The Brahms Deception

by Louise Marley

  “I don’t believe you. You can’t be so unfeeling.”

  “Unfeeling?” She gave a bitter laugh just as the cart jolted over a stone and she had to brace herself against the side. “You have no idea what I feel.”

  He inched forward on his seat. He would have, he knew, just one chance.

  She saw the movement. She laughed again, and opened her arms. “Go ahead,” she said. “Try to force me! You will fail. I’m much stronger than you are, and I’ve been . . . like this . . . for a whole week.”

  He hesitated, and she raised her eyebrows. “He’s struggling inside you, isn’t he?” she crowed. “Oh, yes, I remember what that’s like. I know how much energy it takes to keep control. But I no longer have to fight that battle.” She dropped her arms, and folded them once more across her slender bosom. In a voice so low he could barely hear it over the clatter of the cart, she said, “I took care of it. Once and for all.”

  He feared she was right. Even as he faced her in the noisy cart, he was aware of Brahms striving to break free. It made him sad, and it exhausted him.

  She nodded. “You see,” she said, with grim satisfaction. “You can’t do it. You’re not as strong-minded as I am. It’s not your fault.” She shrugged. “It’s just the way I am, have always been. I get what I want, because I’m willing to do what’s needed.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “Please. Spare me your homilies.” She leaned forward a little, and the look she bent on him was one of loathing. “This is your lucky day, you know. All you have to do is release Hannes, and go back to your life. Your career will be better than you ever expected. Now you will be the premier Brahms scholar.”

  He stiffened, and he felt certain that even with Brahms’s unfamiliar face to work with, his look on her was no less one of loathing. “It was supposed to be me in the first place.”

  Her smile was like ice. “So?”

  “Your father bought you the transfer,” he said.

  “Life’s a competition. We use what we have. I used my father. If you expect to survive in academe, you’d better toughen up.”

  He exhaled, and sat back, staring at her implacable expression. He could hardly bear thinking of what she had done to Clara Schumann. Perhaps he should give up. He had only to release his hold, allow Brahms to surface once again. He would open his eyes in the transfer clinic, and the time line would remain as he had left it. If it was too late for Clara, though it broke his heart to think so, perhaps he should concede. He shook his head, gazing at her.

  “You think you can hurt me with your accusing looks,” she said. “You think because I was born into privilege, gifted, indulged, you think I should be happy. I can tell you, it’s not enough.”

  “It should be. Your mother loves you. Your father is willing to do whatever you want him to do. You have a bright future.”

  “A lonely future,” she said. “You saw me—Frederica—in the transfer clinic, didn’t you? What did you think of me?”

  “There are far more important things than physical appearance.”

  She snorted.

  He had to drop his gaze, look away from her. He watched the village of San Felice as they jolted through it. It was considerably shrunken from the view of it he had had from the Fiat, more than a century and a half from now. Its houses were isolated, its broad fields empty. He watched until the cart had clattered past and onto the wider road, where other carriages and farm carts rolled toward Pistoia. He whispered to Brahms, clamoring within him, “Wait, sir. I’m very sorry, but . . . Please just wait a little longer.” To Frederica he said, “What you’ve done is immoral. More than that, it’s criminal.”

  She laughed. “Who will try me? No one has ever before done what I’ve done! And even when you go back to your happy life, Kristian North, even if someone believes your complaint against me, they could never find me. I am beyond their reach.”

  Her coldness irritated him, and made his temper begin to flicker. “Your mother thinks better of you than this.”

  “My mother is a fool. Clothes, jewelry—”

  “Beauty?” he interrupted.

  “It’s so shallow,” she snapped, but she had the grace to look down at her hands.

  “It’s just what you’re complaining of,” he said. “You think because you’re plain, you have a right to steal someone else’s beauty!”

  “You don’t know what it’s like!” she said. She flicked a glance at him, then down again. “You were born good-looking. Talented. You have everything.”

  His breathing quickened as his anger grew. “No one has everything. That’s an ignorant thing to say.”

  “Ignorant!”

  “You don’t like that word? I’ll choose a different one. You’re selfish. Unutterably, disgustingly selfish.” He found one hand folded into a fist, and he struck at the side of the cart with it. “There’s no excuse for any of this!” he shouted.

  Her voice rose, too. “I don’t care what you say, and I certainly don’t care what you think! Unless you plan to continue as you are, you can’t touch me! And I don’t think you have the stomach for it!”

  Furious, he started to rise, to move toward her in one last, desperate attempt to disrupt her hold. A sudden lurch of the cart threw him back on the seat, and he saw that they had turned out of the road and were threading their way through city traffic. The arched roof of the train station loomed ahead. She would be out of the cart, off to wherever she had decided to go. And she was right, unless he committed the same offense she had, he couldn’t go with her.

  “I can’t believe,” he said hotly, “that you would do this to a woman who never hurt you.”

  “I told you, she’s dead!” Frederica shrieked. “It’s done, and I can’t change it now, even if I wanted to!”

  Kristian, his temper in full spate, made one last attempt. He lunged toward her, his hands out to grasp her shoulders, to shake her into submission. He knew it was hopeless. She was too strong, had been holding on to Clara’s body for too long. If Clara was dead, she had no distraction to weaken her. His action would only throw him back to the transfer clinic, back to his own time, and in all likelihood Frederica would remain untouched.

  He was too angry to care.

  Clara had curled herself into a space even smaller and darker than before. She didn’t know if she was alive or dead. If this was death, it was not restful. It was not the golden heaven promised by Scripture or the blissful ignorance of the nonbelievers. It was also not the hell predicted by the faithful. There was no fire, no burning, no lurid Michelangelo scene, no Dantean circles drawing her ever farther down.

  It was like being smothered, except that it went on and on and on without respite. Her spirit was not set free, but confined in this corner, forced there by her demon’s greater power.

  But she heard the shouts, and she stirred in her tiny prison.

  The demon was screaming at someone. Was it Hannes? It didn’t feel like Hannes. Whoever it was felt as forceful and dangerous as the demon. Could it be another demon? If so, she was certainly lost forever.

  But there was something different about the other presence. It was powerful, perhaps as powerful as her demon, and it was angry. She could feel its fury, a hot wind that buffeted her demon so that it shook with fear. Why? What frightened it so?

  Clara stirred, and stretched, daring a single tendril of energy outside her corner. When nothing happened, she tried another. She was surprised to find that the spark of her spirit, though it had been dimmed nearly to extinction, could still swell and grow, fed by hope as the spark from a match feeds on air. She quivered with excitement as she thought that, perhaps, it could become a real flame again.

  She felt the new power surge toward her. Whatever this was, demon or god or something else, it was attacking her demon. It was fighting on her side. She didn’t know its reason, but she knew it was her last chance. She felt its approach, and she rose to meet it the way a flame leaps to the wick.

  She thrust
herself upward, and outward. She used all her strength to launch herself toward the new power, to throw herself into the fray, to add her meager strength to the battle.

  Kristian saw Frederica’s eyes go wide, the pupils expand with shock. Her mouth opened as if she were trying to catch a breath but couldn’t. As he gripped her shoulders, her head fell back and a terrible sound came from her throat, a howl of pain, and of loss.

  There was no time for Kristian to consider what it meant or why Frederica was suddenly weakened. He dared not hesitate. He sent a thought to Brahms, a brief, Forgive me, Maestro, even as he wrapped his arms around Frederica and pulled her close to him.

  She slumped backward in his arms, wailing. Something was happening. Something elemental was changing, and it shook Kristian, too.

  Her shoulders were against his chest, her thighs pressed against his. He held her head with one hand, and with the other gripped her stiff, corseted waist.

  He felt the vertigo that came with the shift. The world rocked around him. There was no time to think about it. His vision blurred, his stomach turned, and the transfer shattered.

  But in the moment before he lost his hold, he saw Clara Schumann in the great almond eyes, the soft, melancholy mouth. In the fraction of a second before he was jarred out of Brahms, and out of 1861, he felt Clara go limp in his arms, then straighten. Her great eyes turned up to him, and they glowed with a light of gratitude and wonderment. For that second, so brief he might even have imagined it, but which he would remember as long as he lived, he held his goddess in his arms. He knew the feel of her slender body, the warmth of her flesh, the sweet skin of her cheek.

  In that final instant, she turned her head and pressed her lips to his in a kiss of gratitude. And of farewell.

  Then he was gone, spinning through the years, somersaulting over the decades until he landed, with a groan, on the hard cot in the colorless transfer room. He opened his eyes, and found Max and Chiara on either side. Each gripped one of his hands, as if to hold him in his own time, to be sure he didn’t slip away from them. He felt their hands, heard their voices speaking his name. At first he couldn’t answer.

  He had held Clara Schumann in his arms. She had kissed him, pressed her sweet small mouth to his. Her gentle face glowed in his memory, and he knew—he knew—that she was restored. She had to be!

  With a gasp, he sat up, and looked across the room at Frederica Bannister on her own cot. She still lay unmoving, her eyes closed, as still as death.

  Frederica, where are you?

  19

  Kristian woke to darkness, and a steady rain beating against his window. He rolled over, pulling the coverlet with him, and struggled to sit up. He couldn’t remember at first where he was, or when. He rubbed his eyes, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He ran his hand over his chest, and found that he was wearing a tee shirt and shorts.

  He remembered being helped up the stairs by Elliott and Max, while Chiara brought a sedative and a glass of water. He couldn’t remember getting into bed, though, or getting out of his clothes. He was in the transfer clinic—he thought. He had succeeded—hadn’t he?

  With sudden urgency, he fumbled at the base of the lamp for the switch and pressed it. When the lamp came to life, he knew for certain he was no longer in 1861. The Brahms biography lay facedown on the floor, illuminated by the yellow circle of lamplight. He caught it up with trembling fingers, and turned to the index to find the references to Clara Schumann.

  There were many.

  He started turning pages, following the index. He was not quite sure what he was looking for, but he knew somehow that it was vital. Hadn’t there been a section with her name? There must have been, because he remembered reading it.

  He found it, an entire chapter spent on Brahms’s relationship with the Schumanns. Her section was titled “Clara Schumann, Friend and Mentor.”

  He scanned the familiar paragraphs. They told of the lifelong friendship between Robert Schumann’s widow and Johannes Brahms, of Clara’s long performing career, her devotion to her children, her faithfulness to the memory of her husband. It described her summer home in Baden Baden, purchased in 1863. It told of her death in 1896 and her dedication to her husband’s protégé, Johannes Brahms.

  There was nothing he didn’t know, hadn’t always known. There were no surprises. Why did that matter? Why did it make him sigh and lay the book aside, turn out the light to lie back on his pillow with a feeling of satisfaction? Of accomplishment?

  He didn’t know, but a surge of relief left his muscles weak and his eyelids drooping. He turned on his side, plumped the pillow beneath his cheek, and slept again.

  The next time he woke to sunlight filtering through the window shade. Someone was in the room with him, making a slight clattering noise, as of cups and saucers. He rolled onto his back, and slowly opened his eyelids. Soft footsteps approached the bed, and he looked sideways without moving his head.

  “Kristian,” Chiara said quietly. “How do you feel?”

  “What time is it?” he asked. He had meant to ask what day.

  She said, “It’s two in the afternoon. You’ve had a good long sleep.”

  He still wanted to ask what day it was, but the next thing he knew he was sitting up, his feet on the floor.

  A tray rested on his dresser, with a carafe of water, a glass, and a cup of something steaming gently in the dim light. He started to ask for the water. He blinked, and the glass was in his hand, half-empty already.

  Uh-oh.

  Chiara was looking at him expectantly. She had asked him something, but he didn’t know what it was. The cup on the tray had apparently cooled. No more steam curled from it.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what you said. Sorry.”

  She put a firm hand on his shoulder. “I asked if you wanted to drink a cup of tea.”

  “Sure.” He took the cup, concentrating very hard on holding the saucer, lifting the cup, taking a cautious sip, then another. He felt fragile, a bit as if he’d had the flu. When the tea was half-gone, he managed to ask, “What day is it?”

  “It’s Friday.”

  He finished the tea, and set the cup down. He turned to her to ask another question, but found himself in the shower, alone. Hot water bubbled over his shoulders and ran down his face. He gave himself up to it, leaning against the tiled wall and letting the water sluice his hair. This was bad. He must have lost ten minutes, at least.

  He washed his hair, rinsed it, then washed it again because the water felt good. He got out of the shower and toweled himself dry. Fresh jeans and a shirt were waiting for him, with a pair of shorts that looked as if they’d been ironed. He pulled them on, and hoped Chiara hadn’t done his laundry. The shorts were threadbare, something he hadn’t noticed before. Erika would have scolded him to shop for new ones.

  When he had combed his hair and brushed his teeth, he peeked out of the bathroom. His bed had been made, and the tray was gone. He found socks and shoes, and started gingerly down the stairs. He felt unsteady. He missed one step, but otherwise negotiated the staircase safely. As he put his foot on the tiled floor at the bottom, he had a sudden memory of Frederica, nearly tumbling down the staircase in Casa Agosto, the banister coming away in her hand. That bare wooden staircase seemed more real, for an instant, than did the carpeted one he had just descended.

  And Brahms’s body seemed more real than his own.

  He stopped, leaning against the wall, trying to focus on where he was. When he was. He thought of Clara, set free of Frederica, and he felt free, too—free of worry, of anxiety over Clara, of dread of what was to come. He straightened, and started toward the transfer room, eager to see that Frederica had awakened.

  Chiara met him at the door, stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm, and turned him toward the kitchen. “Don’t go in there now, Kristian,” she said. “The Bannisters are making arrangements.”

  “What? Making what arrangements?” If she answered, he didn’t hear it. He blinked, and fou
nd himself in the kitchen, seated at the island, watching Chiara slice tomatoes on a board. Several slices of cheese were already arranged on a plate.

  “Chiara—,” he began.

  She looked up at him. “Yes?”

  “I keep losing time. Minutes. Hours. I don’t even know.”

  “Yes. I know this.” She slid the board across to him, and brought a plate of bread with a dish of olives, and set those in front of him, too. “Please eat something. Then it would be good for you to take some exercise. I think it will help. We will go together for a piccola passeggiata, a little walk.”

  “Okay.” Obediently, he laid a slice of cheese and one of tomato on a piece of bread and took a bite. When he had swallowed he said, “What was that about arrangements? The Bannisters?”

  She didn’t meet his eyes, but busied herself with a glass of water. “They are going to have Frederica transported back to Chicago. An ambulance is coming.”

  “Wait.” Kristian laid down the bread, his mouth suddenly dry. “She’s still not awake?”

  Now Chiara looked up at him, and he saw strain in the shadows beneath her eyes. “No. No, she is not.”

  “But she—she should be.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Chiara sat down at the island, propping her chin on her hand as she waited for his answer.

  He hesitated. How could he tell her what he had done? It was distasteful even to think of, much less speak about. He remembered how intrusive and intimate it felt to take on someone else’s body, to feel his skin and bone and hair. He doubted he could erase those memories, and he had the feeling that if he told anyone, the questions would never end.

  He settled for the quickest and simplest explanation he could find. “The layering effect worked. We couldn’t both be in the same place at the same time, and she was jarred out of the transfer.” He picked up the bread again, folding it around the cheese and tomato. “So was I,” he added. “The hard way.”

  “Yes, I guessed that. That is why the time lag is so severe.”