The Brahms Deception

by Louise Marley

  “I know.” He closed his eyes, and it was a relief to shut out the harsh light. “I’m on my own. But I can handle it.”

  He felt Chiara’s hand on his arm, and he covered it with his own. It felt good. It was that anchor again—she was his anchor—and he couldn’t help hoping she would stay right there the whole time he was gone. He pressed her fingers, and murmured her name.

  He hoped he had said the right one.

  Frederica could hardly wait until it was time for bed on their last night in Castagno. Hannes had been oddly quiet through the evening. She stood alone in the salon and watched through the French windows as he paced the garden, smoking. When darkness enfolded the village and the stars began to wink into existence above the hills, he came in, but he busied himself with his manuscript pages, ordering and reordering them. He collected the pens and extra nibs, capped the inkwell, and packed everything away in his case. When he went to the fortepiano and closed the lid over the keyboard, it felt like a gesture of finality, a real sign that they were leaving Casa Agosto.

  Before she left for the evening, Nuncia lumbered up the stairs to help Frederica pack her valise and her portmanteau. They folded the dresses, the extra corset, the chemises and other undergarments. Frederica went through the drawers of the dresser to make certain she hadn’t missed anything. She found, tucked into a corner, a little paper packet of some brownish powder and a flat spoon for measuring it out.

  She paused, the packet in her hand. What was this? It looked like some sort of medicine. Did Clara need medicine?

  Hannes came in to pack his own things, and found her gazing at the packet. He said heavily, “I hope you’ve been careful, Clara.”

  She could only hold the packet to her breast, nodding. It was pretense. She had no idea what he meant or what the powder was for. Mystified, she stowed the packet under a chemise.

  They spoke German, and Nuncia paid no attention to them. She was busy settling two hats in the hatbox, one nestled inside the other. She shook out the veil of the black traveling bonnet and set it on the bureau, ready for the morning

  Frederica walked downstairs with Nuncia, leaving Hannes to his own packing. Nuncia bid Frederica good night, promising to come early to prepare a light breakfast before they had to leave. Frederica forced herself to smile patiently as Nuncia bundled her things into a carpetbag and let herself out through the garden gate.

  Frederica stood at the French windows, watching the cook ford the little pools of lamplight that spilled out into the street. By the time she disappeared at the turning of the lane, Hannes had come back downstairs and settled into the wing chair. Frederica pulled the curtains closed, and turned to him. “Are you ready for bed?”

  He had a glass of wine at his elbow. He turned his gaze up to her, and she tried to find affection in his eyes, the warmth she had seen before. She couldn’t. The blue of his eyes had cooled, darkened. Something in them made her stomach tighten. He said, “Clara. We must talk a bit.”

  Frederica didn’t want to talk. She wanted to go up the staircase, shed the weight of all these clothes, the restrictions of corset and underskirts and combs and thick cotton stockings. She wanted to tumble into bed beside Hannes, to cover his body with hers, to feel his skin and muscle against her own, taste the wine on his lips. Her body throbbed with wanting him.

  She made herself stand demurely beside his chair.

  He held out his hand to her. When she took it, the touch of his fingers sent tingles of excitement up her arm. He pulled her toward him, and she settled onto his knee, delighted by the gesture, encouraged. She felt as she had at the very first, delicate and light and desirable. She put an arm around his neck, and leaned against his shoulder. “What do you want to talk about, dearest Hannes?”

  He held her close, but he looked past her, to the gathering darkness outside the long gauze curtains. “I worry about what will happen to you, Clara,” he said. He sounded older. There was a little hoarseness in his tone, and his arm around her was more paternal than passionate.

  She couldn’t bear it. She pressed her lips to his cheek, then nestled her head in the crook of his neck. “What can happen to me, Hannes? I am with you. I’m under your protection.”

  “Mein Engel,” he said. The nickname sounded sad as he spoke it now, not the eager, yearning endearment of before. “Your reputation will be ruined. Your family and your friends will turn their backs on you. Your public will not come to your concerts.”

  “I don’t care!” she exclaimed. She straightened, and took his face between her two hands. “If you love me, Hannes—if you love me as you say you do—you will take me with you to Hamburg. I will help you with your work, and keep your house, and—and do anything you wish! But I can’t go back to Berlin, to my life. I simply cannot! ”

  Now he looked stern. It was an odd expression on such a young man’s face, and obscurely, it made her want him even more. “Your children need you,” he said. “Think of little Felix. What will he do if his mother doesn’t come home?”

  She laughed. She pressed her thighs against his, and wriggled deeper into his lap. She opened her legs just a little, daringly, invitingly. “They have Marie,” she said.

  He said, with a determined air, “Marie is your child, too.” But she heard his breathing quicken.

  “She is a woman of nineteen. She has the housekeeper to help her, and her grandfather. My father owes me, Hannes, he owes me everything! Let him take care of my children!”

  “Oh, Clara, you can’t really mean to abandon them!”

  “I’m not abandoning them, not really. I’ve told you.” Frederica pushed herself up to stand before him, and then, slowly, deliberately, she sank down again across his lap, one leg on either side of his thighs. “Hannes, why should I not have some freedom? Some time for myself?” Keeping her eyes on his face, she pulled up her skirts, until there was nothing between them but her lace-edged cotton drawers. He groaned, and closed his eyes as his body responded to her. His arms came around her again, and he moved beneath her, helplessly, hungrily.

  “Hannes,” she said throatily, exultantly. “Dearest, look at me. Look at us! We can do anything . . . have anything—we want! Let us enjoy it while we are still young and strong.”

  “Clara, meine Schatz, oh, God, Clara, it’s all wrong—”

  She stopped his lips with hers, and ground her hips against him. He gasped, and reached for her drawers. His hands were rough and urgent, and she didn’t care. She kissed him with all her strength, parting his lips with her tongue, pressing her breasts against him. He gave up trying to find the ribbon on the drawers. With an oath, he tore the fabric from top to bottom. Half of it came off in his hand, a little froth of cotton and lace, and he threw it to the floor.

  In another moment he had unfastened his trousers. He kissed her throat. He tore away her scarf to uncover her bosom, and took one breast, then the other, in his open mouth, until she could hardly breathe for needing him. A moment later he lifted her bodily with his two strong hands, lifted her just so, and then drew her down, swiftly, all at once, until they were deeply, completely joined. She cried out in pain at the suddenness of it, but it was also a cry of ecstasy and abandon.

  It was a relief to know that he wanted her, that this had not changed. She gave herself up to the moment, clinging to his neck with both arms, savoring his urgent strength, his masculine power. If he seemed as much angry as passionate, she didn’t care. At least for this moment, this hot, wanton moment, she didn’t care. Nothing mattered but this, the satisfaction of her driving need, the sensation of being desired and desirable, of giving herself over to him.

  It was over all too quickly. Hannes cried out, grasping her one last time, piercing her more deeply than she would have thought possible. She welcomed it, savored it. And wanted more.

  When Hannes, face averted, was fumbling to restore his clothing, she withdrew herself from his lap. Her legs trembled with the aftermath of her passion, and her mouth was dry. She shook out her skirts, then p
erched on the arm of the chair, reaching for his glass to take a deep draught of wine. She swallowed, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. He kept his face turned away, but she gripped his arm, and whispered with fierce joy, “You see, Hannes? It is worth any sacrifice! We will be so happy together.”

  His gaze was on the floor, on the fortepiano, on the curtained window. His voice was thick, a stranger’s voice. “What about my public?”

  “They don’t matter! We have to think of our own happiness!”

  He stood up, and turned slowly to face her, still buttoning his waistcoat. His cheeks were flushed. He smoothed his disordered hair with his hands. “You will be an outcast. It will mean the end of your career.”

  She leaned indolently against the back of the chair and smiled up at him. “I don’t want to play anymore. I have already told you. I’m weary of traveling, of living in hotels and playing in drafty halls. And Hannes, you are the greatest living composer. Why should you worry about what people say?”

  “I am just at the beginning,” he said. “I worry about everything.”

  She drained the wineglass, and set it down. “You can trust me, Hannes. You have nothing to worry about.”

  He shook his head, not meeting her eyes again. He bent past her to turn down the lamp, but he took care not to touch her.

  Frederica resisted an urge to press him, to talk more about their future, to make plans about what they would do in Hamburg. He was having trouble, she could see, understanding the change in her. She judged it better to wait till the morning. When they were on the train—together, on their way to Hamburg—the die would be cast. The decision would be made. He was an honorable man, and a loyal one. She knew this about him, knew it better than he could know himself. He wouldn’t refuse her after this time they had spent together. She would not allow it.

  17

  Kristian opened his eyes to a beautiful sunny May morning. They had decided, Max and Elliott and he, that he should arrive on the last day of Brahms’s stay in Castagno. There would be no danger of encountering Braunstein, and he would have the element of surprise on his side. Frederica, they hoped, would be convinced by now they had given up.

  He moved forward, over the rose-festooned wall, past the painted bench and the drooping olive tree, toward the French windows. They were closed this morning, the drawn curtains hanging straight and still.

  Even as he slipped in through the closed windows, he caught sight of a cart, drawn by a single donkey, making its slow way up the hill from San Felice. It was surely meant to carry Brahms and Clara to the train. Elliott had done a perfect job with the coordinates. This was the moment. His last chance. And Clara’s.

  He ghosted through the French doors and into the empty salon. There was no time now to admire the fortepiano, to appreciate the details of the room and the house. He moved straight into the little entryway, and stopped just outside the kitchen door. Brahms was there, seated at the wooden table, drinking from a thick cup. A long traveling coat with deep cuffs and a wide, flat collar lay over the back of one of the empty chairs. The cook, in a long printed apron, was slicing cheese and sausage with a big knife. A basket of bread rested in front of Brahms, with the little bottle of olive oil. As Kristian watched, Brahms tore off a piece of bread and sprinkled it with olive oil. No one seemed to be expecting Clara. Kristian drew back, and moved swiftly up the narrow staircase.

  He found her seated on a lace-draped stool at the dressing table in the bedroom, gazing into the shadowed oval mirror. She was already dressed in a traveling outfit of some heavy, smooth material in a pattern of black and brown plaid. She was brushing her hair into its heavy wings and fixing it with combs. A bonnet of straw with a heavy black veil lay ready on the dressing table. She was lovely still, but something looked different to Kristian. He wondered if it was his imagination that made her mouth look thinner and harder. Her eyes seemed to glitter as she looked at herself in the mirror, and the shape of them seemed narrower than he remembered. The upper lids drooped slightly, almost lazily.

  Kristian moved behind her. She was gazing into the glass, tucking in the last strands of hair, resettling one of the tortoiseshell combs. She suddenly froze, one hand still on her hair, the other raised halfway to her head. He could see himself, too, perceive his own hazy outline in the mirror.

  When he spoke, his voice sounded thin and metallic, a vibration received not so much by the ear as by the mind. “I know you’re there,” he said. “I know what you did.”

  Slowly, warily, she turned on the lacy stool, and faced him. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, in English. “Leave me alone!”

  He shook his head with deliberation. “I won’t do that,” he said.

  “I saw Lillian,” she said. “She couldn’t do anything. She didn’t have any idea what she was looking at.”

  “I can’t allow this to go on,” he said.

  “You don’t have any choice,” she said in a flat tone. He had been right, he saw now. Her face had changed. She looked older, harder, and in some strange way dissolute, as if she had overindulged in wine. She saw him assessing her, and she tossed her head. “You should all just give up and go away! Nothing’s going to change here.”

  “Listen to me, Frederica.” He shifted his position so that he hovered directly in front of her. “This is wrong. You have to let Clara go.”

  She started to rise. “Stay away from me!”

  “You’ve done something horrible,” he said. “But you can still release her. You can set things right.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You have to,” he said urgently. He put out a ghostly hand, fingers spread. “Think of what you’re doing to your parents! Your mother—”

  “Don’t.” She wrapped her arms protectively around herself, as if she were cold. “Get out of my way.”

  From below, he heard Brahms’s voice. “Clara, are you coming down? Claudio will be here soon.”

  She bent over the stool to reach for her bonnet. When she straightened and faced him again, her mouth and hands trembled with anger. “You can’t stop me,” she said in a hoarse voice. “It’s too late. It’s over. I’ve killed her, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

  Frederica saw Kristian’s eyes widen in horror, and for one awful moment the full awareness of what she had done swept over her. Saying it aloud intensified the impact. She had ended a life. She had destroyed Clara Schumann’s spirit, and there truly was no turning back. Kristian’s image shimmered as he tried to absorb the fact of it, and she shuddered herself.

  She quelled the shudder, and stiffened her spine. There was no point in thinking about it now. There was no going back, not for any of them. “Go away,” she commanded. “I’m leaving here. You will never find me again.”

  Despite her determination, she had to grit her teeth at the revulsion in his eyes.

  “How could you?” he whispered, in that tinny, not-quite-real voice. “How could you do . . . any of it?”

  She had to look away for the merest instant. She concentrated on the breath in her lungs, on the rose-scented breeze floating through the window, on the crisp black straw of the bonnet in her hands. She steadied once more, and forced herself to lift her chin and glare at him.

  “You could never understand,” she said.

  “No one could understand. It’s appalling. And if Clara doesn’t survive—”

  “I told you!” she snapped. It was dangerous to be speaking English this way. Dangerous because Hannes might hear, and dangerous because it shook her grasp on 1861. She shifted into German. “I told you, she’s dead. She’s gone. I’m sorry about it, actually. But it was necessary.”

  “How will you live with yourself?” he demanded.

  Bitterness rose like bile in her throat. “You’re a handsome man,” she hissed. “You don’t know what it’s like to be ugly. To have people—men—avert their eyes when they see you. To have a mother who’s disappointed because you don’t have boyfriends, or a father
who only cares about what you achieve. Who named you after himself! What hubris, what—”

  “They care about you!” He raised both his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “They’re there, in Castagno, worrying over you as if you were in some sort of coma. Think, Frederica—”

  “Stop saying that name!”

  From below the stairs, Hannes called out, “Clara! The train is at eleven.”

  She called back, in a voice that shook only a little, “I’m coming, dearest! Moment, bitte.”

  Kristian asked wonderingly, “What are you going to do? What can you do?”

  She turned back to the mirror so she wouldn’t have to see the disgust in his face. “I can do anything,” she said. She drew on her black cotton gloves, smoothing them over her wrists.

  “Your mother is heartbroken,” he said.

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “The time line is changing.”

  At that, she laughed, the sour laugh of disillusionment. “Who gives a damn about that? You’re still here, aren’t you? Your family? Your time line hasn’t changed.”

  “What about Clara’s family? Seven children!”

  “They’ll survive. They have people to care for them. It’s my life now, and I’m going to live it.” She took the bonnet in her hands, and stepped toward the door.

  He was blocking the doorway. He didn’t move, and though the idea was unpleasant, there was nothing for her to do but pass through him on her way to the stairs.

  It seemed so simple, if distasteful. A step forward, another step. She would be on the stairs in a moment, and he would be behind her.

  The shock of their contact sent her to her knees. A wave of nausea shook her. Her brain turned to fog, and she groped for something to hold on to, a wall, the floor. She suffered a sudden vertigo so violent she hardly knew whether she was standing upright or lying prone.

  She had forgotten all about the layering effect.

  He felt it, too; he must have. He flitted away from her to hover on the tiny landing, and his image wavered and trembled like mist in a breeze.