by Gerald Elias
By this point, the students were wholly absorbed by the story behind the music and were expectantly anticipating the demonstrations. Even Jacobus was eager to hear the performance. He knew the story backward and forward but always enjoyed listening to the music simply because it was great music, especially with Haagen playing that viola solo in the beginning. He tried to get comfortable in the folding chair.
“Think BTower can get another grant for some decent chairs?” Jacobus whispered to Nathaniel.
“Shush!” whispered Nathaniel in response. “Just be happy you don’t have to sit on the floor.”
The quartet’s violent E-minor downbeat, Allegro vivo appassionato, abruptly terminating their conversation, was followed by the undulating pianissimo eighth notes in the two violins and the long low E in the cello, setting the stage for the recklessly defiant viola solo for which Annika Haagen was perhaps the world’s most compelling exponent. With her bow, Haagen bit into her strings, playing with a passion and intensity that always riveted and inspired young audiences.
About thirty seconds into the music, Lensky stopped playing, followed shortly thereafter in disorganized fashion by the others.
“Have you got a problem, Ivan?” Haagen asked.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Lensky, “but you rushing.”
The assembly, already silent, somehow managed to get even quieter.
“What do you mean? I’m the soloist and this is the way we’ve always done it.”
“You play faster, faster. Is impossible to play together with bad rhythm. You must listen to others.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Haagen. “All you’ve got are damn eighth notes, and you’re telling me that—”
“Students,” said Yumi, quickly addressing the group, “this is a good example of what goes on in rehearsals. How every little detail of our performance has to be dissected and practiced until the whole ensemble reaches agreement. That’s one of the things that make string quartet playing such a wonderful challenge. We’ll now go to the next movement, where the second violin leads a very upbeat, joyful Czech polka. But it’s all on the G-string, which makes it very difficult, so listen very carefully and let me know if I do okay.
“Second movement,” she said to the others and gave the upbeat before anyone had time to object. When they finished Yumi’s excerpt, the students applauded, enjoying the rhythmic playfulness of the music. The quartet then began the third movement, Largo sostenuto, in which Pravda played her cello solo with the internationally renowned heartwarming soulfulness for which she had been dubbed “Mrs. Slav” and which provided the tonal foundation for the whole quartet, representing Smetana’s own voice as he expressed his love for his wife.
The last excerpt, featuring the first-violin part flamboyantly performed by Lensky, started in the middle of the fourth and final movement, Vivace, where the music seems to be accelerating into a victorious ending but is suddenly interrupted by his fortissimo high-E harmonic. From that point the music turns ominously dark, reminisces dreamily on the composer’s earlier life with brief flashbacks from the first three movements, then descends despondently into oblivion.
When they finished, they remained motionless in position, freezing the uninitiated audience from reacting too soon. The silence was broken by BTower’s applause, followed by Jacobus, and then by the others.
There followed a short session during which the quartet answered questions, none of which they had not heard a hundred times before: How much does your instrument cost? How old were you when you started? How old are you now? How much do you practice? My brother plays the guitar.
There were two interesting questions. One was from a tall, elderly gentleman named Bailey Haskell, who had recently retired from a career as a prison guard and was just a beginner. He said that he had noticed the members of the quartet were all breathing together and wanted to know whether that was something that they worked on as a group.
Haagen responded to that one, talking not only about breathing but also about movement, and how, when a group achieved unanimity in how they wanted a phrase to sound, it was almost inevitable that they would breathe together. So it is actually the idea that comes first, and the physical manifestation of it that follows.
The second interesting question was from Yumi’s young student, Louisa. Yumi was surprised but happy to see Louisa’s hand up and so called on her herself.
“Yes, Louisa?”
“Will I be able to play that song when I grow up?”
“You certainly will … if you work hard enough.”
BTower then thanked the quartet for coming to the school, asked the students to give them another round of applause, and dismissed the assembly. He chatted amiably with Jacobus and Nathaniel as the three of them passed the quartet packing up their instruments, on their way to the stairs. They were about two flights down when Jacobus heard the quartet enter the stairwell above them; already there was some commotion, some heated discussion going on. In the echo chamber of the stairway and with BTower talking to Nathaniel about the excellent progress the school was making, it was difficult for Jacobus to make out what was being said. Suddenly there were a series of shouts, then the ugly rumble of someone stumbling, falling down the stairs.
BTower and Nathaniel immediately turned and raced back up, Jacobus following as quickly as he could, one hand on the railing and the other using his cane like an alpenstock to propel him upward.
“Someone call nine-one-one,” he heard Yumi order.
“No! No, it’s all right. I’m okay,” came Annika’s voice. “Just leave me alone. Pfff. I only hope the viola is not broken.”
“What happened?” Nathaniel asked.
“It was nothing. It was accident,” said Pravda.
“What was an accident?” asked Jacobus.
“Annika and Ivan were arguing about what happened at the outreach,” Yumi said.
“Not arguing,” said Ivan. “Discussing. We were discussing. I say to Annika, so, maybe you think now I know Smetana quartet.”
“And Annika said,” Yumi continued, “‘Yes, you do death very well.’”
“I thought it was funny joke,” said Ivan.
“So he gave her a friendly pat on the back,” said Yumi, “hard enough to knock her down a flight of stairs.”
“Annika, can you get up? You’ve broken anything?” Jacobus asked.
“Nothing a stiff cane wouldn’t fix,” she said. “But please, someone check my Gasparo.”
Annika’s viola, strapped in and protected by a newfangled epoxy composite case, fared better than Annika herself, who suffered a twisted right ankle and bruised left shoulder, but was otherwise reasonably intact. Ivan and Pravda continued to protest that it had been an accident, even as Yumi helped the limping Annika into a cab.
“A little tumble’s not nearly as intimidating an experience as finding a finger in a case. Don’t you agree, Ivan?” Annika asked. She rolled up the window and the cab drove off.
EIGHTEEN
“More Tabasco?” asked Nathaniel.
Once it had been determined there was no medical emergency, at Jacobus’s insistence he and Nathaniel went all the way back to Midtown. Jacobus had already been deprived of one opportunity to eat at Fat Chance and didn’t want to risk missing it altogether. Plus, Sheila Rathman had called with “awesome news” and wanted to meet them somewhere in her vicinity.
“No, I’m okay,” Jacobus replied to Nathaniel’s offer. “I’m trying to be careful with my stomach.” Jacobus felt for a Kissin’ Kuzzin on his plate, using his sense of touch to distinguish it from the hush puppies, and submerged it into a bowl of tartar sauce.
“Have to say,” said Nathaniel, “Ivan really moved up the chart of suspicious characters today. Annika called him on his masculinity and musicianship, but you wouldn’t think he had to shove her down a flight of stairs to give it back to her. With her and Kortovsky having stood in his way from getting into the quartet, who knows what he might have done to Kortovsk
y?”
“Yeah, maybe. But it doesn’t really make sense to me,” said Jacobus. “My guess is that if he thought Kortovsky was out of the way, the next stop on Lensky’s agenda would be to become Kortovsky’s replacement as first violin. But if that’s true, he’d want to kiss the fair Haagen’s ass, not bounce it down the stairway.”
“Maybe he’d want to get rid of her too and bring back the old gang.”
“Nah, I don’t think so. Those guys’re living in the past through a haze of vodka. They’re no more capable of a comeback than I am. I’m thinking the accident with Haagen was just that, an accident.”
“Speaking of whom, it wasn’t so easy getting confirmation of her kid, Prince Rupert’s, reservation to Peru,” said Nathaniel, returning to the summary of the information he had obtained earlier in the day.
“Tell me what wasn’t so easy about it.”
“The first thing I did was call Sheila Rathman to find out from the invoices Annika had submitted what airlines she flew on. That was the easy part.”
“Where is Rathman, anyway? She’s late. What was the hard part? How’s your jambalaya?”
“Almost as good as Mama’s, but I think this shrimp was frozen. Delta refused to give me the information since I wasn’t an ‘authorized party.’ They also required the kid’s ticket number. I told them if I had the ticket number, I wouldn’t need to be asking them if he had a reservation.”
“Sounds like an airline. Can you pass a napkin?”
“Plus, they needed his last name, and I didn’t know whether it was Haagen, Kortovsky, or a combination of the two.”
“So what did you do? Tell them off?” Jacobus asked. He took a final swig of Abita Turbodog, the house brew.
“No. That’s something you would do. I called Sheila back and got the name of the hotel Haagen stayed in. The Marriott in Miraflores. I asked Sheila to call the hotel pretending she was Haagen, telling them that her son had left his precious Game Boy in the hotel room—”
“And they said they would look for it, but in the meantime they remembered the little boy very well and hoped they had a pleasant stay. Right?”
“Something like that. In any event, I’m pretty sure the boy was with his mother. Shall I order two more beers?”
“Only if you give me one of them. What about getting Rathman to open up Kortovsky’s instrument trunk? Any progress?”
“Hold on.” Nathaniel signaled for the waitress to bring another round. “She said she tried the insurance company, but they’re balking. They told her that whether the violin is in the trunk or not wouldn’t be conclusive enough to warrant making an exception to their policy—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah, well. They’re an insurance company. One step up from an airline.”
Jacobus stopped eating. “I think he’s dead,” he said, the words escaping almost before the conscious thought.
“Mmm. The body in Lima?”
“Yeah. Just a feel. People are starting to refer to him in the past tense. Maybe that’s why.”
“There’s nothing for sure that says he’s dead,” said Nathaniel.
“But there’s nothing that says he’s alive, either—”
“Mr. Jacobus! Mr. Jacobus! I’ve got some good news!”
Even if he hadn’t recognized the voice, the perfume gave her away, so when, in an effort to be helpful, she redundantly said, “It’s me, Sheila,” he replied by saying, “It’s me, Jacobus,” which momentarily puzzled her into silence.
“You were saying,” said Jacobus. “The good news? Remember? You gonna sit down?”
“Oh, yes. Yes! The first thing is that Power Ramsey said that since Martin Lilburn’s article came out in the Times this morning, the box office phone has been ringing nonstop. It looks like the concert is going to be sold out!”
“That’s great. Maybe if we throw in a few more vital organs it’ll be standing room only.”
“Do you think?”
“Never mind. You said that was the first thing. Is there a second thing?”
“Yes, there is. We won’t be needing to break into Aaron’s trunk.”
“Yeah? Why’s that? Did you say ‘Open, sesame’?”
“No.”
“Okay, honey, spit it out. Tell me the good news.”
“I just received an e-mail from him!”
“Wonderful!” said Nathaniel. “We were starting to get worried that something had happened to him. Let’s celebrate! Would you like something to eat, Sheila?”
“No thanks. I only have a minute, then I have to run.”
Jacobus was surprised and, he admitted to himself, disappointed. All the theories he had devised, all the conversations with Oro, all the intrigue with Haagen—were they all just fanciful pipe dreams? Had he secretly been hoping for Kortovsky’s demise so that he, the great Jacobus, could once again claim to have solved the unsolvable?
“Hold on a minute. An e-mail?” he asked. “What was in it?”
“Aaron says he’s okay and plans on being at the dress rehearsal tomorrow afternoon. I’ve called Ivan and told him that we’ll pay him for the rehearsal but his presence won’t be necessary. And I know you’re kind of the suspicious type, so I printed a copy and brought it to you.”
“What about the two you deleted?”
“I have to confess to you, Mr. Jacobus, I wasn’t being truthful. One of them is … not intended for public consumption, but I never deleted them. I printed them out because I was getting worried. But now that he’s okay—”
“You have them here?”
“Why, yes.”
“Hand them over.”
“But—”
“Never mind but. Give them to Nathaniel to read. He won’t broadcast it to the masses, if that’s what you’re worrying about. We’re all grown-ups here.”
Jacobus heard Rathman open her purse, remove some sheets of paper, and hand them to Nathaniel. He then heard Nathaniel unfold them.
After Nathaniel finished reading, he said, “Well, the first one’s a little spicy, but it’s like Sheila said.”
“And the second?” asked Jacobus. “Spicy?”
“The second was written a day after the first, and just reiterates that he’ll be arriving for the first rehearsal. Cut and dry, just to confirm, I guess.”
“You have the third one, you said?” Jacobus asked Sheila. “Read it. Please.”
“‘Sheila, I was unexpectedly delayed in South America, and will be at the dress rehearsal tomorrow. Aaron.’”
“That’s it?” asked Jacobus.
“Yes.”
“How do you know it’s from him? How do you know any of them are from him?”
“What do you mean? It’s from him. It has his e-mail address.”
“When was the last one sent?” asked Jacobus.
“About three hours ago, but I just opened it about an hour ago,” said Rathman. “It had to be Aaron, because you need to know the quartet’s user name and password to contact me the way he did, plus of course he had my e-mail address.”
“Well, computers are not exactly user-friendly for blind people, and I’m no expert with these e-mails and all that user name and password crap, but it’s not like a letter where you see the handwriting or a voice on a phone where—”
“I think you’re grasping at straws, Jake,” said Nathaniel. “The likelihood of—”
“Have you written back?” Jacobus asked Rathman.
“Not yet.”
“Do me a favor, hon,” Jacobus said, trying to imitate the sound of what he supposed conceptually to be a supportively patient voice. “Shoot him off an e-mail and ask him a question only he’d know the answer to.”
“I don’t see why—”
“Look,” he interrupted, dropping any notion of cordiality. “We need to be sure it’s Kortovsky who’s writing because we still have someone’s finger without the someone. Am I getting through?”
“What kind of question?”
“How the
hell do I know? How many dimples on your ass? Or is that common knowledge?”
Jacobus heard the seat next to him pop up and the high heels click away faster than Secretariat at the Belmont.
“Good work, Jake,” said Nathaniel. “You sure know how to get results.”
“Fuck you too,” said Jacobus. “And where the hell is our beer?”
NINETEEN
Jacobus was chewing on an extra antacid for good luck and was ready to sack out when the phone rang in Nathaniel’s apartment.
“It’s your new amigo,” Nathaniel said, and handed Jacobus the phone.
“Oro, you have any idea what the hell time it is?”
“Eleven fifty-four, New York time, I believe. Did you know that the time in Lima is the same as—”
“Never mind. What do you want?”
“We have some complication. It appears, Maestro Yacovis, that we have perhaps been led down the false path. I assure you, though, that—”
“What do you mean, a false path? The corpse get up and run away?”
“I am glad to hear you have not lost your sense of humor, Maestro. Because I was finding some difficulty discovering anything about Señor Kortovsky after the night of the concert in Lima on July 27, I went back to the hotel for a further discussion with the receptionist, Señorita Angelita Flores. I asked to see the receipt that all guests are required to sign upon checking out in order to determine if there might be some informations that could be helpful.”