The cab pulled up in front of the wide unsheltered steps at the main entrance, and the driver pressed buttons on the meter before turning around to say, “Twelve even. You need a hand with your bags?”
Brona, unsettled, took a moment to reply. “No, thank you.” She gave the man a ten and a five and told him to keep the change. Used to students, he was surprised enough to get out anyway and pull her bags from the trunk. There were only two, and neither was very heavy. He dropped them on the bottom step and looked up at the egg-shell-white façade.
“Used to be a real nice place,” he said, shaking his head. “What some people think is progress. Have a nice day.”
“Thank you,” Brona said. “You, too.”
The cab drove off, leaving her on the front steps alone.
The interior wasn’t quite so odd. The walls were livened up by building plans Xeroxed on colored paper and scribbled with Day-Glo markers to show You Are Here; the stone floors had been laid with anti-slip rubber matting. The broad window above the receptionist’s counter at Administration showed the usual clutter of desks, computers, filing cabinets, ringing phones, and busy, harassed, cheerful people. One young woman gave Brona some forms to sign and some other forms to take to the residence office to prove she was who she said she was and thus entitled to the room that was part of the Fayant Scholarship. Room, board, and tuition, all paid for by the same man who had paid for the new buildings. Nice man. Nice, and rich. Nice and rich. Brona tucked the forms into the back pocket of her jeans and, smiling, hefted her bags.
“I won’t try and give you directions,” the administration woman said. “Just wander around and you’ll get there eventually. I’ll call Residence, and if they haven’t seen you in an hour we’ll send out a search party.”
Brona laughed.
By the building plans, the basic design was in fact quite simple. Within each cube, a single interior corridor traced a square; rooms on the outside edge had windows; rooms on the inside edge had skylights, as did the corridors. What made it confusing was how the cubes were joined together. As she wandered, Brona found the uneasiness settling around her again like a flock of invisible birds. Cool light, white stone, silence.
A demanding place, she thought. A place it would be hard to live up to.
She circled in on the residence office, was given a key and painstaking, though not hopeful, directions to her room, the laundry room, the dining hall. The residence cube was one of the largest, with two floors and a glass-roofed atrium of the sort Brona had come to associate with banks and high-end shopping malls. There was furniture on the atrium floor, blocky sofas the colors of granite and sand; and a circling gallery off of which opened dormitory rooms; and two double doors onto the dining hall. There was also, on a sunken section of floor in the middle of the room, a grand piano.
Really nice, Brona thought, and really, really rich. The temptation was impossible to resist. She dropped her bags on a sofa, and sat down at the keyboard. A Steinway, and, she was relieved to see, not a new one. She played a chord. The sound thrummed and soared, fluttered against the glassy ceiling and trailed away down the stony corridors. She smiled. In tune. She shifted the bench, found the peddles with her foot, and began to play Satie’s Gymnopedes.
Deceptive simplicity was made rich by the echoing space that wove and rewove the steadily pacing chords and wandering melody. For one of those timeless moments that only seemed to happen when she played, the door of her memory cracked open and gave her a glimpse—a half-glimpse—the barest hint of movement at the corner of her eye. A flash of wings, the flutter of an embroidered sleeve. She played the last chord, the last note, and, sitting desperately still, cast her mind after the retreating sound, following it as if it were the thread that would lead her out of the labyrinth—or lead her further in—
“Wow.”
“Totally wow.”
Voices snapped the thread, slammed the door, startled her eyes open. A dozen or more people sat on the atrium’s sofas, watching her. Someone started to clap, and others took it up. Someone else stood and dropped the single step down to the sunken floor where the piano sat in solitary splendor. He was of less than average height, slight, with a fine-boned poet’s face that was marred just now by a salesman’s grin.
“You,” he said, holding out his hand, “must be the Fayant Scholarship.”
Brona gave the hand a cool look before taking it in hers. “Brona Roswell.”
“Valentine.” The grin twisted into something bitter, yet also more attractive, more real. “The Fayant son.”
1916:
There was a storm raging in Mrs. Potter’s boarding house, an oppressive womanly storm of sobs buried in pillows, shouts locked behind doors, tiptoes and whispers in the hall. Berenice sat in Mrs. Potter’s parlor studying her theory book in the dreary November light from the window—or rather, pretending to study—while the storm within was matched by a cold, sleet-laden wind without. There were term-end exams in two weeks, and a recital at which Dr. Kingsley had forbidden her to play the Chopin she had been learning all fall, but try as she would, she could not make herself deaf to the uproar. Miss Salter had been seen walking arm in arm with Miss Teale’s young man, and when confronted, Miss Salter had pointed out that no promises had been made to Miss Teale and so she, Miss Salter, had every right to step out with the young man in question. It was probably the truth of this last that had provoked Miss Teale to attack Miss Salter on every front, from her morals to her figure to her breeding . . .
The parlor door opened and Mrs. Potter put her head through. “Thank goodness one of you has some sense. Light the lamps if it gets too dark, dear, you don’t want to strain your eyes.”
Berenice smiled and Mrs. Potter withdrew. Soon, the stairs creaked under the landlady’s ascending weight; not long after, there was a fresh outbreak of weeping from above. Clearly, Mrs. Potter’s brand of housewifely diplomacy did not meet the demands of high romantic drama. Berenice closed her book and rose to draw the curtains and light the lamps, but when she was standing at the window, with the cold gray street before her and the stuffy parlor behind, she changed her mind. Leaving the book on the parlor table, she went into the hall, donned boots, coat, and hat, and left the house.
She walked the two blocks to the train station, crossed the tracks and the road, and started up the muddy path into the woods that lay between town and school. It was only a narrow band of woodland, for the school had sold off most of the old manor grounds, but the trees were tall and thick-boled, their roots buried in drifts of leaves, their bare branches so interwoven they blocked much of the wind. Berenice lifted her chin from her scarf in relief from the cold, but kept her eyes on the path. It was mucky, and her boots were thin.
Masters Hall surprised her by being unlocked. She had only come this way out of habit, and because there was nowhere else to go on a Sunday. But the front door groaned open when she leaned her weight against it, and she slipped inside to a dim, beeswax-scented warmth. There was even music being played somewhere in the depths of the building. A flute shone out, lilting and clear, and beneath it lay a murmur that might have been strings, or singers, or both. Music on a Sunday, and not devotional music either: Berenice, her father’s daughter, was mildly, automatically shocked, but it was a very cheerful tune.
Tentatively, she followed it to the door of the smaller recital hall, really just a room with rows of wooden chairs and a low dais for the piano. Standing outside the door, she was sure she could make out a viola’s strings besides the flute, and voices that sang and laughed, such a merry sound that she smiled as she opened the door. The music played on, somewhere in the building, somewhere, but not here. The room was empty but for the piano and the chairs, and a light gray as dust, and the sound, just as gray, of rain beating on the windows. The flute ended its tune with a flourish. The voices laughed and chattered on. Somewhere.
Berenice slipped into the recital room, took off her coat and hat, and sat down at the piano. She played scales t
o loosen up her fingers, and the sheer tedium set her dreaming. She imagined the drab room made brilliant by candles, mirrors, gilt. She imagined the chairs crowded with men in tuxedos and women in gowns bright as butterfly wings, their jewels shining like captive stars. She imagined herself in green—no, black—no, brown, rich raisin-colored velvet with gold embroidered on the tight cuffs, so that it glittered with the dancing of her hands. Smiling, she closed her eyes and played.
The empty room swallowed sound, the growing dusk drank it down. After the final note, the piano murmured to itself a moment, then fell silent when she took her foot from the peddles. She let her hands rest in her lap, her eyes still closed. For one giddy moment, she heard applause, but it was only the patter of sleet against the window glass. She opened her eyes and was startled by the darkness.
And was startled again when a voice said, “Mistress Red, you should play before kings.”
She jumped. Her hand pressed down on the keys. Discord. She could only see a dark shape with pale hair amongst the empty chairs. She saw for a moment a thin old man, but of course she knew who it was. Miss Salter’s beau, and Miss Teale’s. She took her hand from the keys.
“Mister Green,” she said, breathless.
“Did I startle you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I might.” He stood and began to work his way to the end of the row.
Berenice stood as well, and quickly moved to retrieve her coat and hat from the chair at the back of the stage. As quick as she was, he was nevertheless beside her in time to take her coat and hold it while she slid her arms into the sleeves. She stepped away and put on her hat.
“Ah,” he said, “the fire’s out. Now there is only the dark.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “You should put a hat on yourself, Mister Green, if you want that to be true.”
He raised a hand to his hair, which seemed paler than ever against the background of night. “Moonlight rather than fire,” he said ruefully. “Perhaps you will lend me a little warmth?”
“Perhaps I will not!” she said sharply, and a little nervously. She maneuvered past him and stepped off the stage. He jumped down and ran, coltish and loud on the bare floor, to the door which he opened with a bow.
“I shall lend you a little moonlight, then,” he said, “and walk you home.”
“Really,” she said, more nervous than sharp now, “that isn’t at all necessary, Mister Green.”
He laughed and tucked his arm through hers. “You’re very prim, Miss Ross, for red-haired girl who plays Chopin with her eyes closed in the dark.”
Stung, she pulled free. “And you, sir, are very forward for a man so careful of his own skin!”
Too careful, she meant, to serve his country in a time of war.
“But it is not my country,” he said softly, reading her thought with discomfiting ease, “and it is not my war. And, my dear Miss Ross, the woods are very dark tonight.”
Something in his voice, absent its usual gaiety— Something in the echoes in the dark foyer, the ghosts of music and daytime voices— Berenice shivered, and when he opened the heavy door, she stepped through and let him take her arm.
2003:
Brona’s piano teacher said early on, half in despair, “I don’t have anything to teach you. I think you should be teaching me.”
Brona shrugged. There was little point in pretending otherwise. “Let’s talk about interpretation,” she said, and they did that during most of their lesson times.
Leona, her teacher, had a soft gray mob of curls and a round, light brown face that was webbed with lines, like fine tissue paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times. The creases changed patterns whenever she spoke, smiled, frowned. She was an inarticulate philosopher, a thinker who spoke in dreams, who wrestled with the keyboard to make it communicate more clearly than she could. Brona liked her immensely, and when Leona recommended a book that Brona had already read, she decided to look it up and read it again, for Leona’s sake.
The library, like the main residence and the recital hall, was a two story cube with an atrium in the middle and a gallery running around all four walls. Music and listening stations below, books and archives above. Even with students cluttering all the tables, even with a gray sky pressing down on the glass, it was a strange room, severe, elegant, and bright. Brona had heard a lot of complaints about the new school, how cold it was, how confusing, how noisy the classrooms and hallways were, but she was developing a personal fondness for the generous Mr. Fayant and his imaginative architect. It was a building to live up to, and she thought it would probably do most of these students good to try.
She found Leona’s book and sat on a low, deep window ledge, the book unopened on her knee. The window overlooked glassy roofs hemmed in by weedy ground, the highway, the town. The library fluttered like a dovecote with whispers, turned pages, music that seeped from earphones. It was a lovely, breathy sound, like leaves in a breeze, water at the slack of tide. Brona closed her eyes and drifted, half asleep and not quite dreaming.
A nearby voice came clear. “You pretend very well, my dear, but why should you? Why should you hide what you are?”
Brona opened her eyes. The speaker was out of sight somewhere in amongst the bookshelves, but she was shocked by the conviction, the absolute conviction, that the woman had been speaking to her.
She had not been. Someone else responded, a masculine murmur too low to admit to words.
The first voice said, “I will not argue. Every light shines, every fire burns. You can’t hide a fire, you know. If you try you’ll only put it out.” She laughed. “That has to be an exit line. I shall see you soon, though, Valentine.”
In the wake of the voices, the library’s murmur swelled back into the fore, a gentle foaming wave of sound that washed over Brona, making her skin prickle with cold. Not really sure why, she set the unopened book aside and got up from the window ledge. Two rows away, Valentine Fayant stood with his hands braced against a half-empty bookshelf, his arms stiff and his head bowed. Beside him was a cart loaded with grubby folios.
“Who were you speaking to?” Brona asked him.
He jerked upright, staring. It took him a moment to muster a response. “What’s it to you, Scholarship?”
“I don’t know. What fire are you trying to hide?”
“I don’t know, I—” His look of angry bafflement intensified. “Is eavesdropping a lifestyle choice, or just something you do in your spare time?”
Brona laughed and leaned against the bookshelves. “I was sitting just over there.” She pointed a thumb, shrugged. “I was curious who you were talking to. She sounded—” What? Brona waited to hear. “—familiar.” She was chilled, realizing this was true.
Valentine ducked his head. Seeming to notice the cart for the first time, he picked up a folio and put it on the shelf. “Jade. She’s in strings. Second year. I doubt you know her, she doesn’t live in res.” He listlessly put another folio on the shelf.
Jade, Brona thought. Jade. Did it ring a bell, or did she only wish it would?
“She’s a little bit crazy,” Valentine went on. “I don’t know what she’s talking about half the time.”
Brona studied him. He looked sulky, and very young. “Perhaps she’s talking about how you pretend to be less talented than you are. Or perhaps she’s talking about the way you work so hard to deserve the scorn people lay out for the rich donor’s son.”
Valentine flushed, and looked at her sidelong. “You’re another weird one, aren’t you, Scholarship?”
“Probably.” She took a folio off the cart, untied the faded red ribbon and looked inside. A handwritten score for a flute quartet, an illegible name scrawled across the upper corner, and a date. 1936. “What is this?”
He took the folio from her hands, tied it closed, put it on the shelf. “Part of the archives.” He continued shelving, a twist to his mouth. “I get a cut in my tuition for helping do the catalogue. Everything got mixed up in
the move. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“No, it isn’t. Was the job your father’s idea, or yours?”
Shelving, he pointedly did not answer.
She laughed, took her weight off the bookshelf, turned to go.
He said, “You want to go into town for a beer sometime?”
Without looking back, she said, “I don’t have any ID.”
She was several rows away when she heard him say, “How about a coffee, then?”
She smiled to herself. But as she descended the gallery stairs the smile faded. Jade. Jade. She didn’t think she knew the name, but the voice—
1917:
Berenice played Mozart at the recital, and afterwards went home for a cold, prayerful Christmas in her father’s house, her father’s church. She did not think much about school while she was home. The usual round of housework and churchly visits closed over her head without a ripple to prove that she had been away, and the changes to the village were so minor they could scarcely be seen. The Fabers had repainted their boat white with green trim. The boardwalk outside the general store had three new slats, bright yellow amidst the gray. The grief her father bore for his only son, dead in France, had become a clean, rigid structure on which he hung his life. In the new year, as she boarded the train that would take her back to school, she felt that she was drawing breath for the first time in two weeks. Like a seal, she thought. Seals could stay under for a very long time, but even they could drown.
In the Palace of Repose Page 19