CHAPTER NINE

Why did she believe me?

I woke with the obvious question goose-stepping through my brain. Why on earth did Greta Pretsky believe me? Was Mom so persuasive or was my story too outlandish to be invented? Maybe Mom sent Greta Pretsky the tape we made that first day and was afraid I’d be angry. And how did my mother know Greta, anyway?

Everyone else needed a piano demonstration first, but Dr. Pretsky was ready to believe me. Maybe that’s why I chose to believe in her. Also, I knew there was more to her story, and I was dying to hear it.

The clock next to my bed glowed greenly in the dark. Five-fifteen. Too early to take the subway up to Juilliard. I drank hot coffee and stared out the window into the dark. I can look across a small courtyard and right into other apartments from my living room. No lights on yet, no neighbor to send a silent good morning to. So I went to my bedroom, where the one tall window faces Manhattan. Standing on a chair, in full giraffe stretch, I could just get a peek of the skyline, where lights always burn and someone’s always awake.

My back and neck ached from days perched at a piano. A little outdoor exercise appealed to me.

I had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge before, but never at dawn. Imagine the sight. New York straight ahead, glowing from within, bulging with dreamery. Soon the giant would wake and the daily chaos would kick in. Already the docks and garbage trucks and food markets must be bustling, but I couldn’t see them from the bridge. At first light, it was just me and a few hardy walkers and cyclists on the pedestrian overpass. No traffic, no noise, not a hint of chaos.

I walked through the Lower East Side, up through Soho, and toward Greenwich Village. Franz was up and alert, not missing a sound or smell. I wanted to experience it through his senses. He and I slid into the we state—effortlessly and by choice this time. The city became richer, dirtier, brighter, more of everything. We’d stop, head turned up in tourist pose, to stare at glorious buildings I’d never once noticed. Each one had a symphony in it. We sniffed outside a bakery door, caressed the granite of a stoic building, then sat for a while on a hard green bench in Washington Square.

A bearded old man in an oversized coat was setting up his chessboard in the park, eager for the day’s first challenger. A black teenager in ski cap and gloves jumped off his bike and approached the man. He took a seat and they started playing without a word. A pretty NYU student in high purple boots walked by with her Irish wolfhound, and the boy was distracted for just that moment. So was the man. Aside from that, nothing existed for them except the game.

We wandered up Broadway, admiring the exotica in store windows. Then suddenly it was nine-thirty, time to pick up the pace. We crossed to Fifth Avenue and charged uptown like an express train, no wasteful stops planned. But I can never pass St. Patrick’s Cathedral without a look inside. We walked up one aisle and down the other, nodding at each saint. The vaulted ceiling waved at God, and the daylight through stained-glass windows was transformed into wisps of heaven. An angel sang Ave Maria in the voice that Franz wrote it for.

Franz would have stayed at St. Patrick’s all day. I had to resort to my voodoo bag just to make him leave.

And suddenly it was eleven, and Juilliard was still a long way off. I grudgingly hailed a cab.

“Juilliard, please, Sixty-sixth and Broadway.” Just saying it out loud made my innards crawl.

“You are musician?” Friendly driver, definitely foreign.

“No, not really. I’m going to see someone at Juilliard, though. I’m a little nervous. Very nervous, really. Sort of a musician, I guess.”

“Sort of musician? That’s funny, ha! I am great musician.” He laughed at his own words. He was well over forty and had deep brown skin with patches of charcoal gray. His accent was from a galaxy far, far away, and his voice was thick and spongy.

“I sing now for you.”

I braced myself for frog belches. I heard, instead, mahogany and spring-water.

It could only be African. The rhythm was as interesting as the melody, and he added clicks and claps occasionally. I imagined it as a folk song about drought and love. While I found it lovely, Franz was completely enraptured.

For the first time it occurred to me that I hadn’t been much of a musical guide to Franz. He’d heard music in a haphazard way since he emerged, mostly stuff I knew and happened to like. But he’d missed almost two centuries of music. Even when he was alive, he couldn’t have heard much from the world beyond Europe. I decided to be a better host.

The cab stopped, and it was a struggle to leave our driver in mid-song. I heard myself asking for his name, and did he have any tapes or CDs and could we keep in touch. He was Moreno Abdi from Kenya. He sang ancient songs, plus originals of his own. He happened to have CDs for sale—sixteen dollars, only for you—and he gave me a phone number. Moreno seemed genuinely pleased with my enthusiasm. Why not? I was a musician, sort of, and Juilliard-bound.

Cornell has a great campus. Marvelous old buildings woven out of granite and ivy. Stunning grounds, a funky college town, and a knock-your-socks-off gorge. The first time I saw it, I danced around the campus, giddy that they’d actually accepted me.

But the Juilliard campus, that’s really something else.

It’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, to be specific. Which means the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, Avery Fisher Hall, and all the rest. The buildings surround a wide plaza with fountains, the classic romantic backdrop seen in Hollywood movies. I’d been there many times—grabbing the cheap seats as a student and, more recently, for extravagant nights out. That’s how it should be. An air of intimidating excellence shall prevail, where the shiniest stars present their wares and you feel honored to pay outlandish prices just to be there. And here I was, sneaking in without a ticket.

I found the Juilliard building easily, picked up my visitor’s pass, and ran for the elevator. Fourth floor, to the right. I passed a long row of small, windowed rooms. Muffled music of all kinds escaped closed doors and mingled in the hall. I asked a tall kid with a trumpet to point me to Dr. Pretsky. Her studio was an ordinary classroom with a piano, and I nearly knocked her over as I charged in.

She had her purse and a bundle of books under one arm and was buttoning her heavy cardigan, ready to leave. No smile for me today.

“Is this what you consider first thing in the morning, Miss Durbin?” My mother’s tone of voice exactly, but foreign.

“It’s not noon yet, is it?” This was a question, not a wisecrack.

“No, it’s not noon, but the morning is gone. I canceled my morning appointments for you and you don’t even know what time it is.”

“I’m so sorry, really. I got up early and left before dawn, and I don’t know what happened, but I’m really, really sorry.” She looked disapproving but relieved to see me. “Let me buy you lunch, Dr. Pretsky. At least let me do that. We can talk.”

The only ordinary things in the Juilliard cafeteria were the food and the tables. The people resembled exotic birds ready to unleash a song or fly out a window. Between conversations, they vocalized, stretched, rehearsed lines, or scribbled notes. Most intimidating were the dancers, impossibly thin girls with elegant swan postures, laughing with their young princes and chowing down on fries. One swan with long black hair had a ketchup blob on her chin that she wiped away with heartbreaking grace. Her toes pointed outward, even when sitting.

“I’ve got some books for you here,” Dr. Pretsky said. “The basics, yes? You don’t have time to become an expert overnight, but you cannot remain completely ignorant.”

“Is that Itzhak Perlman over there?” I said.

“I want to hear you play, of course, but my afternoon is fully booked and I’m going to the theater tonight. Can you come after that? Later is good, not so many people around.”

I was awed. “Yes, it is Itzhak Perlman! Does he teach here? You know him?”

“What time can you be here?”

Perlman sat with a middle-aged Asian woman dressed in black. He was excited and gesturing, laughing at times. She looked like a thunderstorm.

“Miss Durbin?”

“Eleven. How’s eleven? Late enough?”

She nodded, then looked at her watch and left abruptly.

I sat there a long time, feeling like a warthog among butterflies. What made these people different? Did they have gorgeous genetic code to make them more creative and charismatic than other earthlings? I could make music now, but I wasn’t born special. I was the lichen on a giant redwood, the last coat of paint on a yacht—serviceable, but useless on my own. I searched their faces for something familiar. Maybe Shakespeare or Maria Callas had nestled into someone’s soul and ignited the kind of artistry that gets you into Juilliard. I saw nothing. Franz was looking, too, but at something else.

This world was his. These were the artists he knew, friends from another life. He fell in love a hundred times or more.