The door I had entered was locked, so I climbed the side steps to the stage, over the orchestra pit where she had imagined she would one day play, where she had taken the pearls that had started all the trouble. Or had I imagined that, too? It was easy to imagine things, on that sloping stage with the crimson seats fanning out behind me and the dim gold-trimmed boxes above them. There could have been generations of ghosts here. Operatic ghosts: drowning Rhinemaidens and lost Eurydices and consumptive bohemian girls. I picked my way through the theatrical wreckage, over the plastic Kalashnikovs and the coloured balaclavas, to the wasteworld of ropes and pulleys and old scenic backdrops behind. I found a door there that would have led to a back- or side-street, and pushed the bar on it, prodded it open. The wave of late-summer heat struck me, but I was cold inside it. There was a tobacconist, pulling down the shutters over the window of his narrow little shop. I closed the door behind me and was walking down the metal steps when my phone rang.
You’re late, Sarah said. She’ll be waiting. And I can’t believe you’d be late for her at a time like this.
No, she said, it was yours.
I shut off the phone and I ran. In a daze, or a panic, across the boulevard.
There was no one waiting for me on those wide steps when I reached them. A few students walking down them, with their music cases. There was the sound of a loud flute, playing the same phrase repeatedly, like someone’s favourite ringtone. I ran up the steps, through the doors, into the dark interior, and the sweat was running down my hands. There were two broad staircases on either side of the wall, with high churchlike windows. The evening sun was pouring through them, catching dust and wheeling midges in the yellow light. I took the stairs two at a time, and had reached the balcony above before I heard it.
The series of triplets, with one note ascending. Played on a violin.
I turned. There was a dim corridor, with doors on the left-hand side. A series of benches. Two young girls sitting on them, their violin cases between their knees.
The melody then, like a country dance.
I followed it to an open door.
Jenny was standing in a dusty room, her small head cocked to one side, playing the sixth cello suite, in the cool verdant key of D major.
Her teacher turned to me and blinked, her eyes huge behind her glasses.
You’ve paid for extra lessons?
I said nothing.
Money well spent, she said. She has positively—
She stood then. Took the bow from Jenny’s hand.
. . . leapt ahead. This new teacher is quite remarkable.
She opened Jenny’s case, placed the bow inside it.
It sometimes happens. A pupil makes the old teacher redundant.
She grimaced slightly. Took off her glasses. Wiped her eyes.
Stick with the new one, then, I would say.
She took the violin from Jenny’s chin. Placed it inside and closed the case over.
It has been a pleasure, thus far. I will leave her in the hands of – what is her name, dear?
Petra, Jenny said.
Petra, she repeated. I would have thought the cello suites were too advanced for these tiny hands.
And she took Jenny’s hands in her own. The veins stood out above the bones.
But we have heard the evidence. I would have been wrong.