The Brahms Deception (14 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

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Chiara shook her head. “That should not be so. Even in the nineteenth century, Castagno was well-known. By then, no more bands of wandering soldiers or bandits. Noble families from Pisa and Firenze came here
in vacanza—
for the peace and quiet and the beautiful scenery.”
“Brahms never learned to speak Italian.”
“You are certain of this?”
“We think so. He didn't even visit Julie Schumann when she married a count from Torino, and he was known to be fond of her.”
“
Allora
. Learning about his visit to Castagno makes it even more strange.”
“Well, of course, Julie wasn't married in 1861. She was only sixteen.”
“I thought it was the mother—Clara—Brahms was fond of.”
“They were very close friends, the three of them. Robert, Clara, and Brahms. Brahms and Clara remained friends until her death.” Kristian suspected his voice carried some hint of the emotion he felt when he spoke of Clara. He hoped he was imagining that Chiara regarded him more closely, tipping her small face up into the starlight. Her hair was in its usual tangle, some clipped up, some falling over her forehead, with strands trailing past her collar.
“Which house did you see when you went back? The
maestro
stayed in Casa Agosto, did he not?”
“Yes. Do you know which it is?”
“I do know this. Would you like to see it? We can walk there.”
Kristian straightened. “I suppose there's nothing else we can do right now.”
“No. It is a very bad situation.”
“I'm not sure Mr. Bannister believed what I told him.”
She glanced up at him. Stars reflected in her eyes, tiny constellations gleaming from the depths, and Kristian caught a breath at the beauty of them. “The Bannisters are frightened,” she said. “They do not know what to believe.”
Kristian released the breath. “Chiara—,” he began, then shook his head.
She prompted gently, “
Che cosa,
Kris?”
He looked away from her. Surely, even in the darkness, those perceptive eyes would see through him, see all the way to the secret. “I just—I just wish I could help them.”
“You are helping them.”
He shrugged. “I don't know. They want their daughter back, and I know where she is—at least, I know where she
was
—but I can't go and get her without cooperation. Elliott, and Max—”
“They have to follow their orders, I believe.”
“I know. But Dr. Gregson and Dr. Braunstein, and all the programmers in Chicago—they want to manage every detail. It can't be done.”
“Can it not?”
“No. And I'm afraid they'll bring someone else in, some other researcher, who won't know anything about the situation. They'll have to do all this work over again.”
They will learn Clara's secret, but it won't help.
She took his arm. “Come, before it is too late. Let us see Casa Agosto, and then you will rest. Perhaps tomorrow you will think of something.”
As they walked, she chattered on, and Kristian breathed a little easier. “Soon the music and art festivals begin,” she said, with a nod at the buildings around them. “Many people, many cars—it is too bad. Lucky for you to be here now, instead of then.”
“It's very quiet.”
“
Sì, sì, sì
. Mostly old people here now. The young people have all moved to Pistoia, or Firenze or Milano.”
She led him past the tennis courts and the swimming pool, and down a street so cramped it was obvious it had never been intended for anything larger than a wheelbarrow. The houses leaned together, nearly touching in places. Hidden courtyards glowed with lamplight. Chiara said the names of the houses as they passed them. “Novembre, Ottobre. Down that way is Dicembre.” They passed a tiny bar, where two or three people clustered at a counter drinking coffee. There were no other shops Kristian could see.
Chiara came to a stop in front of one of the houses, saying, “Here it is. Casa Agosto. It has a very strange fresco painted by Saetti.”
“Do all the houses have frescoes?”
“All twelve of the original ones. The artists came here in the last century, and painted them. Not before 1861, however.”
“No.” Kristian gazed up at the old building. The low garden wall was gone now, replaced by a courtyard with a much higher wall, topped by an iron railing. Through the gathering darkness, he could just see the French windows, but they were barred, without the gauzy drapes he remembered.
“Is it the same, Kris?”
“Not at all. There was an olive tree in the garden, and a low stone wall. A painted wooden bench. They all looked old even then.”
“They are gone.”
“Crumbled to dust, probably.”
“Like the people,” she mused.
“I'm afraid so.” Kristian sighed.
Her dark eyes shone up at him. They were almost as luminous, he thought, as Clara's. “It makes you sad?”
He considered that. “In a way. It seems sad that things have to change so much. And that those people—the ones I observed—have all been gone such a long time.”
“I think they are alive for you.”
He glanced down at her. She was as different from Catherine as he could possibly imagine. He wondered if Clara was as wise, as instinctive, as Chiara. He said quietly, “You're right. Even before I came here, and observed Brahms and—” He caught himself. “And the others—they seemed real to me. Their music, their history, everything about them felt—intimate.”
She frowned. “Inti—? I don't know this word.”
“Intimate. Close, as in close friends. Or sometimes even closer than that.”
“Oh.
Intimità.
Not
intimare
.”
“Sorry?”
“It is my English, sorry. I did not understand. In-ti-mate. Intimate.” She took his arm, and they turned back toward the transfer clinic. Her fingers were strong for such a small hand.
Full darkness now blanketed their hilltop, and a night bird sang from one of the tiny courtyards. Had Kristian not been so worried, he would have found it a romantic moment, strolling through an Italian hill town with the hand of a pretty woman under his arm. A pretty woman he liked very much.
It seemed a very long time since he had spent an evening with a woman. It had only been six months, but his life had changed utterly since that time. It seemed much longer.
“Tell me what you do, in America,” Chiara said as they walked. “You finished school, you said?”
“No. I didn't finish—I dropped out.” He was glad the darkness hid his embarrassed flush.
“Dropped out? This means to—what?”
He gave a sour chuckle. “In my case, it means I quit in the middle. I'm not proud of it.”
“You must have had a reason. Perhaps you ran out of money.”
“I did that, all right. But that's not why.”
“Why, then?”
He hesitated, searching for a way to explain that wouldn't embarrass him too much. She said hastily, “You do not have to answer. I ask too many questions. My father says that is why I became a doctor. Too much curiosity!”
“No. No, it's okay, Chiara. Although,” he added with a smile, “that seems like a good reason to be a doctor. Did your father object to that?”
“No, no. My mother is also a doctor, and my older brother. It was expected.”
“Do you like it?”
She laughed. “Sometimes I like it very much. Sometimes I do not. Like most other professions, I think.”
“You'll be a wonderful doctor.”
She squeezed his arm, and released it. “Kris, you do not know me. You can't know if I will be good or bad.”
“Yes, I can,” he said. “I watched you with the Bannisters, and with Frederica. It comes naturally to you, I think.”
Her voice was warm but tinged with that air of being older than her years as she said, “Perhaps. I am not sure I know yet myself.”
They reached the parking lot of the clinic. Everything was quiet on the outside, as if there were no drama, no heartache, inside the plain building. As they stepped up on the porch, Kristian said, “I thought I had won the transfer to observe Brahms.”
“Yes, I know about this.”
“When I learned that the Foundation gave it to someone else—I didn't take it very well.”
“Of course not! A terrible disappointment—your dream lost, no?”
“That's a good way to put it.” He leaned against one of the pillars. The guard, for the moment, was absent, probably making one of his hourly circuits around the building. Chiara stood gazing out into the night. He watched her profile, thinking how familiar she already was, as if he had known her for years instead of days. “Everything fell apart after that,” he said quietly. “My girlfriend left.”
“Because you lost the transfer?” She turned to look up at him. “That seems very selfish.”
“Well,” he said, and managed a short laugh. “It was not just that. She's a very ambitious girl. A singer—good singer, actually. She—well, we argued. We said a lot of things.”
Chiara said without hesitation, “You were not right for each other.”
“I'm sure you're right.” He closed his eyes a moment, wishing he could forget those dark weeks. “It was all a train wreck—everything piling up until I couldn't stop it. First the transfer, then Catherine, and then the school. Took me weeks to calm down.”
He had been lucky, he knew, to get his old job back at Angel's. Rosie had spoken up for him. For months he had pounded out his frustration on the piano, until Angel complained over the cost of having it tuned so often. It had helped, though, blasting Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov through the bar in the late hours.
He straightened, remembering where he was. He looked down at Chiara, and spread his hands. “Sorry. It's still a bit fresh.”
“Poverino,”
she said softly. “Your heart was broken.”
“Well—yes, you could say my heart was broken. Perhaps I broke it myself. I made a mess of everything, and now I have a steep tuition bill to pay and no doctorate to show for it.”
“You must be very angry with Dr. Braunstein.”
He didn't think it was wise to answer that. He said instead, wryly, “At least it got me back into Angel's.”
“Angels?”
“Angel's, the possessive. Angel's Bar. It's not like a bar here in Italy, but a nightclub. I play piano there five nights a week. A real career highlight.”
She put her hand on the door. “I would like to hear you play,” she said. “There is a piano in the reception room, at the other side of the building, beneath the stairs.”
He grinned at her, and his heart lightened a bit. “We'll see,” he said. “You might not like my kind of music!”
 
They found the Bannisters and Elliott and Max huddled around the desk in the transfer room, and they each pulled a chair close to join them. Frederica still slumbered on her cot, brown hair straggling from beneath the transfer cap. Frederick Bannister had combed his sparse hair and changed his shirt. Bronwyn Bannister looked as if she was so weary she could barely stand, but she leaned forward, listening to Lillian Braunstein.
The speaker on the phone made Braunstein's voice sound even more brittle than usual. “You'll have to use the EMP,” she said.
“I don't like it,” Max said. His freckled cheeks looked drawn, and Kristian wondered when he had slept last. “We don't know enough about how it will work.”
“What is it?” Bannister said.
Elliott pushed a thin stack of paper toward him. “It's an electromagnetic pulse. The idea is to stimulate Frederica's brain.”
“It's supposed to jar the subject out of the transfer,” Max said with none of his usual cheer. “It gives a pretty strong kick.”
“Is it safe?” Bronwyn quavered.
Braunstein's voice rattled through the speaker. “We think it's perfectly safe.”
“But you don't know?” Bronwyn's voice shook.
Elliott said, “It probably is.” Max's lips twisted, and he rubbed his brush of hair.
Chiara said to the phone, “Dr. Braunstein, you know that the pulse can have side effects. Are we confident Frederica has never had trouble with her heart?”
“Her heart?” Bronwyn's waxen face turned even paler.

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