Goodbye, Paris

by Anstey Harris

It begins to rain, softly and quietly. A fine, refreshing mist darkens the color of the stone pavements and dries almost as soon as it hits the ground.

  A handsome gray-haired man from the group on the next table looks over and says, “Grace?”

   Chapter Twenty-One

  Shota has barely changed. His hair is mostly gray, but his face is exactly the same as the last time I saw him, coming out of Catherine’s bedroom down the hall from mine.

  This time his smile is genuine, his surprise—although obvious—is a positive thing. Nostalgia flits across his face, leaving warmth behind it.

  I have no idea how I feel about seeing him.

  “Grace,” he says again, and I realize I haven’t moved or spoken. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Shota.” I smile and am taken aback by the involuntary movement of my face.

  “Have you put an instrument in the competition? You don’t live here?” I remember immediately how that same enthusiasm made me love him when I was nineteen.

  “I’m a tourist,” I say. “I live in Kent.” And then, remembering the nomadic nature of the successful musician, I add, “In the UK.” The last time I googled Shota he was lead viola in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in Reykjavik, the time before that the Sydney Symph.

  Shota nods his head and beams at me. “I remember. I remember and I saw one of your cellos. Beautiful instrument. I looked at the label; facet in Kent, England. Bloody lovely cello.”

  My professional self should ask him whose instrument, who he knows that plays a Grace Atherton cello. Instead I just stare at him, stunned into silence.

  “Grace, I’m sorry. How rude I am.” He introduces me to his friends; there is a flurry of names from many different languages and cultures. “And this is my wife, Marion.”

  Marion stretches forward to shake my hand. “I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you over the years.” Her smile tells me that she knows who I am, that she knows what happened between her husband and me. I may be imagining that part of it even says that she’s sorry, that first love is hard. I’m not imagining it; there is a kindness in her eyes.

  As I shake hands with her I notice the tight round baby bump between her and the table; an imminent presence.

  “When’s your baby due?” is all I can think of to say and I hope it’s not too familiar. I hope she doesn’t judge me by my dull conversation, my lack of sparkle.

  “Seven weeks to the day. So we’re hoping he or she stays put like they’re supposed to and is a German baby as planned.” She pats the top of the bump. “Not a surprise Italian one.”

  Marion is beautiful. Her red hair falls in curls and ringlets around her face. Everything about her looks totally natural and effortless. Her face is animated and her skin glows; her cheeks are rosy and round with smiling. She is immensely and immediately likeable.

  I look across at her husband’s square jaw and high cheekbones; this baby will be stunning.

  “Congratulations,” I say. I mean it.

  Shota stands up. “Grace, please join us.” It is an instruction, not a question. “I’ll order some more drinks.” He calls to the waiter in Italian that doesn’t falter; no suggestion that it isn’t native. “Rob, give me a hand.”

  The man closest to me unfolds himself from his chair. He is huge; my first thought, first stop of comparison, is that he is even taller than David. “Rob Bouvier,” he says in an American accent, “sousaphone and trumpet, Hamburg Phil.” I instantly envy him the coded introduction of the professional musician. I am only an artisan member of this club; I never got as far as its hallowed circle.

  “Grace Atherton. I’ve got a cello in the competition.”

  “Brilliant,” says Shota. “I hoped you would have. I can’t wait to see it.”

  I bite my lip. No explanation would work here; I can’t say there was an accident or an incident. I just have to let the world think that the front of my cello is a peculiar and knotted piece of wood that has been oddly varnished. I have to take it on the chin.

  Rob and Shota pick up my table and move it closer to theirs. I move my chair across and their friends spread out and around to include me. I am sitting next to Marion, Shota opposite me, opposite both of us.

  I was naive not to imagine bumping into Shota. He is an internationally renowned viola player; there was every chance he’d be here. I hadn’t thought about it because I was supposed to have been with David. He would have been my armor against my past, against anything I didn’t want to face.

  “Are you looking for an instrument?” I ask Shota. That’s why most players come here; the work of every top-quality maker in the world will be showcased in Cremona from tomorrow.

  “No,” he says, and his gray hair moves around his ears as he shakes his head. He takes a swig of beer. “Paid gig. I’m on the sound panel for viola and then I’m in the quartet that plays the winners.”

  I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I didn’t check who was judging the other instruments. I had only taken note of who was judging the cellos—way back when Nadia and David first put me in for the competition. I chose the body of my cello, the outline and original model, based on the instrument that the judge played. I took care to think about the type of sound he likes, whether he likes sweet top notes or hearty bass. Back then, when I so dearly wanted to win, I employed every advantage I could. I’ve been so stupid. I’ve thrown away so much.

  “And then I arranged to meet these guys here.” Shota is still talking. I cobble together what he has said. He and Marion are using the trip as a last hurrah before the baby, their first, is born and they are meeting up with old colleagues from other European orchestras they’ve played in. “We live in Hamburg.”

  “Are you a musician too?” I ask Marion, although I already know the answer will be yes. This is a close and closed society. It is hard for professional musicians to live with anyone who isn’t involved in the industry. The hours and the constant touring and moving house are difficult for anyone; it helps to have a partner who understands.

  “Trumpet,” she says, even though she looks like she would be more suited to the harp or the flute. Her accent is American or Canadian. I can’t tell which.

  “I went from the Ontario Phil to the Iceland Orchestra. That’s where I met Shota.” I presume that answers the question about her accent. “And now we’re in Hamburg. Guess I like it cold.”

  Most of the table are chattering about a player who has lost her violin. It has apparently been on every television news channel in every country. I think back to the last two weeks; no wonder I have missed it. A couple of Shota’s friends know this woman; a principal violin player in a very important orchestra. She was at a railway station in a queue for the loo and when a complete stranger offered to hold her violin case she said yes. When she came out again the woman had vanished along with the player’s £1,000,000 Guarneri. I must have had an email from the insurers; all violin shops would have. I’ve been so preoccupied, I’ve taken no notice of anything.

  The bubble of happy chatter continues; the main theme, besides the woman’s stupidity, is who owns the violin. These instruments are almost always bought by a hedge fund or a business; they get the tax breaks and the orchestra or the player gets to loan an instrument worthy of their talent. It makes me think about Nadia. I wonder whether she would be scatty enough to make the same mistake. I wonder whether she will finish her A-levels and get on the career path that has made these people so interesting, so cosmopolitan and adaptable.

  “Are you here on your own?” Marion asks.

  “No, well, yes. At the moment.” I swirl the last of my prosecco around in my glass and take a deep breath. “I was coming with my partner but . . . we broke up.”

  It is like taking off a coat. It was a phrase I was so afraid of, a truth so barbed and vicious, but here, with these jolly people on this Italian evening, it’s just a statement. It’s just a fact.

  I have said it out loud to a stranger, and nothing has happened. No thu
nderclap has split the night, no chasm has opened at my feet. Everything is the same except me.

  The chatter continues. Shota asks me if I’m here for the week; I explain that I am and that my friends are joining me tomorrow. “They’re . . .” I go to describe them. I start to say that they’re a funny pair, or that they’re an odd little duo. Instead I find myself finishing the sentence with, “They’re lovely. You’ll like them.”

  And just like that, I am talking about the future. I am assuming that I will see Shota and Marion and Rob and their friends again. That we will all meet up when Mr. Williams and Nadia arrive.

  I have avoided this confrontation for decades; I have never sought out Shota or anyone from my college days. I thought it would compound my humiliation, emphasize my failure. Now I realize it would have made me nostalgic. We are two grown adults with a brief episode of shared past; he’s not a monster and I, I am not a failure. The past is mostly harmless.

  Every few minutes someone walks by with an instrument case. The pavement is wide but almost entirely covered with tables and chairs from the bar. Pedestrians are forced to walk on the cobbled roadway, but no one seems to mind at all. Almost every time someone passes, one of the people at our table will know them. The group widens and shrinks again with the pulse of a living entity; everyone who drops in is immediately accepted.

  Farther down the road another bar has pop music playing, it trickles down towards us and is drowned by the laughter and the shouting. A boy whizzes past on a bicycle, his girl balanced on his crossbar, her legs neatly crossed as if riding sidesaddle comes naturally to her. They pass a group of young people and call out greetings and whistles into the warm night. No one shouts from the houses along the street and tells us or the young people to be quiet; it is as if the whole city has adopted the carnival atmosphere that the competition has brought.

  “I’m going to go back to the hotel soon,” Marion says directly to Shota. She turns her head slightly towards me. “You guys have a good time. Don’t let me down, now; anything less than the crack of dawn is for quitters.”

  “Shall I walk you back?” Shota asks her.

  “Sure,” she says and nods. “And then come back and talk to Grace, yes?”

  Shota nods. “You will stay, won’t you?” he asks me.

  I check the time. It is half past ten; I hadn’t imagined I’d still be sitting outside a bar, drinking and laughing. “I will.” I am listening to a long story that the American sousaphone player is telling two women at our table. He is a good raconteur.

  “Shota has wanted the chance to talk to you for a long time,” Marion says, and I am certain that she knows our whole story. Why wouldn’t she? She trusts this man enough to marry him and have his child; of course she knows the details of a fleeting relationship in his late teens. I’m sure she knows everything about him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure. It’s been really special to meet you.”

  We kiss each other’s cheeks and hug. I genuinely look forward to seeing her again. The exhibition will be open tomorrow and all the visiting musicians will be in there, examining the instruments. The prizewinners will have been notified, although they will still, at that stage, have to keep their successes quiet. The grand concert is tomorrow evening, the winners will be presented with their awards, and Shota’s quartet will play the winning instruments. When I tried to get a ticket for Nadia, the only ones left were in a box. I’ve booked it for Nadia, Mr. Williams, and me; I hope they will be thrilled.

  When Rob finishes his story we all hoot with laughter. The aftermath of the tall tale leaves me deep in conversation with the two women on my left. One of them is a cello player, the other a flutist; they have both worked with Shota and Marion in the past. We talk about the politics of the music business and how people choose instruments. They both know someone who has one of my violins and we chat about him for a while before moving on at tangents to other things.

  Shota is back in what seems like minutes. “Anyone need a drink?” he asks, and a sea of hands goes up. “Bad timing,” he jokes and calls the waiter over.

  Shota sits back in his same spot and we wait for the drinks to arrive. When they come, they are accompanied by a huge plate of Parma ham and breadsticks. The women I’ve been sitting with show me how to wrap the ham around the breadstick in a spiral. It is a very welcome snack after the amount of prosecco I’ve drunk.

  “Your wife is lovely,” I say to Shota.

  He nods. “Grace.” He looks around, checks that the others are busy with their own conversations. “I just want to say I’m sorry.”

  “It was decades ago. A lifetime ago. We were kids.”

  “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. Often.”

  I wish that I hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t dwelt in the past and let just a few months of my youth grow thorny and unhappy through my present. Seeing the adult version of the boy I loved puts it into such perspective; no one could accuse this man of being unkind, of being a game player.

  “I got over it.” I can’t tell him about the months I spent at my parents’ house, shut away and practicing until my fingers bled in a regime of punishment and self-destruction and that wasn’t, really, his fault; just his bad timing.

  “I behaved very badly and there are no excuses for what I did,” and I assume he is about to roll out those excuses.

  “You don’t need to do this.” I’m worried that the others can hear. I look across and see that they aren’t listening. Some sort of card trick is being performed across the table and everyone is trying to decipher how it’s done. Rob is booming his confusion into the melee; no one is looking at Shota and me.

  “When I was in Japan,” he says, “I was a nerdy, straight-laced viola boy. No one thought I was cool; all the boys thought I was dull and all the girls hadn’t even noticed I existed. I got to music college and it was all different.”

  I remember that feeling. There was such a sense of relief in meeting other people who the outside world had thought odd, other kids who liked staying in and practicing. I’m sure not many people were as naive as I was, but certainly just as few were anywhere near mainstream cool.

  “We all thought you were gorgeous.” I smile and don’t mind telling him now. History is wrapped in a blanket of nostalgia that has entirely disempowered it.

  He looks down at his feet, finding it hard to take the compliment. “Anyway,” he says, “you trusted me, and I behaved badly and I’m genuinely sorry. I was a shit.”

  I shrug and hide my face in my drink. My cheeks are red with a combination of alcohol and embarrassment. “OK, you were. It’s true.”

  We both smile.

  “But I had worse things to worry about on that day.” I remember the pain of emptying my room, sliding my music books into bin bags so that I could get out as fast as possible, leave before anyone could see me.

  “Have you done anything about it? About Nikolai Dernov, I mean?” Shota leans forward. He puts one hand on mine. “I’m so sorry. What happened to you was awful.”

  I am halted in my tracks. I have no idea what he might mean. Everything else about this evening has been so easy, so straightforward; this is all wrong. “I got kicked out. I tried to forget it. To move on.”

  “Aren’t you incredibly angry? As an adult, I mean?” His face is rigid, his mouth is a straight line when he stops talking.

  I shrug and take another drink. “It’s been hard but, you know, it’s one of those things. I wasn’t good enough. I had to leave.”

  Shota puts his drink down. He pauses as if to find words, to rearrange his thoughts. “You don’t know, do you?”

  There is a silence. Decades tick past in it like a flickering film. I don’t speak.

  “Nikolai has been charged with abuse of a position of trust. There are two women from the college standing as main witnesses, both his ex-pupils, one from our year. There are plenty more people, as everyone knows, but they haven’t—or can’t—come forward.”

  I can’t speak. I sq
ueeze the stem of my glass tightly. I am cold all over. The thoughts start to trickle across me but they make no sense. I loved Nikolai; I spent hours alone with him, being tutored. I think back to the hours of his own time he gave me, his arms around my back, moving my bow, his fingers pressing down on the ends of mine across the strings.

  “He traded grades and lead roles for, you know . . . Everyone knew it was happening, but no one knew how to stop it. At the time, I mean.” Shota’s voice trails off; he is uncomfortable with these words, these memories.

  I shake my head. “No.” I look up at Shota, directly into his dark eyes. “I don’t understand. He never did anything to me. No.”

  “You were the talk of the college. The girl who said no. The one who would rather leave than let Nikolai abuse his position in exchange for grades, for career advancement. The one who lost everything—at the time—by refusing him.” Shota shakes his head. “Obviously as adults we know it was worse for the ones who couldn’t. Didn’t.”

  Two thoughts wrap themselves around me like hawsers. The first, smacking abruptly against me, shaking my memory and my understanding, is my last conversation with Nikolai. I remember—as if it were startling daylight, as if he and I were sitting here together—the last thing he said to me. The accusation about my playing that broke my heart. I whisper it to Shota.

  “He said, ‘If you really can’t understand what you need to do for me, you will have to leave. You are no use to me or anyone else.’ And he told me to get my stuff, told me to go.”

  Shota closes his eyes, his head is shaking from side to side. I cannot tell if his overwhelming emotion is sadness or anger, but I know he is completely on my side. He leans forward and puts his arms around me.

  As I lay my head on Shota’s shoulder, accept his friendship, his support, the second thought catches me like a cloud. It engulfs me and surprises me; it stops me in my tracks and lifts me up. It was my parents. It was my crazy cotton-wool-wrapped childhood; their intense and stupefying adoration of me that saved me from Nikolai. They allowed me to be a child so wholly and for so long, that I didn’t even understand his veiled threats. I couldn’t read between the lines of his innuendo. The palace of childhood that they built for me and the pedestal I lived on in their eyes, were a sanctuary.