CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After Patrick left, I called Cassie back to decline dinner and absolutely refuse to appear on Gordy & Jill Talk! She was shocked by my lack of gratitude and good sense. All I had to do was drop by the studio for a cheery hello. What could be simpler? Believe it or not, I still said no.

The day was growing blustery. I pulled on a raincoat over jeans and a sweater, then headed to Fred’s. He was just leaving when I got there. Things were different between Fred and me, mainly because things were different between Fred and Cassie. He had colluded with her, kept secrets from me, and I was afraid to know the details. But he was still my pal and I needed his love.

“Ready for your big day tomorrow?”

“Guess so.”

“I’m sorry about, you know, things that have happened.”

“Yeah, well, you let me keep a piano in your living room. That counts for a lot.”

We fell into a comfortable hug, then Fred left with a wave.

Hoffman and Pardo were peering out from her apartment door. I said hello. They acted like my biggest fans, proud to know me from when I was a nobody. Cassie had sent me a handful of complimentary concert tickets. I’d given some to my writing students (I hadn’t seen them in weeks!), but I still had four left. I offered Hoffman and Pardo a pair. They already had choice seats, but I gave them a pair anyway, to give to friends. Mrs. Pardo was going to call her daughter to see if she could come in from Baltimore for the concert. Maybe she could sit next to Fred.

My next stop was Danny’s. He wasn’t home but his mother was.

“Please tell Danny I’m sorry I missed him,” I said. “I brought him tickets for my concert. I know he already has his, but I figured he could bring friends.”

“He’s already going with friends, I believe.” Once again, Ilsa Shales looked awfully elegant for an afternoon at home.

“Of course. Well, I really wanted to thank him for being so helpful. He’s been so nice, a real pleasure.”

Ilsa studied me through ice-blue eyes. Her lipstick was perfect.

“Maybe you’d like two tickets?” I said. “For you and your husband, I mean. I need to give them away anyway. You’re welcome to them.”

Her first honest smile broke through, complete with dimples.

“Yes? That’s very nice of you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

She took the tickets and gazed at them with surprising joy. You’d have thought they were gold.

I caught the subway at Court Street. This trip felt nothing like my first jaunt uptown with Franz, when we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and danced our way through Manhattan. The journey had become routine. Franz was no longer amazed by garish subway posters and dire smells. The only new thing was a nagging, can’t-turn-back-now sense of dread. It followed me through the city, mocked my attempts at optimism, and enveloped me as I met Greta at her studio.

“You are late, Miss Durbin,” Greta pointed out. “One hour late, yes? This is your habit, maybe, but not tomorrow. You understand?”

“I’ll be there at six. I promise.”

“No, you won’t,” she said, “but try.”

Greta’s nerves were showing, too. She insisted we go back to Carnegie Hall so she could give me, one last time, the Miss Manners version of concert protocol. Enter from here, walk this way, sit thus, play music, intermission, enter again, play more, bow gracefully, take an encore, go home.

Greta led me through it like a child, and I didn’t object. I needed it badly. If only she would hold my hand as we walked across the stage. Empty seats gaped at us. Soon they would be filled with discerning music lovers paying big bucks to see the justifiably unknown Liza Durbin.

“Schubert will play for you,” Greta said, noting my fear. “All you must do is behave well. You’ll be fine, yes? Just comb your hair, remember your posture, and wear a decent dress, please.”

“Don’t worry, my sister’s taken care of the dress.”

I didn’t say that to scare her, just to make myself laugh. Greta sneered.

“I plan to introduce you to the audience personally,” she said. “A bit unusual, but necessary, I think. You don’t mind?”

“No, I appreciate it. You’ll know the right thing to say.”

“Naturally.”

Then Greta announced she had things to do in her studio and scurried toward an exit. I stayed behind, said I’d catch up with her later at Juilliard. She didn’t seem to hear or care.

Most of the Carnegie Hall staff recognized me, either through personal introductions or news stories. They left me in peace as I circled the lobby, wandered through hallways, touched the walls, and climbed the stairs to explore the upper levels. I was searching for the building’s soul.

Old signed photographs dotted the walls to show that Pablo Casals, George Gershwin, Prokofiev, and the Beatles never entirely left the building. As I passed these images, my brain volunteered snippets of their music. Franz begged for more. He tingled.

On the first tier, I found the Rose Museum with the door wide open. A heavyset black man in a sharp-looking suit was making notes on a yellow pad.

“Hello there, come on in.” A deep voice, nurtured in the South. “Liza Durbin, right?”

“That’s me,” I said. “Nice museum.”

“Glad to meet you, Liza. I’m Joseph Alexander.” He had a full, warm handshake. A graying goatee outlined his smile and offset his glossy bald head. “You have good taste. The Rose is my baby. I’m curator here, see the stuff every day, and I still get a kick out of it. Check out these instruments. Benny Goodman’s clarinet, Satchmo’s horn, Toscanini’s baton, a Stradivarius played by Paganini. Lots more, let me show you.”

He walked me over to a glass case and pointed to his treasures. The room buzzed with the power of these mementos. My chest filled up with visiting spirits, leaving barely enough room for my breath.

“I suppose you’d want to see the Beethoven manuscripts,” Joseph Alexander said.

“Beethoven? What do you have of Beethoven’s?”

“A few pieces still on exhibit from a show we did last year. Original manuscripts, written by the man himself.”

Joseph showed me to a case displaying several pages of music. No question of authenticity. Franz recognized the writing. He once received letters in that handwriting and deeply loved the man. Tears flowed, not for a dead genius but for lost friends.

For the first time, I understood Franz’s extreme loneliness. My life and the people in it were not companions to Franz. Neither was I, really. We mostly communicated as necessary about music and logistics. He once had real friends who talked and joked and argued with him. They ate together and played music into the night. He was acquainted with the likes of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. I realized that the world I inhabited must seem stilted and depleted to him.

“Are you all right, Liza? Can I get you some water? Maybe you’d like to sit down.”

I must have been a pathetic sight to Joseph Alexander, crying helplessly in his Rose Museum. I tried to pull myself together, without much success.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Joseph said, handing me a monogrammed handkerchief. “I’m not a musician like you, but I am a music lover. Studied music myself but I didn’t have the talent. It’s not enough to love the music, is it? Gotta be blessed with the talent.”

I nodded in understanding, having recently crossed that divide.

“Listen, I get emotional myself sometimes,” he said. “I hear Marian Anderson’s voice and that’s it, I’m lost. Some other time, it’s Dizzy Gillespie gets to me. Doesn’t matter, when you love the music your soul is open to it. Wouldn’t be fun if you couldn’t feel it.”

Was my soul door wide open when Franz first came to me? Maybe he had been floating in the ether, waiting for a receptive being to give him water and light to grow again. Maybe my core needed something to nourish.

“Yes, you have to be open to it,” I agreed. “I think I’ve had enough fun here, though. I’m gonna do some more exploring, if that’s okay.”

“You do that.” I started to leave when he called my name. “Just want you to know we’re rooting for you tomorrow night. You knock ’em dead, all right?”

I walked downstairs to tour the orchestra level. Carnegie Hall had taken hold of me and Franz.

When you visit holy sites, whether it’s in Jerusalem or Tibet, you can feel the energy of the millions of prayers that have settled in the stone. Music infused Carnegie Hall that way. Melody dripped from the curtains, the floors vibrated. Strands of song clung to the seats like stray hairs.

The main floor was deserted and I took a seat at third row, center. This was a chance to inhale Carnegie Hall air, to feel it race through my lungs and turn my blood a brighter red.

I threw my feet over the chair in front of me and leaned back to stargaze at the soaring ceiling. My eyes traveled across the upper tiers. Elegant boxes arced around the room, cradled in carved woodwork. The red carpet (what else?) and red velvet seats vibrated against the creamy tones and gold accents on wood and walls. Straight ahead, ornate columns and architectural flourishes framed the stage and wooden floor. Anyone on that stage would look glorious.

They knew how to build concert halls in the 1890s. New York has newer theaters that may be more comfortable or better equipped in some ways. Still, they aren’t built today with the same loving, if impractical, grace. Our architects and technical wizards use effective, sometimes unaesthetic, tools for fuller acoustic effect. The Carnegie Hall builders had no techno-tricks to fall back on. They used lush, molded plaster, fine woods, and masterly construction. They created a structure that still feels alive after more than a century.

Of course, Carnegie Hall is more than building materials and design. It was the house of Mahler, Paderewski, Caruso, Isadora Duncan, Dvořák, Jascha Heifetz, Richard Strauss—and, soon enough, Franz Schubert. He was among peers here. His antenna sought them out, invited them in. We became aware of them, whispering among themselves and waltzing in the aisles. Wisps of music sighed in our ears. Visions rippled in the air, dissolving quicker than my eyes could focus.

An orchestra of vastly different sounds swelled together, rising from the stage and flooding the orchestra. The cacophony should have been awful; it was hypnotic. Floating chords and wild rhythms found one another, then moved on. Vivid colors melted into coral reefs, and living sounds swam through them.

More than ever before, Franz and I became we. We connected with otherworld spirits that would never have bothered with me on my own. Musicians, dancers, and singers drifted into our mind, summoning us to their dimension. Their voices were familiar to Franz, spoke a language he knew. They made him happy.

The usual barriers between body and mind dissolved of their own accord. Sound and sight splintered into uncountable facets, regrouping in fantastic manifestations. A thousand phantoms lifted us at their whim and tossed us around the room like a dry leaf on a windy day. From far above the balcony we inhaled symphonies. It was all quite marvelous until strange and terrifying words sprang from our mouth.

“Ich sehe. Ich höre!”

No!

“Ich bin lebendig.”

No, Franz, no!

“Ich bin lebendig, ich bin lebendig!”

NO, NO, NO! STOP THIS, FRANZ, STOP IT!

Ich kann fliegen . . . I can fly. She doesn’t realize it. The music makes it possible,and these friends. But I must not stay away long from her, my home, or I might get lost and vanish.

Wouldn’t I?