by Magnus Flyte
“Okay, they’re all a little crazy, but they pay really well,” he said, stepping back to let her in.
Sarah nodded, wondering what Wonderland she had just tumbled into. This was the kind of wealth that her mother always talked about with resentment. The door shut behind her and the house was plunged into murky gloom. It took several seconds before Sarah’s eyes adjusted to where she could see the place was chock-full of what her mother would have called “old junk.”
Jeeves—Sarah would learn his name was actually Jose Nieto and that his previous job was maintaining the swan boats in Boston Common—climbed the stairs, and Sarah hurried to catch up. “There’s an elevator,” he said. “But it’s wicked slow.”
He showed Sarah into another dark room and left. She could make out some oversized stuffed animals looming in the darkness—a zebra, a giraffe, and a prostrate lion. There were creepy dolls on velvet tasseled sofas draped in huge paisley scarves—her mother would be in hives—and a grand piano. Sarah went over to the piano and ran a hand over its inlaid top.
“It’s from 1795,” said a small but strong voice. Sarah caught movement and turned toward it, but found herself staring at her own image in a smoky old mirror across the room. “It’s unsigned, but we know it’s Viennese.” The voice was coming from the sofa. Sarah turned—she hadn’t seen anything there but pillows and dolls. “We bought it from the Frederick Collection. I wanted the Joseph Brodmann from 1805, but even though the moderator was missing, they felt it was too valuable to sell.”
Sarah realized a child was sitting there. A child who looked to be no older than four. She was wearing a white dress with a poufy skirt and a red sash. Then the lion shifted and raised its head and Sarah realized it was a dog, a mastiff. She glanced at the giraffe, half expecting it to reach up and nibble on a drape.
“Is your, uh, mom around?” asked Sarah.
“She’s in India,” said the little girl, gesturing toward the piano. “Play.”
“Um, well, okay,” said Sarah. The kid was a little spooky, but she was excited about the idea of playing a historic piano. “What do you want to hear?” she asked.
“Dvorák. Romanza. Opus eleven.” The girl picked up a violin off the table in front of her. Sarah had only a moment to wonder if it was a Stradivarius before the girl began to play the obscure, lilting piece, from memory, and Sarah had to hustle over to the piano, flip through a stack for the music, and catch up.
The child was incredible—she played as if she actually felt the romance of the music as strongly as Dvorák himself. How could someone feel so much, someone who had been alive for such a short time?
When they finished, the girl laid the violin down.
“It’s twenty dollars an hour,” said the girl. “Five days a week for two hours a day.”
Sarah nodded. “I’ve never met a child prodigy before,” she said. “Do you want SDn Pro">T me to teach you, or just accompany you?”
“My hands are too small to play what I compose on the piano,” the girl said, holding them out for Sarah to see. Her eyes filled with tears. “I need someone to play the music in my head.”
Though she cringed to admit it, it had taken Sarah three entire sessions to realize Pollina was blind. That day, while playing a game of fetch with Boris, Sarah had tossed the ball over to the stiffly serious little girl to try to engage her, too. The ball bounced off the child’s face.
“What was that? What hit me?” cried Pollina, who suddenly lost her balance and stretched out uncomprehending arms in front of her.
“I’m so sorry,” said Sarah, rushing over to put her arms around the girl.
“Stop it,” said Pollina. “Write this down.” She then proceeded to dictate to Sarah an entire sonata. In twelve minutes.
So it had gone for the past seven years. Pollina had composed fifteen symphonies and hundreds of other pieces of music that Sarah transcribed and played on the piano. They were beautiful, eerie, enchanting works, widely varied in emotion and complexity, often inspired by whatever book Pollina was listening to, from Green Mansions to Misty of Chincoteague.
Sarah never really got to know Pollina’s parents, though they made the occasional breathless appearance as she was coming or going, and thanked her profusely for being such a good companion to their daughter. They were passionate amateur archaeologists who had met in Sicily, both searching for an ancient Greek city in a tiny village called Pollina, for which they had named their daughter. They were not themselves musical in the least, and seemed kind of clueless about her talents. When Sarah tried to talk to them, they said, “We don’t want her to have the pressure of performing or being famous. Music should be fun for her. There’s plenty of time for that later.”
So no one in the world besides Sarah and the parents seemed to know that a baby Mozart was living in Boston, right down the street from the Baby Gap.
In lieu of schooling, Pollina—and God help anyone who called her Polly, though Pols was acceptable in some cases—had a tutor named Matt, an English major at Harvard, who came and read aloud to her on whatever topic caught her fancy. She loved European history, and English poetry best. She would often perplex pizza delivery boys by hiding behind Jose and reciting large chunks of Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Jose would sigh, roll his eyes, and tip the kid double.
When Sarah started college, Pollina had asked Matt to read her everything on Sarah’s syllabi. At this point Pollina probably knew more about Beethoven than she did, Sarah guessed.
“Hey, I have some news,” said Sarah carefully. “Something came up and I’m going to be leaving town for the summer. Just until Labor Day. But listen, it’s really exciting.” She explained the job, focusing on the parts she knew would interest Pols. Manuscripts in Beethoven’s own hand. Priceless antique instruments.
Pollina frowned.
“You said we would work on the music together all summer.” Pols hated changes to their routine.
“It’s a great opportunity,” said Sarah soothingly. “I’ll find s SIoutineomeone who can transcribe your music for you, I promise.”
“Actually I’ve been using a voice-activated computer for two years now.”
Sarah was surprised. “Really?”
“Yes. And my hands, they’re big enough to play everything now.” Sarah looked at Pollina’s hands, her long slender fingers. When had they grown longer than Sarah’s own?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sarah asked.
“I didn’t want you to feel useless,” said Pols, sharply.
Sarah was rather touched that Pols was being so sulky. It would be nice to be missed.
“I had a dream last night,” Pollina continued. “I dreamed that you were swallowed by a dragon. And you died. You were dead, and trying to talk to me.”
Sarah thought of Sherbatsky with a pang.
“I’m right here. I’m not dead and don’t plan to be for a long time.”
“I suppose God will look after you while you search for her,” said Pollina.
“Who?”
“Duh, the Immortal Beloved.”
Sarah laughed. It had been one of the great musical mysteries of the last century: the identity of the woman to whom Beethoven had written three passionate letters. He had called her his Unsterbliche Geliebte, or Immortal Beloved. They had even made a bad movie about it, with Gary Oldman as Beethoven.
“I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits,” Pollina quoted with a sigh. “It’s so romantic.”
“Pols, I know you had Matt read you Maynard Solomon’s book,” said Sarah, referring to the great musical scholar who had presented a masterful and nearly incontrovertible case for the identity of the Immortal Beloved. “Antonie Brentano was the Unsterbliche Geliebte. And she was married, and had a few children, and it seems pretty clear that LVB really wasn’t interested in taking on all that.” Sarah’s shorthand name for Ludwig van Beethoven u
sually got a smile out of Pols.
“It wasn’t her,” burst out Pollina with passionate disgust. “Antonie Brentano. She was just another one of his silly flirtations.” She started coughing, and it took a few moments for her to stop.
“Okay, okay,” said Sarah gently.
As much as Sarah loved Beethoven—and it seemed to her at times that no other kind of love could possibly come close to it—she wasn’t particularly interested in Beethoven’s own love life. Much had been made of Ludwig’s series of failed affairs, aborted attempts at marriage, passions for married ladies, etcetera, and the subject was exhausted. Sarah had done far more research on how Beethoven’s intestinal troubles were reflected in his work. When it came to giving bad gas a melody, nobody did it better than LVB.
“I promise I’ll keep in touch,” Sarah said, but Pollina, deep in thought now, interrupted her.
“In my dream, the dragon breathed flames at you and you wouldn’t ask for help. You have to ask for help. There was a dwarf there, too.”
Sarah felt the hair on her arms rise up.
“And a prince, and a witch.” Pols reached out to stoke the fire. “Sarah you must promise me that you will pray to the Infant of Prague to help you.”
The one thing about Pollina that made Sarah uncomfortable even after all these years was her extreme religiosity. Sarah avoided all talk of God with Pols, but it wasn’t always easy to keep silent when she was talking about God’s love for everyone, and how we must all labor for the glory of God, and telling Sarah not to worry, that it was all in God’s hands. Sarah understood that Pollina, being blind and a musical genius, felt especially noticed by God, but couldn’t quite grasp why Pols wasn’t angry about some of the special attention. Still, she was glad that Pols felt there was meaning to it all, since it seemed to give her comfort.
“Alessandro went on and on about that, too,” Sarah said, hoping to avoid making an actual promise to pray to a statue of baby Jesus. “ ‘Il Bambino di Praga,’ he called it.”
“You have to pray for help. But Sarah, don’t ask until you’re sincere.” Sarah said nothing. “Be careful,” Pols added, continuing to cough in a way that worried Sarah. “Prague is a threshold.”
“A threshold?”
“Yes. Between the life of good and . . . the other.”
Sarah thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I’m not going to have to fight demons, am I?”
Pols did not like her teasing tone. “You can laugh, but it’s true. There’s a castle outside of Prague built over a hell portal. Half-man, half-animal winged creatures fly out of it, and if you go near it you age thirty years in one second.” Pols coughed again. “Prague is a place where the fabric of time is thin.”
Sarah sighed. “Pols, are you okay? And how do you know all this about Prague?” Despite her globe-trotting parents, as far as Sarah knew, the little girl hadn’t been out of Back Bay.
“I just wish I could go with you,” Pols said sadly, leaning against Sarah’s shoulder. “The Lobkowiczes are a great Catholic family. And Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowicz was my favorite of Beethoven’s patrons. He was a singer and a musician, too. And he had a clubfoot, did you know that?”
“Yup. Did you know that Beethoven once freaked out over something he did and stood in the doorway of Lobkowicz Palace shouting, ‘Lobkowicz is a donkey!’ over and over again?”
Pollina giggled.
“Let’s eat some more ice cream,” Sarah said. “And then play me something, okay?”
An hour and a half later, Sarah left an almost sleeping Pollina tucked up on the sofa, covered partly by one of the many embroidered shawls in the room and partly by Boris.
Jose met her in the hallway, wearing a giant peach bathrobe. Sarah was surprised to see him still awake and, it seemed, relatively sober.
“She asleep?” Jose asked, jerking his head in the di Seadoberection of the music room. Sarah nodded, attempting to thread her way between Jose, a Louis XVI commode, and a porcelain cheetah umbrella stand.
“Listen, Jose.” Sarah lowered her voice. “Is she okay? I mean, all that coughing? She seems a little feverish.”
Jose shrugged theatrically.
“Who knows? I tell her to let me call the doctor and she tells me that she is in God’s hands. I say, God’s hands are awesome, but what about a little Theraflu? Lately she no want to sleep at night and she keeps coming to my room and waking me up: Jose, I can’t find Lamby; Jose, I can’t reach the cereal; Jose, this can’t be Otto Klemperer conducting, you messed up my CDs again.”
Jose leaned forward.
“And then when she does sleep, she get the nightmares. I worry, okay? She dream of fire, all the time. And you see, she want that fire all the time, going. It’s hot as hell in here.”
“I’ll be away for a couple of months,” Sarah said. “You e-mail me, all right? Every few days. And get her to see a doctor.”
“Everybody goes away,” Jose said sadly. “But we stay, slowly burning up to death.”
Sarah patted Jose on his fuzzy shoulder and stepped out into the Boston evening. It was already muggy a
nd warm, though slightly less so than the interior of Pollina’s mansion. Sarah was surprised to find she was shivering.
FOUR
Sarah’s T ride home was blissfully free of the usual subway saxophonists and zealots, and gave her a few minutes to organize her thoughts. Tomorrow she should get a few books on Prague, maybe a Czech-English dictionary. A raincoat? She was going to a castle, did she need some kind of evening gown? She had never owned anything remotely like that. The last time Sarah had bought a dress was for her former roommate Andrea’s wedding. It was a hot dress, but the zipper was broken. Her date, George, whom she had taken to the wedding on the theory that you should always take a wildly inappropriate person to functions where nuptials were involved, had gotten it caught in the lining. Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet of the Boston Hyatt. But George had smelled like oranges and leather and he had bent her over one of those carts housekeeping wheeled around with soaps and shower caps and dry-cleaning request forms. That had been fun, and afterward she had pocketed some shampoo and conditioner. There probably wasn’t time to get the zipper fixed.
Sarah realized she was focusing on inanities in order not to think about Sherbatsky. And leaving poor Pols.
Sarah let herself into the apartment. Alessandro was out, and she decided to take a bath. Stripping down, flinging clothes around her room, she almost tripped over something hard and sharp. Funny. Her father’s toolbox was in the middle of the room. She kept it in the back of her closet. What was it doing out? Sarah glanced up and noticed something else. Her computer laptop was open. She never left it open. And Alessandro, as odd and boundary-free in many ways as he was, would not have touched her computer. Had someone been in her room? She hadn’t turned on many lights when she came home. Had there been a break-in? Was she not alone in the V in apartment?
Sarah looked around for a weapon. Not seeing anything more threatening than her Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, she knelt down, opened her father’s tool kit, and grabbed a hammer.
The good thing about the kind of square footage two young academics in Boston can afford is that one can conduct a thorough investigation of it in just under fifteen minutes. Sarah wondered how this previously overlooked feature of her apartment might be condensed for a real estate ad: Must see! This easy-to-search-for-lurking-psychopath 2 bdrm charmer with orig wd floors will go fast!
As empowering as it was to walk around her apartment like Thor, it was also tiring. Returning to her bedroom, Sarah examined her computer to see if any files had been deleted or anything looked tampered with. She searched through the papers on her desk and then examined the toolbox more closely.
Her mom had given it to her the Christmas before she went off to college, although Dad had already been gone for a decade by then. It had been a weird, startling thing to see on Christmas morning. Intensely familiar yet upsetting. And she had
felt an unreasonable rush of disappointment when she opened it up and found only tools. She wondered what she had expected—a last letter from her father telling her how much he loved her? A CD of his voice? Her father himself, emerging cramped but whole from this tiny hiding place? It was all she had of her father’s possessions. Perhaps that was why she had added The Page to its contents, which was her own secret bittersweet talisman. The Page was just an ordinary sheet of ruled paper, covered with Sarah’s fourth-grade writing.
Sally and Cindy walked around the house and counted the windows again. Sally went one way, and Cindy the other. They met up again on the sagging porch by the front door.
“Fifty-two,” said Sally firmly.
“Fifty-two,” said Cindy, just as firmly.
They marched back into the ancient old structure.
“I’ll start at the top,” said Sally. “In the attic. You start in the basement.”
The two girls went from room to room, counting the windows. They were very careful, counting little round windows and big dormers. French doors onto balconies counted as one. The rules were very clear to both of them, for they had been counting for days.
