The Prague Sonata

by Bradford Morrow

“So Paul’s right about him.”

  “Looks that way,” Gerrit said, taking a step toward her. “More important, will you please accept my apology?”

  “Any other confessions to make?”

  “No, none. We’re okay, then?”

  “We were never not okay,” she said, giving him a kiss. “Just you need to know you can tell me anything and everything.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now, what about that toast to the remarriage of the manuscripts?” she said, retrieving the wineglasses from the table and handing one to Gerrit.

  THE ONLY WAY HE COULD LOOK MORE GUILTY, Mandelbaum mused when they shook hands in the hotel lobby, would be if his face were doubled, one in profile, the other with the same self-assured smile, and both displayed with a booking number beneath.

  But that was ridiculous, and Mandelbaum knew it. Here were two of the more distinguished men in their esoteric field seeing each other after a long hiatus. And, as a matter of incontrovertible fact, there was a phase decades ago when Mandelbaum’s own face might have appeared above a similar string of numbers. Besides, he had no evidence that his Czech colleague had done anything wrong other than put himself in the middle of things. The point of his trip to Prague at least in part was to allow his old friend a chance to rectify matters in person, get the scholarly process of this discovery on the right track. There was still some possibility Petr hadn’t robbed Paul, or rather, Paul’s student.

  He erased the imaginary profile and perp numbers from his mind, warmly shook his friend’s hand. “How good it is to see you after—what has it been?”

  “Six years, no, maybe seven. Whose centenary were we at up in London? Annalise obviously keeps you stored in first-rate mothballs. You haven’t aged a day.”

  “Renata did her best by you to the last, I see. But it looks like she got some of your hair in the settlement.”

  “Ex-wives have a way of doing that. I think thinning hair gives one an air of greater authority.”

  Serious for a moment, Mandelbaum said, “I’m sorry about the divorce, Petr.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” he responded, a bit subdued, before clapping his hands and returning to form. “Breakfast here at the hotel all right? I know you don’t have starched white tablecloths and such heavy silverware back in the swamps of New Jersey.”

  “This place has always been a little too Alphonse Mucha for my taste, but I hear the kitchen’s good. Let’s do.”

  This was how they’d been from the very first. Mandelbaum had liked Petr Wittmann for his erudite humor, old-fashioned in its way but crisp. And Wittmann respected Paul for his depth of musical knowledge more than he was ever quite able to admit. Besides, they always enjoyed the amicable sparring. As they ordered smoked trout and scrambled eggs, and splurged on champagne with their orange juice, Mandelbaum allowed himself the luxury of some unguarded dialogue with his fellow musical obsessive-compulsive.

  Wittmann wondered what Mandelbaum made of Philip Glass, who, as far as he could tell, composed “with a machine gun.” He asked what it was about American culture that so many of its rock musicians died in their twenties while its classical composers—Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt—lived into their nineties, even made it to a hundred? Was it a dietary difference or merely drugs? He speculated about how many classical composers’ estates were suing this or that wealthy Hollywood composer for lifting some of the best passages for their movie scores.

  Mandelbaum drew his eyebrows together in mock disapproval. “You spend too much time keynoting highbrow colloquia, my friend. The word’s not ‘lifting’ anymore. It’s called ‘sampling’ now, just ask your students. All acceptable in the rap world. Your beloved Wagner was one of the biggest ‘samplers’ of all time, so I see no need to make remarks about sturdy film composers who get a little honest inspiration from the classics.”

  “I stand corrected,” Wittmann said with an amused cough, as the food arrived at their table. “How soon can we expect a learned monograph from you on the contrapuntal influences of neoclassical Stravinsky on Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith?”

  That they found themselves discussing the appropriation of other people’s ideas hadn’t escaped Mandelbaum’s notice. He was still sharp, Wittmann was. Sharp as ever, despite the difficult divorce a year earlier. Which only confirmed for Mandelbaum that, after dismissing Meta’s find to her face, Wittmann wasn’t acting out of character when he reported to friends in the musicology community that he had examined a hitherto unrecorded eighteenth-century manuscript of potentially landmark importance. Though the through line from the manuscript to her was indisputable, Meta Taverner’s name had been glaringly absent, it seemed, in his various correspondence. So nimble was Petr’s disclosure, so agile his working of the small musicological grapevine, neither fully claiming pride of place in the discovery nor hinting that he had nothing to do with it, it was plain that he had poached or piggybacked on other scholars’ work before. Paul had no intention of filling Meta in on the past he and Wittmann shared, but felt it imperative that he personally set things right.

  His thoughts must have been easily readable on his face, as Wittmann now cut directly from their silly jousting to the chase itself.

  “I know why you’ve come to Prague,” he said, after wiping his lips with a napkin and dropping it back into his lap. “Under the circumstances, I can’t say that I blame you. I’d probably do the same thing if our roles were reversed.”

  Mandelbaum laid his fork on the plate. “And what have I come to Prague for?”

  “You’ve come to personally register a complaint that in my very delimited, very preliminary announcement to a handful of scholars about the sonata discovery I failed to mention your charming acolyte.”

  “That’s one reason.”

  “On that count at least I could have saved you the trip. After you phoned to set up this little tête-à-tête, I realized what that tone in your voice was all about. I think you Americans have a phrase, poker face. Well, you have a bad poker voice. Your animosity came through loud and clear.”

  Mandelbaum smoothly pushed his plate away and folded his large hands on the table. “I don’t feel animosity toward you, Petr. I feel confused by you.”

  “You’ll be pleased to know that I intend to rectify any misconceptions I may have caused, inadvertent though they were, with those few colleagues in question, and will credit Miss Tavener and you yourself for making the initial find.”

  “Her name’s Taverner, not Tavener.”

  “Another mistake for me to correct. I must have been thinking of that crazy Russian Orthodox Brit composer.”

  “I wouldn’t call John Tavener crazy, but that’s neither here nor there. Tell me, is it true you told her—having by your own admission announced its discovery and without, by the way, seeing the original—it was a forgery, a fake?”

  “That was my considered first impression,” Wittmann replied.

  “You seem to have made quite the about-face on that count.”

  Wittmann leaned forward. “I have. Our friend Karel Kohout and I had dinner one evening a while ago and this business came up. Both of us have shown considerably more due diligence in the matter than you seem to give us credit for.”

  “I never said anything about Kohout one way or the other.”

  “Be that as it may, Kohout, despite his own negative impression of the manuscript, did some asking around, mostly about the narrative your Meta gave regarding its supposed Prague origins, and he happened to locate an emeritus from the department who recalled having heard an uncannily similar story. A brother and sister living in Josefov, neither of them particularly compos mentis, survivors from the Nazi occupation days, had made noises about an early sonata manuscript, divvied up into three parts as Caesar divided Gaul.”

  “And?”

  “And so I began doing a little of my own research—let me repeat, my own—and I tracked down the sister. As supremely paranoid and unhelpful a person as you’d ever want to meet.
It turns out they’re both still alive, though the brother, whose house in Malá Strana seems to have been burned by Nazi arsonists on their way out of Prague, had moved back across the river after the revolution.”

  “Why didn’t you contact Meta to let her know what you were doing?”

  “Because I had nothing concrete to tell her. For all I knew I was wasting my own precious time. Why waste hers?”

  Born politician, Mandelbaum thought, not without reluctant appreciation. No wonder he breezed through the Communist years. Everyone on the far side of the Iron Curtain had marveled at the freedom he enjoyed to travel abroad to conferences and do research in Western institutional repositories. Equally impressive was the ease with which he shed any taint of Party membership when the Reds were swept out of power and the new democratic Czechoslovak Federal Republic took its place. Their shared history, dating back to their earliest days, had in part been protected by this very survivor’s genius Wittmann possessed.

  Petr was certainly the braver, more brazen, and perhaps crazier of the two young men, Mandelbaum—senior by some years—had long since understood. Had Wittmann been searched by border guards at the frontier and discovered transporting antiquarian manuscript materials out of the country without Party authorization, he might not have seen the outside of a jail cell for the rest of his days. But then, as now, he seemed to have a taste for recklessness, especially if he’d convinced himself that his motives were ultimately right. He was speaking, though, and Mandelbaum snapped back into the present.

  “Besides, the sister told me during my second or third visit that two young women were pressuring her, harassing her on her intercom, leaving notes. Not the subtlest approach for a field researcher, I wouldn’t have thought.”

  “You should have contacted Meta, shared your findings,” Mandelbaum asserted. “You wouldn’t have a clue about this if I hadn’t sent her to you for advice.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I was going to call her once I knew there was something to call her about. I have her phone number on my desk, and she has my card, for that matter. I must admit I was dismissive during our initial meeting, and it seemed only right that if I was to reverse my opinion, I ought to do so with a few hard facts filling my sails, no?”

  Mandelbaum let out a sigh.

  “Paul, stop it. You’re trying to make me feel like a common criminal. If I didn’t know you better, I’d start to resent all this.”

  “Relax, Petr. If I thought you were a criminal, I’d have to concede you’re the most distingué of all criminals I’ve met,” he said, easing up, even as he made subtle reference to their presumptuous past.

  “So,” Wittmann said, offering a provisional smile. “Friends and partners again?”

  “I never said we were enemies. All I ask is that you put your time and energies into what I’d originally requested.”

  “Please remind me,” the smile fading. “Just what was it you requested I do?”

  “Confirm my opinion about the score’s authenticity and value. Help point Meta toward leads that might connect her with the missing movements. Discuss possible provenance, since it was owned by a Czech. And if you were of a mind, offer her your thoughts on attribution.”

  “In other words, appraise it for you and do all her work for her?”

  “It’s called scholarly advisement, academic counsel, the interchange of ideas. Not to mention professional courtesy between colleagues.”

  “There was no reciprocity in her approach to me. She didn’t trust me enough to show me the original. And now that you mention it, without seeing the original, how can I possibly comment on its potential value?”

  Realizing that diners at nearby tables had turned their heads and were watching, Mandelbaum said, “Let’s lower our voices, what say? Never know who’s listening.”

  Wittmann glanced nonchalantly around, dropped his voice. “Let’s just suppose this manuscript proves to be something on the order of what we handled back when—”

  “Really? You’re really going to say that here?”

  “Well, let’s be honest. Its ownership is murky at best—”

  “We don’t know that. The owner might still be alive.”

  “If it was quietly placed with a private collector,” Wittmann glided on, “not only could we benefit, but your young protégée would be able to stop living hand to mouth for years to come. Productive years, I might imagine.”

  Mandelbaum started to speak but was again interrupted.

  “Not that I’m saying this is a remotely feasible course of action—”

  “You’re out of order, Petr. Ownership before commerce.”

  Wittmann sat forward, placing his elbows on the table and folding his arms. “So you’re all angelic now? Is that what I’m to understand? Such niceties didn’t trouble you in days of yore. We were a superb team. Why walk away from this?”

  “These aren’t days of yore. My goal right now is to advise Meta.”

  “Are you telling me that you came here just to protect your Meta from me, with no other motive slightly in mind?”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Such as keeping the manuscript for yourself, if a partnership doesn’t interest you, perhaps making your own deal.”

  “Have you gone insane?”

  “Glad to hear it,” Wittmann said, ignoring the question. “Let me remind you of a few things, though.”

  Mandelbaum clasped his fingers into a knot on the starched tablecloth. He didn’t want to give Wittmann the pleasure of a response.

  “You made it abundantly clear to me when you bowed out of our arrangement that you questioned my motives in wanting those manuscripts out of Czechoslovakia. It wasn’t always like that. Early on, you agreed that originals of Dvořák, Mozart, all these unique treasures that were being destroyed by damp and mildew and insects in nasty cellars, uncataloged, neglected, some of them fed to the fire by ignoramuses and ideologues, or stolen by thugs who wanted them for every wrong reason, all of them should be rescued, taken to a safe haven in the West.”

  Mandelbaum sat back in his chair.

  “Did you or did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “You also agreed at the time that since we couldn’t risk donating the works to a Western institution for fear word would get out about our activities, and I at least would wind up in a very ugly, very solitary prison cell, the only solution was to put them into individuals’ hands. Discreet individuals. Individuals who would take care of the materials, know their intrinsic value, appreciate the opportunity of custodianship.”

  “Yes, I agreed about that too.”

  “And you further agreed, since we had no way of financing all our travel and other expenses, which were not inconsiderable, when we were just getting started in our careers, that the only way to do it was to sell the manuscripts. And sell them below fair market value, with the promise that the buyers—we trusted only a few—would keep our secret, and keep the papers out of the public eye until such time as they could safely be made available to scholars. You agreed to that as well, didn’t you?”

  “All of this is basically true, yes. And so?”

  “So, what we have here is a situation that runs the opposite of what was going on back in the late sixties, early seventies. Here’s a manuscript that, in lieu of a living owner, must be repatriated, not in the possession of some eager thirty-year-old whose family never spilled a drop of blood in the cause of its survival. Our government, flawed as it may be, is not the culture-hating mob of Marxist morons that preceded it. There are collections here now that are more than capable of assuming responsibility.”

  Mandelbaum leaned forward. “That’s a very pretty speech, Petr. But I have nothing to say on the subject.” Seeing Wittmann shrug with irritation, he moved ahead. “What interests me at this moment is whether you have made enough progress in the interim that you’d be willing to confer with Meta.”

  “I have and I will,” taking the hint and shifting the tone of his voi
ce back to urbane cordiality.

  “She deserves full credit for the discovery of the middle movement, and for setting the research in motion. Thereafter, all’s fair in love and war. Even if it’s just musical warfare.”

  “I’m no warrior, so don’t worry about it.” Wittmann waved the waiter to their table, passed him some crown notes after telling him they needed to settle.

  “Let me charge that to my room,” protested Mandelbaum.

  “Nonsense, this is on me.” As they left the restaurant, Wittmann took in a hearty deep breath outside and asked if Mandelbaum had as yet made his pilgrimage to the astronomical clock in Old Town Square. “I recall it’s one of your favorite things here. If we walk a little faster we can be there for the eleven o’clock tolling and the grand procession of saints and devils.”

  “I’m only just in town, as I said. Haven’t seen much beyond your handsome face.”

  They chatted about Petr’s teaching and Paul’s retirement as they ambled beneath the arched stonework of Powder Gate and past Celetná’s elegant windows sparkling with glassware and jewelry, its high-end boutiques that displayed nary a hint of its earlier history of Eastern European deprivations or the drear of Red rule. Thanks to none other than Petr Wittmann, Mandelbaum had been allowed to visit Czechoslovakia for months at a time as a guest lecturer or scholar in residence in the days when frontiers here could be tricky for Westerners to negotiate. He remembered how colorless and tired this now-chic street had looked then. Never a fan of the Madison Avenues of the world, or what excesses they represented, Mandelbaum still had to admit this one was more palatable than before.

  “So,” he said before they entered the square to witness the mechanical pageant that had taken place every hour off and on since the fifteenth century. “When can Meta, you, and I sit together and discuss these manuscripts like proper scholars?”

  “Manuscripts, plural?” Wittmann said, stopping.

  Mandelbaum suppressed a cringe at his slip. “It sounded as if you located another movement of the sonata through this woman and her brother,” he improvised.