Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “You know. I’ve told you. Yes, women, but they’ve gone. No memories even.”

  The trees loomed up on either side of the chalky road, the summer dust in the air, and the only sound to be heard was their own feet scuffing the dry surface. The air smelled of the day’s dead sunlight. Ahead were the lights of the taverna, where Nikko greeted them with mock reverence, yet happy to see them. The waiters at the taverna knew them only as “The Lovers.” They were not interested in names or greatness in the world, but they could recognize lovers, and warmed to them.

  They ate fresh lobster, caught that afternoon and cooked by Nikko himself. First, a little taramasalata, with a glass of ouzo. Then lobster, a salad redolent of feta and olives. They chewed pita and drank retsina. It was as though they had never left the island. Always this was like coming home.

  Then out came the bouzouki and the dancing began. They joined the waiters and three other guests and danced. The slow line of figures, pacing each other, then faster until, with flushed faces, they swayed and slapped their calves and stamped.

  Constanza and Louis did not get back to the villa until one in the morning. Both of them glowed from the food, wine, dancing and their love for one another.

  (“Life there, Herb. It was so simple. The villa was furnished with simple things. Pine chairs and a table. Another table for work. We slept in a bed made of pine—a box with a mattress on it and sheets thrown over it. There we always slept with the windows wide open. In the second year we had mesh put up or the whole place would fill with insects, some of them huge green things like locusts. Stanza was frightened by them. The only things of any value in the villa were the piano and an old icon which we hung in the main room. Large, with mother-of-pearl and gold inlay. A mother and child.”)

  Louis decided to call the answering service in New York. “They won’t get a line until the morning.” He was already undressing Constanza. She loved being undressed. Found it very erotic to have each garment pulled away until she was naked. They began to make love again. Louis was not surprised that this would make the third time since they arrived. It was always like this when they came to Corfu. The air, sense of freedom and relaxation gave both of them fresh appetites.

  Just as they were drifting into sleep, entwined one with another, the telephone rang. Louis grunted, and Constanza laughed, for he had been so wrong about the length of time it would take to get a line to New York.

  He wrote the messages on a pad by the telephone, tore off the sheet and came back, up the simple open wooden stairs to their loftlike bedroom.

  “Can they not do without us?” she asked, humor in her voice.

  “Someone can’t. Will I ring a number in Rome. I don’t recognize the number.” He stretched out beside her again and she took the paper from him. “It’s for me. That’s my mother’s number.” She made a tiny irritated noise.

  Constanza rarely spoke of her mother. They had quarreled hopelessly after her father’s death. Money had played a part in the dispute. Money. The Will. Lawyers were brought in. Constanza moved out of the family apartment in New York. Eventually, things were patched up, but they remained apart. Signora Traccia had moved back to Italy. Constanza said she lived with her sister in a very fashionable area of Rome. “They both live like high-class whores,” she had once told him. “It’s embarrassing. I only visited once. Stayed two days, then sent myself a telegram saying I had to get back to Cincinnati. It was the only time I’d been out of the country before I met you.”

  Now, in the darkness, she said she would put in a call tomorrow. “She probably wants another loan. I give her all she needs from what was left to me, but she spends it. Only gets in touch when she needs more. They were together, at the end, because of me. They should’ve split up years ago. She’s not a very nice person, but my father … well, he worshipped her. Then he died. So sudden, Lou. There one minute, gone the next … and … oh, well. Tomorrow.” It was about the longest sustained speech she had ever made to him about her parents.

  It was almost noon when she bothered to put the call through. They had stayed in bed half the morning, talking between small bouts of loving. Often, in Corfu, they could go on like this all day. Start a little lovemaking, not finish it. Talk. Laugh. Another sexual encounter, unfinished. Talk again. Laugh again. Then one of them would say, “How about the grande finale?” They would go for it—so hard that it seemed both were trying to lose themselves in each other’s body. They always said that they were simply two parts of one whole.

  Like the call to New York during the night, Constanza’s line to Rome came through within the hour. Louis had gone outside, to sniff at the afternoon air. When he came in, she was talking in Italian, fast, almost exasperated. “She wants to see me.” She covered the receiver with one hand. Louis could hear a tinny voice rattling on at the distant end. “She says it’s very important. Life or death matter.”

  “Then we’ll go to Rome, if we have to.”

  “One minute, Mama,” she said, hand over the phone again. “Lou, darling, she’s a drama queen. Worse than opera singers. This is a terrible thing, she says, but she won’t tell me what it is, not over the telephone. She’s crazy—paranoid.”

  She went back to talking to her mother, her voice rising, the Italian getting faster and faster, more shrill.

  Once more the hand over the telephone. “Louis, I don’t want to go to fucking Roma. It’ll be terrible.”

  “Okay, ask her here. She can come to the wedding.”

  She dazzled him with her smile (“Seemed to light up her entire body, completely, Herb”), then talked into the telephone again. Controlled now. Calm. Speaking with an obvious tact, smoothing over the hysteria at the distant end.

  Finally, the conversation ended. Constanza gave a long sigh. “She’s going to call back in an hour—which means about four hours. Has to make reservations. Pack. Get to the bank. She’s coming as quickly as she can get here. I don’t think you realize what you’re doing, Lou. She’ll be hell. She’ll also try to steal you from me, and where’s she going to sleep? Not here. I forbid it.”

  “Nikko’ll give her a room at the taverna. If she’s into seduction, let her get Nikko into bed.”

  “I’m hungry,” she pouted. “Hungry! And she won’t call back for hours. Shit!”

  But, half an hour later, the telephone rang. The Signora Traccia was flying into Athens that night. She had a connection that would get her to the airport in Corfu at eleven the next morning.

  “And she’s being strange, Lou. Says she doesn’t want us to meet her at the airport. Asked me to have her picked up and brought here.”

  “Good.” They were lengthening the runway at what had been a tiny airstrip: preparing for the hordes of tourists. Until a year or so before, there were few scheduled flights from Athens. It was a recent thing, and driving to the airport, with all the construction going on, was a time-consuming business. “Good,” he repeated. “Let’s go and eat.”

  Nikko had a room, and promised to take the greatest care of the mother. They ate until around five, then came back to the villa for love in the afternoon. It was late when they walked down to the taverna again for dinner, and later still when they got home. By then, Nikko had even arranged to drive to the airport and meet “The Mother” as he called her.

  That night they made love until three in the morning, and it was very special, like a wedding night. They swallowed each other’s tongues, and probed each other’s bodies as though they were instruments. Not for nothing did Stanza whisper, “Play me again, my dearest, darling Lou. My husband, my bridegroom.”

  In spite of it all, they were awake early. They wrapped towels around themselves and went down the steps cut into the rock. Down to the sand, and into the water, splashing like children. There was nobody to see their nakedness, and they swam out, floated together, then made love again, buoyant on the water, as though they had the ability to conquer the elements. Their bodies floated together, and they moved with the gentle swell, feeling the sun
rising hot above them. When they climaxed, it was with a great rushing wave of water, as they lost control and thrashed in the foam that was of their own making.

  Back in the villa, they showered. Constanza had only just dressed when Nikko’s motor horn beeped outside. Louis was only half dressed, so she dashed down, telling him to hurry—“… and, darling, don’t let her use our room, not even for a second, or she’ll unpack and we’ll have to move out. She’s every operatic villainess that’s ever been written. I promise.”

  “Then I’ll frighten her away. Il Diavolo!” He clawed the air with splayed, crooked fingers, and her laugh floated back to him as she disappeared.

  He finished dressing, then heard the sound of voices below. Constanza’s tone pitched high, as though her mother had already said something upsetting or hurtful. He heard the other voice, low and insistent. Something familiar drifted back, but he could not grasp at it.

  As he walked down the stairs, he saw the two of them standing, looking up at him. Stanza’s face had drained of color, but the woman next to him seemed confident, even challenging, in the way she stood, the manner in which she moved slightly. All of it was familiar, though it did not strike him until she spoke, and he had to get within a few paces of her before he recognized Constanza’s mother.

  “Hallo, Louis. It seems I’ve only just arrived in time.” Sophie Giarre took a step back, as though afraid of him. “Carlo sends his good wishes,” she said with a terrible smile. Behind her, the icon of the mother and child seemed to lower over them all.

  In the Captiva apartment, old Louis Passau broke down completely and uncontrollably.

  (17)

  IT TOOK LOUIS PASSAU several minutes before the full truth penetrated his brain. At first he refused to believe it was Sophie. Then, once his mind accepted that fact, he could not assimilate the horror.

  “Sophie?” Questioning if it was really her.

  “It’s been a long time, Pianist.”

  “What’s … ?” Constanza stood behind her mother. She looked vulnerable. He had never seen her like this before: like a child; a very young teenager getting her first taste of the real world and finding that it could be an awful place.

  Passau knew he looked like a ghost. He had this strange feeling that both of the women could see right through him.

  “You know each other?” Constanza’s eyes opened wide, bewildered. “Mama, this is Louis Passau, the man I’m going to marry. Please, what did you say about my father? I don’t understand.”

  “Louis Passau?” Sophie’s hands were on her hips, and somehow she appeared to have distanced herself from her daughter. “Maestro Passau. Yes, Constanza, you’ve done very well landing yourself the great Maestro Passau. When I knew him he was plain Louis Packer. They used to call him ‘The Pianist,’ right, Lou?”

  “A long time ago, Sophie. Different people. Different world.”

  “Different people, yes. Same world, Lou.”

  “What’s … ? What’s going on? I don’t … ? Mama, you said Louis Passau would listen to me sing. You told me … I don’t … ?” Constanza’s voice had become small, frightened, as though she knew something truly terrible was about to happen.

  Sophie’s head moved, her eyes raking her daughter with a look of such complete contempt that the air between them could have frozen. “I last saw Lou around eight months before you were born, baby. He had picked up some bug. Had to get straight home, that last time I saw him. We were a good team: him on the piano, me singing my heart out—you’d have been proud of us. He knew I wanted to talk with him that night, but he told me we could talk the next day. He was in one hell of a hurry to drop out of my life. Where did you go, Lou? On that last night? They said you went off to meet the Gennas and, together, you hijacked a convoy of booze trucks coming in. That true? You left me for money?”

  He heard and saw the entire thing. The last night in Chicago. How he had made excuses. “Gee, I think I picked up a bug, Sophie. You shouldn’t come near me, not tonight. I feel wretched.”

  The way she had clung. “Let me come back to your place, Lou. I’ll tuck you up. Make you all cozy.”

  “We were playing the Hawthorne Smoke Stack, right, Lou?”

  Still not wanting to believe her, he nodded.

  “The night before that—the night before we did our last show together, do you remember that?”

  “A long time ago, Sophie.”

  “Sure, a long time ago.” Her head whipped round again towards Constanza. “I don’t want to shock you too much, my darling daughter, but that last night before the final show we did, Louis and I fucked our brains out. Right, Lou?”

  “Long time …” he began, but she raised her voice, cutting him off as surely as a bullet could cut off his life.

  “Yes. Yes, it was a long time ago. The next day, Constanza, the next morning, when we were getting dressed, he was in a great hurry. Had an important appointment, and so did I. And in the evening, the very last time I saw him, I wanted to tell him about my appointment, because mine was at the doctor’s office. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to talk to him. You see, I was pregnant. I was having his baby.” She stopped to look at each of them in turn. “I was pregnant with you, Constanza Maria Traccia.”

  In the present, the old man began to sob again, his head moving from side to side, then backwards and forwards, like an autistic child.

  His pain and despair reached out—an icy, dead hand, clawing at Big Herbie Kruger’s heart, so that he got to his feet and lumbered over to the old Maestro, put his big arms around him, cradling him like a child.

  “Long ago, Lou. It’s okay now. You’ve told it. It wasn’t your fault. Is okay now.” Soothing him, hushing him as though he were a distressed infant.

  Presently, the emotion subsided. “I get you cup of tea, Maestro.” Herbie ran a big hand over the old man’s shoulder, then ruffled his hair. “In England that’s remedy for all things. If things go wrong—death in the family, letter from tax man—always they say, ‘Let’s have nice cuppa. Cuppa tea.’ You like that?”

  Passau nodded. Even nodding seemed painful. “I didn’t know,” he said, very quietly, almost inaudible. “No idea. I’ve thought back many times. Not a hint.”

  “Not your fault, Lou.” He went through into the kitchen, put the kettle on, then looked into the bedroom. Pucky’s face was a mask of desolation. “You can forgive him a lot,” she said.

  “A little, yes. Not a lot, Puck. But some of it you can forgive, like God.”

  “You were great with him, Herb. Man of the Year.”

  “Yea, I know. Like in the kindergarten: gold star and a green rabbit. I have to keep it gentle for a while now. I need more time. A lot more time, and Art isn’t going to give it to me. Before we know it, Lou’ll be banged up with Gus Keene in the guest suite at Warminster.”

  She shook her head. “It has to be you, Herb. We’ve got to make it plain to Art.”

  “Maybe it’s not up to Art.”

  He took the tea through to Passau. “Hot, strong, sweet. You can stand your spoon up in it, Lou. Get the other side of that, you be okay.”

  “Thank you, Herbie.” The tone had altered. Kruger thought he even detected a tincture of humility.

  They sat in silence for a while, then Passau began to talk, unasked and without any prodding from Herbie.

  “I still don’t know what happened after she dropped the bombshell, but I did know that what she said was true. There is an awful truth, Herb, a terrible truth when something is fully revealed to a man—something like that anyway. I knew what I had loved about Stanza—and I did love her, Herb. Loved her like nobody before or since. Now, with the distance of time, that love is pure. Difficult for you to understand, I think. That incest could be pure.”

  “Wasn’t incest, Lou. Not knowing incest. Sophie was quite a monster, if you’re telling it right. She put her daughter up to it.”

  Passau nodded, almost imperceptibly. “They left,” he said. “I can’t remember how, but I g
uess Nikko drove them back to the airport. I remember none of that, apart from Sophie saying that Carlo would catch up with me. One day, she said. Some day. I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. Stanza was sobbing; weeping. I heard her crying in that villa for months afterwards, just like she had somehow recorded it into the wood and stone. I’d wake in the night and hear it. For many weeks I would reach out for her, to comfort her, stop the tears. But she wasn’t there. Sophie didn’t even let her stay so we could talk, figure out what to do.”

  “So you just stayed there? Five years. Until someone spotted you, made you come back to the real world. …”

  “Oh, I was in the real world all the time, Herb. Those five years were probably the last time I was ever truly in the real world.” He took a long sip of the tea. “It’s good.” He nodded at the cup.

  “Great secret, making good tea.” Herbie tried to lighten the dreadful sense of anguish that lay between them, filling the room. “You just stayed there, in the villa, Lou?”

  “She wrote to me, about a month after, from Rome.” Passau did not appear to be answering the question. “Wrote and said she had read the press release in the paper. Pleaded that I should go back to work. I didn’t even reply, because I thought Sophie would see the letter. Didn’t know that, by then, she had moved away from her mother. Gone to live in Switzerland—Stanza, I mean.”

  “You had no doubts?”

  “Doubts about what?”

  “You were sure she was your daughter?”

  “Certain.”

  “But did you check it out, Lou? Get the birth certificate? Look at the paper trail?”

  Slowly he shook his head. “I didn’t need any birth certificate. I knew. Fathers know. When I thought about it later, I realized why I loved her. She was like me. I could see it, feel it, hear it. Two sides of a coin, Herb. Constanza was my daughter.”

  “Lou, you didn’t follow it up. You might’ve been conned.”

  “I know who she was.” Uncompromising. It was like holding a pistol to Herbie’s head and telling him to shut up otherwise he would pull the trigger.