The Prague Sonata

by Bradford Morrow

  Sylvie asked him if he knew anything about the former residents there, the Svoboda family. Through those first few moments, Sylvie and the man spoke together. Meta nodded with an anxious smile whenever he looked at her.

  “What’s he saying?” she spoke up, not wanting to interrupt but impatient. Meta, following the music of their language as closely as she could, had heard both of them invoke Otylie’s name along with Irena’s. Her hopes were rising by the minute.

  “He say that he never meet Irena. But he get a few letters from her long time ago.”

  “Does he still have them?”

  “Máte ještě ty dopisy?”

  Turning toward Meta, the man shook his head apologetically. “Not.”

  “What were they about?” Meta asked, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t understand her.

  Sylvie translated the question, then explained that what he recalled was mostly about Irena’s search for Otylie and Jakub. The man had no knowledge of Otylie, unfortunately, but had certainly heard of Jakub Bartoš, who had distinguished himself as one of the courageous resisters during the Nazi years in Czechoslovakia. Jakub was buried, the man believed, in the Vyšehrad Cemetery alongside other notable Czechs.

  Before they left, Sylvie gave him her telephone number in case he happened to recall anything further. Meta did remember to glance at the floor in Irena’s old apartment and saw that whatever boards had once hidden the manuscript had been long since replaced with newer parquet in a herringbone pattern. She shook her head. How thoroughly the evidence of a life, its harrowing struggles, its blood spilled, can be erased by as simple an act as replacing an old floor.

  Without discussing their next move beyond exchanging the few words “We go, no?” and “Please, let’s do,” Meta and Sylvie walked down past Saint Nicholas Church to catch a tram in Lesser Town Square that would take them back across the river, where they could make a connection to Vyšehrad.

  A breezy, cloudless day. Men fished the wind-riffled Vltava in the shade of willow trees. Magpies winged along beside the tram as if they were in a race. Meta marveled at how the city was transformed along this upriver stretch. Gone were the baroque and Gothic masterpieces of Prague’s center, replaced by spray-painted graffiti and humble workers’ housing as the tram neared a high bluff that had for centuries been the seat of power for Bohemian kings.

  After getting off at Výtoň, they walked in silence up the undulant cobblestone roads through the Leopold Gate, where they startled a flock of pigeons. Apple trees were spangled with ripening fruit. The rhododendrons’ leaves looked like burnished green leather. They climbed the hill, stopping to pet a brindled cat that looked well fed for a stray.

  “Meta,” Sylvie said, her tone downshifting out of the blue. “I must tell you one thing. I am sorry but I am now thinking this. Jakub probably is not here. We maybe not find.”

  “Why not?”

  “The partisans, the resisters? They did not buried many. They killed by the Gestapo and the bodies destroyed, how you say, they mutilate. Or throw them in hole so nobody find. Many these fighters gone. And if they not gone, Communists will not let them to Vyšehrad.”

  “What about what the man told us, though?”

  “He hope we find, but he is maybe confused. We look, though.”

  They strolled past Saint Martin’s Rotunda with its petrified cannonball stuck in the wall—yet another war caught in the teeth of time—in order to view the river from the battlement overlook. Acacia trees, huge horse chestnuts, dwarf weeping cherries. Thickets of wild red roses cascaded beside the stone path. Far away, a dog yapped.

  Despite Sylvie’s warning about Jakub, Meta felt a deep serenity for the first moment since arriving in Prague. The stern Kohout of days ago receded; the illustrious Wittmann seemed but a distant wrinkle on her horizon. She experienced such an urge to take Sylvie by the arm and walk along like sisters, but shyness stopped her. The two entered the cemetery through an iron gate over which arched a sign that read “Pax vobis.” Meta had managed all her life to avoid being in graveyards and now here she was in a second one in a matter of weeks. These cities of the departed weren’t as depressing as she had always imagined. Instead, they inspired tranquillity. She wished Gillian were here to share this.

  They found the resting places of other heroes of Meta’s. Her three favorite Czech composers—Dvořák, Smetana, Suk. But while the graveyard was filled with Jans, Josefs, and Jaroslavs, the women discovered only one Jakub. A Jakub Kohout, of all things. Arranged on his tomb, which was far less grand than those of others buried here, was a curious crucifix fashioned of little stones and chestnuts. Other graves wore the same impromptu garlands of respect. Although this was neither her Jakub nor her Kohout—quite opposite poles of her experience—nor was the man whose remains lay in this tomb other than a Christian, unlike Jakub Bartoš, she sensed this was as close as she’d ever get to Otylie’s courageous husband. She knelt on one knee and rearranged the nuts and stones into a musical note.

  Rather than returning to her pension that night, Meta slept on the sofa in Sam and Sylvie’s apartment. What started out as just another day that might have ended in disappointment had led her instead to a new vision of Jakub. Irena had told her what she knew of his final months but, ironically, he hadn’t come to life as such until Meta visited Vyšehrad. It didn’t matter that the old gentleman had made a mistake, didn’t matter that Jakub wasn’t entombed there. Otylie’s husband may not have had any further physical presence in this world. No bones and dust beneath a marker. The rest of the sonata his wife risked everything to save, along with the culture it represented, was out there somewhere, though. Meta had to find it not just for herself, for Irena and Otylie, but for him too. The day had brought her face-to-face with the idea that she wasn’t here shadowing an illusion.

  What was more, Meta had been adopted by the Kettles. “Meta Kettle, Keta Mettle,” the children giggled over a dinner of herb-rubbed roast chicken and cucumber salad that night. Afterward, Sam played Debussy and some simple piano meditations by Federico Mompou, the—to Kettle’s mind—scandalously underappreciated Catalan composer. He even knocked out a convincing imitation of Bill Evans doing “My Funny Valentine,” having heard it earlier in the evening on a CD. What an ear, Meta thought.

  All this was healing medicine to Meta, who lay down under a blanket in one of Sylvie’s cotton nightgowns, still wearing her socks and clutching a chestnut nicked from Jakub Kohout’s tomb. Sam and Sylvie didn’t have much money, Meta now fully understood as she dozed. And their commitment to her was a real gift. Before she fell asleep, she promised herself two things. One, she would do something for the Kettles that they would never do for themselves. She didn’t know what it would be, but a wonderful extravagance was appropriate, no matter that her own resources were beginning to run low. Two, after having met possibly the only man alive who could confirm Irena once lived here, she would not give up until every last possibility had been exhausted.

  Many of her hopes would vanish when, a few days later, Petr Wittmann showed up at the Slavia, a crowded art deco café across from the National Theater, where Meta had been waiting for over an hour to finally meet him. Her nerves were already as tense as taut wires when she arrived, but after three espressos and countless glances at a wall clock, they quivered, much as they had before competition concerts in her youth.

  After sitting casually in a chair at her table, Wittmann ordered himself a coffee and lit a cigarette, saying in passing, “Sorry I’m a bit late.” He spoke in an impeccable Oxford accent and looked older than in his dust-jacket photograph. High forehead, aquiline nose, impatient full lips. He wore his salt-and-pepper hair long with sideburns that gave him an unexpectedly dashing, raffish air. Round wire-rim glasses framed his dark gray eyes.

  “It’s an honor to meet you,” Meta said, not knowing whether to reach across and shake his hand. She decided it was better not to.

  “I’m also sorry to say that something unexpected has come up at the
university, so I’m afraid we won’t have much time.”

  “Paul Mandelbaum told me to give you his very best regards.”

  “Yes, we spoke on the phone, as you know” was Wittmann’s oblique response, and to the waitress who just then delivered his coffee, he said, “Zaplatím.”

  Was it possible, Meta wondered, that he had just asked for the check?

  “So now,” after a sip from his cup.

  “Thank you for making time to see me. I know your schedule’s tight.”

  “That I won’t deny. I’m back from sabbatical with my new book in dire need of its introduction and a final redraft before it goes off to the publisher.”

  “What—”

  “Mahler, but I could have used more time off.”

  “I look forward to reading it.”

  “Mahler’s not why we’re here, though. We’re here to discuss your lost Mozart sonata, or was it Beethoven?”

  “I know, I mean I see obviously how busy you are. But if you could spare just half an hour, fifteen minutes—just to listen to it once. I’d so value your expertise.”

  Here Petr Wittmann snapped cigarette ash into the tray, leaned back in his chair. “Paul is someone I’ve known since our student days. Met him at an international conference in Paris. We’ve been in touch ever since. He is a man of considerable knowledge and not a little imagination. Sometimes quite a lot of imagination. I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance until today, but I would think that you must be a good musicologist if only because you studied with my friend and because he says you are good. I don’t want to waste your time, his, or, for that matter, mine. Having looked into it a little, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just that. A waste of time.”

  She was floored by how coolly he delivered this judge-jury- and-executioner sentence. He even underscored his out-and-out dismissal of her project with a brief, apologetic smile. It was everything she could do to keep from jumping up and running out of the place.

  “But you haven’t seen it,” she said, doing her best to maintain composure.

  “Actually, that’s not quite true. I have had the opportunity of seeing what you left with my colleague, Karel Kohout. As forgeries go, my sense is that it’s quite a distinguished fabrication. In fact, as forgeries go, I’d be willing to state for the record that this is one of the more sophisticated works I’ve had the occasion to see in years. But if you think it’s worth investing a lot of valuable time in the thing, as Mandelbaum tells me you intend to do, I can only urge you, with all due respect, to put your energies to better use.”

  “Maybe the scan isn’t clear enough for you to work with. To me, there’s no question about the legitimacy of the original.”

  “Look, don’t get me wrong,” Wittmann retorted, raising both hands in the air as if Meta were pointing a pistol at him. “While it’s true the original might make it easier to date the thing, and while it may well be old, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “I must be missing something here,” she protested.

  “Maybe so. I am talking pure music. Whoever concocted this nifty mélange really knew his stuff. An impressive amalgamation of phrases and technical conceits borrowed from Mozart and Clementi. Some traditional transitions and modulations sounding fresh. Too much Beethoven, not enough Beethoven. It’s really quite a mess, for all its corrupt instances of beauty and clear moments of inspiration.”

  “But there’s nothing messy about it.”

  “You still misunderstand. As music, to our contemporary ears, it’s a marvelous construct. Were it authentic it would be revolutionary. I mean that as a forgery it’s a brilliant, messy stew. Riddled with anachronisms, impossible musical moves for the era it purports to come from. Miss Tavener, I’m sorry, but so-called lost masterpieces out of the workshops of ingenious forgers have a long and storied history, and I believe yours is likely another chapter. It’s just not the book I can help you write right now. I hardly have the time to write my own.”

  Meta opened her mouth, closed it. She didn’t bother to correct his mispronunciation of her name.

  “I’m truly sorry,” he went on. “Don’t think these things never happen to the best of us. I put in a lot of work years ago on what I’d become convinced were some unknown Bach fugues. As it happened, they were probably the work of someone in his circle. Friends with Anna Magdalena, I speculated at the time, though I later repudiated that. I remember wanting them so badly to be by Bach, there at the beginning of my own career, that I forced them on the poor man, who wouldn’t have been very grateful.”

  “I’m not making any such claims, you realize.” Meta was struggling to regain some semblance of equanimity. “I’m coming at this from another angle than you were when you were working on your Bach. This manuscript has a story behind it, a place in history, and it’s only part of my work to try to identify the composer.”

  “Identification strikes me as critical to understanding its value, if it has any value, cultural or otherwise. Am I wrong?” As he asked this question he pulled some coins from his trouser pocket and paid both of their tabs.

  “Doesn’t value have multiple criteria? Why shouldn’t its beauty give it value?”

  “I said corrupt beauty. That’s not the same as genuine beauty.”

  “You’ve given this enough time and thought to be confident beyond a reasonable doubt about what you’re saying?” she asked, hearing echoes of Jonathan in her question.

  “I’m making a subjective call based on objective frames of reasoning. I think you have something interesting here, but an oddity. Why do you think that woman who had it all those years never let anybody publish it?”

  So he had listened to Mandelbaum, and with closer care than she’d thought.

  “You’re going to say it’s because she knew it had a dirty past.”

  He nodded. Any earlier coolness toward her was gone now. He seemed to feel sorry for her, even sympathetic. “Wouldn’t surprise me. If you want to pursue a potentially interesting line of thought, trace the provenance back to its original owner. I would wager you will discover that the forger and the family who owned it all those decades had some relationship. You might find a fascinating narrative there. Still and all, I can’t imagine your talents wouldn’t be better used on other projects.”

  “Well,” Meta said, numb as stone.

  “I wish you nothing but the best. Mandelbaum speaks glowingly of your other work, you know. I’m sorry to be in such a rush and I apologize again for being late. If you’re ever back in Prague, don’t hesitate to call me. It would be a pleasure to see you again under less pressured circumstances.”

  “Thanks for giving the score a look,” she said. As she finally shook his hand—hers was damp, his dry—she realized that Kohout’s judgment about the work was, by default, the same as Wittmann’s.

  He said “Good luck,” and left.

  Dazed, Meta wandered back across the river to her pension. Her sight was blurred, her head ached. Hubris, she thought. Hubris again. What philosopher said that hubris is the flip side of faith? She lay on the bed for a time, eyes tracing a long crack in the ceiling, like a crease in a plaster palm. Imagining it as her lifeline, she tried to divine where on its serrated curve she had arrived today, and what twists and turns her future had in store.

  “Ridiculous,” she said aloud, finally, then sat up and walked to the window, her mind skipping like a dull needle across a scratched vinyl record. Give up, go home. Give up, go home. Give up, go home. How had she never noticed that the word Elba was hidden in the middle of her mentor’s name, she thought, remembering Mandelbaum’s words about Petr Wittmann. Well, he had turned out in fact to be her Elba, not her Canaan, hadn’t he? “Ridiculous,” she said again, feeling rotten for thinking of Mandelbaum this way. It wasn’t his fault things weren’t going well. I’m no better a musicologist than I am a damn pianist. Second-rate, third. All those years wasted, and she sat down to dial Jonathan’s number on her newly and grudgingly pu
rchased cell phone.

  “Suffice it to say I tanked” was her response to his hesitant, “How’s it going?” She raised her voice as she spoke, a preposterous habit from as far back as she could remember while making overseas calls. As if the ocean between her and whomever she called required Meta to shout in order to be heard. It had the effect of making her sound hysterical. Not so inappropriate at the moment.

  “You needed to follow an interesting lead, and that’s what you did,” Jonathan reasoned. “This isn’t the end of the world or your career. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Nothing’s really changed.”

  She was speechless. Everything had changed, had it not?

  He was still talking, consoling her, offering to meet her at the airport, to restock her fridge, when she heard him say “—did discuss the manuscript with a colleague—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, even if you did discover the other parts and manage to figure out who wrote it, it’s highly unclear as to what ownership rights—”

  “Jonathan, rights and ownership are the lowest of my priorities. Especially now.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  It didn’t take a lifetime of training for Meta’s ear to register the neediness in his tone. That, and a hint of acerbity. Way out of character for him, she knew, sensing it was best left untouched. She thanked him, assured him that she missed him too, and hung up feeling more dispirited than before, not to mention more distant from him, fairly or not, than she’d ever felt. She paced back and forth, wishing she could call Gillian, but couldn’t bear to tell her the news yet. Not from embarrassment but because she knew Gillie was going to blame herself, and Meta couldn’t take the compounded heartache of that conversation just then. Instead, she dialed her mother.