"In the coffin!" Stefan whispered. "Beside him!" It was full of contempt.
I would have closed my eyes, but had no such control over any physical body. I held this violin, the one of which they spoke, I had it in my arms, and I thought now, so this thing, this thing we follow through this bloody history is at this time, give it 1825 or more, lying already in a coffin! Has it been sprinkled with holy water, this thing, or will that only happen at the Last Rites, and the Requiem, and will that be beneath a Viennese church with gilt-and-sugar angels?
Even I knew the little man could not get the violin. But he struggled to defend himself, both to them and to his own heart, turning, pacing, lip jutting, glasses flecks of light.
"Why, how, you can't just walk into a room where a Prince in his coffin lies in state ..."
"Berthe, he's right," said Stefan gently. "It's unspeakable that I allow him to take such a risk. Besides, when could he do it? What is he to do, walk boldly up and seize the thing from the dead man's grasp and rush out with it?"
Berthe looked up; her dark hair was a frame for a white face, her eyes beseeching but clever. She had long lashes and a lush thick mouth.
"There are times," she said, "late in the night when the room will be nearly empty. You know it. When men will sleep. And only a few say their Rosaries, and these even most likely close their eyes. So, Father, you go in to tend the tables. When even Stefan's Mother sleeps."
"No!" Stefan said, but the thought had found a fertile place. He looked forward, absorbed in his plan. "Go up to the coffin, take it from him, it lies with him, my violin...."
"You can't do it," Berthe said. "You have no fingers with which to hold it." She was horror-struck. "You can't go near the house."
He said nothing. He glanced about himself, once again leaning on his hands and then quickly straightening on account of the pain. He saw the clothes that lay ready for him. He saw the cloak.
Then: "Tell me, Hans, tell me the truth, was it Vera who sent the money to me?"
"Yes, and your mother knows of it, but if you ever broadcast this, I will be destroyed; don't brag on this kindness with any other secret friends. Because if you do, neither your sister nor your Mother will have the power to protect me."
Stefan smiled bitterly and nodded.
"Did you know," said the little Hans, pushing his glasses up on his stubby nose, "that your Mother hated your Father?"
"Of course," said Stefan, "but I have hurt her far worse now than ever he did, haven't I?"
He didn't wait for the little man to find an answer. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. "Berthe, I can't put on these boots."
"Where are you going?" She ran around the bed, to assist. She helped him with each foot, and then to his feet. She gave him his black wool frock coat, fresh and clean, supplied no doubt by his sister.
The chubby little man looked up at him, full of pity and sadness. "Stefan," he said, "there are soldiers all about the house, the Russian guard, Metternich's private guards, and police everywhere. Listen to me."
The little man came up to him and put his hand on Stefan's hurt hand, and when Stefan winced and drew back the wounded hand, the little man stopped, apologetic and full of shame.
"It's nothing, Hans. You have done kindness for me. I thank you. God can't look unkindly on that. You did not murder my Father. And my Mother put her blessing on all this, I see. That's my father's finest cloak, lined in Russian fox, you see? How she thinks of me. Or did Vera give it to you?"
"It was Vera! But mark my words. Leave Vienna tonight. If you are caught there will not be a trial for this! They'll see to it you are shot dead first before you can speak or anyone can speak who saw him hurt you."
"I have been tried in here," said Stefan, touching his coat with the wrapped hand. "I killed him."
"Leave Vienna as I told you. Get to a surgeon who can yet mend your fingers. Perhaps they can be saved. There are other violins for one who plays as you play. Go across the sea, to Rio de Janeiro, go to America, or east to Istanbul where no one will ask who you are. In Russia, have you friends, friends of your mother?"
Stefan shook his head, smiling. "All cousins to the Czar or his bastards, every one," he said with a small laugh. It was the first time in this ghostly life that I had seen this Stefan truly laugh. He looked carefree for a moment, and happiness took all the lines from his face and made him, as it customarily does to people, perfectly radiant.
He was full of quiet gratitude for the flustered little man. He sighed and looked about the room. It seemed the unadorned gesture of a man who might soon die and looks at all the simple things with loving regard.
Berthe tied his frills, made his collars peaked and straight against his neck. She knotted the white silk tie in front. She took a black wool scarf and wound it round his neck, lifting his groomed and shining hair and letting it fall down. Long, yet trimmed.
"Let me cut it ..." she said. More disguise?
"No ... it doesn't matter. The cape and the hood will hide me. I have no time left. Look, it's midnight. The long deathwatch has probably begun."
"You can't!" she cried.
"But I will! Will you betray me?"
The thought stymied her, stymied her father. They shook their heads, silently and obviously vowing that they would not.
"Goodbye, darling, would I could leave you with something, some little thing ..."
"You leave me with all I'll ever need," she said softly. There was resignation in her voice. "You leave me with some hours that other women must make up or read about in stories."
He smiled again. Never in any setting had I seen him so perfectly comfortable. I wondered if the bleeding hands hurt him, because the bandages were bad already.
"The woman who fixed my hands," he said to Berthe, sticking to his point, "she took my rings in payment, all of them. I couldn't stop her. But this is my last warm room for the night, my last unhurried moment. Berthe, kiss me and I'll go. Hans, I can't ask you for a blessing, but a kiss, I do."
They all embraced. Stefan put out his arms, as if he could lift the cloak with the clubby hands, but Berthe was quick to get the cloak, and the man and the woman together put it over his shoulders and brought the hood up over his head.
I was sick with fear. I knew what was to come. I didn't want to see it.
13
The vestibule of a great house. The undeniable ornament of the German Baroque, gilded wood, two murals facing each other, a man, a woman, in powdered wigs.
Stefan had gained entry, his hands tucked inside his coat, and still spoke sternly in Russian to the guards, who were confused and unsure about this well-dressed man who had come to pay his respects.
"Herr Beethoven is here? Now?" asked Stefan in this sharp Russian. A divertissement. The guards spoke only German. At last one of the Czar's private men appeared.
Stefan played it to the hilt, without removing his bandaged hands, making a deep Russian bow, the cape falling around him on the tiled floor, the chandelier above lighting the dark, near monastic figure.
In Russian, he said, "I have come from Count Raminsky in St. Petersburg to pay my respects." His confidence and bearing were perfection. "And also to convey a message to Herr van Beethoven. It was for me that Herr Beethoven wrote a quartet which was sent to me by Prince Stefanovsky. Ah. I beg you to allow me a few moments with my good friend; I would not at this hour disturb the family, only I was told that the watch was all night, that I might call."
He was on his way to the door.
A great formality descended on the Russian guards and was immediately adopted by the German officers and the wigged servants.
The servants trailed after the guards, then hastened to open doors.
"Herr Beethoven has gone home some time ago, but I can escort you to the room where the Prince is laid," said this Russian official, obviously in some awe of this tall imposing messenger. "And I should perhaps wake ..."
"No. As I have already explained, I would not have them disturbe
d at this hour," said Stefan. He glanced about the house as though there was nothing in its regal dimensions that was familiar to him.
He started up the steps, the heavy fur-lined coat dancing gracefully just above the heels of his boots.
"The young Princess," he said glancing over his shoulder at the Russian guard who hastened to follow. "She was my childhood friend. I will come to call upon her at the proper hour. Only let me rest my eyes upon the old Prince and say a prayer."
The Russian guard started to speak, but they had come to the proper door. It was too late for words.
The death room. Immense, its walls replete with the gilded white curlicues that make the rooms of Vienna look so much like whipped cream; soaring pilasters with gilded tracery; a long row of outside windows, each deep in its rounded arch beneath a gilded soffit, its counterfeit in mirrors opposite and far at the end double doors such as those we entered now.
The coffin lay on a great curtained dais of rich gathered velvet, and a woman in a small gilded chair sat on the dais right beside the coffin, her head bowed in sleep. The nape of her neck showed a single strand of black beads, her dress was the high-waisted Empire style but in strict black mourning.
The whole bier was heaped and surrounded by exquisite bouquets of flowers. Marble jardinieres held sprays of solemn lilies and dour roses in profusion all about the room, becoming part of the engulfing decoration.
White-painted French-style chairs were set out in rows, their solemn damask upholstery of deep green or red, in sharp contrast to the clumsy German-made white frames. Candles burned, singly and in candelabra and in the great chandelier above, a massive thing of gold and glass not unlike that which had fallen in Stefan's house, all crusted with beeswax, pure and white.
A thousand flames fluttered timidly in the quiet.
To the rear of the room, a row of monks sat, saying the Rosary aloud in Latin, sotto voce, and in unison. They didn't look up as the hooded figure entered and made his way towards the coffin.
On a long golden couch two women slept, a younger dark-haired woman with Stefan's sharp features, her head against the other woman's shoulder, both of them dressed in rich black, their veils for the moment thrown back. A brooch loomed on the elder's neck. Her hair was silver and white. The younger stirred in her sleep as if arguing with someone but didn't wake, even as Stefan walked past, though some distance from her.
My mother.
The unctuous Russian guard didn't dare to stop the imperious aristocrat who boldly came to the dais.
Servants at the open door stood blind, as if they were waxen dummies in their pre-Napoleonic blue satin and pigtailed wigs.
Stefan stood before the dais. Only two steps above, the young woman slept, in her small gilded chair, one arm in the coffin.
My sister Vera. Does my voice tremble? Look at her, how she mourns him. Vera. And look into the coffin itself.
Our vision took us close. I was flooded with the scent of flowers, deep intoxicating perfume of lilies, other blooms. Candle wax; it was the sweeping swooning scent of my little Prytania Street Chapel of childhood, that capsule of sanctity and safety in which we knelt with Mother at the ornate rail, the rich gladioli on the Altar far outshining our little bundles of lantana.
Sadness. Oh, heart, such sadness.
But I could think of nothing but this before me. I was with Stefan in this attempt, and petrified with fear. The hooded figure quietly climbed the first two steps of the dais. I couldn't bear the heat of my own heart. No memory of mine took first place over this hurt, this harm, this fear of what was to come, of cruelty and shattered dreams.
Look at my father. Look at the man who destroyed my hands.
The corpse looked cruel, but only in a faded dried-up insignificant way, his Slavic features more evident in death, angles hardened, cheeks deeply grooved, nose falsely narrowed by the undertaker perhaps, lips too reddened with cake rouge and turning down, without the breath of life to make them give the quarter smile he'd worn so easily before he was ever angered or brought to this.
Very painted, this face, and his body was excessively dressed with furs and jewels and colored braids and velvet, sumptuous in the Russian style where everything must sparkle to express value. His hands with all their rings lay like dough on his chest, holding a crucifix.
But there beside him lay nestled in the satin the violin, our violin, against which Vera's sleeping hand dangled.
"Stefan, no!" I said. "How can you get it?" I whispered in our vigilant darkness. "She is touching it. Stefan."
Ah, you fear for my life as we watch this old tableau. And yet you won't give me my violin. Now watch me die for it.
I tried to turn away. He forced me to look. Rooted in the scene, we would be spared nothing. In our invisible form, I felt his heartbeat, I felt the tight wet tremble of his hand as he turned my head.
"Look," was all he could say to me. "Look at me, during the last few seconds of my life."
The hooded and cloaked figure mounted the last two steps of the dais. He stared down with glazed weary dark eyes at the dead Father. And then from beneath his cloak he reached with his thumbless bandage of a hand and scooped up the instrument and the bow, to his chest, quickly bracing it with the other maimed hand.
Vera woke.
"Stefan, no!" she whispered. Her eyes moved sharply, from left to right, a warning. She motioned desperately for him to leave.
He turned.
I saw the plot. His brothers came from the doors of other chambers. A man rushed to pull away the screaming Vera. She reached out for Stefan. She shrieked in panic.
"Murderer!" cried the man who fired the first bullet which struck not merely Stefan's chest but the violin. I heard the wood splinter.
Stefan was overcome with horror.
"No, you will not!" Stefan said. "No." Shot after shot struck him and the violin. He bolted. He ran down the center of the room, as they pumped their bullets into him. Bullets came now not only from the fancy dressed gentlemen but from guards, bullets shattering into him and into the violin.
Stefan's face was flushed. Nothing stopped the figure that we beheld. Nothing.
We saw his open mouth gasping for breath, his eyes narrowed, the cloak streaming out behind him as he ran down the staircase, the violin and bow safe in his arms, no blood, no blood, save that which oozed from his hands, and now look!
The hands.
The hands were unbound and whole and had no need of bandages. They had once again their long and perfect fingers. They clutched the violin tight.
Stefan bowed his head against the wind as he passed through the front door--I gasped. The doors were bolted and he had not even seen. The crack of guns, the screams, rose in a grating splash of dissonance and then faded behind him.
Down the dark street he sped, feet pounding the shiny uneven stones, only glancing down to see that he had the violin and bow safe in his hand, then giving the run all of his young strength until he had left the cobblestoned center of the town, running, running.
Lights were a blur in the dark. Was it fog that wreathed these lanterns? Houses rose up in unrelieved blackness.
Finally, he stopped, unable to go any further. He rested against a chipped and peeling plaster wall, the cloak fallen back to cushion his head, his eyes shut for a moment. The violin and bow were safe and unscathed in his pale fingers. He took deep breath after breath, and glanced frantically to see if anyone came to follow.
The night was without echoes. Figures moved in the dark but they were too dim to be seen, too far from the lights above occasional doorways. Did he notice the mist that curled along the ground? Was it common for winter in Vienna? Clumps of figures watched him. Were they to him only the tramps of the city night and nothing more?
Once again, he fled.
Only when he had crossed the broad bright Ringstrasse with its string of lights, and its utterly indifferent late-night crowds, and sought the open country, did he stop again and for the first time look down at his re
stored hands, his hands unbandaged and cured--and at the violin. He held it up by the light of the dim lamps of the city against the welkin to see that the violin was whole, unharmed, not so much as scratched. The long Strad. His. And the bow he had so loved.
He looked up, and back at the city he'd left. From the rise where he stood, the city gave its dim winter lights warmly to the lowering clouds. He was confused, elated, astonished.
We became material. The smells of the pine woods and the cold air, scented by distant chimney smoke, surrounded us.
We stood in the wood not far from him, but too far to ever comfort him, that Stefan of over a hundred years ago, standing there, his breath steaming in the cold, holding the instrument so carefully, his eyes peering towards this mystery he'd left behind.
Something was horribly wrong, and he knew it. Something was so monstrously wrong that he was caught in angst without end.
My spirit Stefan, my guide and companion, gave a soft moan though the distant figure did not. The distant figure held its vivid color, held its vibrant materiality, but it examined its clothes for wounds. It examined its head and hair. Intact, all. Here.
"He's a ghost, he's been since the first shot," I said, "and he didn't know it!" I sighed softly. I looked up to my Stefan and then at the far figure, who seemed the more innocent, the more helpless, the younger only by countenance and lack of poise. The specter beside me swallowed and his lips were wet.
"You died in that room," I said.
I felt such a piercing pain within me that I wanted only to love him, to know him completely with my soul and to embrace him. I turned and kissed his cheek. He bowed his head to receive more kisses, pushing his cold hard forehead against mine, and then he gestured to the distant newborn ghost yonder.
The distant newborn ghost examined his cured hands, his violin.
"Requiem aiternam dona eis Domine," said my companion, bitterly.
"The bullets shattered you and the violin," I said.
Frantically, the distant Stefan turned on his heels and began a trek through the trees. Again and again he glanced back.
"My God, he's dead but he doesn't know it."
My Stefan only smiled, his hand on my neck.
A journey without a map or destination.
We followed him on his crazed wanderings; this was the hideous fog of Hamlet's "undiscover'd country."