Death and the Maiden

by Gerald Elias

  “Sorry, but I can’t tell you that, Jake,” said Dedubian. “Privileged information.”

  “I’ll tell you, Mr. Jacobus,” said Haagen, about to erupt. “Aaron gets his violins reappraised every year, and it’s only because he’s so fucking anal.”

  For some reason that Jacobus didn’t understand, she was clearly not on Dedubian’s persona grata list. It did not require an expert in the subtleties of human nature to sense that Haagen was about to explode, so Jacobus suggested it was time to go to lunch. As they departed, he could hear Dedubian saying, “Is there anything else I can do for you, dear?” Fearing what her response would be, Jacobus grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the waiting elevator.

  NINE

  Jacobus suggested one of his favorite New York eateries, Fat Chance, that boasted “down-home suth’n cookin’.” The specialty of the house, Kissin’ Kuzzins, oysters wrapped in bacon, dipped in cornmeal batter, and deep-fried, served with homemade succotash, made Jacobus salivate just thinking about it. Jacobus’s recommendation, though, was vetoed by Haagen, who objected to the astronomical cholesterol level of the menu, so Jacobus, in consideration of her frazzled state, acquiesced to her request to go to Yu and Miso, an unpretentious but well-regarded Japanese restaurant just across from Lincoln Center.

  Haagen ordered the bento lunch box with miso soup and green tea. Jacobus, spurred on by an energetic chorus of slurping sounds from various points in the restaurant that rekindled nostalgic memories of his concert tours to Japan in his younger days and his more recent stay at Yumi’s grandmother’s home, ordered tempura soba with a Sapporo beer. Since the way they eat noodles in Japan imitates the sound of a herd of African elephants at a quickly drying watering hole, they must be serving the real thing here, he conjectured.

  He let Haagen take the lead in the conversation, reluctant to let go of a pleasant past for a troublesome present.

  “I can’t believe he did that to me,” Haagen said, in a daze.

  “Hey, dealers can be pricks. We all know that,” he said in commiseration.

  “Yes, but first the lawsuit. Then Aaron missing. And now this. It’s hard to take.”

  “About Kortovsky. Aaron…”

  “Mr. Jacobus, let me be candid. Aaron is a shit and I’m having a bad day. If it weren’t for needing him because of this deadline on the lawsuit, I couldn’t care less where he is or when he returns. He’s always been this way.”

  “I understand, Ms. Haagen, that Kortovsky may always have been ‘this way,’ but you’re his wife. How can you not have some idea what he’d be up to?”

  “Wife, yes and no. And please call me Annika. Both and neither. We are married, but we live separate and—how shall I say?—open lifestyles. One of my parents was Danish and the other Finnish, so that’s not such a big deal for us as it is here in your country. We both have that need to be individuals, you know, and Aaron for his adventures.”

  “Like rock climbing?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that, but yes.”

  “Doesn’t that kill his hands?”

  Haagen laughed.

  “Is that some sort of punch line in Denmark?” asked Jacobus, annoyed.

  “Just the opposite, I think. I’m sorry to laugh, but when he was a student he cultivated a reputation for having incredibly strong fingers, and he liked to show off the grooves on the fingertips of his left hand to the other students. It was so Aaron.”

  “Yes,” said Jacobus, “that was certainly a badge of honor when I was a kid. The deeper the groove, the longer it was assumed you’d practiced. But in the long run it’s not the best way to play. It only really shows that you’re pressing too hard.”

  “Tell that to his fingerboard,” said Haagen. “Or my arms. Not that I minded at the time.”

  She laughed again, but this time it was more to herself.

  Haagen was spared further explanation with the arrival of their lunches. Jacobus, always appreciative of a well-prepared tempura soba, used his nose to locate the small bowls of sliced scallions and peppery seasoning, and added them—extra today, to help clear his sinuses—to the bowl of buckwheat noodles and breaded prawns swimming in a rich broth. He found himself back in the soothing comfort of Japan, where he had the friendship of his old counterpart, Max Furukawa, and Yumi’s family. Yumi’s English granny, Kate Padgett. A true musician. The only woman in the world who ever understood him; loved him, maybe. Why he didn’t have it in him to reciprocate, especially when they were in the hot tub together …

  “Are you listening to me, Mr. Jacobus?”

  “Of course I am. I heard every word you said. About Rupert.”

  “Rupert? Prince Rupert?”

  “Yes, that Rupert.”

  “But that was five minutes ago. I was asking how you liked the soba.”

  “Oh. It’s delicious. Oishii, as they say. But isn’t he a little young to be going to boarding school?”

  “Perhaps. But with Aaron and my schedule—”

  “And lifestyles.”

  “Yes, and lifestyles, it would be so much worse for PR—that’s his nickname, PR—to be stuck at home with a nanny all day. At least he can be around children his own age, and the Collective Reference Academy has a wonderfully creative program. You’ve heard of it? It was in the Times.”

  “Collective Reference?”

  “Yes. There are no real classes. Instead, every student brings his or her own personal daily experiences from the outside and then they discuss them. There’s no instruction in the traditional sense at CRA. The teachers aren’t even called teachers.”

  “What are they called then? Babysitters?”

  “Facilitators.”

  Jacobus, inhospitably, conjured up the Scrabble board, appending the P in PR to the end of CRA.

  “The school’s not far from my house in Mt. Kisco—that’s why I moved there, along with it being impossible to afford anything in the city—and it’s holistic and gender neutral.”

  It wasn’t part of his job description to figure out what the hell that meant, so Jacobus only asked, “You see him much?”

  “Not often. Not because I don’t want to, but CRA discourages short, random contact between students and parents. Studies have shown visits like that only confuse the children.”

  “And what does the boy do during the summer, Annika, play Frisbee on the quadrangle?”

  “So, okay, it’s a little strange, Mr. Jacobus, but maybe we’re all a little strange.”

  Jacobus noted he was getting her a little hot under the collar, which he liked, because he found that when people were frazzled they were more likely to speak spontaneously and, as a result, truthfully. He had used that tactic with countless students, and though it might not have endeared him to them, it at least got them out of their shells. When he had tried it with Yumi at her first lesson, it almost ended up being her last lesson as well. But that was years ago, and water under the bridge …

  “And if we lose this lawsuit,” Haagen was saying, “I’m sure I won’t be able to afford CRA along with anything else. To answer your question, though, summer is when the quartet is either at festivals or on tour, so I take PR with me for those things.”

  “Does Kortovsky ever take him?”

  “No. He says it interferes with his independence.”

  “Did you take PR with you on the South America tour?”

  “Absolutely! Prince Rupert had a wonderful time, except…”

  Except! thought Jacobus. Maybe now we’ll get somewhere.

  “Except what?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “Except for the guinea pig,” Haagen said.

  Jacobus returned to his slouch and with his chopsticks made circles in his bowl of broth.

  “What happened? Prince Rupert was attacked by a guinea pig?”

  “No. He saw people eating guinea pigs!”

  “Eating them, eh?”

  “We try not to eat meat—for ethical and health reasons. They served them lying on their backs.”r />
  “Talented waiters in Peru.”

  “Not the waiters. The guinea pigs were served on a plate, lying on their backs with their little legs in the air.”

  “Better than standing up, though, I suppose.”

  “Don’t joke. PR was traumatized for days.”

  “I hope he got over it.”

  “Eventually. The two of us hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. That helped a lot. He loved all the stories about the wars between the Spaniards and the Incas, and he got to pet a llama! It was so experiential.”

  “Very sweet. And what did you do with your viola on your trek? Carry it on your back and play ‘Cóndor Pasa’ around the campfire?”

  “Mr. Jacobus, your sarcasm is so charming. No, the quartet has a special instrument trunk. It’s got padded compartments, one for each of our cases, and each compartment has its own combination lock. InHouseArtists sends one of their management interns to our last concert and escorts the trunk back to their office in New York. Then we can return whenever we want and our instruments are waiting for us, safe and sound.”

  “And when you were in Lima, did you and PR and Aaron stay in the same hotel?”

  “Oh, no! Aaron always likes to stay downtown. He says it has the pulse of real life.”

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “It’s old and run-down and not very safe, especially for women and children, and especially after dark. What Aaron really means is that it’s got the pulse of real whores. PR and I stayed in Miraflores, a half hour outside the center. It’s got nice hotels and shops and the ocean.”

  “Do you know which hotel he stayed in?”

  “No.”

  “You, his wife with his kid, in the same quartet on the same tour, and you don’t know where he stayed?” He immediately regretted not being able to keep the exasperated disbelief out of his voice.

  “You seem to be having some difficulty understanding, Mr. Jacobus,” Haagen replied. “Let me make it clear for you one more time. Not only don’t I know where he stayed, I didn’t want to know. Maybe Sheila knows, but I don’t ask. Really, I make it my effort to not know where he stays. I know exactly who I am, and I know exactly who Aaron is, and I know it is better this way. How’s your lunch?”

  Unlike Haagen, Jacobus didn’t want to change the subject. “So that’s the story between you and Kortovsky. But what about the others? What about Yumi?”

  There was a pause. Was it for her to sip her tea, or was it for her to choose her words carefully?

  “I don’t dislike Yumi, Mr. Jacobus, and I know she’s a former student of yours, but we try to stick to business and not let personal entanglements get in the way. Yumi has fantastic technique and she’s so musical—I’m sure she got a lot of that from your teaching—but we all have our own personality. It’s difficult enough as it is for a viola and second violin to play together in a quartet even when there are no distractions, shall we say.”

  “The last part is certainly true,” said Jacobus, “but I don’t buy the ‘personal entanglements’ stuff. Surely there’s somewhere in between being buddy-buddy and not on speaking terms. Something like peaceful coexistence. It’s known to happen.”

  “Well, I think you’re aware of the situation Aaron put us all in when Yumi joined the quartet.”

  Yes, Jacobus had been told by Yumi, but he didn’t respond to Haagen, waiting to hear what she would say. He took a swig of his Sapporo.

  “Perhaps you don’t, then,” she continued. “Shortly after Yumi started with us, we were on a cross-country tour. Everyone was very nice to her because she was a welcome change from Crispin. She was so much easier to get along with and she was willing to learn. One day I heard her talking to Aaron. Her voice wasn’t her normal voice, probably because it wasn’t a normal conversation.”

  “Go on.”

  “She told him that she wouldn’t tolerate his sexual advances, whether verbal or physical—it sounded to me like it had been both—and either they would have to stop immediately, or she would quit and call an attorney. She told him that in order to retain his respect and the respect of the rest of the quartet, their relationship had to remain professional, and only professional.”

  That was the advice he had given Yumi, Jacobus recalled, but this was the first he had heard it related back to him. Yumi had rarely mentioned the incident since.

  “I’m not an eavesdropper, Mr. Jacobus, but Yumi’s tone was not calculated to be confidential. Quite the opposite. So when I heard that conversation I confronted Aaron. That he would cheat on me and take advantage of a young woman in her position, who we had just hired. Aaron exploded. I suppose he didn’t care to be raked over the coals by two women in one day…”

  Jacobus pictured Haagen smiling over that thought. He picked up his bottle of Sapporo. Somehow, it had gotten empty.

  “… but what he said to me was that I was being naïve thinking that Yumi was still a schoolgirl, that she was just an innocent bystander.”

  Jacobus slammed the bottle to the table.

  “I see you also assume Yumi still is a schoolgirl, Mr. Jacobus. Maybe she was when you first taught her, but she’s now a grown woman, and a very attractive one at that.

  “I don’t know if there was any truth to Aaron’s excuses or whether he was just lashing out, which wouldn’t surprise me, but I decided to take the advice Yumi gave to Aaron, to keep the relationship professional, and only professional.”

  “What about your ‘open lifestyle,’ Annika?” countered Jacobus. “It sounds like you want it both ways.”

  “You’re wrong there. Outside the quartet, that’s one thing. We all have our own lives out in the real world, to do as we please. To be free of the music that binds us together with our every breath. But when you play in a string quartet, Mr. Jacobus, you don’t shit where you eat.”

  “Hence the current relationships.”

  “Hence is right. You know, I think it’s time to go to the rehearsal. I need to get there early to warm up. Shall we walk together?”

  Jacobus reached for his wallet.

  “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Jacobus,” said Haagen.

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “That’s not the reason.”

  “Why then?”

  “Because I don’t want to owe you anything.”

  * * *

  They began their walk down Broadway in silence, Jacobus on Haagen’s right. Since Broadway is a diagonal street, it creates little triangular islands as it intersects the otherwise squared grid of streets and avenues. Approaching the first mini-oasis, Jacobus smelled the aroma of Middle Eastern grilled meat and onions from a vendor’s stand—too soon after lunch, he thought with regret—and heard a flock of strolling, cooing pigeons, their wings intermittently fluttering, an indication of someone tossing breadcrumbs in their midst.

  “Dylan! Don’t touch them! They’ve got germs!” said a woman in the horrified tone of someone fearing an outbreak of bubonic plague.

  “Tell me about this marketing study Rosenthal mentioned,” Jacobus said, thinking about the flock of wild turkeys that roamed his woods and wondering if they too had germs.

  “Oh, that. As I said at the meeting, it was really nothing.”

  “It didn’t sound like nothing the way Carino lasered in on it. It sounded more like something.”

  “Look, we would never, ever try to fire Pravda. She is our anchor. She’s our connection to the past. It’s just when Pravda decides to retire, we ask ourselves, what will we do next? What must we do to make ourselves marketable without compromising our artistic integrity? Because these days, for good or bad, the former has become an essential part of ensuring viability. If we have no viability—in other words, if we fold—it doesn’t matter how much integrity we have, does it? And what Crispin has done is twist this around in his mind so he can believe that this—this market study—is the reason we fired him.”

  “Just out of curiosity, Annika, is Crispin Short an attractive man?”

/>   “If your definition of ‘attractive’ is a pudgy, pasty, five-foot-tall bald Englishman,” she said. “I can guess what you’re thinking. ‘Wouldn’t someone rather pay for a ticket to see an Asian beauty in a tight dress?’ But please remember that we didn’t know what the results of the study would be when we asked Sheila to do it, so how could anyone accuse us of intentionally forcing Crispin out of the quartet? And should Yumi be penalized because she happens to be good-looking? And plays better than Crispin? Ouch! Crispin!”

  “He couldn’t have been that bad,” said Jacobus.

  “No. It is Crispin. What are you doing here, Crispin? Let go of my arm. Have you been following us?”

  “Why is Lensky playing with you now, love?” came a whiny voice from the other side of Haagen. It was also panting, suggesting to Jacobus the degree of exertion required of pudgy, pasty Short to catch up with them.

  “It’s none of your business who plays with us. You should know that by now,” said Haagen.

  “How’d you know Lensky was going to play with them?” asked Jacobus.

  Short ignored him.

  “But it is my business, Annika darling. Or weren’t you listening to Carino’s offer yesterday. I get reinstated, you’re off the hook. Otherwise, you get the hook. It would be wonderful to play with you again, Annika, in every way, but you don’t have too many chances left. Fair warning. Off to the solicitor. Ta-ta.”

  “Disgusting, jealous little man,” Haagen said after a moment.

  “Jealous?”

  “Oh, nothing. Let’s forget him. Please.”

  “The joy of quartets,” said Jacobus, making Haagen laugh in a joyless sort of way.

  “Have you heard the story of when Crispin broke Aaron’s bow at a rehearsal?” she asked.

  “No! Shit!” Jacobus said in disgust, the scent of the souvlaki replaced by another.