Firebird (The Flint Hills Novels) (14 page)

When she was eight months old Simi was massacred along with seventeen other children in a terrorist raid on the kibbutz nursery. Shortly thereafter his family left the kibbutz and moved to Tel Aviv; at that point David's lessons were no longer kept secret from his father. His first composition was an achingly mournful lullaby dedicated to his baby sister.

When Annette met him he was finishing his season in Tel Aviv before taking up the baton as conductor of l'Orchestre de Paris. Although his career was established, personal fulfillment had escaped him. He was forty-three, divorced and childless. The morning he greeted Annette at the airport in Tel Aviv and escorted her to his car, intimations of a future began to trouble him. These thoughts were nurtured during the week as they rehearsed Mendelssohn's and Sibelius' violin concertos, as their music began to meld into a uniquely beautiful expression, and with it their hearts and souls. David had never seen an artist respond so fully and passionately to his direction, and he drew from her one inspired performance after another. The morning after their first night together, which was the day of their final matinee performance, she approached him onstage, and he saw in her countenance his own personal messiah. He took her back to his apartment after the performance that afternoon and they made love again, and as they lay there in the faded light of dusk, sharing a single cigarette, listening to the waves rushing onto the beach below, they both believed in happiness.

The next day he drove her to the airport and Annette changed her ticket so that she could stay with him another week. The week turned into three, and she stayed to help him pack his books and paintings and watched as the movers crated up his furniture for the move to Paris. After the apartment was emptied, they took David's car and toured the Negev, and they flew to Athens, where they planned to spend a few last days together before David went on to Paris and she returned to New York. On their third day in Athens they were married by an American naval chaplain. A week later they arrived in Paris as husband and wife.

Although arrogant and inflexible by nature, David recognized his happiness as a rare gift and he strove to grant his young wife the esteem and recognition she merited. His task was facilitated by Annette's ability to detach herself from a past she had always considered ill fitting. She shed her native skin and emerged the creature she was always meant to be. The limited French she had learned as part of her training soon became her dominant language; she argued in it, made love in it, and dreamed in it. And the uncomfortable memories of her childhood receded into that part of her brain where the English language sat dormant. Now the only English she heard was that spoken by South Africans or Londoners or the Irish, and she gradually took on those expressions and intonations until she sounded more British than American. Only when she spoke to her parents on the telephone did she unconsciously revert to her Midwestern drawl.

When Violette was born to them four years later, Annette, who was a vibrant twenty-seven, took it in stride; David, then in his late forties, was profoundly altered. David Zeldin was an intensely cerebral man. Yet some nurturing instinct emerged in him with the birth of his daughter, and his immense love for her transformed him completely. For four years Annette had been trying to get him to cut back on his two packs of cigarettes a day, to no avail, but the day after Violette's birth he quit smoking cold turkey. His nights, which had always been sleepless, were now a bustle of activity. A deep, visceral envy arose in him as he watched Annette nurse the infant, and when, after four months, she started the baby on formula so she could do a short European tour, he eagerly took over the night feedings. If the weather was pleasant he would come back early from rehearsals, command Maria, their Portuguese nanny, to ready the pram, and stroll off with his baby down Avenue Victor Hugo to the park, where he would sit among all the mothers and nannies, gazing lovingly into his daughter's pale blue eyes as he rocked the pram in gentle, rhythmic motions, humming bars from Mozart or Strauss.

He had always been a frugal man, and his tastes were simple. Now he wandered through toy stores querying salesclerks about the suitability of certain toys, learning how this game or that toy would assist in child development, how the brain would be stimulated or the motor skills enhanced, and then he would come home with a pale blue stuffed bear because it matched the color of Violette's eyes. Whatever gift he brought home, however small, always delighted the child. It was as if the infant still saw with her soul, and she saw into his heart and loved him for his pain, for his starved fatherhood, for his butchered youth. All the things he had lost were mourned in this passionate celebration of Violette's birth, and parenthood became the most important thing he had ever done.

When Violette was not yet one year old, Annette and David were invited to Israel as guest artists with the symphony orchestra for a special performance to celebrate the opening of the new School of Music at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Some of the greatest classical recording artists of the day would be performing. Since Violette's birth, David had turned down any engagement that required travel outside of Paris, but this opportunity tempted him. It would be his first trip back in five years. He was not the type of man to succumb to nostalgia, but he found himself lying in bed in the early morning recalling the physical beauty of his homeland; he missed the tightly-knit society, the hardships, even the dusty, oppressive khamsin that blew its dreadful winds for fifty days. When Violette awakened at night he sang her back to sleep with old Hebrew songs.

He felt strongly that the baby was too young to travel, but he wouldn't leave her behind, even in Maria's care. Annette, knowing the trip would do him good, begged him to reconsider.

"It's not as if we're taking her to rural Siberia," she argued. "You have so many friends there. We'll have good medical care. And we'll take Maria with us."

But Maria refused to go. She was old and dreaded planes and she was frightened of the war, she said. Annette tried to explain to her that there was no war, that it was no more dangerous than Paris, but Maria would only shake her head and pound away at the dish towels with her iron, muttering to herself in a peasant Portuguese that even David couldn't understand.

Annette didn't give up; she longed to return to the place where they had met and become lovers, and she knew that David was looking forward to showing off his wife and baby to his old friends and colleagues. Determined, she put out word through their friends that she was looking for an au pair to accompany them, and after several interviews she found Magda, a young Argentine woman who had raised her five younger siblings and came highly recommended by the Australian ambassador to the OECD. Finally, David relented.

He insisted on flying them all first class, although the non-stop flight was only a little over four hours. At takeoff the baby began to cry. She repulsed Magda's efforts to soothe her, mashing her little fists into the young woman's face, trying to squirm away. She stretched her little arms across the aisle, grasping frantically for her mother and father, squirming to free herself from those arms coiled around her so tightly. Even after they had reached cruising altitude she continued to cry, and finally Annette broke down.

"Magda, give her to me. She sounds like she's in pain. It must be her ears."

As soon as they arrived at their suite at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, David called in a doctor. Yes, she had an ear infection. That was why she had wailed and fussed and sobbed so. Violette fell asleep then, driven into deep slumber by exhaustion, and Magda assured them it would be all right, that they could go off to their cocktail reception and not to worry.

In the back of the taxi, dressed elegantly in black, bathed and perfumed, they reassured each other with observations about Magda's maturity, her poise. She had never been ruffled, even during the nerve-wracking flight; she seemed much older than her twenty-one years, but that came from the experience of handling all those younger siblings. She was from a good family, her father mayor of a small town in Argentina. If an emergency should arise, she would handle it. She knew where to find them. The concierge had been alerted.

They were happy that evening. It was spring and the air smelled of warm, rain-fed earth. During the taxi ride home, Annette draped her long bare leg over David's and took his hand and ran it up the inside of her thigh. At the reception he kept noticing how beautiful she was, how motherhood had rounded out her body, added fullness to her hips and breasts, and when they returned to their hotel room that evening and found Violette sleeping peacefully and Magda reading quietly they slipped away to their bedroom and made wide-eyed, brutal love to each other. They did things they had never done before, things they would never speak of later but would suggest to each other by a brief word, a glance or a touch, things that bound them to each other in silent lusty pleasure.

The next day Violette was fussy, and when they returned from rehearsal she was running a high fever. They called in the doctor again, who reassured them that the antibiotics would soon get it under control, that they were not to worry but should keep her cool. Annette had the crib moved out of Magda's room into theirs, and, dressed in her long black gown, she bathed the baby continually during the hours before they left for the concert hall. She kept Magda running back and forth for ice, for fresh cloths, for dry towels and clean diapers. She refused to leave until the last possible moment.

David sat with her; his anxiety was as great as hers. Violette's eyes seemed a darker shade of blue, and he told himself this was his imagination. She was awake, and she would slowly turn her darkened gaze to him, then back to her mother. It was a meaningful gaze, he thought. She wanted them to read something in her feverish eyes.

"I think we should call the stand-in conductor," he said after a glance at his watch. "I'll stay with her."

Annette was stunned. "That's crazy. It's too late."

"Vranskä's ready to step in. I spoke to him yesterday. He can do it. He's been assistant conductor for two years and knows the program by heart."

"You didn't tell me you spoke to him."

"I don't have a good feeling about this. I don't like leaving her alone. You go on. You're guest soloist."

"But this isn't just about me. It's about us performing together."

"I know. But she's more important."

"Darling," Annette said, reaching for his hand, "I'm worried too. But you heard the doctor. The fever will pass. Magda just needs to keep her cool. There's nothing we can do that Magda can't."

They both turned to look at the young woman, who stood in the doorway with an ice bucket.

"I've seen this before," Magda said reassuringly. "So many times, with my little brothers and sisters. She'll be all right."

David hesitated a moment and then said, "You'll call the doctor if there's any change for the worse? Even the slightest change?"

When they went to kiss the baby good-bye before they left for the concert hall, Violette was quiet. She sat up and gripped the side of the crib, and her darkened eyes silently followed them as they gathered their coats, their music, Annette's violin. Her eyes rested solemnly on their faces as they gave last-minute directives to Magda, and then closed the door.

Annette didn't have time to call until intermission. Despite her anxiety, she had played well. Her remarkable powers of concentration had carried her through. She was playing before a tough audience of peers and critics, and she had moved them, swept them into Barber's tender, mournful world and locked them there until the end. The final notes were followed by a deep silence, then a cannonade of applause. David smiled at her from the podium, his brow shiny with perspiration.

They had told Magda to expect their call shortly after nine o'clock. She answered immediately, in a whisper. Yes, Violette was sleeping. Her fever had gone. All was well.

The Sibelius concerto on the second half of the program that night had always been Annette's favorite piece, but since she had met David it had acquired a very personal significance. She had performed it with the Tel Aviv Symphony under David's direction when they first met five years before, and tonight she expected his love to be the signature inspiration as it had been every time she had performed it since then.

Instead, she found the piece sang of her daughter. She didn't have the time to rationalize this, and if she had, she would've found it strange, for there were moments when the music soared into an ominous delirium and the orchestra whirled along with her in a great pounding gallop, spinning the air into plaintive frenzied motion.

Backstage after the performance, David and Annette were showered with attention from David's old friends, who were eager to meet Annette. David, usually so restrained, drank a glass of champagne and held his wife's hand.

* * *

When they returned to their room that evening, Magda and their child were gone. Within minutes of David's call the King David Hotel was invaded by detectives from every branch of service. There was a stealth about their manner of operation that underscored the urgency of the affair. Guests and employees were interrogated; a scenario was pieced together. Magda had left the hotel around 9:20 p.m. with the stroller, which was found abandoned on a side street several blocks away. Residents were interrogated. And then nothing. There were no witnesses. Nothing to lead them anywhere. Just the abandoned stroller. Their lives stopped there.