her elevated age, sixty-five this year, Sara felt self-conscious performing theatricals. Nonetheless she was flattered by the invitation. “Why don’t you play Titania yourself, Fanny?”
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