The Silver Swan (17 page)

“You’re ninety, Papa,” she would say. “Of course your eyes are deteriorating. So are mine, and I’m not yet forty.”

“A mere child.”

“In your eyes only, and your eyes are, by your own admission, not very good.” She clinked his glass with hers. “Your health.”

“Oh, Mariana, you have no idea — no idea of what it feels like to be ninety. I’m alone in my generation, my friends are all dead and your dear mother’s no longer beside me.” He paused for effect. “At least I have my ears.”

“Which would be better,” she scolded him, “if you wore those damn six-thousand-dollar hearing aids you insisted on buying.”

“I can hear music without them. What else do I need to hear?”

“You’d hear what I say to you.”

Her father laughed. “Yes. Now there’s a good reason to throw them away.”

These insults were lighthearted and loving. This hadn’t always been so. He had been hard on her and demanding. At first, he said he wouldn’t be her teacher, he was too often away. When he decided no other teacher would suffice, he took over. He couldn’t bear it when his criticism of her playing, which he offered profusely, made her cry. It made him furious. Did she not understand the gift that he was offering? Didn’t she know a great artist had to be tough? He offered parsimonious praise
and was quick to criticize any musical ideas she had that were not his own or that he guessed came from Starker.

With his public, Alexander had great charm and wit. With his students, he offered support, lending his instruments and money, writing recommendations for jobs, preparing them for recitals, and often inviting them to Swann’s Way in the summer. But when it came to lessons, he was stern. He had been capable of great cruelty, his temper volcanic. He would say anything that came into his head, however mean. He refused to be challenged or contradicted, demanding respect and obedience. She had frequently overheard him in his studio; he was imperious, harsh and tactless, but always, always right. His students both revered and feared him; they returned again and again, and from great distances, to learn.

But he was not
their
father. The decision to become a firstrank soloist had been made for her, Alexander claimed, because of her great talent, and she had to bear the responsibility for it. “I gave you this talent,” he would proclaim. “Don’t throw it back in my face!” And once, during a particularly challenging lesson, when she had dared to resist his advice, he had said, “I never wanted you. I didn’t want a child. You’ve been nothing but an albatross — something your mother needed.” This had burned into her brain, unforgettable.

Over time, his pronouncements confused her. Alexander would say that women were simply not as musically gifted as men — women were never meant to have important careers in music. They didn’t have the creativity or endurance. The life was too hard. They couldn’t be happy or fulfilled without a husband and children. “Of course you’re a special case,” he would conclude. “You’re my daughter — a chip off the old block. The two of us are birds of a feather. Cut from the same mold.”

In his last years, she read to him when his eyes failed. Little in the realm of literature interested him, but he asked to be read the news and the Arts section of the
New York Times
each day. They would wince over bad reviews of musicians they knew and even those they didn’t know, if the review was nasty enough to evoke sympathy.

“Who would do this, Mariana?” Alexander would say irritably. “Who would want to be a musician? You work for years, your entire childhood, you master an instrument and practice every day of your life in order to be told by some moron that you aren’t any good, or if you once were, you aren’t anymore, or that your interpretation of such and such was shallow, too fast, too slow, off-key. You feel humiliated and furious, but there’s nothing you can do. And who, anyway, was the idiot who wrote this review? Someone who used to write for the sports page!” He practically spat with contempt. “Ach, it is a terrible business. You put your head aboveground merely to be shot at.”

Mariana sighed. He didn’t mean it. He was well aware of the rewards to be reaped from a successful career in music.

“You have to be strong. You have to rise above the petty criticism,” he continued accusingly. She rolled her eyes. Although he’d received few bad reviews in his lifetime, he could remember every biting word of each one, verbatim — they continued to rankle, forty or fifty years later. “You were never strong enough, sweetheart. You had no confidence. You should have been more like me. Tough.”

“I should have,” she agreed.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” he would say, shaking his head sadly.

At first bold and confident onstage, Mariana had begun, in her late twenties, to lose her self-assurance. The pleasures of travel diminished. The pressure of performance, the constant stream of strangers who joined her for late suppers after concerts and engaged her in meaningless conversation, the men who tried to seduce her — all this took away from her desire to pursue a large international career, as did her father’s ruthless criticism of her concerts he attended, although they were not many. He was occupied with his own schedule and, in addition, refused to attend any concert of hers at a hall where he himself had not been engaged. Mariana faced concerts with increasing dread. After Anton left her, she began to experience paralyzing terror before each performance, a dizzying panic. Black shapes clouded her vision. Her heart hammered in her chest. Nothing helped — not psychotherapy, medication, standing ovations, or spectacular reviews.

In the winter of 2002, Mariana traveled alone to Washington, D.C., to perform the Dvořák concerto with the National Symphony, her first major concert since Pietovsky had gone back to his wife. Although her father had offered her the Swan for the concert, Mariana had chosen to play the Vuillaume. Increasingly superstitious, she followed ever more elaborate rituals, which both reassured her and made her feel as if she were crazy. She packed her gown in the same three dry cleaner bags, tied with velvet ribbon; she placed familiar objects next to the bed in her hotel room; she ate only certain foods at certain times and read the same poems aloud the afternoon before she was to play. She had been prescribed beta-blockers to help her remain calm, but she
would not take them, sure they would make her less focused and more forgetful.

In Washington, the morning rehearsal went well. The conductor was sensitive to her playing and complimented her interpretation. The concert hall was empty and the mood relaxed. She had played the Dvořák many times. But as the afternoon passed, she felt she was losing control.

That evening, as she strode onto the stage, cello in hand, wearing a bold red dress, she felt a wave of vertigo. The lights were too bright, the stage tilted. It was terrifying. Confused, she stopped and balanced on her instrument. The orchestra members had turned to watch her entrance and the audience rose to welcome her. Trying to regain her composure, she went directly to her chair without shaking hands with the concertmaster and conductor, a terrible breach of custom. She was breathing hard. The conductor waited till she raised her bow, giving him a signal to begin. Two minutes into the concerto, she lost her way in the music and couldn’t find it again. Mariana was drenched in perspiration. The conductor halted the orchestra and looked at her with concern, suggesting they pick up the music at an agreed upon measure. Again, they started and again she lost her place. She couldn’t hear the orchestra, so loud was the roaring in her ears. In shame and distress, she rose to leave the stage, but fainted as she passed along the edge of the violin section. Someone caught her cello as she slipped to the floor. The music world was electrified by news of the failed concert. Mariana was rushed to the hospital, where after a thorough exam the doctors could discover no physical problem. They diagnosed an acute panic attack and recommended medication, which Mariana refused.

Alexander was in Europe, to her great relief. She returned to New York and went directly to her parents’ apartment, unable to return to her own, alone. She entered quietly, put down her suitcase and cello, and went to her mother’s room. Pilar lay in a hospital bed, a pale sun on her thin face, the oxygen tubes affixed. Her afternoon nurse sat quietly in a chair near the bed while Pilar slept, but when Mariana came into the room, she rose to stand by her side.

“Your mother’s not doing well, Miss Mariana,” she said. “She’s more than ever confused and her breathin’s bad. I’m glad you came home.” Then she left the room.

Mariana pulled up a chair and leaned her head on Pilar’s bed. She took her mother’s hand in her own and, getting no response, began to sob. “Please listen. Please help me, Mama. I need you.” She searched her mother’s face and spoke more urgently. “Listen to me. I need help. Mama, I want to die. Papa will be so ashamed of me. I’m so ashamed of myself, I’m such a failure. I’ve disgraced you both.”

Pilar’s eyes opened. She stared vacantly at her daughter and patted her hand before once again falling asleep.

The ancient waiter brought Mariana her old-fashioned, limping across the dining room to where she sat alone. She remembered helping her father to the men’s room, that last time they’d come for dinner, and waiting for him outside the door. He had taken a long time and, at last, asked her to come inside. “I’ve sprung a leak, Mariana,” he confessed. “What shall I do? Do my pants look terrible? She made him turn slowly around in the bathroom’s bright light and reassured him no one would notice. She saw a small, moist stain on his left thigh.

“It’s nothing, really, Papa. No one will see. But perhaps you would feel more confident wearing something like Depends when we go out — for your own sake, so you don’t have to worry.”

He looked at her, eyes flaming. “Never. Never.”

“Say it three more times, and you’ll be quoting King Lear.” But the reference was lost on him, and he did not laugh.

Back at their table, Alexander took her hand. “You know how much I love you, my dear, and how grateful I am for your help. You are my sweet daughter. Where would I be without you? You’ve always been the center of my life.”

Give him half a martini, she thought, and he became a sentimentalist. But, Mariana told herself, beggars can’t be choosers. Just as she had with her mother, she would take what affection was offered and try to believe in it. She raised her glass to him. It was their last dinner at the inn.