Better to avoid the whistler. On these morning walks she savored her solitude, brooding over Eric’s perfidy of two years ago, over the x-rated e-mails to another woman. She still whimpered on her early morning walks, and wept late at night into her pillow. But she paused to listen, and admire the panorama before her, the hilltops a pointillist carpet of yellow broom punctuated by ten-foot high yucca stalks crowned with plumes the color of clotted cream, the ocean fog tinged sunrise-pink nestling in the canyon.
A plump young man dressed in an old-fashioned black wool morning coat and gray breeches suddenly emerged out of the fog. He bounded up the hill, thumping the ground with an alpenstock, a carved wooden walking stick that seemed familiar to her. Her family possessed a similar walking stick, an heirloom handed down over many generations. How odd. No movie was being shot in the area. She had seen no vans or camera crews. Of course, crazed homeless men wandered in these hills. She rejected this theory, as he was not filthy or wild-eyed like a drug-addled panhandler.
Now the young man stopped. The top of his head came just to her chin. He blinked out on the world through myopic eyes covered with thick spectacles, and his boyish face was framed with long unruly brown hair. His whistling broke off abruptly. Helen took up the musical line in her thin untrained alto. His impish lips turned downward and his brows furrowed. Then he spoke, and although the language seemed an old-fashioned German, she somehow caught his meaning.
“Gruss Gott, fraulein, and how do you know my melody already? I am only just composing it. Are you an angel muse, a goddess come to assist me? I have become lost in these mountains. Can you inform me the way to the lodgings of my friend Josef von Spaun? He expects me tonight.”
He used the formal second person “you,” polite, restrained. His features matched the picture in the New-bould biography of Franz Schubert that she had been reading last night and had tossed amidst a slew of books on her nightstand. She stepped toward him and touched the fabric of his coat. The weave felt similar to the moth-eaten wool serge coat that her father had saved from World War II, and which he still pulled out of the front hall closet to show visitors. The young man startled at her touch.
“Gott im Himmel, fraulein, but your uncourteous manners are singular. Did you not a proper education receive?”
His protest discomfited her, and her face flushed pink. “I’m sorry. But you can’t possibly be who I think you are.”
Glaring at her, he squared his shoulders and thrust out his chest. “Your curiosity about my identity yourself does not excuse. Even chambermaids fresh from the country do not poke and prod at a personage without permission.”
“But if I’m a goddess wouldn’t I be exempt from the rules of courtesy?”
“Ah, but a goddess would already know my identity, unless she were mayhap only a water sprite. But there is neither a river nor a lake nor even a brook in this vicinity.”
Helen tried to concentrate on a logical response. The situation was baffling. Perhaps a friendly American hello would put them both at ease.
“My dear Franz—I may call you Franz, dear Herr Schubert—as a goddess may take liberties?”
He grimaced. But then he shrugged as if it were too much trouble to argue with her about her use of the informal “thou.”
“So then, fraulein, you cannot direct me to the residence of Josef?”
“No, I don’t know his house, that is, I don’t know it actually, but I’ve read about it and seen a photograph. I didn’t have time to visit it on my trip to Austria.”
The young man seemed for the first time to examine his surroundings.
“This landscape is uncanny, is it not? The flora differs from the firs in the woods surrounding Vienna.”
A scary idea suddenly crystallized, that he might have emerged from an Einstein-Rosen wormhole and that the entrance to some otherworld might be nearby. Yet another reason to panic in this desolate chaparral. She stammered out a reply.
“I don’t know what to tell you, that is, if you are really a body, and not a spirit, then you must have lost your way. In fact, you have strayed somehow, I don’t know how, to America, at the western edge, near the Pacific ocean, and it is, that is it was when I left my house a little while ago, the beginning of the twenty-first century. Unless, and this is possible, it’s the other way round, and I’ve lost my way instead. Or, it could be a complete muddle, could both of us be lost?”
The young man frowned.
“Ah, so you tell me I am multiple leagues from Vienna and decades in advance of my proper time. Be that as it may, in point of fact you are a goddess, are you not, you can convey me back, no?”
“I haven’t a clue as to how you can get back. Because, I’m only a too, too mortal woman, that’s for sure, and completely ordinary, unlucky in love, though come to think of it, the goddess Aphrodite never found her heart’s desire either, but never mind. And by the way, I haven’t yet introduced myself, my name is Helen Bramer, but please call me Helen.”
The young man’s face brightened.
“Well then, fraulein, if you have a plump feather bed, and nourishing chicken broth, and excellent writing paper, I can compose just as easily in your house as in Josef’s. And we will await an answer from God. Surely, He, Who transported me here, can return me. It is obvious that He has ordained an encounter with a beautiful woman to console and assist and inspire me.”
Helen blushed at the compliment. She was, at her core, an insecure teenage girl, desperate to think that against all odds she might turn out to be pretty. And from the young Schubert himself, well, this was indeed a “moment musicale” to be treasured.
His voice now dropped to a whisper, and his eyes glanced upward toward the sky.
“God does not let me idle long. Compose I must, and constantly, lest the demons attack. Please, Fraulein Bramer, shelter me in your home, and God will succor me.”
His self-invitation delighted her. Helen was not one to let strangers into her home. But midwestern common sense did not apply to this unique situation. Her mind began its chatter. I’m not ready for a guest, especially one so distinguished. Where will he sleep, there aren’t enough towels, suppose he trashes things? Suppose he has a special diet? Suppose he … the objections were unending.
And so, Helen guided Herr Schubert the mile to her Spanish bungalow set back a little from the main road. They walked up the driveway framed on either side with four cypress trees. At the entrance she opened the heavy arched oak door and motioned him to step in first. He looked around for an urn to stash his alpenstock, but finding none, handed it to her.
Immediately he sprinted across the Persian carpet to the ebony Steinway grand piano gleaming in the far corner. Usually, visitors remarked on the gloss of the shellac, but showed no interest otherwise. She no longer played regularly and could not remember the last time the piano lid had been raised. The instrument had not been tuned in several years, and the flat pitch of its keys assuredly would prove embarrassing.
Herr Schubert opened the fallboard, sat, placed his chubby hands on the keyboard, and picked out a cheerful air. Humming, he then improvised an ebullient variation. His face beamed with unabashed pleasure.
“Ah, fraulein, in Vienna such divine instruments we do not possess. Although not a perfect pitch, still the sound is a delight fabricated by angels in the workshops of paradise. Only in my reveries have I encountered such dulcet tones.”
A relief, he liked the instrument. Of course in the 1820’s the technology of the grand piano had not yet been perfected. He now closed the fallboard, and stood up.
“I will be very happy here. And of what will my sleeping quarters consist?”
Helen had no ready answer. Should she offer Franz her bedroom? Twenty-five years ago she had inherited $600,000 from a great-aunt. When the surprise check arrived in the mail she had deposited it in her checking account. Within a year, every last dollar had been spent to buy this home and furnish it. She had created a “room of her own.” The queen-sized bed was set in a
n ornate wrought iron frame. The mauve silk comforter was coordinated with chintz draperies splashed with blue and mauve parrots. Etchings of Scottish castles hung on the sponge-painted lavender walls. No, not even for a genius composer would she give up her sanctum.
She led him down a long hallway to a windowless room furnished with a pressboard desk and swivel chair, a desktop computer, a beige stainless steel filing cabinet, and a leather club chair. A Murphy bed was set into the far wall. She cleared her throat and fidgeted.
“This is my spare room. Had I realized that you would be visiting, Herr Schubert, I would have fixed it up better.”
“Ah, but fraulein, this one is splendid. It will be as quiet as a grotto in a monastery. I will obtain the rest I require.”
Thank goodness the room satisfied him.
She said, “Come to the kitchen, so I can fix you a nice breakfast.”
Helen cooked oatmeal and toasted wheat bread. She brewed espresso, poured it into mugs, and dolloped a thick layer of whipped cream on top. The two sat at the butcher block table in her breakfast nook. Herr Schubert wolfed down the cereal and toast, scattering crumbs everywhere and spattering globs of strawberry preserves on the table and the floor. It was obvious he would be a lot of trouble.
She picked up her BlackBerry and speed-dialed her assistant’s voicemail. Speaking rapidly, she stated she was sick, and would not be in the office today. Schubert seemed fascinated by her actions.
“Fraulein, what is that contraption, and to whom are you speaking about your ailments? You appear to be hale and hearty.”
“This is a machine we use nowadays. My words are being recorded. You see, we don’t actually have to talk to anyone. And being sick is the standard excuse for not showing up at work.”
“Be that as it may, you appear as wealthy as a countess. How is it that you labor as if you were a charwoman?”
“It’s too difficult to explain. All I can say is that the better off we are, the more we work.”
She settled him at the piano, and brought him blank copy paper and three sharpened number two pencils. Back in the kitchen, she loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and wiped up the mess. Like having a toddler, but worth it, as every mother said.
She walked into the living room. “Be back soon, I’ll buy some paper for you,” she said. How could a prodigy compose his masterworks on flimsy twenty-pound copy paper?
Franz barely glanced up as she prepared to leave. Picking up the car keys she left him hunched over the piano, tinkering with a pleasant tune that seemed to ramble through a magical forest, leap like a trout in a mountain stream, rest on top of a mist shrouded mountain.
She drove the fifteen miles on the backed-up freeway and clogged streets to a music supply shop. Thirty years ago, she used to buy classical scores there, when she had briefly resumed her piano lessons. At that time she had rented a spinet in her cramped apartment near the La Brea Tar Pits. As a child she had been a star piano student, entered by her teacher in several statewide competitions, but she had abandoned serious practice at the age of fourteen, when her academic classes became too demanding. The Steinway now stood as a silent reminder of a talent she had let lapse.
Would Franz be there when she returned? This was a fool’s errand, a waste of time and money. Of course the apparition could not be real, and would disappear, poof! just as it had appeared. What would she do with blank composition paper? The private high school near her had a stellar music department, and would appreciate a donation.
Since the breakup of her three-year relationship with Eric, weeds of glum pessimism had strangled the secret garden of her imagination. Her walks, her reveries, her love for books and chamber music, none of these rejuvenated her. She had stood firm in the belief that men and women shouldn’t live together outside marriage. Living in sin, it was called during her growing up years. Eric was not the first man who had become exasperated when she refused to cohabit. All too soon she had reached her mid-fifties, unmarried and childless, and was sinking into a kind of melancholia, regretting the roads not taken.
Her goddaughter Emily’s wedding last month was a shock. Was it already twenty-six years ago that she had held tight to the wriggling baby who squalled while the elderly priest mumbled the Latin blessings and sprinkled holy water? She had sat in a cluster of cousins at the reception, held in the Cross Creek Country Club in Springfield, Illinois, introduced as the Hollywood aunt. How did she remain so thin—perhaps nibbled only on lettuce leaves, a high metabolism, like a rabbit? Where was her husband, and how many children did she have? They raised myriad eyebrows, some from the Illinois side of the family, thin and once reddish blonde now a faded gray, the others from the Kentucky side, thick and once black, now salt and pepper.
Her hairdresser Max ensured that her hair was shoulder length, professionally tousled, and Clairol blonded. She passed for forty. But there it was, the reality of getting older, alone. Her younger colleagues seemed to show disrespect; they sensed she was road-kill in the new economy marketplace. She felt passed over, not a part of, estranged from the normalcy of family bonds. Where was she to find a little love in this cruel world? Thank God she had accumulated a portfolio of blue chip stocks and bonds to keep her aging body and her drooping soul together.
It took her the usual ten minutes to find a parking space on a side street. She fed quarters into a parking meter, walked two blocks to the music shop, and entered its musty gloom. Door chimes tinkled. Musical instruments and sheet music cluttered the room from the dirt-crusted linoleum floor to the water-stained acoustic tile ceiling. She scooped up a tall stack of high quality twelve-stave music manuscript paper. The bill was seventy dollars. The clerk, whose freckled face was topped with frizzy red hair, stared at her.
“I’ve seen you somewhere. Are you a composer of film scores? Or perhaps a professor at USC Thornton?”
She was uncertain how to reply. She could hardly tell him the truth.
“Oh no, it’s for a friend. He is a young composer. Some day he’ll be a household name, but as of yet, well, you know how the world treats its geniuses.”
He nodded his agreement. “Do I ever. I got a PhD in musicology at twenty-five but here I am, at forty-five, living pillar to post. The Web is wiping out our business. At least I occasionally meet a gorgeous woman.”
She did not pursue this flirtation. Smiling at him she left the store.
A three car collision slowed the freeway to stop and go. When she turned into her driveway two hours later, she saw her neighbor Roxanne out for a walk, watching her gray, pink-beribboned Yorkshire terrier spin around in circles preparing to lift its teensy leg. Roxanne’s dry-cleaned skinny jeans encased a tight derriere. Unpleasant, these Botoxed women who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Roxanne waved, but Helen pretended not to see her, pulled into the garage, and pushed the button to close the door.
Franz was still bent over the piano. He hadn’t disappeared! She laid the stack of paper on an end table. Finally he noticed her, and then when he spotted the paper, jumped up and seized a dozen sheets.
“Ah fraulein, this is perfection, how can I ever show you proper gratitude?”
“I’m sorry about the pencils. I’ll buy you a proper fountain pen tomorrow,” she said.
“Heaven, this is.” He waggled his index finger toward her. “And this one, she is my own empyrean muse.”
That evening, Helen roasted chicken and prepared several rice and vegetable dishes, puzzling over complex directions in her Julia Child cookbook. For the first time since her breakup, she set the Queen Anne cherry table in the dining room with a white linen cloth, and lit two white taper candles in silver candelabra. Her Rosenthal china gleamed in the flickering shadows cast by an antique French chandelier resplendent with gilt-leaf cherubs.
“Ah, fraulein, this is magnificent. Let us toast my swift and safe return.”
They clinked Waterford crystal goblets filled with Stag’s Leap cabernet. Eric had left a dozen bottles of wine and
several fifths of rare single malt Scotches in her kitchen cabinet. Until now, she had not opened even one bottle. He was a hard-driving commercial real estate broker, and a connoisseur of wine and liquor. His irritation with her disinterest in fine spirits and her dislike of his drinking had been a source of tension.
Within a few days Helen and Franz settled into a domestic routine. Both awoke at five-thirty, and walked together on the fire road. She fixed breakfast, either oatmeal or eggs, with toast or croissants and fruit. She scurried off in frantic haste to her job. He remained behind, holed up for hours in the plain spare room. Occasionally he went to the piano to experiment with a melody. He was short-sighted, perpetually in a brown study, oblivious to his surroundings, constantly muttering and singing to himself, and jotting down notes. He never asked about the microwave, the electric lights, the computer, the Acura parked in her garage, the occasional automobile that whizzed by.
The hot smog of July settled into the canyons. Crows squabbled, wasps buzzed, crickets trilled. At night, coyotes howled as they cornered defenseless creatures who shrieked when death fangs grabbed their throats.
Helen lingered over breakfast, drove in much later to work, and left much earlier. Her reputation at the office began to deteriorate, as her in-box piled up. At home, she dressed in silk pajamas instead of her habitual mommy jeans and tees. She appeared always made up with powder and mascara, and with hair set in loose curls. She shopped and cooked for dear Franz, washed his clothes, collected and organized the musical fragments into bound notebooks. Every night she pulled out and made up the Murphy bed, and every morning she placed the bed back and tidied up the room.
Curious Affairs Page 11