The Brahms Deception Read online

  It was time, she thought, to test the perimeter of the transfer. If they could not control me with the pulse—she felt a laugh bubble up behind her carefully demure expression—they can’t control me at all.

  A chilly rain began to fall, squelching Kristian’s thought of going for a head-clearing, temper-settling walk. He stood on the porch, staring out into the wet darkness, seething. The security guard arrived, and spoke to him briefly, but Kristian’s terse responses put him off. He stood there, alone, until the door opened behind him and Chiara came out.

  “Kris,” she said. “It’s cold. Come inside.”

  He said in a tight voice, “I’m so angry, Chiara.”

  “Of course you are angry! Why should you not be angry?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll say something I shouldn’t.”

  She made a small noise, and when he turned to look at her he saw she was trying not to laugh. “What?” he demanded.

  “You Americans!” she said. The giggle escaped her, and she gave her head a shake, as if trying to disperse it.

  “What’s funny about being angry?” he demanded.

  “It is not funny to be angry!” She spoke with asperity, but she was still smiling. “It is funny that you think not to show it. Why not just—” She waved one hand, as if searching for the word. “Just . . . speak it! Raise your voice! We Italians do this—we speak loudly; we argue—and then it is over.”

  “You don’t know,” he said. “My temper gets me in a lot of trouble.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps you are like a pot with hot water. If you do not lift the lid once in a while, it boils over.”

  A retort was on his lips, but even as he opened his mouth to speak it he realized how absurd it would sound. “Maybe the Italians won’t mind if I yell a bit,” he said. “But the Americans—” Juilliard. Catherine. He made a sour face. “I have a bad reputation.”

  “Come in, Kris. I am going to prepare some dinner. We can talk it over, you and Elliott and Max and I.”

  He tried to smile, but his face felt stiff and he doubted it was convincing. “Dinner would be great. I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a moment.”

  “Come very soon,” she said, and disappeared back inside.

  Kristian turned back to contemplate the rainy evening. He felt the guard’s eyes on him, but he kept his face turned toward the neutral darkness. Anger still burned in his chest, very like the boiling pot Chiara had described. He wasn’t sure she was right. His fear was that if he lifted the lid off his temper, what boiled underneath it would explode.

  It had done just that, his last day in the dean’s office. His temper had exploded. He had destroyed his opportunity, and fled without looking back. There was no chance of rebuilding. He had managed to ruin his future at Juilliard very shortly after ruining his future with Catherine.

  If he half-closed his eyes and let his mind drift, he could see Catherine’s face against the backdrop of rain. It still had the power to hurt him.

  He should, he supposed, have known better than to fall in love with someone like Catherine Clark. He had been twenty-five, old enough to understand her. He should have sensed her singleness of purpose—the same purpose Clara Schumann had shown throughout her life. There had to be, he supposed, a certain selfishness in anyone who could make a great career—and Catherine would, like Clara, make a great career. He expected it.

  He had thought they would do it together.

  He had met Catherine in the voice studio, his first term at Juilliard. Part of his fellowship duties was to accompany voice students. He enjoyed it, liked listening to what the teachers had to say, liked hearing the students progress. He loved the excitement that centered around Catherine, with her big, dark soprano voice and the intense presence that served her so well onstage.

  When Catherine asked for extra practice time, he was only too willing to agree. She gave him stacks of difficult music to learn for her recital and for her auditions, and he accepted them without question. He coached her in German, and sometimes they practiced Italian together. They spent hours in each other’s company, in the practice room, in the library, taking long walks through the city. Before long, they were spending afternoons together in bed in his cramped apartment, their lovemaking accompanied by the constant rumble of the subway beneath them.

  He shouldn’t have been surprised, he thought, by the drama of his final scene with Catherine. She was an opera singer, after all. She did everything on a grand scale.

  He had told her the bad news even before he called Erika, blurted it out when he met her outside the library. They had rehearsal time scheduled on the stage of Alice Tully. “I lost it!” he said miserably. He was still reeling from the impact of Gregson’s phone call, and unspent fury burned in his chest. “They gave the transfer to someone else!”

  She had a stack of music in one arm, and she shifted it to the opposite side. She wore a wool scarf around her neck against the chill of the winter afternoon, and she looked distracted. “I don’t know what you mean, Kris.” She gazed past him to Lincoln Center Plaza, where tourists were wandering past the fountain, stopping to stare up at the Met, at Alice Tully Hall, at the façade of the Juilliard School. “How could they give it to someone else? Didn’t you have a contract or something?”

  “Catherine, there was no contract. It’s an award, like a scholarship or a grant.”

  She brought her gaze back to his, briefly. “You signed a stack of things, I saw you.”

  “Release forms. Health affidavits. Waivers. I told you at the time!”

  She looked beautiful, as she always did, her lips glistening with freshly applied lipstick, her eyes perfectly made up. The white wool scarf set off her olive skin and dark hair. Other people turned to admire her, something that usually gave him pleasure. At that moment, though, he wasn’t thinking about how she looked or how she sounded. At that moment, he needed warmth. He was wounded, and he needed comfort.

  He didn’t understand at the time that Catherine didn’t have warmth to offer him. It took him a long time to understand that passion can be cold. She tossed her head, making her hair ripple over her shoulders. “That’s too bad, Kris. There’ll be another chance, right? Come on, or we’ll miss our rehearsal time.”

  “Another chance?” The heat rose up from his chest and into his throat, flaming in his cheeks. “Have you been paying any attention at all?”

  Her perfect lips twisted. “Come on, Kris. It’s bad luck, but it’s not the end of the world. Come on, now, we—”

  He snarled, before he could stop himself. “Can’t you think about someone else for once in your life?”

  She stiffened, and took a step away from him. “For God’s sake, Kris, grow up! So you had a disappointment! You have to get over it sooner or later—might as well be sooner!”

  “Get over it! For Christ’s sake, Catherine—”

  “Dammit, Kris, we’re going to miss our slot. Are we going to practice, or not?” She stamped her foot, glaring impatiently at him.

  He stared back, stunned. “Catherine—”

  “What?” Someone spoke to her, and she turned to toss a brilliant smile over her shoulder. When she turned back, the smile had vanished as if it had never been. “So do I need to get someone else?” she said with icy disdain.

  He stammered, “S-someone else?”

  She gestured toward the stack of music she was carrying. “Look, this is tough for you, I get it. But I have a recital in two weeks, and I have to focus on that.”

  His temper burst into full flame, and the heat of it felt infinitely better than the cold disappointment of his loss. He said, “You know, Catherine, sometimes you’re a real bitch.”

  She tossed her head. “Come on, Kris. You’re acting like a loser.” She spun away from him, and marched across the plaza toward the concert hall. He—miserable, furious—threw his own copies of her music onto the pavement, a shower of printed notes spreading over the plaza, blowing in every direction to be stepped on and torn by people’s feet
. It was a grand gesture and it was appropriate to the moment, but the sudden finality of it shocked him. Someone bent and picked up a page, started toward him, holding it out. He shook his head, and spun away before he could do anything else irreversible. He stamped away from the plaza, afire with anger, and walked through the city streets until he was exhausted.

  He shouldn’t have argued with her. He should have understood the timing was wrong, that she was thinking of her upcoming recital, the Voss master class, all the things that drove her. He shouldn’t have called her a bitch, although Erika assured him later, without the slightest heat, that the description fit Catherine Clark perfectly.

  The thing that tipped him over the edge, that made it clear to him there was nothing real between them, was that Catherine had no idea how much the transfer meant to him. She didn’t grasp how much he wanted to be the one who observed Brahms, the musicologist to solve the little, persistent mystery of p dolce. She didn’t understand how deeply it mattered to him. She had no idea—and probably never would—how much all of it meant to a guy from the wrong side of Boston, who had worked so hard for every opportunity. She didn’t get any of it. And even if he could have explained it to her, she wouldn’t have cared.

  He had taken it all the way, he had to admit that. He hadn’t pulled a single punch. He cursed at the dean, insulted his adviser, quit the program on the spot. He had lost everything in the space of twenty-four hours.

  He took a deep breath of the rain-scented air of Castagno. The rhythm of the raindrops soothed him a little, and he took comfort in the fact that he had not completely lost his temper this time. He swallowed, and straightened. It did no good to agonize. At this moment, nothing seemed to have any point.

  He would go in, eat what he could of Chiara’s good food. He would try again to call Erika. Then he would pack his duffel, bum a ride back to Pisa, and go home. He should have known this wouldn’t work out.

  If he had any luck at all, Angel’s would let him come back. It seemed the universe was conspiring to make it clear to him that Angel’s was where he belonged, his proper place. The job for which he was most suited. A piano in a bar with a broken neon sign, playing for an audience of barflies who had no better place to go, and who wouldn’t know Brahms from Bach.

  The blanket of darkness had shifted, almost imperceptibly lightening the shadows. Clara stirred, like a lost child awakening, and wondered where she was.

  She tried to remain as still as she could, so as not to alert the demon, and she tried to sense what was happening. What was the demon’s intent? Perhaps, if she could puzzle out what it was the demon wanted, she could find a way to loosen its grip. Perhaps, if she could break free for even the briefest of moments, she could show Hannes that all was not right, that the Clara he loved was imprisoned.

  He did love her, she reminded herself. He loved her faithfully, nobly. That was why, in the end, she had given in to her feelings.

  They had been in Hamburg. She was to play the Harp Songs there. She had come from Berlin with Marie to stay with friends for the rehearsal and performance period. Hannes stayed there, too. It was the most lighthearted gathering Clara had been part of since Robert’s death. Everyone rose late, and breakfasted at leisure. Hannes and Clara walked to the theater for rehearsals, and often stepped around the corner for a light supper afterward. Marie was content to spend her time shopping and sightseeing. With the children well cared for in Berlin, Clara felt more free than she had in a very long time. She would not admit it, even to herself, but without Robert to worry about, to indulge—and to be scolded by, to answer to—she felt like a bird that had escaped its cage.

  It was the night before the performance. She and Hannes were walking home together through a light snowfall. The rehearsal had gone well, and they were idly discussing some of the fine points of her interpretation, but with no feeling of urgency. Rather, she thought, they felt complacent. Confident. They had faith in the music, in the ensemble, in each other. They smiled up at the fat, dry flakes drifting lazily through yellow circles of lamplight, not so many as to make the road treacherous, but enough to turn the city into a fairyland. In the middle distance, the spire of the unfinished St. Nicholas Church rose majestically into the snow, its tip disappearing into a cloud of white. Clara tipped her head back to try to see the top, and stumbled on the cobblestones.

  Hannes caught her arm to steady her, and then kept it, holding it close to his side. The heat of his body through layers of wool and linen was as inviting as a comforter on a cold night. She looked up into his eyes, the blue of them even deeper in the light of the gas lamps. Her body throbbed suddenly, a spasm of desire that shook her to her toes. For one stunning moment, she could hardly breathe for wanting him.

  He bent to her. He kissed her cheek, then her lips. His long arm held her, grasped her waist through her fur-lined cloak, pulled her more tightly against him. His other hand came up to cradle the back of her neck, his fingers strong and warm against her skin.

  She tried not to surrender to temptation—oh, so briefly she tried—but it was no use. She melted. She felt no stronger than one of the snowflakes, a pattern of icy lace dissolving at the touch of a warm surface.

  “Clara,” he said huskily, “mein Engel. Meine Schatz.”

  She found herself whispering, “Hannes, dearest Hannes,” against his cheek, and then, with an unseemly rush of feeling, she pressed herself against him, letting him crush her mouth with his, allowing his hands to caress her beneath the fur of her cloak. Wherever he touched her the ice that had encased her for so long fell away. She burned with need, with repressed longing. When he released her, her legs trembled so she could barely stand.

  “Mein Gott!” she exclaimed in an undertone. “Hannes! Someone will see us!”

  He lifted his head to glance around them. He laughed, a low, throbbing tone that seemed to vibrate in the very center of her body. “There is no one, Clara. And even if there was, I don’t care! We are both free to love whomever we please.”

  She pulled back to put a respectable distance between them, but still she gazed up at him. Snowflakes fell on his fair hair, his clean-shaven cheeks, caught on his eyelashes. He looked terribly young, and divinely handsome. He was as different from Robert as he could be, this young eagle they both had loved from the beginning.

  “Hannes, it may seem so, but it’s not true. I am not free,” she said sadly. The brief rush of passion shamed her, and left her melancholy and bereft. “I have my reputation to think of. And that of my children. Robert’s memory.”

  The look he bent upon her was understanding itself. “I loved Robert, too,” he said. “And I love your children. But Clara! I want you!”

  “It is impossible,” she said sadly. “The gossip would ruin me. I would be cut in the street. My concerts would be empty. No one would have anything to do with me, and then how would I support my children?”

  “Will you not marry me?” he said, squeezing her hands in his. “It would be my greatest honor to call you my wife.”

  “No one would ever forgive me for betraying Robert’s memory.”

  “That’s hardly fair to you! You are still young, and—”

  “I’m a good deal older than you, dearest Hannes. You know people will say all sorts of things. They will whisper that we were already lovers, perhaps that we hastened poor Robert’s death. They already say that I abandoned him, when it isn’t true at all!” A flush of shame heated her cheeks, and she turned her face away. One cooling snowflake touched her forehead, and she closed her eyes in a confusion of longing and sorrow.

  “Let them gossip. I don’t care about that.”

  She lifted her head again, and another snowflake fell on her cheek. “Hannes, you would care! They would say terrible things about you, even though you are a man. Everyone knows Robert was your mentor. They would never forgive you, and you can’t afford that. Not now, when your career is just beginning to grow.”

  “Come away with me then,” he whispered. “Somewhere
where no one will find us, no one will know . . .”

  She gave a light laugh, but it was a bitter sound in the quiet street. “Hannes, no such place exists, not for you and me! We are known everywhere!”

  He was silent for a moment, staring up at the spire of St. Nicholas. They stood a little apart. Despite her protests, she found herself gazing hungrily at the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his neck above the high points of his collar. When he tucked his chin to look down at her, his eyes had gone dark with the intensity of his feeling. “Italy,” he said.

  “What?” Her voice caught in her throat, and she swallowed. “What did you say?”

  “Italy. We are not known in Italy.”

  She took a little breath to deny it, but realization dawned on her. “Italy,” she breathed. “I have never been to Italy.”

  “I know that. Everyone knows that.” He grinned suddenly, and squeezed her arm. “It’s perfect! I will find a place. You will set aside a time from your concert schedule, and I will make the arrangements.”

  “Oh, Hannes, dearest, I don’t know—”

  “Yes, yes, you do! Just a short time—two weeks, shall we say? But soon, very soon!”

  “It will take time: the children, my agents—”

  “May!” he pronounced, pulling her close again. “You will make me wait until May, and not a moment more!”

  Laughter bubbled to her lips, too, making her feel as lighthearted as a girl—lighthearted as she had rarely felt, even when she truly was a girl. “May! That is only four months away!”

  “Three,” he said. He brushed her forehead with his lips, and he whispered, “I can hardly bear to wait even that long!”

  She did not, at that moment, actually say yes. It seemed she was still thinking about it, enjoying their little shared fantasy, not really being serious. Hannes was completely serious, though. When he came to her, a week later, he had already found Castagno. He had arranged to rent a house there that was called, oddly, August. It was done. The plans were made.