And, opening my eyes, I saw not only the great hall filled with rows and rows of faces, but I saw Stefan, and the light was directly behind him, and yet he reached out at me.
"Stefan, turn!" I said. "Stefan, look! Stefan!"
He did turn. There was a figure in the light, a short stubby figure, beckoning to Stefan in great impatience, Come. I gave the music one last thrust.
Stefan, go! You are the lost child! Stefan!
I could play no more.
Stefan glared at me. He cursed at me. He made his hands into fists. Yet his face changed. It underwent some complete and seemingly unconscious transformation. He gazed at me with wide and frightened eyes.
The light behind him faded as he drew close, a dark shadow, fading even as he hovered over me, a gloom no more substantial than the shadows in the wings.
The music was ended.
I saw the audience rise en masse. Another victory. How so, God? How so? Three tiers and they reward this din that is my only tongue.
The hall roared with applause.
Another victory.
There was no sight or sound of those contrived ghosts.
Someone had come to take me from the stage. I stared out into the faces, nodding; do not disappoint, sweep the hall with your eyes, all the way to the right and to the left, look up at the topmost balconies and then at the boxes, don't raise your arms in vanity, merely bow, and bow, and murmur thanks and they will know, thanks from my bloody soul.
In one last dim flash I saw him, close to me, confused, bent, near invisible, fading. A wretched miserable thing. But what was this bewilderment? This strange wonder in his eyes. He was gone.
I was held by others once again, oh, lucky, lucky girl, to have such kind and helping hands. O Fate, fortune, fame, and destiny.
Stefan, you could have gone into the light. Stefan, you should have gone!
Backstage, I cried and cried.
No one thought it the slightest bit unusual. The cameras flashed, the reporters wrote. I knew no doubt within my heart of peace for those I'd lost--except for Faye ... and Stefan.
20
I WENT to the Teatro Amazones in Manaus because it was a singular place and I had seen it once in a movie. Fitzcarraldo had been the name of the film, made by a German director, Werner Herzog, now dead, and Lev and I in the hellish time after Lily's death had spent a calm night with each other at the show, actually together.
I didn't remember the plot, only the opera house, and the stories I had heard of the rubber boom and the luxury of the theater, and how splendid it was, though nothing on earth would ever compare with this palace in Rio de Janeiro.
Also I had to play another concert immediately. I had to. I had to see if the ghosts would come back. I had to see if it was over.
There was a little controversy before we left for the state of Amazonas.
Grady called and insisted that we go back to New Orleans.
He would not tell us why, but went on and on that we must come home, until finally Martin took the phone and, in his subdued abusive way, demanded to know what was Grady's meaning.
"Look, if Faye is dead, tell us. Just say so. We don't have to fly home to New Orleans to hear the news. Tell us now."
Katrinka shivered.
After a long moment, Martin covered the phone. "It's your Aunt Anna Belle."
"We love her," said Roz, "we'll send lots of flowers."
"No, she's not dead. She claims that Faye called her."
"Aunt Anna Belle?" said Roz. "Aunt Anna Belle talks to the Archangel Michael when she's taking a bath. She asks him to help her not to fall and break her hip again in the bathtub."
"Give me the phone," I said.
We all came together.
It was as I suspected. Aunt Anna Belle, now past eighty years, thought she had received a call in the middle of the night. No phone number given. No place of origin.
"She said she could hardly hear the child, but she was sure it was Faye."
The message? There was none.
"I want to go home now," said Katrinka.
I questioned Grady over and over. A garbled voice, supposedly Faye, no content, no origin, no information. What about the phone bill? Coming soon. But then the phone bill was cluttered up because Aunt Anna Belle had lost her card and somebody in Birmingham, Alabama, had run up a whole mess of calls on it.
"Well, get somebody to be right there," said Martin. "By Aunt Anna Belle's phone and the phone at home, in case Faye does call."
"I'm going home," said Katrinka.
"To what?" I asked. I hung up the phone. "To sit there and wait day by day in case she ever calls again?"
My sisters looked at me.
"I know," I whispered. "I hadn't known before, but I know now. I am so very angry with her."
Silence.
"That she'd do this--" I said.
"Don't say things you'll regret," said Martin.
"Maybe it was Faye," said Glenn. "Listen, I'm pretty piqued myself, I'm ready to go home, I don't mind going back to 2524 St. Charles and waiting for a call from Faye. I'll go. You all go on. But I don't think I'm up to keeping company with Aunt Anna Belle. Triana, you go on to Manaus. You and Martin and Roz."
"Yes, just that last place," I said. "We've come so far, and I love this land so much. I'm going to Manaus. I have to go."
Katrinka and Glenn went on.
Martin stayed to manage the benefit concert in Manaus, and Roz went with me, and nobody forgot about Faye. The flight to Manaus was three hours.
The Teatro Amazones was a gem--smaller, yes, than the grand marble creation in Rio, but very splendid, and very strange, with the coffee leaves right in its iron, and the very velvet seats that I had seen in the film Fitzcarraldo, and murals of the Indians, and a general embrace of the native art and lore wound up with the Baroque by the bold and crazy rubber baron who had built it.
It seemed that everything in this country, or nearly everything, was done--as it was in New Orleans--not by any group conscience, or group force, but by some single and mad personality.
It was a thrilling concert. No ghosts came. No ghosts at all. And the music now was directed, and darkening, and I could feel the direction of its flow, rather than drowning in it. I had a current. I didn't fear the deeper colors.
There was a church to St. Sebastian on the square. I sat inside for an hour while it rained, thinking of Karl, and thinking of many things, and of how the music had felt and that I could now actually remember what I'd played, or at least hear a dim echo.
The next day, Roz and I walked along the harbor. The town of Manaus was as wild as the opera house itself, and it reminded me of the port of New Orleans in the forties when I was a really little girl, and our city had been a true port, and there had been ships like this at every dock.
Ferryboats carried the hundreds of workers home to their villages. Street vendors sold goods from sailors' pockets, flashlight batteries, cassette tapes, ballpoint pens. In our day back then it had been cigarette lighters with naked women on them. I remembered that the trashy item you could buy down there by the customs house was a cigarette lighter with a decal of a naked woman.
No call came from the States.
Was it ominous? Was it good? Did it mean nothing?
In Manaus, the River Negro ran before us. When we flew back to Rio, we saw the joining of the black and the white waters that make the Amazon.
When we walked into the Copacabana Palace, there was a note waiting. I opened it, fully expecting to read some tragic news, and felt suddenly weak and sick to my stomach.
But it was not concerning Faye.
It was in the old fancy script, the fine eighteenth-century script, firmly written.
I must see yon. Come up to the old hotel. I promise you, I will not try to hurt you. Your Stefan.
Baffled, I stared at this. "You go on up to the suite," I said to Roz.
"What's the matter with you?"
There wasn't time to answer. With the vio
lin in the shoulder sack, I had to run down the curved drive to catch Antonio, who had just brought us from the airport.
We went on the tram alone, without bodyguards, but Antonio himself was a formidable man and afraid of no sneak thieves and we saw none. Antonio called on his cell phone. One of the bodyguards would come up the mountain to meet us at the hotel. He'd be there in minutes.
I rode in stiff silence. Over and over I opened the note. I read the words. It was Stefan's writing, Stefan's signature.
Good God.
When we reached the Hotel stop, the next to last, we got off and I asked Antonio if he would wait for me on the bench, right by the track, where the waiting passengers sat, and I told him I wasn't afraid to be alone in this forest and he could hear me shout if I needed him.
I walked uphill, step after step, remembering suddenly with a tight smile, the Second Movement of the Beethoven's Ninth. I think I heard it in my head.
Stefan stood at the cement barricade over the deep gorge. He was dressed in his nondescript black clothes. The wind was blowing his hair. He looked alive, solid, a man enjoying the vista--the city, the jungle, the sea.
I stood, some ten feet from him.
"Triana," he said. He turned and only tenderness came out of him. "Triana, my love." His face was as pure as I'd ever seen it.
"What trick is this, Stefan?" I asked. "What now? Has some evil force given you the very tack to take it away from me?"
I had hurt him. I had struck him right between the eyes, but he shook it off, and I saw again, yes, again, tears spring to his eyes. The wind blew his long black hair in streaks and his eyebrows came together as he bowed his head.
"I am crying again too," I said. "I thought laughter had become our language, but now I see it's tears again. What can I do to stop it?"
He beckoned for me to come close.
I couldn't refuse, and suddenly felt his arm around my neck, only he made no move for the velvet sack which I brought down gently in front of me.
"Stefan, why didn't you go? Why didn't you go into the light? Didn't you see it? Didn't you see who was there, beckoning, waiting to guide you?"
"Yes, I saw," he said. He stood back.
"What then, what keeps you here? Why this vitality again? Who is it who pays now for this with memories or sorrow? What do you do, raise your educated tenor voice, no doubt tutored in Vienna, as fine as your violin style...."
"Hush, Triana." It was a humble voice. Serene. His eyes were only quiet and patient.
"Triana, I see the light continuously. I see it always. I see it now. But Triana--" His lips quivered.
"What is it?"
"Triana, what if, what if, when I go into that light--?"
"Go! God, can it be worse than the purgatory you revealed to me? I don't believe it. I saw it. I felt its warmth. I saw it."
"Triana, what if, when I go, the violin goes with me?"
It took one second for the connection to be made, for us to look into each other's eyes, and then I saw this light too, only it was not part of anything around it. The late afternoon kept its radiant glow, the forest its stillness. The light clung only to him, and I saw his face change again, transcending anger, or rage, or sorrow, or even confusion.
I had made my decision, after all. He knew.
I lifted the sack with the violin and bow and I reached out and put it in his hands.
He raised his hands to say no, no. "Perhaps not!" he whispered. "Triana, I'm afraid."
"So am I, young Maestro. And I'll be afraid when I die too," I said.
He turned and looked away from me, as if into a world I couldn't possibly measure. I saw only a radiance, a swelling brightness that made no assault on my eyes or my soul, but only made me feel love, profound love and trust.
"Goodbye, Triana," he said.
"Goodbye, Stefan."
The light was gone. I stood on the road in the rain forest above the ruined hotel. I stood staring at stained walls, and the city of towers and hovels down below, going on for miles and miles over mountains and valleys.
The violin was gone.
The sack in my hands was empty.
21
THERE WAS no point in calling Antonio's attention to this, that the violin was gone. Our bodyguard had come with the van.
I held the sack as if it contained my violin. We rode down the mountain in silence. The sun came pouring through the open windows of the lofty green leaves, it threw down sanctifying shafts on the road, and the cool air touched my face.
My heart was brimming, but I couldn't name the feeling. Not completely. Love, oh, yes, love, love and wonder, yes, but more, something more, some fear of all that lay ahead, of the empty sack, fear for myself and fear for all those I loved and all those who now depended upon me.
I thought dim rational thoughts as we sped through Rio. It was near dark when we reached the hotel. I slipped out of the van, waving to my loyal men, and went inside, not even stopping at the desk to see if there was a message.
My throat was tight. I couldn't speak. I had one thing to do only. That was to ask Martin for the violin we carried with us, the short Strad we had bought, or the Guarneri, and see what happened.
Oh, bitter small things on which the fate of a whole soul hangs and with it the whole universe known to that soul. I didn't want to see the others. But I had to see Martin, had to find the violin.
When the elevator doors opened, I heard them all shrieking and laughing.
For a moment I couldn't interpret this sound.
Then I crossed the hall and hammered on the door of the Presidential Suite.
"It's Triana, open up!" I said.
It was Glenn who pulled back the door. He was delirious. "She's here, she's here," he cried.
"Darlin'," said Grady Dubosson. "We just put her on the plane and brought her down, soon as they stamped that passport."
I saw her against the distant window, her small head, her small body, a tiny waif of a being, Faye. Only Faye was that small, that delicate, that perfectly proportioned, as if God loved as much to make elves and small gentle children as he did to make grown things.
She wore her faded jeans, her inevitable and characteristic white shirt. Her auburn hair was cut short. I couldn't see her features in the twilight glow from the window.
She ran into my arms.
I closed my arms around her and I held her. How very very small she was, perhaps half my weight, so little that I might have crushed her like a violin.
"Triana, Triana, Triana!" she cried. "You can play the violin. You can play. You've got the gift!"
I watched her. I couldn't speak. I wanted to love, wanted to welcome, I wanted a warmth to flow from me as it had come with the light to Stefan on the road in the forest. But for the moment I only saw her small bright face, her pretty gleaming blue eyes, and I thought, She is safe, she is not dead, she is in no grave, she is here, and she is unharmed.
We are all together again.
Roz came booming over, throwing her arms around me, lowering her head and her voice. "I know, I know, I know, we should be angry, we should scream at her, but she's back, she's all right, she's been on some dangerous adventure, but she's come home! Triana, she's here. Faye is with us."
I nodded. And this time when I held Faye, I kissed her thin cheek. I felt her small head, as small as a child's head. I felt her lightness, her fragility and also some terrible strength in her, born of the black water of the womb, and the dark house, of the stumbling mother, of the coffin lowered into the ground.
"I love you," I whispered. "Faye, I love you."
She danced back. How she loved to dance. Once when we'd been separated and all came together in California, she had danced in circles and leapt in the air just to see us all united, the four of us, and so we were now, and she frolicked around the room. She leapt up on the wooden coffee table--a trick I'd seen her do before. She smiled, her small eyes flashing brightly, her hair red in the light from the window.
"Triana, play
the violin for me. For me. Please. For me. For me."
No contrition? No apology?
No violin.
"Martin, would you get the other instruments? The Guarneri. I think the Guarneri is strung and ready to play and there's a good bow in the case."
"But what happened to the long Strad?"
"I gave it back," I whispered. "Please don't argue with me now. Please."
Grumbling, he went out.
Only now did I see Katrinka, wrung out and red-eyed, sitting on the couch. "I'm just glad you're home," she said in a raw and tortured voice. "You don't know." How Trink had suffered.
"She had to go. She had to wander off when she did!" Glenn said in his gentle drawl. He looked to Roz. "She had to do what she did. The point is, she's home. She made it."
"Oh, let's not do this tonight," said Roz. "Triana, play for us! Not one of those horrible witches' dances, I can't stand another one of those."
"Aren't we the critic!" said Martin, closing the door. He had the Guarneri violin. It was the nearest to what I had had.
"Go on, play something for us, please," said Katrinka in her broken voice, her eyes dazed and hopelessly hurt and relieved as she looked at Faye.
Faye stood on the table. She looked at me. There seemed a coldness in her, a hardness, something that could not say that she had any care for us, something perhaps that said, "My pain was greater than you knew," the very thing we feared when we had called morgues in dread and given out her description over phone lines. Maybe it was only "My pain is as great as your pain."
Here she stood alive.
I held this new violin. I tuned it quickly. The E string was very slack. I wound the peg. Gently. This was not as fine as my long Strad, not as well kept, but it had been very well restored, as they said. I tightened the bow.
What if there is no song?
My throat tightened. I looked at the window. In a way, I wanted to go over there and just look out at the sea, and just be glad she was here, and not have to learn yet how to say it was all right that she'd gone away, or talk of whose fault it was, or who was blind, or who didn't care.
I'd especially like to not know whether or not I could play.
But events such as these have never come to me at my choosing. I thought of Stefan in the forest.
Goodbye, Triana.
I tuned the A string, then the D and the G. I could do it now with no help. In fact, I'd been able to arrive at near perfect pitch even from the beginning.