The Prodigy: 2014 Edition - The Ghost Stories of Noel Hynd - Number 4

by Noel Hynd

  “Maybe.”

  Then, before his eyes, Rolf’s hands aged again, the emerald ring appeared. His body sagged slightly but he felt a surge of brilliance course through his hands.

  The old hands took over again. Technically inspired. Glowing with virtuosity, making Geiger recall the piece. He played by himself. The old hands disappeared and Geiger’s took their rightful place. He ended at mid-interval near the end of a bar. Rabinowitz was correct. Liszt would be the perfect third for London. He looked up. The ghost was before him again.

  “So your program is now established for London?” Rabinowitz asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Good. Good,” Rabinowitz muttered. His eyes drifted in the direction in which Diana had vanished. “Do you love that woman?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do. Without qualification.”

  “Foolish! You mustn’t.”

  Geiger’s eyes burned at the ghost so censoriously that the ghost faded. Then the specter rematerialized on the other side of the library, speaking again as a handsome young man.

  “Personal relationships are poison when genius is to be realized,” the ghost said.

  “Spare me,” Geiger said.

  “Heed my warning. She is unfaithful to you,” Rabinowitz attempted.

  “Talk to me only of music,” Geiger said. “Talk to me only of the piano. Of personal relationships, you never knew anything.”

  “Women cheat! This one in particular.”

  “You lie. I’m tuning you out.”

  Geiger went abruptly to his feet. He crossed the library and approached the window.

  The ghost drifted in front of him. Geiger evaded him and stepped to the window. Rolf reached to the shade of one of the high windows, and jerked its cord. The shade shot skyward. Geiger arranged for a generous river of cleansing sunlight to flow upon the ghost.

  A moment passed. The substantial image of Rabinowitz stayed in place for several seconds. A look of extreme anger and ferocity washed across the spirit’s face.

  “Now vanish,” Geiger said. “You are no longer wanted.”

  Then—before Geiger’s astonished eyes—the young Rabinowitz aged to his middle years, then to his sixties, then to his later years, then to the day he died.

  “She cheats on you,” Rabinowitz tried again. The final image Rolf saw was the old maestro in his open coffin. Then that too disappeared, as his final words rang in Geiger’s ears.

  Twenty-nine

  Upstairs in the bedroom, Diana sifted through her mail. Among the day’s arrivals, she found an envelope bearing the return name and address of Phillip Langlois. She set it aside until she had read a letter from her father and another from a sister. Then she opened it.

  Dear Diana,

  Mr. Geiger never answered my repeated requests for interview time. I do understand that he must be terribly busy with preparations for his upcoming tour. But I hope he might reconsider. If you could mention that you and I met at the Public Library and that I’m not a monster of the tabloids, I would be most highly appreciative.

  I wonder also if you might have lunch, coffee, or tea with me at your convenience. This might sound slightly mad to you, but I have a theory reflecting upon my study of Isador Rabinowitz which suggests that you, Diana, may be in personal danger. I don’t mention this to alarm you. But danger is danger and I would be negligent if I did not pass along to you what I know.

  Respectfully yours,

  Phillip Langlois

  She read the letter twice. Enclosed with the note was another business card, marked with his hotel phone number. Her first reaction was irritation. She had a feeling that Phillip was long on charm and short on substance. He also came across as a man who was interested in her sexually. She was twenty-six and divorced, not twenty-one and unwary of men of the world. She had seen enough of primal male motivation in her time to recognize a touch of it here.

  She thought about him a little more as she lay on her bed and fingered the handwritten note. Then again, might as well face it, she concluded, Phillip oozed sexuality in a hunky-guy beneath the shirt-and-tie sort of way.

  She wondered about Rolf and his recent tirades. Was this, she wondered, just a glimpse of what might follow with Rolf? Her first husband had been too given to his career—or his lack of one—to pay her the respect and attention she needed. Now was Rolf set to push her into the background in a similar manner? Would he always be too busy to treat her in the wonderful way he had treated her in the past?

  As she lay on the bed reading, her fingers left the letter and found the small silver piano that lived between her breasts. She twisted it thoughtfully. She asked herself, as she had asked herself more than a few times recently, what she wanted from Rolf.

  How long could the relationship sustain itself?

  What was she going to do, tag along as his girlfriend for a few years until she hit her mid-thirties and he replaced her with a younger version of herself? It was a nasty reverie, all brought on by Phillip’s letter. She wondered where such thought were coming from recently. Was there now something within the atmosphere of the townhouse?

  Diana turned away from the thought for a moment. There was music from downstairs.

  Rolf was at the keyboard.

  “God! What bizarre piece was he now playing?” This was nothing she had ever heard before. “Where was this coming from? It sounded like Franz Liszt, the world’s first rock star, jacked up on amphetamines.” It continued for several minutes in all its fury. Then it stopped.

  Silence from down below.

  She heard Rolf on the steps coming upstairs. She tucked the letter from Phillip Langlois back into its envelope and nestled the envelope back among her other mail.

  Rolf entered the room, gave her a glance and said nothing. He went to his dresser to retrieve something, but she couldn’t see what.

  She sat up on the bed and watched him. When he turned around, his eyes locked on hers.

  “What?” he asked uncomfortably. She shrugged.

  “Just wondering if you were going to say anything,” she said.

  His gaze remained firm and unyielding for a moment. Then something gave way within him. His expression changed, so did his mood, and so did his demeanor.

  He walked over to her and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Guess I should say something. Sorry I barked at you down there.”

  He gave her a hug. She responded.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” she said. He shrugged.

  “I have a lot on my mind. London can’t be a disaster. It’s going to be a long concert. Three major works. The old goats in the music establishment will tell me I can’t do all three, or shouldn’t do all three, all in one night.”

  “So why do all three?”

  “Because I can,” he said. “And I want to get all the works I want to play in this one tour. So that means practically doubling up on dates in some places. Like London, to start.”

  “Rolf, are you sure you should do it that way? I don’t want this to kill you,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Well, because I don’t, Tiger. I love you.” He flinched slightly.

  “That piece I was just playing. Did you hear it?”

  “I heard it.”

  “It’s the Totentanz. Franz Liszt. The Dance of Death.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He felt her shudder.

  “What put that in your mind?” she asked. “I’ve never heard you play that. Why play it in London? Why a piece with such a macabre title?” He drew a breath and stood.

  “It’s an instinct I have. The right piece of music at the appropriate time.” He seemed to think about it for another moment. “A danger I should flirt with. I live my professional life by instinct. So why go against it now?”

  “It creeps me out,” she said.

  “You don’t like the piece?”

  “The title creeps me out,” she repeated.

>   “It never did before.”

  “It does now.”

  A thoughtful look crossed his face.

  “Then it will have to creep you out,” he said. “No apologies.” He got up and he said nothing else, leaving Diana alone again in the room. She looked back to her mail. She listened to Rolf walk back downstairs to the library.

  For the next several hours, music flowed from the Steinway. Some passages repeated themselves, some bars, and the occasional grand piece of music—specifically the Choral Fantasy—uninterrupted and beautiful. It almost seemed a crime that such a magnificent playing fell upon so few human ears.

  In the evening, Rolf made dinner for himself. Diana went to her art class with Maurice Sahadi. She returned home around ten and Rolf was still playing. She readied for bed by herself and climbed in at eleven-thirty.

  Before turning the light out, she reread the day’s mail. She still didn’t know what to do about Phillip Langlois.

  Rolf came upstairs about midnight. She was almost asleep. He sat down on the edge of her side of the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder she had a funny sensation. It didn’t feel like his hand, even though it was.

  It felt somehow different, though that was a silly thought.

  “You want me or you just want sex?” she asked.

  He smiled strangely, which added to her confusion over the moment. It was as if he had developed a new smile, one she didn’t like.

  “How about both at once?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said. “Climb in here.”

  He did. But the sex was perfunctory. He said little and acted like a man going through the motions. It occurred to her in the middle that he could have been with any woman and it wouldn’t have made any difference to him. It was hugely dissatisfying. When it was over, he went right to sleep. She lay there for thirty minutes wondering what was wrong.

  The next two days, he spent earnestly at the piano, saying little, hardly acknowledging that Diana even lived there with him. She was willing to grant him his space and not say anything. She went to another gym class, another art class and to two movies with friends. On the third day, she telephoned a surprised Philip Langlois. She told him that she would be happy to meet with him, even though Rolf’s schedule was still enormously cluttered.

  Langlois seemed pleased. Very pleased. They set a date five days away. When she set the phone down, she wondered what she had done.

  “Most affairs start over lunch,’ her mother had once told her years ago. During the phone conversation Philip had given her a wide choice: breakfast, lunch, coffee, drinks, dinner. She had made her own decision.

  She also wondered where the emotional intimacy she had shared with Rolf had gone and when, if ever, it would return. Meanwhile, the date was set and she found herself looking forward to it. For lunch.

  Thirty

  “Have you ever heard the name, Laura Aufieri?” Philip Langlois asked.

  The British author sat with Diana Stephenson in one of the modest pubs on Third Avenue north of Bloomingdale’s. It was a hamburger joint with red-and-white-checked tablecloths. Diana thought for a moment. Then,

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  “I suspected you hadn’t,” he said. “Not many people have. Laura Aufieri nearly cost Isador Rabinowitz his career. Although,” he continued, “Laura lost more than Rabinowitz did.”

  “I’m not following,” Diana answered him. “And this must be fairly old news.”

  The waiter arrived with food. A meat pie for him. A salad with shrimp for her.

  “Well, it’s an old story,” Langlois began. “But let me backtrack a minute. I have this theory that Rabinowitz and Rolf Geiger are almost identical in psychological makeup.”

  She started to scoff, but he insisted that he be allowed to continue.

  “You see,” Langlois said in his best analytical voice, “they were both prodigies, but came to their gifts very late. As young adults, they were romantics and iconoclasts. They experimented with their gifts, fooled around with ladies then went mentally off the rails as they reached for greatness.” He had a draft Bass ale in progress and his hand kept finding it. “This is what fascinates me,” he said. “When Rabinowitz made his move to become a world-class recitalist in the 1940’s, that’s when his personality quickly changed. For the negative. I’ve been following Rolf’s career and everything has an eerie ring. It’s like watching Rabinowitz all over again. The intensity. The lack of humor. The change of personality.”

  He paused. Amid swigs of ale his tone alternated between dead calm and breathless.

  “Well, come on, Diana, you live with Rolf Geiger,” he said eventually. “Am I not correct that Rolf has changed recently?”

  “He has a world tour coming up. It’s not unusual for an artist to be preoccupied or even moody. Much of that is concentration. It’s to be expected.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed. “And maybe not. Look, I’ve done extensive study. Rabinowitz was a student of Rachmaninoff. You can see it in their techniques: beautifully organized performances, impeccably delivered, rarely capricious, uniform from one season to the next and guided by a sense of sonority and a strong left hand. But when Rachmaninoff died in 1943, that’s when Rabinowitz started both his quest for greatness and his descent into venality. I’m not a psychologist,” he said. “I’m a journalist. And I know when I see two individuals on parallel roads.”

  She thought about what he had said for several seconds, while Phillip started to eat.

  “Suppose I’m listening to you,” she said. “What direction are you going with this?”

  He proceeded carefully.

  “I’m waiting for someone to be murdered,” he said. “Most likely you.” She bristled. “What?” she snapped.

  He repeated. She felt anger first, then a wave of fear.

  “I have a feeling you’re going for a cheap analogy,” she said.

  “Oh?” he asked. “You know, I’ve been an investigative reporter for many years. I notice things. And I notice that you look like a frightened woman these days.”

  Again, she protested. He waited.

  “Hear me out, please? Without interrupting.” She crossed her arms and waited.

  “In 1944 in London,” Langlois said, “the handsome young Rabinowitz was just making a name for himself. He was involved with a young woman named Laura Aufieri. Her body was found in the home in Mayfair that Rabinowitz kept. She had been strangled to death.”

  She felt something sickening crawling around her stomach.

  “So?”

  “She was a woman with whom Rabinowitz was having an affair at the time. A long-term live-in affair.” He held the sentence a beat. “But once he was out of that romantic relationship, through the thrill of her death, he went on to bigger things in terms of his career.”

  “Why wasn’t Rabinowitz arrested for the murder?”

  “He was.”

  “What?”

  “That’s part of where this whole ‘Dark Angel’ terminology came from. Tragedy. Violence. There was another woman who died suspiciously in Rabinowitz’s past, too, way back in Russia. But all records disappeared during the Stalin era. So who’s to know what happened?”

  “All of this is supposition,” Diana insisted.

  “Not entirely. Even this ‘Dark Angel’ nickname has a resonance: Rachmaninoff in his lifetime was known as ‘the archangel.’”

  “So did Rabinowitz go to jail?” Diana asked.

  “No. Lack of evidence. And naturally, because of who he was, a young virtuoso on the piano, the police cut him a wide degree of slack. But he was questioned nonstop for two days.”

  “You’re implying that Rolf will do the same thing? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “As a reporter, I’m just noting the eerie confluence of facts. In fact, I didn’t suggest anything. You just came to the same conclusion as I did.”

  “If this was such a big deal,” she asked next, “why wasn’t it in the newspapers and why isn’t
the story widely known here?”

  “Libel laws in England,” he said. “The stories of the death of Laura Aufieri were in the newspapers and the address in Mayfair of the Rabinowitz home was printed.” Langlois unwrapped a folder and started pulling clippings out of it. He pushed two before Diana. Across half a century, the face of a murdered woman looked out at Diana.

  She cringed again. Laura Aufieri was approximately Diana’s age. The slain mistress also bore an uncanny resemblance. And she, too, Diana noted, had been a young music journalist.

  Diana looked at the material for several seconds, then raised her eyes. Her salad was losing her interest.

  “Why would Rabinowitz have killed her?” she asked softly.

  “The theory was that Rabinowitz felt she was standing in the way of his career. The personal relationship was costing him passion from his musicianship. He realized he had no love to give to anything except the piano. Laura may have protested the end of their relationship or Rabinowitz may have lost his temper. Who knows? Maybe she was involved with another man. That rumor surfaced, too, stating that Rabinowitz murdered her in jealousy.” He paused. “Look. What’s indisputable is that Laura Aufieri was murdered.”

  Diana blew out a breath, overwhelmed and still highly skeptical.

  “I still don’t know what to say. Or how to react.”

  “That’s what I thought you would say,” Langlois said. “But consider this: A year ago, I sued the Metropolitan London Police to have documents declassified,” Langlois continued. “Rabinowitz was the chief suspect and subject to arrest. He then moved to the United States and stayed here until the London magistrates let that case grow cold. Mostly likely, there were bribes involved. Oh, and, in this country,” Langlois added, “Rabinowitz struck up a friendship with the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover made sure that there would be no cooperation forthcoming from American police agencies in the case.”

  “Fascinating,” she said. She suffered a disquieting sensation as she remembered that picture of Rabinowitz with Hoover that she had seen in the library. “But this is still a story from more than sixty years ago.”