Читать книгу After You've Gone - Jeffrey Lent - Страница 8

Under a pewter sky of clouds folded in tight waves, the wind at his back, Henry Dorn crossed Nieuwmarkt, near empty this late afternoon almost four years since the signing of the Armistice, some few bicycles steering gingerly around patches of ice passing him as he trudged onward, his greatcoat belted tight and brushed-wool fedora clamping his ears, the canvas case with leather strapping gripped by both hands as the wind caught and tugged it, the cello a kite, a bird captured that the wind would free. His nose and cheeks were bright with cold and his lungs seemed to lodge and trap the air to freeze him from within.

Henry Dorn was fifty-five years old. He’d outlived his father’s short span by nearly thirty years. He’d written his mother this past spring just before his departure for Holland but had not been back to Nova Scotia in fifteen years. He loved that gloomy spit of land between St. Mary’s Bay and the wild water of Fundy like no other place but some time since had decided he’d not return there. It was a love best kept at a distance.

And then abruptly eighteen months ago the devastating double tragedy which had brought him to this place, this strange city the other side of the world. Or had seemed to at the time. Did this account fully for the essential if unspoken exile? Certainly not but from the youngest age the unpredictability of life had been a constant companion—only for that span of now-lost years had he thought otherwise.

Then face into the wind past the Waag and right onto Recht Boomssloot, the canal frozen, the houseboats encased, the trees skeletal traces overhanging the railings and here the wind was cut a little and he was able to carry the burden by the handle, balanced so the case rode alongside him now, the neck forward and up. As if tamed. He snorted.

He hadn’t anticipated the cello when he’d signed the lease and so was faced, as he was each Tuesday afternoon, with the narrow steep steps up to the third story—a little effort was all. You got used to these things. And the staircase made possible the tall broad windows at the front, the view and serenity of height that had compelled him that sunstruck day in June when the sparsely appointed two-room apartment offered a graceful alternative to his railway hotel room and her grand suite at the Hotel Krasnapolsky.

The rooms were warm, the steam radiators thumping gently as if to remind of the coal monster in the basement. Out of his coat and hat he sat for a time on the side of the bed and studied the canvas case. His chest still straining. If he had to be trivial, why not a violin?

His sixth Tuesday. Morozov had served him tea, not in the Russian style but some brewing of his own device—likely simply a large kettle steeped throughout the day. Then sat after tuning with him and leaned forward, his hands on his knees and listened as Henry worked his way through Kummer’s Daily Exercises. Or the 1st. Midway through Morozov stood and turned his back as if he only wanted to listen not see. When the piece was done the teacher, with no expression on his face, came and stood behind him, his right arm coming down and lifting Henry’s right hand so the bow was away from the strings and guided the hand, arm, and bow through the air, hovering above the strings, not touching, just movement and then halted, pressed hard as if to say There and stepped away, settled himself and took up his own instrument and bow and played the piece through, slowly but with an even tempo, the bow not at stark right angles but quivering fluidity, not attack and retreat but sudden depths of caress. When done, Morozov looked at him, his face the same.

Morozov spoke an English less flawed than idiosyncratic. “The music,” he said, “you cannot force like a dying horse.”

Three hours later when the windows showed only reflected light and the cello had warmed through he opened the case and set the sheet music on the small beaten secondhand stand and brought out the instrument. The stand centered under the single electric ceiling fixture. He inserted the tail peg and tightened it and brought the beautiful fragile construction between his spread knees, tipped the bow against each string, tightened the A-string against its flat and without thinking or pausing to consider played the piece through and his right arm flexed as if it were merely an extension of the bow and was following not leading and the final six bars of the little exercise came forth into the room with all the dazzlement and purity of spring light and he sat listening to the final note trail off until all remaining was the echo in his inner ear. He sat so for a long time with no desire to move or even attempt the piece again. It was enough. An exquisite and muted triumph.

Finally he bent for the soft piece of flannel within the case and wiped the cello down. There were beautiful things in the world and there are beautiful periods or times—usually not known until they had passed. And yet throughout his life, there had been those moments when he was forced or found by accident, once again, beauty.

Briefly he considered the small table set just to the side of the large windows that held a gooseneck lamp and his pens, the sheafs of paper, the notebooks. But it was early and he had to go out again. He used to write in the mornings, at break of day but now chose to end the day. Because the writing had changed. It was his, alone. And he liked this.

There was a single gas ring he boiled coffee on mornings. Other than that he did not cook. So he wrapped again in the coat and went down the cramped stairwell and up the street to the end and entered the small single-counter café dimly lit whatever the time of day with old dark wooden walls and a stamped-tin ceiling murky from years of tobacco smoke. He sat on one of the stools and unbelted his coat and ordered the soup without asking what it was—it did not matter— the soup was a meal. With hard bread and a saucer of pickled herring. Three older men were at other stools and each glanced at him and then back to the polished wood beneath their elbows, these three part of a handful he’d come to recognize. The woman behind the bar was friendly in the way of someone who knows she has a new customer she may count on but does not know what to make of. He did not mind this. As every night he spoke Dutch and she responded in English and that was that. Without a thought he used the last hard crust to mop the soup, a brown combination of beans and ham and he did not know what else but the mopping was new to him— something that as a boy he’d have had his knuckles rapped for and as a man had never once considered but here it was the obvious thing to do—to leave anything in the bowl would have been ill-mannered and he knew this simply by observing others. Then he had a single crystal thimble on a long stem of Oude Genever, the clay bottle brought up from where it lay in chipped ice and he sipped this slowly.

It wasn’t only the pickled herring but the soups reminded him of his mother’s chowders: cod, scallop, haddock—each winter progressing the cubes of potato grew smaller, the fish more dense. By spring they would be down to seed potato and after great hesitation and a murmured discussion with herself, she would go the store owned by her brothers-in-law and purchase a sack of winter-stored fresh potatoes. But not until spring. They were not poor. In fact in Freeport they were wealthy people. But on Digby Neck and the Islands wealth was gained slowly and hard and easily lost, never assummed, never losing sight of the precariousness of everything and if for a moment or a day attention was diverted from that safe penurious grasp there were the God Almighty storms of the Bay to remind. The church was less sanctuary than seat of hope.

The wind had fallen with the dark and he walked slowly back along the canal, the frost in sharp refraction off the lampposts, the windows of the houses throwing warm rectangles of domesticity against the dark.

A woman passed around him, gently bumping as she did and he watched her stride away, wrapped in a scarf and long drawn-tight coat but clearly a slender young woman. He watched until she passed from sight. She did not look back.

That evening he filled his pen and wrote

I am a beginning cellist but shall not be a mediocre student. It is only so long since I was a beginner at anything.

Not true.

There should be time for work. Daydreaming loses its value when it overwhelms. It was Benjamin Franklin who asked, “Dost thou love life? Then take heed how you waste time for time is the stuff of which life is made.” Maybe I always misinterpreted his meaning. He certainly wasted time in a plentitude of enjoyments, if my memory serves. How did I miss that? I wonder if Franklin played an instrument? I’m quite sure he enjoyed music. I only now understand his years in Paris. Or think I do. “Ye shall know a man by his works.” I’m no longer convinced of that.

Daily I become more fond of Amsterdam. The tumult of infatuation, that heady first blush has passed and so now I proceed renewing the pace of the heart. The local citizenry surely consider me the strange American. But the shopkeepers are grown used to me, friendly in the abrupt way of the Dutch that makes sense to me now.

Write to Mother.

This last entry recurred through the filled pages. When the ink was dry he turned this page atop the stack, facedown, like the others not to be read again.

The apartment with its two small pools of light. Over the writing table and over the music stand and stool. The cello lying on its side, the swells and long neck and scroll of beauty. And the embarrassment only a teacher can know—leave the Kummer exercises for now. Practice the scales. How many variations on this had he himself begged, cajoled, thundered, red-penciled, conferenced over, tapped chalk for emphasis, sotto voce implored against his temper over the years? Countless. Was he a child again? Was all he knew of himself mere assumption? Was there even hope of relearning the world? Just months ago he’d not thought but known so. Now he was less sure. He contemplated the stack of writings.

He rose and turned off the gooseneck. Undressed and folded his trousers over the back of the chair, hung his shirt there and went on sock feet to the bed, sat and removed his socks and slipped into the bed. He reached and pulled the chain and the room and music stand went dark. Sleep far more elusive.

Somewhere in this night, Paris he assumed, was Lydia Pearce.

Whom he’d met on the North Atlantic passage, the unexpected encounter, the flare in an otherwise dark night, at first he’d thought Two lost from others recognizing comradeship. By the time they’d disembarked in Rotterdam and made their way north by train they’d entered into an irresistible but nebulous alliance. She maintained year-round suites at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and for a few short days Henry had settled in a mildly depressing railroad hotel room just off the station but four days later, armed with a tip from the Krasnapolsky’s concierge he’d hiked the beguiling and still mysterious network of streets in the old city and found this apartment. On the third floor, spartan and old but filled with light from the four tall windows overlooking the canal, two large rooms and he’d sat with the landlady in her groundfloor chambers for what seemed an unnecessarily long time as she dictated all the conditions as if he were a young man, a student or striving artist not quite to be entrusted with the magnificent rooms. Already, then, there, scheming how he’d bring Lydia here the first time. He was a welcome guest at her suite, even owning a key but she’d been emphatic that he maintain a separate residence.

“I’m already all the scandal I need. Not that I mind adding you to the mix,” she smiled. “But I’m not without peculiarities.” As if he’d needed to be told that.

The apartment was spotless, the bed linens fresh and starched. Knowing she’d wonder where he’d been that afternoon, even as she’d sent him off—pointing to the stack of correspondence awaiting after her month-long absence. So, freed anyway, he’d wandered the neighborhood and found what he was looking for, stocking the apartment carefully, selectively and all for one purpose.

“So where’d you go?” she’d queried when he arrived back at her suite, the stack of waiting letters disappeared as if spirited away by unknown hands.

“Oh,” he’d said, glancing out her windows toward the evening bustle of the Dam. “Walking. I found my way back to the old square, with the weighing house—”

“Nieuwmarkt.”

“Why yes. Actually I almost missed it, just crossing the easternmost tip but then went on along the other side, into the old neighborhood over there—”

“Isn’t it lovely? I’d planned to take you over there myself. It’s one of my favorite parts of the old city.”

She was beside him, pressing gently and his arm was about her waist. Feeling delightfully sly and free of guile, he said, “Well let’s explore it tomorrow. What do you say?” Turning toward her.

“Absolutely.” Her face, heart shaped, subterranean brown eyes, the lock of auburn hair tumbled onto her forehead, her hair cut shorter than was the style but he liked the way it showed her delicate neck, the tautened strain of tendons of her throat when she lifted her face to his, her breath like warm bread upon him.

It was after noon the next day when they set off. Henry’s excitement not diminished but growing although he’d said nothing that morning about her suggested excursion. From time to time he fingered the silent key in his trouser pocket.

So off they went, cutting through alleys and side streets, Lydia leading Henry although to onlookers they would’ve seemed just another couple strolling in the crystalline languor of an early summer afternoon, Henry soon with no clear idea where they were but for the general north-northwest of their bearings, when abruptly she plunged down a side street. The canal here was narrow and domestic and the overhanging trees spread nearly across it, the sun speckling down through the new leaves onto the still-green water, the trees allowed a strip of soil canalside and then the cobbled lane also in shade before the narrow four and five story domiciles of white painted brick with their gabled pitched roofs. Between the cobblestones of the roadway, too narrow but for the smallest of automobiles, and facades of the buildings, lay another small strip of soil, broken by the entrance steps and the ornate iron railings that guided up those three steps. And here they paused, looked at each other and smiled.

It was, all of it, a miracle of small perfections. Each railing was different, with its own twists and spirals, hammered buttons, vined metal stalks and leaves, and at the base of each entry its own flower garden in those smallest of possible plots. Some a profusion of density and blooms, others a single careful pairing of tall and short flowers, some so exotic Henry was sure they’d come from far distant lands. And so they went, Lydia in the blue sleeveless dress coming just below her knees, hand in hand, until one or the other paused without warning so the other was caught up, turned back face to face for the quick kiss and on again. To the next discovery, the next intriguing pairings of metal and flowers that would take Lydia into a squat to breathe close, Henry leaning behind her, his hands on her shoulders, peeking around her head to try and gain the scent also but often as not the scent he sought and found was that which came from her, the faint delicate perfume she dabbed from a vial so small he doubted his own fingers could open it—then her face tipped back to him as she rested the curve of her back against his knees, to know he was seeing what she was.

Squeezing his hand as he squatted beside her, canes of yellow roses the size of his fist rising above diminutive dimples of mounded flowers dark red with white centers, their foliage a green so deep as to be almost black and it was these leaves that allowed the combination of majestic roses and the tiny profusion of blossoms to work, to create a balanced beauty, thoughtful, intentional.

Which was when she stood and said, “Something else I’ve been meaning to show you but so far every day we’ve been out I forget about it but recall it later. Don’t you have that happen to you?”

He paused a beat. “Of course,” he said. “Lead onward.” And helping her to her feet she came without effort or signal against him and kissed him again.

They broke out onto Nieuwmarkt faster than he’d expected and the Waag lay almost in front of them and he knew now that without effort he could find the apartment and decided this was again all happening because it had to, because there was no choice.

The square was ringed with cafés with tables set out for the afternoon sun and people sat with hats off and collars loosened against not just the warmth but the slowed draining conviviality of late afternoon. A beer wagon with a four-horse hitch trundled in the shadows on the far western side and ragged streams of cyclists pedaled by. An elderly gentleman walked a brace of small off-white terriers, his past-century mustache the same color as the dogs. Lydia’s hand in his had grown warm, damp in the full sun as they worked their way, Henry thinking they were crossing over to the far side and then realizing they were aimed for the faded green and brown canvas canopies just beside the ancient weighing house.

She fell back and leaned against his arm. “The flowers in my rooms?” she said. “This is where they come from. Even in winter they’re here, with gas blowers to keep them from freezing. Now of course all the flowers are cut from the fields fresh each morning. But when it’s cold you can still get flowers. They have huge hothouses, all over just outside the city. One day we’ll ride the tram so you can see them.”

“It seems a great deal of work to have flowers in winter.”

She stopped then, just feet short of the backside of the canvas stalls and took his elbows. “Flowers, having flowers, is not a luxury. I see them as being both ephemeral and a mark of civility. Which perhaps are the same thing.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I’d always mostly thought of flowers as decorative.”

“They are not.” Emphatic not challenging. She led him around to the front of the stalls and said, “Now wait here.” And was gone, but not from sight.

Tin buckets filled with flowers of all types, shades and colors lined the fronts of the canvas stalls and in the strained light within he could see tiers of more buckets, more flowers, these likely more delicate against the afternoon sun. But what he was watching, as much as the splendor before him, was the woman in the blue dress pacing back and forth, dipping to look, sometimes raising a finger and one of the vendors would move behind her as if that finger communicated all that was needed. He stood considering this being versed deeply in what lay before her. As she had thus far ever appeared. And it was then, the fleet thought, that he knew he had yet to learn where she lacked command. This with no quickened pulse but only a jab of dread—one day, one way or another, he would learn that place in her. As she would in him. And how they’d muster themselves, each alone again.

She came forth with a trimmed bouquet, wrapped and tied and hugged tight to her chest, almost hiding her, her eyes tracked onto his as if he were a beacon.

“Look,” she proclaimed, her excitement rippling.

And he did, leaning close, parsing the clutched tight crush and he thought perhaps some were some sort of dark sunflower but the rest were strange as life to him. “They’re magnificent,” he said.

And then she was laughing. “Oh God,” she choked out. “Fifteen cents. Can you imagine? I get carried away. So carried away. I wanted to show you this but now what? Henry, what in the world am I going to do with them?”

And he looked again at the flowers and slowly said, “You know, perhaps I have an idea.”

“And what would that be?”

He touched her laced fingers and gently took the flowers from her. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

He found the apartment easily and led her up the stairs, Lydia following silently and stood in the ill-furnished but attractive old rooms as she inspected, standing a long time by the tall windows. Finally she turned and said, “I like it. It’s just right for you, I think.”

Henry was going through the scantily stocked cupboards and found a pair of old jars to fill with water for the flowers.

“I love the windows,” she went on. “So peaceful. But it’s not the Dam. I love the bustle there. When I look down, I feel I’m at the center of the world. But those jars? Do you intend to steal my flowers?”

“I’d thought to offer to take them off your hands. Since you were so overcome and spending so wildly.”

“Stop it. A housewarming gift.”

“No, no. That’ll come later. I’ll pay you back.”

“You’re a terrible man. How did I ever get mixed up with you?”

“I’ve wondered that myself.” She had pulled apart the oversized bouquet and was dividing the stems between the two jars and she glanced at him quickly, for a moment her face perched on a serious question and then she smiled.

She said, “This is a good place you’ve found, Henry Dorn.”

The afternoon before the slender stock of supplies he’d laid in were limited to a bottle of Montrachet and sacks of fresh cherries and strawberries, hard bread and cheese. A block of chocolate dark and dense, wrapped in waxed white paper. They sat on the floor with the food spread between them, the windows heaved up for air and rising neighborhood sounds. A quiet, speckled afternoon.

When most all was gone but the last of the wine she lay back, her head on his lap, stretched out, her shoes kicked off and one ankle up over the other knee so her dress slid down her long thighs and pooled in her lap. She said, “I’m growing rather fond of you.” Other than during sex the only admission she’d made. However intimate their conversations they’d yet to speak of themselves as joined.

“Are you sure about that?” He stroked her face, her cheeks and nose and forehead, last running a finger against her lips. He half expected her to nip him then but she didn’t.

“It’s a bit overwhelming.”

“How could it be otherwise and be worth anything at all?”

She reached and took a flower, pulled yellow and black petals loose and let them drift onto the stomach of her blouse. “Yes,” she said. And closed her eyes.

After a bit he realized she was asleep. He sat, his legs going to sleep, holding her. Still terrified and with absolutely no other place he wanted to be.

Three months later she was gone. And two months after that he lay, still waiting sleep’s restless wandering.