The Silver Swan (9 page)

At eleven, Claude and Francine arrived at the Jumeirah-Essex House. As they entered the lobby, Francine, looking around, complained that the Essex House had been bought by Arabs since her last visit, and ruined. “It is tarted up.”

Claude hushed her. “We’re not supposed to say such things, Maman. This is America.”

She shrugged. “Well, it’s true. Look at this lobby.”

Their host, Mrs. Edith Libbey, had inherited a large fortune. Widowed by a banker, she possessed an important art collection. Sophie knew of it and she had told Claude to keep
his eyes open. “It is legendary,” she’d said, urging him to pay attention on her behalf and make a full report. “I wish I could be there with you.”

“Why not?” he had asked. “You could come for the weekend, just for the New York recital.”

“You know I can’t. That weekend it’s impossible.” It was her mother’s sixtieth birthday, a celebration she could not miss.

“I do know that. And I promise to report on everything I see.” Now, hoping to spend time with Mariana, he was relieved she hadn’t come.

Mrs. Libbey occupied the penthouse. The elevator man consulted a list of invited guests and took them up. During the long ride, he stood with his white-gloved hands folded in front of him, saying not a word. When the doors opened, they stepped directly into the foyer of the Libbey apartment and were greeted by their hostess. Mrs. Libbey, a tiny, brittle woman with bright eyes — the only things that seemed to move in a face immobilized by decades of plastic surgery — shook their hands. Everything about her person seemed like tinder — papery, vulnerable to a passing spark. She greeted Francine familiarly, then complimented Claude on his performance and told him how much solace she had found in music since her husband died.

“I often stay up here in my little aerie for days at a time, listening to music. You must have a look ’round at the art. Your mother too might like to revisit the paintings. Mr. Feldmann was most fond of them. It gave him such pleasure to look when he visited. I hope you will also find it interesting, Claude, if I may call you that? A musician must be sensitive to the visual arts. I always enjoyed that about your mentor.”

A butler appeared behind her, dressed as formally as Claude himself, inquiring what they wished to drink. Claude asked for a very dry martini, and his mother a glass of red wine. Edith Libbey escorted them down three carpeted steps into an enormous room with windows facing north over Central Park. As they entered, everyone stopped talking. “And here, at last,” proclaimed Mrs. Libbey in her whispery voice, “is our guest of honor. I’m sure you’ll agree he’s been too long in crossing the pond to offer us his talent.”

Claude smiled, puzzled. This was an expression he had not heard before: “the pond.” He would remember it. The guests applauded and resumed their conversations. Mrs. Libbey gave the Roselles a chance to admire the view. To Francine, she said, “I’m very glad to see you looking so well. It’s been years since I’ve had the pleasure of entertaining you and Alexander. How very sad that he’s no longer with us, but at ninety, one must expect the end to come.” Looking heavenward, she said, “Soon it will be my turn.”

“I doubt it,” Claude said quickly. “You’re not old enough, surely.”

She smiled at him for the first time, pleased. “One can never count on anything after the age of seventy.”

“Well, then, you have a long period of certainty ahead.”

His mother, out of Mrs. Libbey’s line of sight, rolled her eyes.

Edith Libbey smiled again. “I will ask my secretary, Carol, to show you my collection. Meanwhile, please make the acquaintance of those guests you have not met. We are sixteen tonight at our midnight supper, and now that everyone is here, I must consult with my chef.” In tiny, hurried steps, she crossed the room and disappeared through carved wooden doors.

Claude and Francine separated to greet the other guests. They knew William Rossen, of course, and Claude’s concert manager. People were drinking, talking, and plucking hors d’oeuvres off trays passed by the catering staff. As he circulated, Claude looked for Mariana. He caught a glimpse of her in shadow at the far end of the room. Leaning against the window with a drink in her hand, staring down at the glittering city, she seemed very much alone. Her rigid posture, turned away from the other guests, did not invite conversation. Relieved to know she had come after all, Claude had to shift his attention to a man at his elbow, who introduced himself as a board member of Lincoln Center.

“Congratulations,” said the man — Claude did not catch his name. “You did yourself — did all of us — proud. I so admire the Brahms sonatas.”

“Yes, they are marvels, aren’t they? Was the program overlong?”

“Not for this member of the audience. Had he written another piece for cello and piano, I would have welcomed it too. Brahms was a pianist, of course — I needn’t tell you that — but he understood the cello, didn’t he? He had, or so it seems to me, a particular sympathy for the cello’s register — I needn’t tell you that either — and the sonatas are among his most simpatico works …”

As soon as he was able to disengage himself, Claude walked toward Mariana, coming up behind her and looking over her shoulder at the view. His face reflected back in the window, as did hers. He could smell the delicate fragrance she wore.

She was silent as she took a step forward and turned her face toward his. Their eyes met for several moments before Claude moved back and smiled at her. “You are as lovely as
your father always said you were.” Still, she said nothing. “Tell me, Mariana, did you approve of my playing tonight? I felt I was playing in your father’s memory, to honor him. And I was also playing for you, knowing you were there. It matters very much to me what you thought.”

“Yes, my father would have approved,” she said coolly. “Apparently, he was immensely proud of you.” Now she dropped her eyes and took a sip of her drink.

“Ah, do you say that because he gave me the Silver Swan or because he spoke of me?”

“My father spoke almost exclusively about himself.”

Disappointed but unfazed, Claude told himself she wasn’t being truthful. He was confident that he had had a privileged relationship with Alexander Feldmann and had earned his teacher’s esteem.

“I see your mother’s here with you.” Mariana was mocking. “Is your father in town also?”

“No, my father didn’t come. He has his own busy schedule, and because I play so many concerts, he follows my career much less closely than my mother does.” He laughed. “Besides, my father is so Eurocentric, he doesn’t feel a concert in New York is as important as any I play in a European capital! Were I to be playing the Dvořák concerto with the New York Philharmonic, he still wouldn’t come. He just doesn’t like America.”

“It seems your mother does not share his opinion.”

“She would go everywhere with me if I allowed her to. She hasn’t enough to do these days. But sometimes I prefer the company of women
other
than my mother.”

Pursuing what he hoped was his advantage, he continued, “And I like you very much, Mariana. You are a beautiful woman.”

She put her empty glass on the window ledge and looked away.

Claude took her hand. “Did it make you terribly sad to see the Swan in the hands of someone other than your father tonight?”

“I knew it would happen one day.” She paused. “But I always believed I would be the one to choose who that cellist would be.”

“And are you disappointed in his choice?”

She again looked at him intensely without answering. Behind them, a woman appeared.

“Here you are! I’m Carol, Mrs. Libbey’s secretary. She asked me to show you around the apartment, to introduce you to her art. It’s a very special collection.”

Carol was in her fifties — trim, and brisk. She extended her hand. Claude drew Mariana along with him, saying, “We’d be delighted.” Carol turned back to inquire, “Should we invite your mother to join us? She always loved these paintings.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Claude answered. “I understand she’s been here several times before with Alexander Feldmann. Let’s just be the three of us.” Looking back, as he tightened his grip on Mariana’s hand, he saw grief in her deep, dark eyes.

The apartment was vast. They moved from room to room, astonished at what they saw. Claude remembered Sophie’s request. He thought he should write things down to tell her about on the phone. But with Mariana so close, he didn’t much care to. It was hard to conjure Sophie here, her earnest, young face, polished and pure in the way of well-brought-up
Swiss young women. He stood close to Mariana, keeping his fingers in contact with the fabric of her dress as he guided her from room to room. They were shown important paintings — an oil portrait of a princess by Hans Holbein the Younger, a series of Raphael drawings, a shelf of Cycladic sculpture, a library from Venice with a set of Canalettos, a Whistler, a John Singer Sargent, and two beach scenes by Winslow Homer which, Carol told them, Mr. Libbey had particularly loved.

“He was from Maine; they had a place on Soames Sound. I myself barely knew him — he was dying by the time I came to work here — but he always said that Homer
spoke
to him.”

Mariana was silent. She hugged her waist. Claude stared at her, pretending to look at the art on the walls but studying her profile and the plunging purple neckline. She yielded and leaned toward him.

There were portraits of ancestral Libbeys — wearing white ruffled shirts and black coats. There was a dancer by Degas, a decoupage by Matisse. Carol discoursed at wearying length about who bought which picture when, and from which dealer, and where.

A butler approached, half bowing. “Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.”

In the dining room, an ornate crystal-and-gold chandelier sparkled above the table, and antique gold sconces hung between paintings of flowers: Renoir and Fantin-Latour. The table had been set with sumptuous linens, a silver service fit for giants, crystal goblets, and elaborate china whose floral pattern reflected the theme of the oils. As they entered the dining room, Carol withdrew before they had a chance to thank her.

The Roselles were shown to places flanking Mrs. Libbey, who already sat at the table’s head, diminutive in her tall thronelike chair. She had a frozen smile on her face and a large halo of immovable blond hair. Claude was not happy that Mariana had been seated at the other end of the table; there could be no further conversation. At least he could watch her, perhaps catch her eye from time to time. He wondered if she had wanted to sit beside him. Mrs. Libbey leaned toward him. Across the table, at Francine’s right, sat the famous Russian cellist Zena Padrova, now in her eighties. Long retired from the stage, she was widely respected as a teacher. He recognized her at once. He had seen her embrace Mariana just before they sat down to dinner. Feldmann had told Claude riotous stories about Padrova. She was boisterous, bawdy, and full of a vital and irrepressible life force Feldmann cherished. Claude could see she must have been very attractive. She had already embarked on telling a joke — “And I told him, not again!” Her companions laughed.

Mrs. Libbey called the table to order and thanked her guests for coming, then proposed a toast: “
An die Musik!
” and “To our honored guests.”

As she finished, Claude rose to thank their hostess for the party and the meal to come. He lifted his glass to her, then turned toward Mariana, raising it slightly higher as his eyes met hers.

The dinner began. Servers, wielding silver trays, rushed in and out with
saumon en gelée
, a rack of lamb, a puree of walnuts, and a tray of glistening roasted vegetables. This elaborate meal had been described, in the invitation, as a simple postconcert supper. But then, Claude remembered with amusement, Mrs. Libbey had described the apartment
as her “little aerie.” Her sense of proportion had obviously failed her. This might be, he reflected, either a condition of age or a condition of wealth.

Now Mrs. Libbey locked her gaze upon Claude and would not release him. His mother did not help at all. She was deeply engaged in a conversation with Zena Padrova about Alexander. Claude wished he could hear what they said, they spoke so intensely. He glanced across the table from time to time, as he politely answered Mrs. Libbey’s questions: yes, he still lived in Lugano, yes he admired the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio and of course the Villa d’Este. At one moment, he noticed that his mother’s eyes had filled with tears and Mme Padrova was offering her napkin. Claude could not imagine what they might be saying. His mother rarely cried in his presence, but after Feldmann’s death she had often wiped tears from her cheeks. “It’s hard,” she would say, “to lose such an old friend. You’ll see one day. One feels so alone.”

At the other end of the table, Claude observed Mariana chatting easily, laughing, and allowing the waiters to fill her wineglass again and again. At one point, she told a story about her father — his time in Prades with Pablo Casals and how he had annoyed the maestro by flirting with the village girls and taking them on picnics atop Mont Canigou. Everyone roared with laughter. She was not shy, nor did she lack self-confidence. And she resolutely would not meet his eyes again.