Thomas’s face twisted. ‘I am only a boy in her eyes.’
‘That is certainly true, and remember that you are even younger than you claim. I hope you understand that there is no chance of her returning your feelings.’
‘My feelings have nothing to do with it.’
‘It seems to me they have a great deal to do with it. What is she to you?’
‘She is beautiful,’ Thomas shot back. ‘The most beautiful girl I ever saw.’
‘I assure you she is quite an ordinary young person,’ Stravinsky said gently.
‘She is not ordinary. She is sensitive, and kind, and gentle, and special. How can you think her ordinary?’
‘And you love her.’
‘If that’s what you want to call it.’
‘You are certainly a very strange boy,’ Stravinsky commented. He stared at the pale, passionate face. ‘What do you expect me to do, Thomas?’
‘You must think of something. You are the only one she respects. It’s your duty!’
‘I warn you, Thomas, if you give yourself away because of this infatuation, they will turn you back in New York, and you will be sent home to Germany.’
‘I don’t care about that.’
‘But I do.’
‘You must help!’
‘If I agree to think about it, will you leave me in peace? I have a migraine.’
‘Yes, I promise.’
Stravinsky covered his aching eyes again. ‘Then not a sound more out of you until morning.’
Thomas sat hunched on the edge of his bunk as Stravinsky drifted into an uneasy sleep. His mind was in turmoil. He had blurted out his feelings without thought. But from the instant he had seen Masha Morgenstern, something magical had entered his life, something that made him feel strong enough and brave enough to endure the loss of his family and face the terrors of an unknown future.
It was as though, in the arid desert that his young life had become, he had stumbled across an oasis, a pool full of sweet water that rippled and shimmered and that might sustain him.
In her presence he felt a quiet joy, in her absence an empty yearning. He had fastened on her, and though he could not have said why, he knew that what he felt was as intangible as the air he breathed, and as real.
Was this love, as Stravinsky had called it? He hadn’t thought of it as that. Love, he had been taught, was what you felt for God. But God hadn’t given Thomas much cause to love Him. His father, always so remote and severe, had climbed proudly into the Gestapo truck, and had embraced martyrdom in the name of love. He had led with him his brother and their wives, leaving Thomas an orphan.
He had always seemed more real in his church than in their home, where he was so often silent. When the Brownshirts had picketed Saint-Johannes, turning away parishioners and breaking the stained-glass windows, his face had been alight with joy. He had marched past the glowering faces and threatening rifle butts with his head held high.
That was admirable, to be sure. It was in the tradition of Martin Luther, the founder of their church. But what Thomas felt was something different. It was not a desire to die, but a desire to live. God could do without him. God was already claiming truckloads of lives. If he was to serve, Thomas would serve Masha. If he was to love, he would love Masha. He knew that there was a gulf between them, and it was unlikely that he could ever bridge it, but the thrilling, breathtaking fact of her existence was enough to give his life meaning.
Stravinsky cried out quietly in his sleep, an inarticulate sound of grief. Thomas covered him gently with the blanket, soothing him. Here was another strange, dry man, who had imperceptibly taken the place of his father. He trusted Stravinsky, and trusted that he would find a way to keep Masha Morgenstern from marching, as his father had done, to her doom.
A bitter wind swept off the Channel, scouring the superstructure of the Manhattan. On the promenade deck, sheltered by the canvas awnings that the crew had stretched to keep out the wet, Toscanini and Carla huddled under rugs. Both had been wretchedly sick. The mountainous grey waves rolled past, queasily glimpsed by the light that was flaked off Manhattan by the gale.
‘Yet again you have betrayed me,’ Carla said. ‘Yet again. After so many betrayals and humiliations.’
‘Is now the time to discuss this?’ he growled into his blanket.
‘I found her letters when I was packing in Kastanienbaum.’
Toscanini grunted. ‘I hope you were entertained.’ But he glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes.
‘I was disgusted. An old man like you. Shameful.’
He drew his bushy eyebrows down, huddling deeper into the rug, wishing he could shut out her voice, which shook with anger and pain. ‘I do not expect you to understand.’
‘Understand!’ Carla retched futilely over the bowl she held. Her stomach had long since emptied. ‘No, I do not understand. I found the menstrual bandages she sent you. The posies of her pubic hair. Flowers from my little garden. What kind of woman sends such things to a man?’
‘A woman such as you could never understand.’
‘A sexual maniac. Pathological. And younger than your own daughters.’
‘She is not younger,’ he muttered.
‘She is barely older than them. She was their friend. What would they say if they knew? Did you think of that, Arturo? As for the correspondence, I have never read such obscenities. They appalled me.’
‘Why did you persist in reading, then?’
‘The folly of it, Arturo. What if her husband comes across these things? She will end up like poor Gretel Neppach.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic.’
‘Melodramatic! If this thing is discovered, you will be ruined. We will all be ruined. What possessed you to take such a risk?’
‘Her marriage is unhappy.’
‘You were jealous of her husband, you mean. He is young and virile. While you can barely empty your bladder.’
‘In any case, it is all over now.’
She retched again, groaning. ‘Did it take another war to end it?’
‘What did you do with the correspondence?’ he asked, his voice barely audible above the wind that battered the canvas awnings.
‘I burned the flowers from her little garden.’
‘And the letters?’
‘I have brought them to you. So that you can see your folly.’
He made no reply, but he thought, thank God, they are all that’s left me.
‘She must be a madwoman. And you are the same. A mad old man. Psychopathia sexualis senilis. That is what Dr Eisenberger called it.’
He opened one eye. ‘You showed the correspondence to Eisenberger?’
‘I asked for his opinion on your sanity. He said it was a form of sexual dementia of the elderly. He attributed it to syphilis.’
‘I do not have syphilis,’ he snarled, glaring at her. ‘You had no right to show my private letters to that prating Swiss fool. Is that what you were occupied with all this time, while I waited for you in an agony?’
‘I nearly didn’t come.’ She lay back in the deckchair, exhausted. ‘I wish I were dead. You have broken my heart for the last time.’
‘You have never understood my passionate nature, Carla.’
‘Haven’t I supported you for forty years? Looked after your business affairs? Nursed you when you were ill and put up with all your madness? And you say I do not understand you.’
‘There is a dimension of me that you never shared. That you always refused to share.’
‘The old story again. Your justification for licentiousness. It’s finished, Artú. I am leaving you.’