She awoke to a heavy sadness, and her heart exploded with a silent wail so desperate that even the angels cried.
Chapter 16
Ethan Brown rose and went into the bathroom. He poured the cold coffee out of his mug and rinsed it. He took a deep breath before returning to his office.
Annette Zeldin was leaning back in her chair, taking a long drag on the cigarette she had just lit. It had been months since she had smoked.
"I'm sorry," she said, peeling the blanket off her legs. "I forgot. You should have said something. I'll go outside."
"It's raining," replied Ethan.
"I don't mind."
"Sit down."
She took the ashtray he held out to her and leaned back in the chair.
Ethan didn't care much for Scotch, but he poured a couple of fingers into his mug and took a drink.
Annette was calm now. His coat had slipped a little and there was an illusion of nakedness about her. He got up and went around behind her and quietly pulled the coat over her shoulders.
"Ethan, the authorities believe she was stolen for adoption. I have to believe that. That's the only answer. Not a day goes by when I don't pray for her. Every night and every morning the first thoughts that run through my head are prayers for her. I pray she's in a family, a good family. Someone who loves her. But then at times I have this feeling, this gut feeling, that something went horribly wrong. Sometimes I read stories in the news about the horrible things people do to children and infants... sick people..."
"Stop it, Annette. You can't think like that."
"I know. But then, I begin to think it's an illusion. The idea that she's happy and healthy somewhere with loving, kind parents. Perhaps the truth was ugly and sick. And here I am living my life believing a lie."
"It's the only way to stay sane."
"It tore the heart out of our family. She was our heart and soul, and she was gone."
She told him how David had wanted another child. Right away. But she only wanted to keep moving. She took any engagement she could get. She would go anywhere in the world. She found respite from her misery only when she was performing. And she looked for her daughter everywhere. In every country, every city, she approached the consulates and embassies. She took pictures of Violette with her. She located authorities and filled out papers, wrote letters, opened investigations.
Steadily, quietly, their marriage fell apart. When they were home together, an inescapable emptiness blanketed their conversations. Overnight, it seemed, they became strangers. As suddenly and inexplicably as they had become lovers. A year after Violette's disappearance, David filed for divorce.
"David never uttered a word of accusation. I was to blame and yet he never blamed me."
"You weren't to blame."
"But I was. He had an intuition and he was right."
"Only in retrospect. You couldn't have known."
"I believe sometimes we know things outside the scope of conscious awareness. David rarely talked about feelings, but he had strong intuitions. Perhaps he picked up on something about Magda. I don't know, but I should have trusted him that night. And I didn't."
It was in Johannesburg that she was asked to perform Sibelius' violin concerto again. When Ernst Rodine saw her, he hardly recognized her as the same woman who had played with his symphony several years before. When she took her place onstage he noticed the pencil-thin arms as she raised her instrument to her chin, the sunken, empty eyes, the raw smile. During the first part of the performance, the shoulder of her black satin gown kept slipping, and backstage during intermission he found a safety pin and pinned the top tighter for her. With an embarrassed laugh she told him she had dropped two dress sizes and had already had the gown altered once.
When they returned to the stage and he lifted his baton, he saw Annette suddenly turn to look at the audience. And she was a breath slow on the pickup. Then he noticed the way she was holding her head, as if she was listening for something beyond the music.
Annette first heard it in the seconds of silence preceding the opening chords. Faint but distinct. From that moment on she played mechanically; her bow ripped across the strings as if wound up by a malicious spirit, and with her entire being, detached, she tuned her ear to the sounds beyond her own music and listened. Then, early on in the allegro, she heard it again. Her heart leapt. From his podium, Ernst threw her an alarmed look. She was picking up tempo. He tried to catch her eye but she wouldn't look at him. During a pause, she listened again, intently. Her acutely trained ear searched the audience, the balcony, and her eyes swept the shadowy faces in the deep cavernous hall before her, but she knew the cry didn't come from this place. Then came her solo. She watched her fingers and her bow flying over the strings but she heard not one note of the music she played; she heard only the sound of her baby's piercing cry. She remembered all the times she had heard that heart-wrenching wail, and the ways she had rushed to calm it. The way she had brought the baby to her breast, hurriedly, eagerly, fumbling with the buttons on her blouse, her nipples taut, warm and full, barely able to hold back their milk. She remembered looking down at Violette's eyes, bright and alert in the middle of the night as she rocked her and sang to her. She remembered those eyes. Their lightness, their intelligence, their inarticulate knowledge. But now the cries wouldn't cease. There was nothing more she could do. So she listened, and she played on.
Her cries turned to long staccato sobs and her heart fluttered as rapidly and perfectly as a bird's. Her lashes, heavy with tears, closed upon her blinded eyes. Then her tiny hand released its prisoner, her delicate body shuddered and her heart ceased to beat.
The orchestra had stopped. The musicians were staring at her in disbelief; the first violinist had tears in her eyes. An embarrassed murmur passed through the audience and someone coughed nervously. The conductor's hands hung defeated at his sides. In the back of his mind he marveled that she was still going on, at a tempo none of them could match, a delirious speed, and yet she was playing brilliantly.
Suddenly she stopped. She lowered her violin, and her bow slipped from her hand. It clattered to the stage, drawing a collective gasp from the audience. She raised her eyes and took a step toward the conductor, her hand outstretched for help, and then she collapsed.
* * *
Annette fidgeted with the silky blue binding on the blanket.
"I heard her, Ethan, as clearly as you hear my voice now, I heard her. Why it was given to me, that awful punishment of hearing her suffer, I don't know." She looked up at him. "Everyone thought I was hallucinating. Perhaps I was. But I believe she's at peace now."
Ethan poured a little more Scotch in her mug and held it out to her.
She told him how the doctor in Johannesburg had put her on medication and advised a rest cure; several days later she flew to Montreux, Switzerland. Her hotel room had a small balcony overlooking Lac Léman and the Alps, and she would sit there and read, wrapped in blankets against the chill, steeping herself in long, ponderous works by Flaubert and Tolstoy. She read voraciously and through the power of words was able to keep the ghosts of her own life in abeyance. She lost herself in stories that were situated in worlds and times vastly different from her own.
Music was conspicuously absent from her life. The hotel was old, elegant and purposefully lacking in technology. The rooms had no Internet, and she asked the management to remove the television monitor. Aided by drugs, she slept soundly, and she rarely recalled her dreams. She wrote no letters; writing would mean reflection, which she couldn't bear. However, she kept a journal, where she recorded her daily activities—the books she read, what she ate for dinner. She noted her walks in the mountains, her morning excursions by bus into Montreux, where she purchased more books and browsed through the open-air markets; she noted her afternoons at a café with an open terrace overlooking the lake, where she read newspapers and drank tea, and no one noticed her.
Then, after three weeks, one Saturday morning she woke up restless. She
dressed and went down into the town for her coffee instead of taking it in her room as she usually did. It was still very early and the café in Montreux was deserted. She gazed out over the splendid blue lake, at the blue mountains rising above the far shore, and for the first time in her life she experienced a pang of wanderlust. Purpose had always guided her movements, and ever since she could remember, music had been her purpose. Nothing had ever appealed to her for its own sake but only through its relationship to her music. When she left Kansas it was to study at Juilliard in New York. When she traveled it was to perform. Music had even been central to her marriage. But for over a month now she had not lifted a violin, or listened to a recording, or attended a concert. She had shut music out of her life as she had shut out David. It was the last link to the nightmare, and the nightmare was just beginning to fade.
What took its place that morning as she looked out over Lac Léman was a curious excitement about the unknown. An urge to venture without a purpose to guide her. She walked to the train station and paused in the main hall to read the schedule of departures. As she stood there, a train pulled in and a rush of travelers streamed past her and began to board. She waited a moment and then struck out down the platform. Her heart began to pound, and on an impulse that felt wonderfully reckless, she climbed aboard. The train was crowded, and she maneuvered down aisles, around passengers fussing with their bags and looking for seats, crossing through car after car until she came to a first-class carriage and found an empty window seat. Her heart was still beating wildly when the train began to glide out of the station. The platform slid away, and the town sped by. As the train curved around the lake and she caught sight of her hotel perched on the side of the mountain, an exhilarating sense of freedom hit her. She suppressed a smile at the thought of all her belongings back at the hotel room, at the maid who would turn back her bed that night, at the small, round table in the corner of the dining room that was always reserved for her, which would be empty this evening.
They were just out of Montreux when the conductor came down the aisle checking tickets.
"I'm afraid I don't have one," she said a little giddily when he asked for her ticket.
"You'll have to pay a fine," he said curtly.
"That's quite all right."
"Where are you going?"
"Where's the train going?"
"Geneva."
She frowned. "I didn't really want to go to Geneva. Does it make any other stops?"
"Vevey and Lausanne," he whipped back, annoyed.
"Is that all? It doesn't go any farther?"
"This is a regional train, madame."
She hesitated. "You said it stops at Lausanne?"
"Oui, madame." Politeness sharp as a beak.
"Lausanne will be fine." She smiled and added, "Thank you."
When she had paid, he tore off her printed receipt and gave it to her. It slipped from her hand and floated to the floor, landing at the feet of the young man opposite her. He picked it up and returned it to her with an amused half-smile.
Annette turned toward the window, intent on enjoying the scenic beauty, but the young man's reflection in the glass drew her attention. He was resting his chin on his hand, his deep brown eyes fixed intently on the passing landscape, his long, slender fingers absentmindedly tapping his lips. He wore a leather jacket over a crisp blue shirt and there was an air of elegance and good manners in his gestures; he was young, she thought, perhaps twenty. On the seat beside him lay a copy of The Economist.
As the train sped along the lakeshore, she found her imagination dwelling on him. It became a momentary obsession, an amusement; wondering about him, imagining herself with him. The idea tickled her and made her smile to herself. When he got up to put away his magazine, she stole a glance at him. Neither of them pursued conversation.
As the train was pulling into Lausanne, the young man took an umbrella and a small leather bag from the overhead rack and made his way down the aisle. Annette waited in her seat, and she caught him glancing back at her just before he passed through the door. When she got off the train she looked around for him, but he had disappeared into the crowd.
She made her way to the exit. The air was damp with the threat of rain, and she stopped beneath the canopy and looked across the Place de la Gare to the fountain and a block of boring modern buildings with windows the color of the overcast sky. She was hungry and she didn't even have an umbrella, and she didn't have the faintest idea where to dine or what there was to do. She felt suddenly very lonely and a little frightened. How silly. Taking off on a lark. Gloom clouded her thoughts and she longed to be back in her hotel curled up with a book. She thought perhaps she might eat something in the station and then take the next train back to Montreux.
Suddenly he appeared beside her.
"Excuse me," he said in English, a little shyly and very respectfully. "Can I help you?"
She gave him a smile of delight. "Hello," she said.
Her warmth put him at ease. "Hello," he replied. "I was sitting opposite you..."
"Yes, I remember."
"I thought perhaps you might need a recommendation for a hotel." He seemed a little embarrassed. "But now I see you don't have a bag."
His eyes were very dark and very bright. A lock of wavy brown hair fell over his forehead and he swung it back with a toss of his head.
"Thank you," she answered. "I would."
"I can direct you to the hotel where our family stays when we're in town. It's quiet and well managed."
"I'm sure it will be fine."
"It's not far, just up the street. Do you mind walking?"
"Not at all."
He was an engineering student and he had come to Lausanne to meet his mother, who would be arriving the next day from St. Moritz. Annette gave him her maiden name and told him she was on vacation.
She didn't see him again until that evening when they both dined at the hotel, and he sent the waiter to invite her to his table for coffee. She found him to be mature, very well bred, intelligent and gracious in his conversation. Over cognac they energetically argued politics, and they were the last ones to leave the dining room. On the way up the stairs he slipped his hand into hers. She found his decisiveness reassuring, and she didn't hesitate when he drew her into his room.
She never saw him again after that night. He asked for her address in Paris but she wouldn't give it to him. He seemed hurt. She was surprised to find herself crying as she took the early train back to Montreux the next morning.
Three weeks later she learned she was pregnant. She didn't react with elation as she had with her previous pregnancy. Instead, a wonderful serenity settled over her. She named the baby Eliana, which in Hebrew means, "God has answered me."
* * *
When she had finished talking, they sat quietly for a long while. Ethan didn't know what to say. And she looked so tired.
He leaned forward and kissed her. A light came into her eyes.
Chapter 17
Annette was holding on the line for Ethan when he walked in the front door of the Salmon P. Chase House the next morning. He plodded leisurely up the steps with feigned casualness, ignoring Bonnie's look. He closed the door to his office and picked up the telephone.
"Ethan?" Her voice was bright.
"Mornin'," he answered. His heart beat rapidly.
"Ethan, can I still get in that house? My mother's old house?"
"Sure. I haven't done a thing to it."
"Would you mind terribly if I... if I went out there sometimes?"
"Not at all. I keep it locked, though. There's still some stuff up in the attic. There's not anything your mother cared much about. Things for a garage sale, she said. She didn't want to bother moving it. But I always kept it locked anyway."
"Could I come by and get the key?"
"Anytime. I'm here."
* * *
She entered his office dressed in jeans and wearing her sable-collared coat. Ethan thought she looked like a
movie star but all he said was, "Lady, you could use a good old sheepskin-lined parka."
"You're such a cowboy," she teased.
"So what's all the excitement?" he asked.
"I can't tell you. If I do, it might go away."
"Come on now, you're not superstitious."
"No. But I get very nervous when good things happen."
She smiled and took the key he held out to her.
* * *
Annette enjoyed the drive to the old house. Even the bleakness of the winter landscape didn't seem to oppress her, and as she slid the key into the lock and opened the front door of her mother's family home, it struck her that she was falling in love with Ethan Brown. She hurried inside to get away from the cold February wind blowing at her back. A wind that shrieked around the corners of the house. It was a terrifying sound. The wind never sounded this way out on the open plains, only when it was confronted with an obstacle of some sort, a dwelling, a shelter, something built up in the midst of the vast emptiness.
She closed the door behind her and laid her violin case on the dusty table, then she carefully removed the instrument. As she tuned it and tightened the bow, thoughts of Ethan crowded her mind. She marveled at how a man like him could be fulfilled in a place like this. And yet she could imagine him nowhere else. He could have been a partner in a prestigious law firm or taken his place among the academics at Harvard and Yale. Instead, he collected books and read them late into the night, when his pretty girlfriend was asleep, enjoying communion with minds like his own in silence and solitude.
She began to play, and gradually the wind ceased its roar. The demons withdrew into silence, and music calmed the land.
* * *
Just that week Ethan had hired a couple of guys to help him tear down the fences that bordered Emma Ferguson's property. It was a long, slow process, and stray wire was always a potential hazard to the animals. Ethan thought it was about time to check on it, so the next day he rode out to visit the property. He finished a little before noon, and he thought he just might ride over to see if Annette Zeldin was at the farmhouse.
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