Sylvia has trouble understanding how a sound can be simultaneously intimate and forceful, bright-edged and warm. What Sylvia also finds wondrous is matching the exquisitely fluid action of Inez’s bow arm with the sound. There is no separation. The sound comes as instantaneously as you witness it being made, seeming to defy some law of nature. Inez’s bow arm is a wonder in itself. Sylvia is amazed by how slowly Inez can draw the bow across her violin and still achieve force, how the shift from up bow to down is not a shift at all but as even and immaculate a gesture as a single breath. The bowing strikes her as being more vertical a motion, certainly across the high strings, than horizontal, the bow deftly traveling north and south across the strings, across the body. Sylvia wonders how it would feel to be touched by a hand that has so much effect. Later, Sylvia realizes that she’s held her breath, like a girl riding through a tunnel, during much of Inez’s stunning cadenza.
AFTER the first movement, Inez takes in the open space of the great hall. She is coated with the weight of her own history. A habit of abstraction. A habit of disassociation. Her girlhood was spent standing on a spot practicing, the audience only in her imagination. Tonight the audience is palpable. Twenty-five hundred souls. Her family is sitting out there. This is not her girlhood room. The audience is not a wall hung with photographs. Rather than holding on to the music, or having it circulate within the closed room of her imagining, Inez would like to offer the audience what is inside her.
BETWEEN movements, all the coughers awake from their virtual slumber.
“Give them all a box of Smith Brothers,” says Hy Myerson.
Just as the orchestra slips into the languorous Andante, Sylvia feels a hand drop onto her thigh. She gives a start and resists the urge to swat Hy. Toby’s gaze is fixed straight ahead on Inez. Poor Toby. Sylvia lifts her opera glasses and aims them at Inez, reminding herself to breathe.
A PERFORMANCE coated with a veneer of impenetrable poise, a performance begun stoically, assumes a lush and startling intimacy in the Andante. Inez opens herself to the music’s warmth, especially as she climbs to the high register of the G string. The lyric line is meant to be tentative rather than overpowering. Tentative as Sylvia the reporter’s hand on her cheek. And yet what begins tentatively can end up making a lasting impression. Inez is now asking something of the audience, and letting them see her uncertainty. Life may be worth living; it may not.
Inez opens her eyes to the audience. A thin charcoal line appears across her open eyes. A horizon along which a woman could walk. Where might it take her? She might stay alive. She might not. The fact that beauty exists in the world doesn’t necessarily mean that life is worth living. Can a woman—this woman with the violin in her arms—make a rational choice to end her life? Or must she have the dogs of madness barking at her heels? She wants her most important choice to be made with controlled reason, with an unswerving command akin to this crisply articulated passage of triplets.
She glances at Maestro Bonfa, who’s flipping backward in his score. The man has lost his place. She might guess that he’d given himself over to “worldly grief” if his eyes were not so stewed in fear. Thankfully, the orchestra is following her. She nods to the poor man. She will lead him in.
AS the movement weaves to a close, Sylvia Bran, an enraptured watcher, leans toward the violinist in the aubergine dress. Beside her, Hy Myerson, whose hand she’d managed to shake off her thigh, wheezes a soft bentwood curl of a snore.
as if he means it
RISING off the floor, Christine leers at him naughtily. “You’re a virtuoso in your own right, Jake.”
“Thank you.”
Jake had watched Christine drink a half bottle of wine with lunch, but it hadn’t occurred to him until after they’d finished making love that she might be a bit pickled.
“Inez must have been pleased with her performance. I thought she was magnificent, but what do I know?”
“I think she was pleased, as pleased as she allows herself to be.”
“Were you proud of her?”
“Of course.”
“And the kids?”
“Sure.”
“Your family is beautiful, Jake. I was watching your children through my glasses—so sweet. No wonder you never mention them. Who’d want to bring up a perfect family in a place like this. You know what Derek said about Inez? He said, ‘She plays it as if she means it.’ I thought of that while we were screwing.”
“Funny time to think of that.”
“I’ll tell you why. The words came into my head—he fucks as if he means it.”
“I do mean it.”
“Yes, I know you do,” Christine purrs. “Do you think it’s wrong for a lady to use a word like fuck?”
Jake boosts himself off the floor and pulls up his undershorts. “Do I think it’s wrong for a lady . . . here’s what I think, Christine. I think it’s perfectly all right for a lady who’s just been fucking another lady’s husband to use the word fuck.”
Christine stretches out on a wicker daybed and Jake lies down with his head at the opposite end. Christine grabs hold of Jake’s right foot and bends the baby toe back until it hurts.
“Ouch.”
“That’s what you deserve, fucker.”
As pleasant as it might have been to make love on the daybed, Christine, not about to spoil tradition, made a place for them on a pair of straw mats on the floor of the second-floor sunroom.
“This is my meditation room,” she’d said when she led Jake into the room.
“Are you sure you want to defile it like this?” Jake had said.
“I thought this would be a way of blessing it.”
Jake was angry when he arrived. He’d brought a paltry lunch: two liverwurst sandwiches on rye and a tub of German potato salad. He thought Christine would sneer at the lunch and refuse to eat it. But she was gracious and said, “We have a bottle of Gewürztraminer in the fridge. That will be perfect with our sandwiches.”
He’d wanted to pick a fight with Christine. Although the purity of their enterprise depends, in part, on his thinking of her rarely between visits, she’s been on his mind a lot recently. The fact is, he hasn’t been himself since the strange business with Inez at Nepenthe. Everything seems a little off center now. He’d promised to quit seeing other women, but he has no intention of stopping his visits to Christine. Add lying and betrayal to his crimes. Clearly, he will pay in full when the party’s over.
In any case, something about his arrangement with Christine is bothering him. Was she too controlling? Has it all become a frivolous game for her? Can he possibly be falling in love with her, after all these years? He wishes he could come to see her more often, not just for the recreation they enjoy, but to talk with her, to tell her what’s on his mind.
Jake looks across at her now; she’s wrapped in a short, peach-colored kimono, bursting with blossoms. He tucks one of her small feet in his hands and begins massaging it.
“Don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Christine.”
“Oh,” she says, after he cracks a tiny bone in her middle toe, “that feels good.”
Years ago, he gave Inez full body massages. He’d have his beautiful young wife lie naked on the bed with a towel draped over her rump. Sometimes, after the massage, they made love, an activity that’s now become rare.
Jake lets go of his lover’s foot, and Christine, who seems to have an uncanny sense of when Jake’s attention has wandered, and to what location, says, “You haven’t told me about your trip to Carmel with Inez.”
“Do you think you should be privy to everything that goes on with my marriage?” he asks, trying to affect a light tone.
“Not at all.”
“You don’t tell me anything about Derek.”
“You never ask. Anyway, I was just making conversation.” Christine reaches forward and takes one of Jake’s calves in her hands, then begins stroking it. “I have to admit, Inez has been on my mind since the concert.
Your wife is a beautiful woman, Jake, and very talented.”
“It’s not as if that was the first time you’d seen her.”
“No, but this time she was standing out front.”
“Are you jealous of Inez?”
“I’ve never been jealous of any man’s wife.”
Jake pulls his leg free and stands. “Do you mind if I have a cigarette in your meditation room?”
“Not at all. I love to watch you smoke, Jake.”
Jake walks over to the small bamboo stool where most of his clothes sit and pulls a pack of Viceroys—a switch from his usual brand—out of his shirt pocket. He picks up a metal ashtray, a Chinatown statue of a Buddha with a deep cleft in the belly meant for cigarette ash. Jake lights his cigarette and settles back on the wicker daybed.
“My trip with Inez was odd, if you want to know.”
“Odd?”
Jake blows a long stream of smoke out of his nostrils. Christine raises her eyebrows, eager for details.
“We were having a nice enough time. Shopping in Carmel. Walking on the beach. On the last night we drove down to Nepenthe in Big Sur.”
“I adore that restaurant, Jake. You’re such a romantic.”
Jake turns his face aside, finding it difficult to look directly at Christine. “So we had a couple of cocktails, even danced for a while out on the terrace . . .”
“Nice . . .”
Jake looks at the long ash at the end of his cigarette. “And then she asked me for a divorce.”
“Oh, Jake,” Christine says. She rises onto her knees and takes Jake’s hands. “Did she mean it?”
“I think she meant it.” Jake flicks the hanging ash into the Buddha-belly ashtray. “It frightened me.”
“Of course. You love her, Jake.”
“At first I was angry. I’d probably had a little too much to drink. I wanted to know how long she’d been thinking about it. Turns out it had been on her mind a long time.”
“A long time? Really?”
“I was appalled.”
“Why?”
“She kept it secret for so long.”
“Like you’ve never kept anything from her,” Christine says, as her kimono falls open.
“That’s not the point.”
“Of course not.”
Jake’s eyes fix on the nipple and brownish aureole of Christine’s left breast.
“So did you talk her out of it?”
“No, I didn’t talk her out of it.”
Christine wraps herself tighter in her kimono. “Then she’s filing papers?”
“Not right now.”
“So you talked her out of it.”
“What’s your point, Christine?” Jake glares at her, but his mistress does not reply.
“We ended up talking about God.” Jake laughs.
“God and divorce. That’s original, at least for those not in the Catholic set.” Christine rises off the daybed and pads barefoot across the room to a rattan table where the sleek, green bottle of Gewürztraminer stands beside a bowl of dried rose petals and two wineglasses. Christine pours what’s left of the wine into each of the glasses, then walks back to the daybed and hands Jake a glass. “Was the talk of religion your ploy?”
“I suppose.”
“Might as well bring moral indignation to the party.” Christine returns to her end of the daybed, folding her legs under her, careful not to spill any wine. “So can the marriage be saved?”
“What’s it to you?” he says, with a lash of venom that even surprises him.
“Sorry, mister. The truth is it means a lot to me that you stay married.”
Jake pours down his wine in a gulp and hands Christine his empty glass before pushing himself up from the daybed. He walks over to his clothes and begins dressing.
Christine, holding a wineglass in each hand, places the one she’s been sipping from down on the floor and shifts the empty glass from her left hand to her right. “You’re really close to being an idiot, Jake.” Christine hurls the empty glass against the wall next to Jake and delights at the quick explosion of glass.
Surprised, Jake shouts, “What are you doing?”
“That was satisfying.”
Jake buckles his belt in a hurry. “You’re crazy, Christine.”
“Yes, and you, you have a way of only seeing half of what’s in front of you. I know you love your wife. You may be too much of a fool to realize it. And you have children, in case you haven’t noticed, who might rather have a father around than not.” Christine takes a leisurely sip of her wine. “But that’s all your business, Jake. Here’s my business: as a divorced man, you’d be useless to me. I’m being purely selfish, but I want no part of you in that condition. If there’s ever been a man who needs a wife, it’s you, Jake. I won’t have you coming over here in rumpled clothes, stinking from need and the pee stains on your underwear.”
“Pee stains on my underwear?” Jake shakes his head for a moment and then, not at all kindly, flips Christine the bird.
“Yes, well.” Christine shrugs. “Fortunately, you look like a man who aims to stay married for a long time.”
depraved
SYLVIA spent the better part of a week deciding how to approach Inez Roseman again. Finally, when she works up the nerve to call and ask the violinist to lunch, the phone conversation feels like an audition.
“Lunch?” Inez says.
“Yes, well, nothing fancy. I was thinking either at my apartment or perhaps at a little Chinese restaurant in the Avenues. How do you feel about Chinese?”
“I thought we agreed that you were no longer doing the story.”
“We did agree. The fact is I really enjoy your company and hope we can meet again, without a pretense.”
“Without a pretense. Don’t we always need a pretense?”
Sylvia laughs at the little joke. Isn’t it a joke?
Inez is silent; she sounds like she’s ready to hang up.
“By the way, the Goldmark was wonderful.”
“That’s very kind of you. I’m glad that you could be there.”
Has Inez forgotten that they’d spoken before the concert, that Sylvia had left her open hand like a glowing leaf on the violinist’s cheek? “I hoped the feeling was mutual,” says Sylvia.
“What feeling?”
“I thought that maybe you would appreciate a friendship.”
“A friendship?”
“Yes, I know it’s an absurd idea,” she says, stalling. Will Inez Roseman hang up on her?
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s absurd. It’s just that I don’t . . .”
“I know,” Sylvia says, cutting Inez off. She doesn’t want to hear the violinist’s excuses and launches recklessly into a final foray. “Friendships are so passé. Who has time for friends these day? And why would somebody as accomplished as you are want to be friends with me?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Forgive me,” Sylvia says, wondering if she’s overplayed her hand. “I tend to spit things out, especially when I’m nervous. You see, I don’t always think the most of myself, but, as my analyst says, who does?”
Sylvia, pleased by how nimbly she’s spun her line and invented an analyst, is delighted by Inez Roseman’s response: “How about trying a Japanese restaurant? I know a little place called Miyamo that’s been around since the early fifties. It’s up the street from the new Japantown complex on Geary.”
SYLVIA passes through an open doorway and then through the split blue curtain of the small storefront restaurant. She assumes she’ll arrive first. In fact, she has the sneaking feeling that she might be the only one who comes. An old woman bows to her and leads her in past a black lacquered counter to a small row of tables with worn pillowed seats. Inez, to her surprise, is already seated at one of the tables, sipping tea.
“Am I late?”
“No, I’m early,” Inez says, gesturing for Sylvia to sit.
“I’m so glad you came,” says Sylvia, sliding into her chair.
“Did you expect I wouldn’t?”
“I know how busy you are.”
“Not as busy as you think. You must be the busy one. I’m surprised the newspaper lets you get away for lunch. Are you working on a story?”
Sylvia forces herself to look Inez in the eye. “I have the day off.”
“How nice that you chose to spend a bit of it with me.”
Is Inez patronizing her? Sylvia smiles at the violinist and then takes a quick look around the restaurant. The only other diners—two Japanese men in suits—seem more interested in their tall glasses of beer than in their food. The room is bare of ornament except for a bamboo screen and a large, airbrushed photo of a plate of sukiyaki.
“I know it doesn’t look like much,” says Inez, “but the food is good. I haven’t been here for quite a while. I used to meet my father here sometimes after morning rehearsals. He had a shop nearby. After he died, I came a couple of times by myself. I don’t know why I thought of coming today. You said Chinese—power of suggestion.” Inez cranes her neck around. “It’s kind of dingy, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s cozy.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Sylvia is at a loss for what to say. She picks up a menu but can’t concentrate on it. The two Japanese men are speaking to each other in bright bursts of language. Sylvia looks across at Inez’s hands—how closely clipped the violinist’s nails are. She would like to reach over and take hold of one of Inez’s hands.
Inez looks down at her hands. “They’re terribly chapped. I can’t get enough lotion on them.”
“Don’t be silly. Your hands are beautiful, Inez.”
Inez holds up one hand and then the other. “I’m sorry, but these are not beautiful.”
Sylvia wonders what it would be like to have the violinist touch her, to have those fingers slowly run down her cheeks. Clearly, Inez knows everything that Sylvia’s thinking.
Inez picks up her menu. “Do you know what you’re going to have?”
“I can’t decide.”
“Me neither.”
Her only hope, Sylvia realizes, is to become the reporter again. “I’m curious—what kind of shop did your father have?”
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