There seemed only one place to go, under such histrionic circumstances. To the opera.
The large, over-decorated doors were locked. There was a cardboard sign, askew behind a glass window frame, and from the operatic sounds booming from the interior, I presumed what it said was that rehearsals were in progress. So I walked round, beneath the carved-stone caryatids, until I found a side entrance open.
I relished the gloom for a moment, as the voices echoed above me and the orchestra dutifully echoed them back. It was Verdi, I could tell, from the simple, almost peasant force of the melodies. Bo ba bo bo bo ba bum.
I climbed a narrow staircase which I assumed would lead me backstage, or somewhere close to the orchestra pit. But the steps just kept going, winding their way up into the impenetrable shadows above. There was a thin wintry sense of light then, and I saw a door and pushed it open, and found myself in a box, six seats covered in that tired dusty velvet and an equally red velvet balustrade.
There was a full rehearsal in progress on the stage, a chorus dressed in military fatigues and black ski masks and those that I could only assume were the principals dressed in the pastel-coloured balaclavas of the street riots. There was a set of crumbling Soviet-style buildings, strewn about with overturned monumental sculptures of muscular bronze workers, hammers and Kalashnikovs jutting from the stage rubble at unlikely angles. It was Rigoletto, in some post-modern interpretation, I could only presume, from the choruses that filled the empty auditorium; from the baritone, bent double far below me, moving like a crab through the apocalyptic wreckage of the set. I took a seat by the balustrade and bent my body like his, my chin against the velvet armrests, worn smooth by innumerable elbows, and listened to the small orchestra in the pit down there until the last aria had ended and a soprano dressed in pastel colours died in a black-clad figure’s arms. Gilda, I assumed, the cursed one, remembering the conversation that could never have happened, in that same orchestra pit.
A director walked on from the wings and dismissed all of the cast but the hunchbacked baritone, who repeated an aria until his back seemed to trouble him, then sang it one last time, half upright. There were raised voices, a balaclava pulled off, and a plastic machine gun kicked across the boards. Differences of interpretation, I assumed, until the stage finally emptied and the orchestra began to pack.
I saw the first cellist rise and recognised from above his thinning hair, his shining patent-leather shoes as they stepped from the pit through the empty auditorium. Then they stopped, in a band of sunlight that lit the frayed carpet from the high windows and I thought for a moment he was about to bend down and polish them. But he didn’t. He looked up from his shoes, directly at me. He put one hand in his pocket, searching for something. Then he dropped his gaze and walked on, out of sight.
I sat there in the shadows as the orchestra cleared. I could hear the snap of music cases and the shuffle of departing players and the sound of a pair of shoes, mounting the stairs behind me. They were hard-heeled shoes of patent leather, I imagined. But I couldn’t have been sure.
Then the door slowly opened, and it was him, all right, with an unlit cheroot between his lips.
You like opera? he asked.
I know very little about it.
You must like it, he said, to find your way up here.
Rigoletto, I muttered, and didn’t know how to continue. I will admit to being curious.
Rigoletto, he said, was set in Mantua. Not in some post-Gorbachev wasteland. It can only cause trouble.
The balaclavas?
The whole thing. How do you say? The concept. Is difficult, he said, to play the cello solo with a riot in the auditorium. Enough of metaphor, I say. Just tell the story.
He took a plastic lighter from his pocket and struck it. I remember it was coloured green. The warm light lit his face from underneath.
So what is the story? I asked him.
As absurd as any opera. A hunchback. A daughter. A duke. A secret assignation. A curse.
He lit the small cigar, finally.
You should never have been there, he said then.
You knew, didn’t you?
That she was dead.
No. Not at first. I allowed myself some frisson of jealousy. Before I realised she had to be.
He blew the cigar smoke through his lips.
No smoking here, he said. But the place will be empty soon. Musicians make an exit quicker than hares, through the hatch. The minute they hear the bell.
He flicked the green-coloured lighter again. His face flared in the amber, and he seemed to relish the theatricality of the underlight.
That was our place, you see. Lovers have to have a place, don’t they? A secret place. And not only in opera librettos. A bare mattress on a floor. A sink. Or a washbasin. If you are blessed, a bath or a shower. And we were blessed, for a while.
His eyes met mine and I looked away.
Why do you care? he asked.
Does it matter?
Yes. I sense a frisson of jealousy there too. But I have to admit I am puzzled. You act as if you knew her.
I imagine I do.
So tell me then. She was pulled from the river? Three or four weeks ago?
She was.
I suspected as much.
Why?
When things began to happen. My daughter heard music. You have a daughter? Of course. Of course. So maybe she hears it as well. Bach’s cello suites. The D minor was her favourite. I taught her cello, if you must know.
No, he said. She never had that kind of talent. Too much vibrato. But she would have loved to. To sit beside me, as my second cellist, and play the Cortigiani solo. Would have been her dream. And she had many of those.
He tapped ash into his hand and crumbled it to nothingness.
I had an affair with my pupil. The worst of clichés, I suppose. In that apartment, where I would see you coming and going. And you want the whole story, of course you do. She would sit on that couch after – what do you call it – the thing, the event – and play her cello while I smoked in the other room. She had too much expressivo, too little restraint. But she had talent, I can’t deny that.
He placed the cigar between his thin lips and drew once more.
And you, he said, what’s your excuse? For haunting that place that was ours?
I was asked to find a girl, I told him, who had gone missing as a child.
And you tracked her to there? That little apartment? I would love to know how?
His eyes met mine once more. Small, brown. I would have described them as repellent.
You must like the damaged ones.
Pardon me?
He smiled, wistfully.
She had that extraordinary need, you see, for contact, that only comes from the damaged ones. And they can be exquisite, the damaged ones.
But I understood too well. Something broke inside me. It was his tone. The assumption of complicity.
Have you found that, in your life? No? You are English, of course. You mightn’t know of such things.
I could have flung him over the balcony, down to the seats below. I imagined the crunch as his head hit the aisle.
I am good, he said, very good at keeping secrets. So you must have been good too? At searching them out? I met her on that bridge, if you must know. She was playing the cello, busking for coins. She made almost a living from it, from the passers-by, the tourists. It at least paid for that apartment where the lessons began. I would help with the rent there, after a time. And I wonder who pays for it now?
He looked puzzled for a moment. And I took a breath to calm myself.
Did she ever talk about her childhood?
Sometimes about nothing else. But the stories, they often changed. Two Romany musicians who started her playing in the metro. A father, who taught her violin. By ear.
She was taken, I told him, as a child.
Taken? By gypsies, like in a fairy tale? Who told you that?
Her parents. They hired me to find her.
Who hired you? The mother?
And the father.
How strange.
Why is it strange?
Because she wasn’t taken. She ran.
From him, who else? That village fiddler. So she told me.
I remembered his feet, rubbing spittle into my office carpet. His hands, like stolid blocks on his knees. And did all of the pieces fall into place then? No, they didn’t. But I understood something, at last.
But who knows, maybe that memory was as unreliable as her . . . vibrato . . .
He narrowed his eyes.
She loved it and hated it. But she couldn’t live without it.
Without what?
Music. Have you ever been terrified by music?
My wife has. Only last night.
Bach’s cello suites. The serene heart of baroque. Has terrified my daughter. My household. My window broke the other night. Of its own accord. Perhaps I deserved it.
He raised one gleaming black shoe and stubbed the cigar out on the heel.
She told me she was pregnant, you see. I assumed it was another fantasy. She asked to meet me where I’d met her first. By that bridge. But I never turned up.
He blew air between his teeth.
Would you have? Yes, you probably would.
I did, I said. Some time later.
He whistled, for a moment. The first arpeggio.
And now it terrifies you. Well, he said, finally, perhaps you deserve it too.
He took an intake of breath through his thin nostrils. They seemed pinched, by invisible fingers.
Whatever the case, you are welcome to it.
He bowed his head slightly with odd formality, and seemed to click his heels. He turned towards the door, where he heard it.
A series of triplets, with one note ascending.
I thought the orchestra had left.
The bow now picked out a melody. Like a country dance.
They have, I told him. Like hares out of the trap.
Can you hear it?
I recognised the sixth cello suite.
Is there someone in the pit?
I glanced backwards. There was no one in the pit.
So, you have it on your phone, he said. A ringtone?
He took two steps down towards me and gripped my lapels, feeling for a phone. But it was silent, in my inside pocket.
So, he whispered, his face close to mine. She still plays for us. The D major suite. A cool, verdant key.
I pushed both hands away.
For us?
Or should I be jealous? he asked. He rubbed one hand off the other, as if to cleanse them.
For you.
And there was only an echo of the sound now.
Again, too much vibrato. But she is no longer my concern.
He bowed his head and stepped backwards towards the door.
She is – how do you say it? – all yours.
He turned and left the door swinging gently on its hinges. The sound reminded me of something. And as his feet down the steps retreated into silence and the door creaked on, I remembered.
The sign outside his house, Musikinstrumente, the slight wind blowing, the wood creaking against the metal.