by Noel Hynd
Thirty-seven
Rolf and Diana flew first-class to London from New York. They took the 10 A.M. British Airways flight which brought them into Heathrow at nine-thirty in the evening. A Bentley and driver picked up Rolf and Diana at the airport and drove them to Claridge’s, where they would stay. The concert was in three days.
The next morning they awoke comfortably in a roomy, solid suite on the third floor overlooking Brook Street, directly above the entrance to Claridge’s ballroom. Two huge bay windows and a narrow balcony and porch allowed them to step outside from their suite and look down at the other arrivals at the hotel.
Even though this was the end of August, the hotel was packed with the wealthy and influential from various nations: Saudi oil barons, multinational bankers, Swiss who-knew-what, beautiful multi-lingual women who seemed to wait under the canopy at the main entrance and the occasional American film director or movie star. Rolf had stayed here twice before when playing London. He was as comfortable as any man could be at $2,500 per day.
Well, it was the promoter’s money, after all, he reasoned, so why not enjoy it? Television rights to the Covent Garden concert had been sold to the public broadcasting system in the United States and various live and cable television outlets in Europe. With the package so big, only the most jaundiced of accountants could have blinked at the extortionate hotel expense.
On his first day in London, Geiger went to Covent Garden to meet his conductor, Heinrich von Sauer and members of the orchestra.
Von Sauer was a jowly man of about sixty. He had a tangle of white hair framing his sprawling face and a big low belly. He spoke many languages, but none perfectly. His German had a Swiss-Austrian lilt to it. His English had a Slavic accent but he had learned French in Germany and conveyed strange echoes of the Third Reich when he spoke of Debussy. His Italian was a disaster as he’d learned it in Belgium from a Sicilian mistress, or so he liked to explain. And on it went. Nonetheless, he was charming and intelligent in all the languages he massacred.
“There is just one thing that remains,” von Sauer said. “Order.”
“What sort of order?” Rolf asked.
“Which comes second, which comes third? Totentanz or the Emperor? There seems some confusion remains from New York.”
“Right now, I’m thinking Totentanz third, following a second intermission.
More brilliantly ruptured English:
“I’d like to tell the orchestra at certain.”
“Tell them,” Rolf said, “that we will close with Dance of Death.”
“Appropriate. And you will probably be asked for an encore. Unusual as that is, that is often you predilection, as well as that of your public. Not that it involves the orchestra, but have you an idea? I am wondering.”
“I was thinking of the final movement of the Moonlight Sonata,” Geiger explained.
Von Sauer nodded inscrutably, intrigued and impressed.
The first movements of the Moonlight Sonata, with its calm settling passages, was more a signature piece than appropriate encore material, even though Geiger had broken accepted custom in the past by playing it. The final movement of the Moonlight Sonata, a stormy, whirlwind that forced the fingers of the pianist to fly across the keyboard like a crazed bird, was an arresting choice.
“Inspired,” von Sauer said. “We are alike thinking of this.”
“Hope so,” said Geiger.
A rehearsal took place that afternoon and another was scheduled for the next morning. There would be a final one on the morning of the concert.
Diana always found things to do by herself in London. She disappeared to museums and art galleries, then went by Covent Garden to meet Rolf for dinner on their first evening after arrival. Seeing some theater on the first night might have been nice, but it was not possible in light of jet lag and the demanding nature of Rolf’s schedule.
Late on the second afternoon in London, Rolf managed to slip away to do some shopping. He purchased one item for Diana. It was a silk scarf at Liberty’s, red and blue with a montage of musical patterns on it, not the least of which was a grand piano. The scarf was a beautiful sturdy piece of fabric—both delicate and strong.
He examined it carefully in the store, even doubling it up several times and examining how well it would work if it were made into a rope or garrote. A pair of strong male hands using this could strangle a woman perfectly, he mused. Wouldn’t Rabinowitz be pleased?
Geiger paid for the scarf and, after leaving the store, threw away the packaging. He would present the scarf to her himself at just the right moment. That moment, as he now saw it, would be between the second and third works of his London Performance.
He walked back to Claridge’s from Liberty’s with his inevitable plan for Diana’s immediate future running through his mind. He crossed Regent Street carefully. The London busses, cruising close to the curb from the ‘wrong’ direction, made ghosts of more than a few inattentive foreign visitors each year.
He arrived back at Claridge’s at six. He and Diana went to a comedy in the West End that evening, then found a late supper at a small Italian trattoria in Mayfair. They returned to the hotel past midnight. They settled onto the big sofa in their living room. They opened a split of champagne that had been sent from the manager and placed it on ice.
“Want to see what I bought today?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She hopped up from the sofa, then reappeared a few moments later almost nude. She was in a soft pink peignoir, low at the throat and high at the hem. Nothing else.
“Like it?” she asked.
“What’s not to like?” Rolf asked.
She came back over and he took her in his arms.
“I bought you a little something, too,” he said. “But I’ll give it to you during the concert tomorrow.”
“During?”
“It will be more memorable that way.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s time to take things off, not put them on.” She laughed.
“Your hands are so talented,” she said. “I’d never push them away.”
For both of them, it was a perfect ending to a memorable evening. They took the champagne with them to the bedroom, and made love for the first time in two weeks.
Diana took it as evidence that the dark mood that Rolf had fallen into had finally lifted. Rolf saw the act as a renewal of their relationship, a reminder of how much he loved her both spiritually and physically.
Given all of that, on the eve of the concert at Covent Garden, the scarf and his plans for the second intermission the next day, fit perfectly into place.
Thirty-eight
It was not unusual for Rolf to be restless the night before a major concert. Geiger awakened midway between 3 A.M. and 4. It was an hour when sometimes truths emerged from sleep. It was also the hour when ghostly spirits occasionally emerged from worlds unknown.
Diana slept peacefully under his arm. But from where he lay in bed, he could see that there was a strange light in the next room. And he distantly—almost subliminally—heard a magically euphoric violin. He lifted his arm and rose from the bed, leaving her warmth behind.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness in his bedroom. Then he walked to the living room. The light was a strange bluish yellow and it came from outside the hotel.
For another moment, he waited, half-expecting Rabinowitz to emerge from the night. And for half an instant, Rolf thought he felt Rabinowitz’s hand on his wrist in the darkness. But when he moved his wrist, there was no obstruction. And there was no trace of Rabinowitz anywhere else. Geiger was alone. Or assumed he was.
Something compelled him to the bay windows and doors that overlooked Brook Street. He walked to the glass doors and looked out. A fog has settled upon London. All he could see were the brick upper stories of the buildings across the street, plus their black rooftops.
He reached to the lock on the portals and opened them, stepping out on
to the small balcony. He thought of Claire and for some reason he thought of Anila, the young Italian girl who had been his first lover at the Negresco in Nice many years earlier.
Then he felt a shiver. He stepped forward and looked downward. The fog dissipated. He felt another deeper shiver because something all too familiar was taking place down below him. His eyes tracked a human figure across Brook Street. Geiger was incredulous. It was the clown again. The polka-dotted clown he had seen twice before. First on a bright three-quarter-moon night on Seventy-Third Street, just before the haunting with Rabinowitz had begun. Then Rolf believed he had caught a glimpse of it again in Nantucket.
The clown wore the same getup as both previous times. A baggy jump suit, black with big white polka dots on it. White face. The violin. Oversized shoes and a wide flat hat.
Here was a complete reenactment of what Geiger had seen in New York, and he searched his soul as to why this would happen. And he looked at it in terror this time because he knew that the clown was always a harbinger of something otherworldly.
He remembered the name of the clown: Umberto. A good strong Italian name that had come straight out of nowhere.
The clown looked up at him. Then the ghostly musician cradled the violin in his left arm. He held the bow aloft and put bow to strings and began to play.
Geiger watched, transfixed. The tune the violinist played was deeply passionate. It fit all the emotions he had felt for Diana while he made love with her, while he had held her incredible body in his arms. Geiger broke into a violent sweat.
Was the clown mocking him or trying to ignite further passions? He felt a trembling within his own body. He turned quickly away. He rushed back into the hotel and closed the windowed doors. But then came the violin music again, carried on the wind, and through the closed window. The instrument was in the hands of a master, and so were Geiger’s emotions.
He turned again, reopened the doors to the balcony, and looked back down and saw that no one other than the violinist was on the street.
“No one—not one other person—was present to give any notice to the clown playing such beautiful music. It was as if this performance were just for him.”
Deep down, he knew it was. The clown kept playing.
Geiger took this in for another few seconds, then turned. He left his hotel room. He didn’t wait for an elevator. Rather, he ran down the massive staircase at the core of the hotel and made a fool out of himself as he raced out through the deserted lobby onto Brook Street.
He stood for a moment.
From the opposite side of the street, the clown-violinist watched him. There was again no doubt in Rolf’s mind that he was looking at a ghost. The ghost stared back at him and beckoned.
The music had stopped. A lone passerby watched him. The night porter from Claridge’s appeared beside Rolf. “Is there anything we can help you with, sir?” the porter asked.
“No. No,” said Geiger gently. Then he asked, “Do you see anyone across the street? Or hear any violin music?”
The porter looked across the street but obviously didn’t see anything.
“It’s all right,” Geiger said. “I know what’s there, even if no one else sees it.”
“Of course, sir.”
Rolf stepped from the sidewalk. A large taxi turned the dark corner quickly and cruised right in front of him, practically crushing his toes. Late revelers returning to the hotel, Geiger assumed. Geiger glanced into the cab and saw his suspicions more than confirmed. There was a thirty-something English rock star with three ravishing girls, all about nineteen.
Rolf didn’t wait for the hack to discharge its passengers. He moved around them and crossed the street. He was anxious to confront the clown.
But when Geiger arrived on the opposite side of the street, the musician was gone.
Geiger felt befuddled. He looked in each direction. Then he saw the hunched lonely figure of the clown walking away toward nearby Hanover Square. Geiger took off in brisk pursuit.
Once, the figure stopped and looked back at him to make sure he was following. Geiger accelerated his pace. The clown was a hundred feet away from him. Then eighty. Then fifty.
Geiger further closed the gap. He trotted after the phantom, a preposterous figure in polka dots, as it ambled through the thick murky London night. Before reaching the square, the clown turned on South Molton Street, a smart small arcade-like side street with fine shops, a block from the hotel.
Geiger continued to follow. He was reminded of the mythical supernatural beast which would take the form of a vulnerable animal to lure would-be predators to a lonely high ground. Then it would assume its real form. The hunted would turn upon, and destroy, the hunter.
Was this some sort of ghostly trick? An emissary of Isador Rabinowitz? Geiger could not stay away. The onetime prodigy was now on South Molton Street. He closed to within twenty feet of the violinist. The violinist stopped half way down the block. Then the player turned.
Cautiously, Geiger walked to the clown. The white face looked toward Geiger. It was not a face that he recognized. The ghost’s lips were thin, pink, and lifeless. A meager smile emerged from them. Geiger stood only a few feet away.
Somehow Geiger did not feel the urge to speak. He sensed no malice from this vision and he felt that whatever this spirit was seeking to relate, a message would manifest itself.
He was correct. A bizarre feeling overtook him. He realized for the first time that underneath the makeup, underneath the polka-dotted suit, the clown was a very pretty woman.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Laura Aufieri,” she said.
“Who?”
She smiled. “We have someone in common,” she said. Then the clown turned again. Geiger knew that he was to follow.
With a start—he realized where he had seen her before. In Nantucket. In the bookstore. She was the woman he had mistaken for Claire and whom he had approached. Even back then, the ghost of Laura Aufieri had been stalking him.
“Follow,” she said.
She led him farther down South Molton and into an even heavier mist. She cut through an alley and Geiger shadowed her. For a moment there was a light rain, which disoriented him. She trotted slowly. He kept pace. He made one turn, then another, and they came out on a block that was filled with an eerie light. Geiger noted where he was, on Whitlowe Street where it intersected with Folger Place.
The woman in front of him slowed. She went into a doorway that was lit differently than all others on the block. It was four doors from the corner.
Geiger followed, unable to stop. He stepped into a building that had apparently not changed since World War II. It smelled of mustiness and the furnishings in its entry areas were aged. There was thick carpeting on the steps and blackout curtains on the front windows.
He followed Laura up one flight to a landing. Now there was a spring in her step because she was a much younger woman in her twenties. She even slightly reminded Rolf of Diana.
She stopped at an unlocked door on the first floor. She entered and looked to see if Rolf was still with her. He was. He was aware of her eyes now, in particular. They were very pretty, as was she. “Come with me,” she said. “Then you’ll understand.”
“Are you a vision of death?” he asked.
She smiled. “Yes, but not yours,” she answered. “Come. Veni…”
He walked through the door. He had a sense of being in her home. She was transformed and dressed differently now, wearing a skirt and blouse that would have been fashionable during World War II. As Rolf looked further, he realized that this whole room was like that. He had stepped into an evening from fifty some years ago.
In the front hall, something took his breath away. It was a theatrical poster from 1942. The Duke of York Theatre in the West End. Laura’s name was headlined in a musical review. Her picture on the poster showed her in the clown outfit, obviously her most famous role.
Then Geiger stepped into a living room, which was warm from the
glow of a small fireplace. Laura smiled to him, but Geiger’s heart gave a start because there was movement in a nearby chair.
The man in the chair, previously perfectly still an unnoticed, set down the Times of London and glared at Rolf. It was Isador Rabinowitz.
Geiger was shocked, yet strangely not frightened. He felt as if he were on the verge of a great epiphany, an understanding of all events, real and supernatural.
This before him was a Rabinowitz that he had seen in old photographs. It was a Rabinowitz of about thirty, the nasty malicious womanizing brilliant artist who had fled to England from the Continent to escape the Nazis.
“Why are you here?” Rabinowitz demanded of Geiger. “You have no right to be here!”
Geiger heard himself speak.
“But I am here. Laura asked me to follow,” he said.
“Laura did what?” Rabinowitz roared. “Laura! Laura!” Rabinowitz rose in a fury.
“Protect me!” Laura said to Geiger. Rolf was confused.
“Protect you how?” She shook her head and began to cry.
“Oh, you can’t; you can’t,” she said. “I’m already dead. But I can protect you.”
The dreamy logic, if there was any, escaped Geiger.
Rabinowitz grabbed the woman. She screamed. Geiger’s feet felt frozen in place. Rabinowitz filled the air with vilifications. He slapped Laura hard across her face. She staggered.
Geiger made a move to help her, but the deadly tableau began to play out before his eyes.
Rabinowitz dragged her into the next room. Geiger heard her screams. The light in the next room took on a pinkish macabre glow. Rabinowitz’s shouts triumphed above Laura’s.
There was no way for Rolf to measure what followed in real time. But he next found himself at the door to the bedroom, looking in. A vile vicious Rabinowitz clutched the unfortunate woman around the neck. He was shaking her and shaking her, and when Geiger made another move to interfere, he realized again that he couldn’t. He was watching an event from more than half a century ago. No more could he have interfered than he could have stepped into the canvas of a painter. Sadly, he bore witness to Laura’s murder.
