by Magnus Flyte
“Obviously, the presence of the audience changes the sound,” someone said. Sherbatsky turned to Sarah.
“Well, that,” Sarah said. “Yeah. But also the musicians wear different shoes for rehearsal. Sounds like the first violin has on boots. A rainy day in Munich maybe?”
That had been pure invention, that thing with the boots, and she was pretty sure Sherbatsky knew it, but she was right about the second French horn player making a mistake.< Ctak and/p>
Many of the seminars had involved strange “empathic listening” exercises, where you had to play something of Ludwig’s later period on the piano or violin while wearing giant sound deprivation headphones. Sherbatsky had made recordings of “simulated noise” as well, his attempts to guess at what Beethoven had been able to hear of his own work at different periods of his life, and different places. The composer had actually had moments, even near the end of his life, where the ability to hear had returned in brief flashes. Sarah was entranced, and became Sherbatsky’s star pupil.
For their final project, Sherbatsky had simply said to the class, “Surprise me.” Sarah called a friend who worked at Mass General, and the girl had snuck Sarah into her lab and done a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan of Sarah’s brain while she thought through the entire Ninth Symphony. When Sarah presented the printout to Sherbatsky, he had wept.
Last winter she asked him to supervise her PhD thesis, even though he was known to loathe overseeing student work. He surprised her by agreeing eagerly, saying that he thought Sarah had exceptional sensory abilities. He actually hugged her brain, which had been awkward but flattering. But, Sherbatsky said, they would have to begin in the fall. He was off on sabbatical for the spring semester. He was vague about his destination, which was not unusual. Sarah wasn’t sure if Sherbatsky knew where he was most of the time. She hadn’t heard from him since he left in January.
So why hadn’t the Lobkowiczes hired someone like him, who was recognized the world over as the man who knew Beethoven better than Beethoven knew Beethoven? Or some acknowledged expert from the Royal College of Music or someplace like that?
Why her?
At the bottom of the letter was an e-mail address. If Sarah accepted the offer, she was to send an acknowledgment at once to Miles Wolfmann, head of the Lobkowicz Museum Collection. Travel accommodations would then be made. She should be prepared to leave immediately.
Sarah decided that a brief acceptance message was best. She could have pretended that accepting meant canceling equally glamorous plans, but why bother? However, she needn’t tell Miles Wolfmann that the only people she’d be disappointing by her absence this summer were the members of Boston Sports Club, where she moonlighted as a spin-class instructor.
How had the Lobkowicz family even heard of her? True, she had published, but only in academic journals. Had Sherbatsky himself recommended her? That was plausible, and Sarah decided to accept it as the most likely explanation.
She left the office and biked quickly back to the tiny Porter Square apartment she shared with a roommate. Adrenaline and excitement kicked up her pace, and she beat her best time by forty-five seconds.
Sarah knew she should call her mother and tell her the news. Actually, the person she really wanted to tell was her father. Even though it had been thirteen years since his death, she still wanted to tell him things.
Sarah felt a weird mix of dread and resentment when she thought about what her mom’s reaction would be to Sarah gallivanting off to Europe for the summer. Her mom, Judy, had grown up very poor and dropped out of high school when her own mom died and she was left to take care of younger siblings. Judy was cleaning houses for a living when she met Sarah’s dad, an e Cswhelectrician she let into a fancy mansion on Beacon Hill so he could fix the crystal chandeliers for her employers.
Sarah’s dad had been delighted that his daughter loved reading and school. Her mom said all the right things (“We’re very proud of you”), but even when Sarah was very little she had the sense that with every book she read, she was somehow distancing herself from her mom. This news wasn’t likely to improve matters.
Sarah sighed, stowed her bike away, and climbed the stairs to her apartment. Alessandro, her roommate, greeted her at the door, clad only in a towel and carrying two raspberry-colored cocktails. Sarah accepted one gratefully.
“Campari and pomegranate juice,” Alessandro purred in his thick Italian accent. “You will adore me forever.”
None of Sarah’s friends could believe that Sarah wasn’t sleeping with Alessandro, who was hot in both the classical Renaissance sense and in a totally cheesy vampire movie one, too. Sarah, who took a scholarly interest in her own healthy libido, could only explain it as a matter of pheromones. When it came to sex, she simply followed her nose, and her nose never led her to Alessandro. “You’re spoiled,” her friends said. Which was probably true, since Sarah never seemed to have any trouble finding a suitable partner for the mood, and the mood occurred frequently. “What about common interests, intimacy, trust?” other friends said. “Don’t you want that?” At this point, Sarah usually had to hide a yawn.
Now she followed her roommate into their cramped but immaculate (that was Alessandro’s doing) kitchen and showed him the letter from Prague.
“The first thing you must do when you get there,” Alessandro said, “is visit Il Bambino di Praga, and say a prayer to him.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Alessandro was a scientist. He was studying yeast, although Sarah wasn’t totally clear on the specifics. Mostly because the way Alessandro pronounced the word “yeast” always cracked her up. She knew his work had something to do with brain functions, but in a way that didn’t seem to overlap at all with her own interest in music and the brain.
“What’s a bambino of Praga?” she asked.
Alessandro shook his head in mock despair. “What kind of a nice Catholic girl are you?” he asked.
“I’m not,” said Sarah. That, too, had been a showdown with her mother. The day she had decided that she wasn’t going to mass anymore.
“It’s an ancient statue of Gesu Bambino, the baby Jesus, that has magical powers when you pray to him.”
“This from the man who stares into an electron microscope all day.” It never ceased to amuse and perplex her that Alessandro, a neuroanatomist, freely switched from evil eyes and the magical abilities of saints to Einstein’s unfinished unified field theory in a microsecond.
“Sarah,” Alessandro said, sternly. “There is much more to this life than what we can see even through an electron microscope. You will learn, when you go to Prague. There is magic there.” He crossed himself. “Dark magic. Prague is a threshold.”
“Prague is a city,” she said firmly. “A place where, just like here, the rules of science apply.”
“Rules of science.” Alessandro shrugged his elegant shoulders. “And what are those? We don’t even know how this works.” He pointed to his head. “Eighty-six point one billion neurons. And glial cells surround neurons—eighty-four point six billion glia. For over a century, cento anni, we know glia are there, but not what they do. Now we know they modulate neurotransmission. But how? We don’t know. And universe? Ninety-six percent of the universe is dark matter and dark energy. What are they? Chissá? No one knows. I tell you, rules of science are molto misterioso.”
Sarah downed the rest of the Campari. The doorbell rang.
“One of your lovers?” Alessandro raised an eyebrow. “I thought you say no sex till you finish paper on pitch perception in the brain?”
Sarah shook her head. “I’ll see who it is,” she said, and handed Alessandro her glass. “If we’re going to talk about d
ark matter I think I need another drink.”
TWO
When Sarah opened the door the hallway was empty. Then she turned her head. And then she looked down.
The man was . . . small. Was he officially, Sarah wondered, a “little person,” or whatever the correct phraseology was these days? S
he looked at the top of his head, which was large and blocked the rest of his figure, except for a set of feet in brown shoes. The toes pointed outward, in the manner of ballet dancers. Or paper dolls.
The shoes were odd. Retro, but more so. They had buckles, not laces. Sarah blinked.
“Sarah Weston?” The man’s voice was not small. It was loud, and very deep. A bassoon. Well, he was about the size of a bassoon, Sarah thought, and probably the weight.
“Can I help you?” Sarah hedged. You couldn’t be too careful. Not with the kind of student loans she was carrying. A tantalizing image involving stacks of Czech crowns floated before her eyes. Did you have to declare that kind of thing to the IRS?
The little man tilted his head. Raised tiny hands to frame his eyes as if he were cutting off the glare of the hallway’s fluorescent lighting. Or instigating a game of peekaboo. His eyes were large, and very dark, almost black.
“So? Chi é?” Alessandro appeared at Sarah’s elbow. The knot of his towel was on the same level as the tiny man’s chin.
“You do not look like her,” said the stranger, ignoring Alessandro and continuing to scrutinize Sarah.
“Maybe you’ve got the wrong Sarah Weston,” she offered. “What is this about?”
The little man studied Sarah calmly for a moment, and then spoke softly, almost chanting, his deep voice now in a minor key:
Hitherto I thought there were only Nine Muses, but
now Weston makes me believe there are ten.
For she decant Fonts ve ths songs that are musical, in fact Musty as new
Wine, songs full of Cecropian honeycombs.
Alessandro let out a short whistle, the complicated and expressive whistle of all Italian men born south of Rome. Sarah had learned most of them. This one meant, “Oh, so I guess you like your men pazzo, eh, sweetie? Nice conquest.” Sarah wondered how Alessandro could actually manage a sarcastic whistle. In a towel. And what the hell were Cecropian honeycombs?
“It’s not mine,” the stranger said, modestly. “It is the verse of one Balthasar Caminaeus, a doctor of laws. Written in praise of Elizabeth Weston. Whom you do not resemble. Which is very fortunate for you. She was not an attractive person, even allowing for the costume of the era.”
Alessandro licked his lips. He clearly had no intention of going anywhere, or aiding Sarah in managing this absurd exchange. Or putting on pants. The tiny man appeared to be waiting for a reply. One buckled shoe tapped the carpet softly.
“Did Bailey send you?” Sarah waited for the stranger to pull a recorder out of a sleeve and serenade her with another round of “Hail the Buds of Spring.”
“I’m afraid Elizabeth Weston is not widely read,” the little man said. “Forgotten, like so many others. But not gone. Not quite.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “But I’m kind of . . . in the middle of something. So, if you have something to . . . say . . . or do?”
“She has to pack for Prague,” Alessandro said, making himself useful at last. “She has recently become a scholar molto importante.”
“You are going, then?” The little man leaned forward and touched Sarah lightly on her wrist. “I thought you would. I was hoping. I think you are needed.”
Sarah was suddenly on the alert. How did this person know her business?
“Yes, I think this is very good,” the man continued in his strange bassoon voice. “You have an interesting face. This man in the towel smirks at me. He thinks I am pazzo, but what does he know? He’s looking in the wrong place, I tell you. Or rather, the right place but in the wrong way. Yeast! Bah!”
“Okay, maybe I call the cops now,” Alessandro said, shrugging and turning back into the apartment. Sarah watched the back of his towel retreating, the Renaissance shoulders above it in an apparent huff.
“How did you know the Lobkowicz family invited me?” Sarah asked. “I only got the letter a few hours ago.”
“I am on very intimate terms with the Lobkowicz family,” the little man said. “Indeed, I have just come from Prague.” He brought his hands up to his face again, and this time he did cover his eyes with his palms, then held them out to Sarah. Balanced in the center of his left palm lay a copper pillbox.
“For you,” he said, simply.
Sarah could hear her cell phone ringing in the other room.
“I should get that,” she said. She didn’t want to let the litt K le
“I will wait,” said the man, calmly.
Sarah half-shut the door and picked up her phone, noting that it was the head of the Music Department, Professor Klyme, calling. “Hello?”
“Sarah, I have some bad news,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you this. Professor Sherbatsky is dead.”
Sarah sat down on the forest-green sofa she and Alessandro had scavenged from the corner of Mass Ave and Arlington on trash day. Her mouth suddenly felt dry.
“What?” she demanded. “When? How?”
Professor Klyme told her what he knew, which was very little. There had been some kind of accident. In Prague. No doubt details would be forthcoming.
“An accident?” Sarah repeated. “Prague?”
“A terrible tragedy,” Professor Klyme said, somewhat mechanically. Sherbatsky had not been particularly liked in the department, where professional jealousies ran high.
“I received the news from a Mr. Miles Wolfmann,” he continued. “A colleague of Professor Sherbatsky’s. He offered his condolences and then informed me that you are going to Prague yourself to assist in restoration work at the new Lobkowicz Palace Museum. He’s sending a plane ticket Federal Express. I should congratulate you. This is quite an opportunity.” Professor Klyme sounded miffed and more than a little skeptical. Sarah thanked him crisply and then asked if there was anyone . . . would a funeral be held? Some kind of service? Professor Klyme did not know, and after a few more conventional phrases of regret and well-wishing, he hung up.
Sarah sat on the couch, stunned, for a few minutes, before realizing she had left a strange little man standing in her hallway. She crossed the room and opened the door.
The little man was gone. The pillbox lay on the ragged carpet where his feet had been. Sarah picked it up and shut the door. She wandered back into her apartment and looked out the window, but the little man was nowhere to be seen. She had the weird sensation that something cosmologically enormous had happened, that the orbit of the earth had shifted, and yet outside her window her neighbor was planting tomato seedlings in her garden, and a little boy was bumping his tricycle down the sidewalk while his mom walked behind him with a fat Labrador.
She went to her bedroom and clicked on her computer, entering “Sherbatsky” and “Prague” into the search engine. The first result was a page from the Prague Post.
American scholar dies at Lobkowicz Palace.
“Shit,” Sarah said out loud. She read on in shock: “Dr. Absalom Sherbatsky was recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on Beethoven, and had come to the palace to offer his services to the Lobkowicz family. He apparently fell from a window at Lobkowicz Palace late Wednesday night. Police have ruled it a suicide.”
Suicide? Sherbatsky? Sarah continued searching online but found no more information. She pulled the letter from Lobkowicz Palace out of her backpack. The invitation to come to Prague was dated before the (appa K/emon Pro">rent) suicide. So Sherbatsky must have recommended her. Perhaps he wanted an assistant.
They had sent her the job offer. And then Sherbatsky threw himself out a window? It just didn’t make sense. Had he simply fallen? He was not a physically strong man. It had been a joke between them. He always commented on Sarah’s mental and physical toughness, on her “townie” upbringing. Thin and gangly Sherbatsky seemed to admire her combination of brains and brawn, and unlike the Professor Klymes of the world, he had never treated her like a bimbo just because she also looked good in a bikini. Sarah felt tears come to her eyes. Poor Sherbatsky. What had happened to him?
Alessandro appeared in the
doorway and Sarah told him the news. She read the Prague Post article to him.
“Are you sure you should go?” asked Alessandro. “Look at what happened in Venice two weeks ago. People go crazy and throw themselves out window in middle of party. There is something about this, cara . . .”
“I’m going,” said Sarah. Of course, there was the money. She’d go just for that. She’d go just to show the snobs like Professor Klyme that a girl from “Southie” could distinguish herself in academia. But she also wanted to find out the truth behind the death of her beloved mentor. The whole invitation to Prague sounded like a challenge.
And Sarah never backed down from a challenge.
THREE
“Yes, it’s all coming together. It’s all happening. You must find her,” said Pollina, frantically poking the fire with a stick, even though the windows were wide open on this spring evening. Sarah had had a busy day, organizing herself to leave for Prague, but she would never have missed a music session with her favorite pupil. “Pupil” was the wrong word. Pollina was more of a colleague. Even though she was only eleven.
“You’re sad.” Pollina suddenly turned to Sarah, her eyes shining brightly in the semidarkness. “You want some ice cream?”
Sarah did not want to tell Pollina about Sherbatsky. The girl was already in fragile health, and the news that Sarah was leaving for the summer would upset her enough. Pollina was too alert to miss Sarah’s mood, though. She had been thinking over the death/suicide of the professor all day, and it still didn’t make any sense.
“Chunky Monkey or Oreo Cookie?” Sarah asked, heading for the kitchen, stepping over Boris, the elderly giant mastiff who napped next to the fire.
“Both,” said Pollina.
While still in high school, short on cash and wanting to avoid babysitting, Sarah answered an ad taped to the music room bulletin board for someone seeking a violin tutor. Sarah dearly hoped the person who needed the tutoring was not a horrible child, forced into the violin by crazed aspirational parents. She called the number, left hers, and received a brusque message back telling her to report to the address on Commonwealth Avenue at four p.m. on a Friday afternoon. No other details. She pedaled over on her bike and stared up at the massive mansion. Must be divided into apartments, she thought, but there was only one doorbell. Sarah pushed it, there wa Nmass a long pause, and finally an actual uniformed butler answered the door. “Meess Weston?” he said. Sarah just stared at him, openmouthed, unable to believe that Jeeves had in fact come to life. And was Mexican. Finally, he sighed and leaned in conspiratorially.
