"Don't mock me, Triana!" he said. "He was, and so was Mozart when I was very young, a little child, so that I don't even remember him. But the Maestro was my teacher!"
His cheeks flamed. "You know nothing of me. You know nothing of the world from which I was torn. Your libraries are filled with studies of that world, its composers, its painters, the builders of its palaces, yes, even my father's name, patron of the arts, generous patron of the Maestro and yes, the Maestro was my teacher."
He broke off, and turned away.
"Ah, so I am to suffer and remember, but not you," I said. "I see. You brag as men so often do."
"No, you don't see anything," he said. "I only want you, you of all people, you who worship these names as if they were household saints-Mozart, Beethoven-I want you to know I knew them! And where they are now, I know not! I'm here, with you!"
"Yes,it is so," I said, "as you've said and I've said, but what are we to do? You know you can catch me unawares a thousand times, but I won't sink again into it. And when I dream, of the surf, of the sea, do I dream what you...
"We won't speak of that, your dream."
"Oh, why, because it's a doorway to your world?"
"I have no world. I'm lost in your world."
"You had one, you have a history, you have a series of connected events behind you, trailing, don't you, and that dream comes from you because I've never seen those places."
He tapped his right fingers on the table, and tipped his head down, thinking.
"You remember," he said maliciously, smiling up at me, though he was much taller, letting his brows do the work of being ominous while his voice was naive and his mouth sweet. "You remember, after your daughter's death you had a friend named Susan."
"I had many friends after my daughter's death, good friends, and as a matter of fact there were four of them named Susan or Suzanne, or Sue. There was Susan Mandel, who had gone to school with me; there was Susie Ryder, who came to give me solace, and then became an ally to me. There was Suzanne Clark. .
"No, not any of those. It's true, what you say, you've often known your women in clusters of names. Remember the Annes of your college years? The three of them, and how they joked about you being Triana, which meant three Annes. But I don't want to talk about them."
"Why would you? The memories are only pleasant."
"Then where are they now, all these friends, especially the fourth. . . Susan?"
"You're losing me."
"No, madam, I have you locked to me." He smiled broadly. "Just as tightly as when I play."
"Sensational," I said. "You know it's an old word."
"Of course."
"And that's what you are, producing all these hot sensations in me! But come now, why not talk straight, what Susan do you mean, I don't even...
"The one from the south, the one with the red hair, the one that knew Lily
"Oh, that was Lily's friend, that Susan, she lived right upstairs, she had a daughter Lily's age, she-"
"Why don't you simply talk of it to me? Why should it drive you mad? Why don't you tell me? She loved Lily, that woman. Lily loved to go up to her apartment and sit with her and draw pictures, and that woman, that woman wrote to you years after Lily's death, when you were here in New Orleans; and that woman Susan who had so loved your daughter, Susan told you that your daughter had been reborn, reincarnated, you remember this?"
"Vaguely. It's a pleasure to think of that rather than the time when they were both together, since one's dead and I thought the letter was absurd. Are people reborn? Are you going to tell me such secrets?"
"Never, and furthermore I don't know. My existence is one continuous strategy. I only know that I am here and here and here, and it never ends, and those I love, or come to hate, they die, but I remain. That's what I know. And no soul has ever leapt up bright before me declaring to be the reincarnation of anyone who hurt me, hurt me-!"
"Go on, I'm listening."
"You remember that Susan and what she wrote."
"Yes, that Lily had been reborn in another country. Ah!" I stopped with shock.
"That's what you make me see in the dream, a country to which I've never been where Lily is, that's what you would have me believe?"
"No," he said, "I only want to throw it in your face that you never went to look for her."
"Oh, pranks again, you have a thousand. Who hurt you? Who fired these guns you heard when you died? Don't you want to tell me?"
"The way Lev told you about his women, how all during Lily's illness he had had one after another young girl to comfort him, the father of a dying daughter...
"You are one filthy devil," I said. "I won't match words with you. For myself, I say, he did have his girls briefly and without love, and I drank. I drank. I grew heavy?
So be it. But this is pointless, or is it what you want? There is no Judgment Day. I don't believe in it. And with my faith in that, went any faith I had in Confession or Self-Defense. Go away. I'll turn the music box back on. What will you do? Break it? I have others. I can sing Beethoven. I can sing the Violin Concerto from memory.
"Don't dare to do that."
"Why, is there recorded music waiting for you in Hell?"
"How would I know, Triana?" he asked with sudden softness. "How would I know what they have in Hell? You see for yourself the terms of my perdition."
"Seems a lot better than eternal fire, if you ask me. But I'll play my guardian Beethoven anytime I please, and sing what I can remember even if I mangle pitch and key and melody-"
He leant forward and timidly; before I could gather my strength I dropped my gaze. I looked at the table and felt a huge misery in me, a misery rising so that I couldn't breathe. The violin. Isaac Stern in the auditorium, my childish certainty that I could attain such greatness-.
No. Don't.
I looked at the violin. I reached out. He didn't move. I couldn't cover the four feet of table. I got up and came round to the chair next to him.
He watched me the whole time, keeping his pose deliberately, as if he thought I meant to do some trick to him. Perhaps I did. Only I didn't have any tricks yet, nothing really worth trying, did I?
I touched the violin.
He looked superior and smo othly beautiful.
I sat right in front of it now, and he moved back his right hand, out of the way, so that I could touch the violin. Indeed, he moved the violin a little towards me, still gripping its neck and bow.
"Stradivarius," I said.
"Yes. One of many I once played, just one of many, and it's a ghost with me now, as surely as I am a ghost, it's a specter as I am a specter. But it's strong. It is itself as I am myself. It is a Stradivarius in this realm as truly as it was in life."
He looked down on it lovingly.
"You might say after a fashion I died for it." He glanced at me. "After Susan's letter," he asked, "why didn't you go looking for your iughter's reborn soul?"
"I didn't believe the letter. I threw it away. I thought it was foolish. I felt sorry for Susan but I couldn't answer."
He let his eyes brighten. His smile was cunning. "I think you lie. You were jealous."
"Of what on earth would I be jealous, that an old friend had lost her mind? I hadn't seen Susan in years; I don't know where she is now...
"But you were jealous, consumed with rage, more jealous of her than ever of Lev and all his young girls."
"You're going have to explain this to me."
"With pleasure. You were in an agony of envy, because your reincarnated daughter revealed herself to Susan and not to you! That was your thought. It couldn't be true, because how could the link between Lily and Susan have been stronger! That's what you felt, outrage. Pride, the same pride that let you give away Lev when he didn't know his left hand from his right, when he was sick with gn.ef, when-"