The Prague Sonata

by Bradford Morrow

  No, Tomáš had chosen to seize this moment with both shaky hands. In a way, he believed, he was providing the manuscript two very different opportunities to find its way home. Be it Wittmann or Meta, he reasoned, one of them would carry his albatross the rest of the way. Rather than a betrayal, this was its best chance of survival. It was not unlike what Otylie herself had done. Surely she would have approved.

  Now, though, he was stymied as to how to account for it. Only hours before he’d thought this whole business was nicely settled. He had to admit that Wittmann and Kohout, two distinguished fellow countrymen, sketched a fairly credible case for keeping it in Czech hands despite Tomáš’s own disdain for what he saw as Johana’s gullibility. But he didn’t know what to tell them. Best, he thought, to feign confusion, buy himself time to think.

  “Myslím, že jsem jí to dal. Ale kdoví, komu to opravdu patří,” he tried. I believe I gave it to her, but who owns it may be unclear.

  You believe you gave it to her? Wittmann chided.

  I need a moment to remember.

  Let me help you, the professor continued, his voice lowered, as if to prevent its being recorded by hidden microphones. We know about you, your past. Let me tell you a bit about us. We too have had to work with occupiers in order to pursue our dreams. You and I both understand that a man has to look out for himself while making sure not to harm the homeland. It’s a delicate dance. For hundreds of years, artists and scholars of every stripe have had to toady to patrons they sometimes hated in order to keep benefactors’ money coming in. We stand near the bottom of the social order, despite whatever flattery the middle and ruling classes toss our way. You have never been treated properly, in my opinion. I believe I can promise you one thing if you make it possible for us to have the original. In our findings, we will be abundantly clear as to the important, even heroic role you’ve played in this matter.

  Thank you, Tomáš muttered, wearying of the musicologist.

  By the way, would you mind satisfying my curiosity about something?

  If I can.

  I was just wondering how our American friend, slečna Tavener, was able to find you. Your sister tells me that she never spoke with her.

  Tomáš shrugged. Another American, a friend of hers, lives nearby on Jánská. Writer, a journalist, I think he said. He seems to have heard me playing—no, it was his piano teacher friend, an American who—

  First it was the Germans, then the Soviets. Now it sounds as if the Americans have come to invade the republic, Kohout said, his uncomfortable laugh ignored by the others.

  Yes, well.

  And what would this other American’s name be? Wittmann pressed, ignoring Kohout, not for a moment missing the possible reference to Gerrit.

  If I remember right—

  Marta had listened long enough and stepped out of the shadows, saying, I think that’s about all the time we have, gentlemen. Dinner is ready and, as you can see, my father’s not well and we don’t want to cause him stress, do we?

  Of course not, Kohout said, startled, rising from his chair. We were just leaving.

  Wittmann rose more slowly, annoyed by her intervention. Not looking at Marta, taking Tomáš’s hand in both of his own, he finished, Well, I do hope you’ll give some thought to what we’ve said. It’s been splendid seeing you again.

  Once out of earshot, down in the elegant square that fronted the old Lobkowicz Palace, Wittmann cursed and seethed. Kohout stared at the cobbles, hands in his pockets, then looked skyward. A darkening doubt had come over him in the Langs’ parlor about his role here. Wittmann still had the fire of ambition blazing in his belly, but Kohout had to ask himself whether the prize they sought hadn’t already slipped away irretrievably. He didn’t like the expression on Tomáš’s daughter’s face when she ushered them out of her house. The withering farewell she offered at the door made it as certain as death they would not be given another audience with her father. Mandelbaum, whom Karel Kohout respected, intended to look out for his protégée, putting the original doubly at a distance from them. Most aggravating was that this Taverner girl had played a far better chess match than he might have thought possible, given how nervous she’d seemed when they encountered her in Old Town Square, how diffident she appeared to be in his office, audaciously showing up with a homemade transcript of the original. Even at the time he had thought, How amateur can you get?

  He now sensed it wasn’t amateurism that informed her choices, but distrust. Had it been up to Kohout alone, he would have been inclined to concede checkmate. However, he’d known Petr Wittmann too long to believe that his colleague was going to let the matter drop so easily.

  The two entered the first pub they saw and ordered pints. Wittmann’s mood had changed. No longer rancorous, he now grew contemplative. As they drank a second round, he proved Kohout’s prediction right by formulating, sotto voce, an idea that reached beyond what he had ever risked in the past. His prior scholarship may have involved subterfuge, a little restrained plagiarism, some occasional intrigue. Whose didn’t? But what he asked struck Kohout as borderline mad.

  First, did Kohout still have the phone number that Johana Langová said those two girls had left in her mailbox? Second, the journalist who came by the other day asking about puppet theater and the postrevolution resurfacing of cultural artifacts—wasn’t it likely he was none other than this fellow living on Jánská? And third, while it was clear the sonata had been harbored by many caretakers, wasn’t it time to take action and wrest it from the clutches of the unworthy?

  MANDELBAUM EMERGED FROM CUSTOMS wearing his signature black pullover and wide-wale black corduroys, looking like a disheveled incarnation of the great conductor Karajan or maybe Bernstein in his white-thatched days, and wrapped his long arms around Meta. Whenever time passed without their seeing each other, she always forgot just how tall he was, how lean and graceful, what a larger-than-life figure. Holding her away from him and studying her smiling face, he said, “You look positively aglow. Who’d have thought that Prague soot and diesel exhaust could do such wonders for a girl’s complexion?”

  “Shameless flatterer. I’m pasty as a potato and you know it. Here, let me take your shoulder bag.”

  “I’m not a total cripple yet, little Sherpa girl. I can manage my own carry-on.”

  “Were you able to reach—”

  “Yes, your mother’s quite devoted, you know. She made it to the bank before they closed. I have it right here,” he said, patting the side of his well-traveled bag.

  They walked down the corridor, falling into old, easy rhythms. Meta hadn’t realized how much she missed the man.

  “Baggage claim’s down this way,” she said.

  “I don’t have anything to claim. I come with one spare shirt, a couple of pairs of socks, my toothbrush, heart meds, reflux meds, cholesterol meds, and whatever other dainties my dear wife said I couldn’t live without. I had more to wrap up at home than I’d thought, and barely made the plane as it was.”

  “I’m sure we can find you whatever you need.”

  “Much more important than my picayune needs, tell me how your recital went. Is the movement a decided connect? Do you have a clear cycle coming together? You’ll play it for me a hundred times as promised? How’s Sam et famille? Catch me up on everything.”

  During the drive back from Ruzyně airport in Sam’s crummy four-door Škoda, Meta told Mandelbaum, yes, there was a clear connect. Explained that the original was under lock and key at Gerrit’s flat, where Irena’s movement could now join it.

  “And you absolutely trust him?”

  “There are people here in Prague I don’t trust. He’s definitely not one of them.”

  Hard by the Municipal House on Náměstí Republiky, Mandelbaum checked into his hotel, whose lobby was ornately decorated with art nouveau murals, chandeliers straight out of a Klimt dream, windows incised with arum lilies on intertwining stems. He left his things with the concierge and gave the desk receptionist an unmarked pack
age housing the manuscript, to be placed in the hotel safe until he returned from lunch. Meta was waiting for him in the restaurant bar.

  “Too stuffy-sterile in here, and I want to stretch my legs. Is that little hole-in-the-wall Konvikt still in business?”

  “You know Konvikt? That’s where Sam and I first met.”

  “Do I know Konvikt. Please, a little respect for your elders. Who do you think turned Sam on to Konvikt in the first place?” They walked, Mandelbaum admiring this and that in a city he knew more intimately than Meta might have guessed. She envied him his cosmopolitan ease and at the same time felt comforted, if a touch nervous, that he was here. If ever she could use a sounding board—a figure of speech she always loved because it turned people into pianos—now was that time.

  Mandelbaum sighed with satisfaction as they entered the monolith of lush smoke that was Konvikt’s interior and sat at a free table near an open courtyard window in the back room. “Ah, yes. This is more like it,” he said, removing his coat and settling himself. When the waiter came, he ordered house beer for them both with his slow but serviceable Czech, and asked for a menu. “Sop,” he explained to Meta with a wink. “I haven’t eaten since they handed out dry mystery-meat sandwiches over the English Channel.”

  “Don’t forget tonight’s a dinner reunion with the Kettles, so save room.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he said, and ordered grilled sausage and sauerkraut when the waiter returned with their pints.

  “Feel good to be back?”

  “As if I never left. I feel the same when I’m in Paris and Vienna. But now then,” he continued, relishing his first swallow, savoring the inch of foamy head that banded the top of his pint glass. “Meta first, then music, then Mandelbaum after. Tell me what’s up with this new love of yours.”

  “It’s progressed since I spoke with you last.”

  “Which means it’s a fast-moving storm.”

  “More like the rainbow that follows the storm.”

  Meta described how she’d quickly grown close to Gerrit, and how her relationship with Jonathan, which had been unraveling since the day Irena gave her the manuscript, finally fell apart. She faulted herself every step of the way, as the father figure across the wobbly round table gently defended her from herself.

  “I happen to be a rare example of the lucky one who met the only person he’d ever want to be with first,” he said. “But don’t forget, my dear, you were not married. Apparently with good reason.”

  “Maybe so. Still, it’s hard to feel good, given how it all ended. But it’s not like I feel shattered either.”

  “I always thought Jonathan was a decent chap who, despite his good intentions, never really understood you. I also hoped you’d find somebody who, like my Annalise, loves music but doesn’t need to breathe it every waking hour to stay alive.”

  “Gerrit’s exactly that way. He really seems to get music but doesn’t live or die for it.”

  “Perfect,” Mandelbaum said.

  “Well, no, he’s not perfect. I mean, he has his own flaws and demons.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Meta took a sip from her glass, shrugged.

  “Is he in love with you?”

  So forthrightly asked, that one took Meta aback. She looked down at her hands, remembering how just that morning Gerrit had kissed them. “Yes, I think. I really hope so.”

  “Good man. When do I meet him?”

  “We could meet tomorrow morning, I thought.”

  “I have business tomorrow morning. Can we do lunch, then afterward you play it? If the manuscript’s at his place, I assume he has a piano. The movements can be reunited then.”

  “There’s a decent Steingraeber downstairs in his landlady’s front room,” Meta said, figuring Mandelbaum must have a meeting scheduled with one or another of his musicologist colleagues. Wittmann was her guess, and she inwardly flinched as she thought this, recalling Jonathan’s accusation. How was it she had never really asked herself just why Mandelbaum decided to drop whatever he was doing and rush four, five thousand miles to be at her side? A long way to go just to meet a former student, listen to her play an unknown manuscript. Though these thoughts made her uncomfortable, she trusted her mentor to fill her in when he felt she needed the information. The man was like a river, not to be pushed along.

  Back at his hotel after leaving Konvikt, a reluctant Mandelbaum retrieved his package and handed her Irena’s goatskin portfolio, which housed the manuscript.

  “I still believe it belongs in the safe here, my dear.”

  “I know it’s valuable, but we’re not in some spy movie. It’ll be fine at Gerrit’s. Now get settled and I’ll come pick you up for dinner tonight,” she said, and gave him a hug before heading to the metro.

  Clothes and hair still reeking of Konvikt smoke, Meta let herself into Gerrit’s apartment, holding her coat close to her breast.

  “What an excellent surprise,” Gerrit said, getting up from his desk.

  “I have a bigger one,” she told him, out of breath from the hurried walk up Nerudova. “Look what I’ve got.”

  With that she pulled out Irena’s scuffed burgundy-colored satchel.

  “Is this it, in here?” marveling at how unassuming the thing looked. Nine out of ten people wouldn’t bother stooping to pick it up off the sidewalk.

  She went over to his desk, where she set it down, turned, and kissed him. “It sure is. The original of the second movement. What Irena gave me before she died. This is what started everything.”

  “Can I see?”

  “I waited to open it until I got here so we could be together,” she said, unstringing the thong wrapped around an ambered bone button and pulling out the manuscript.

  “It’s an honor,” Gerrit said, and Meta could tell he meant it. “Shall I fetch the other movement?”

  “Please,” handing him the skeleton key.

  He brought the dispatch case that housed Tomáš’s brown envelope and stood by her side while she opened it and placed the movements together for the first time in sixty years. Both stood there awestruck. Not just by the significance of this small moment, but by the beauty of the physical scores, one tattered and soiled, the other remarkably fresh. Meta wanted nothing more than to sit down and examine every millimeter of what lay before her on Gerrit’s desk, but she had promised Mandelbaum they’d do the comparative examination when all of them were together. “Since he’s come all this way, a promise is a promise.”

  “Agreed. But this merits a toast,” Gerrit said, heading for the kitchen. “Let me see what’s in the cabinet while you put them away for safekeeping.”

  “So what are you writing?” she called out to him in the other room, as she locked the secretary.

  “Take a look,” he replied. “How’s a glass of red sound?”

  “Great, but just a finger’s worth.”

  Sitting down in Gerrit’s chair, Meta read what was on the laptop screen. Such a wonderful writer, she thought, as she casually browsed what was there and in the notebook that lay open next to the computer. She even loved his handwriting, the way he formed letters, the dark blue of his ink. When she glanced at another of the notebooks lying on the desk and opened it out of curiosity, she was taken aback by what she saw. She hastily turned a page, then another. Her recent life was here. Her struggle, her search. And what was this about Petr Wittmann? What was any of this doing in one of Gerrit’s notebooks?

  When Gerrit walked into the room with the wine, his smile faded. Meta looked up and said, as calmly as she could, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. But why didn’t you tell me you were writing everything down?”

  He set the glasses on a side table, nervous and embarrassed. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. Writing notes is just something I do, the same way your lifeline is music.”

  “You should have told me, shouldn’t you? I can’t tell if I should be flattered or weirded out. I mean, if I were a composer and decided to write songs about you behind your ba
ck, how would you feel?”

  “I suppose if they were love songs—”

  “But this isn’t a love song,” she said, closing the notebook and crossing her arms. “It’s reportage. Notes and facts and lines of inquiry for I don’t know what, an article, a book?”

  His cheeks flushed. “The truth of it, Meta, is that it is a kind of love song. For you, what you’re doing here. That doesn’t excuse the fact that I’ve been writing it down without your knowing. I just didn’t want you to think I was using you for your story.”

  Meta listened carefully and watched him while he spoke, then uncrossed her arms and stood. Looking away from Gerrit, running her eyes over his wall of photographs, she surprised him by saying, “And I was concerned about using you too much. Your time, your energy, your knowledge of Prague, your Czech. Your encouragement.”

  “No, please. My time, energy, all of it, is yours for the taking.”

  “What’s that about Wittmann in there?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck with a flattened palm, Gerrit said, “Another confession. I arranged to see him not long ago. Told him I wanted to discuss that story I was writing on Czech puppet theater.”

  “What?” Meta half-laughed, turning back to Gerrit. “What does Wittmann know about puppets?”

  “More than you might imagine, actually. Point is, I really went there to see if he’d let his guard down about you and the manuscript. I got nothing out of him, as it happens. I thought I might try again, but things developed too quickly after that for him not to see through my ruse. So I left it alone.”

  “Understood,” said Meta with a relieved sigh.

  “I did make a call to an older colleague at the Prague Post and, without telling him why I was asking, got a little history on Wittmann. What kind of influence he had in the days before the revolution, what sway he has now.”

  “And?”

  “To cut a long story short, he had sway then and still has, even if his star doesn’t shine quite as bright.”