“I was thinking you would.”
“One note at a time.”
“Okay, but Nathan? Here’s the thing: I’m not Bach. No one is.”
“One note. One bar. One phrase at a time. You will do this?”
I say nothing.
“You will do this.” Not a question this time.
“Okay. Yes. I will do this.”
We hang up. I sit down on the bench, wrap my arms around my legs, and bury my face in my knees.
One note, he said. All I need is one note.
I pick up my head. My guitar is lying on the bench next to me. As I reach for it, there’s a sudden screech of brakes from the street above me, then the sound of horns blasting. I hear a man yelling—he must’ve gotten out of his car—and then a snatch of a song playing, maybe from his radio—“Norwegian Wood.” It’s a beautiful, bitter tune. Written in the sixties by John Lennon with an assist from Paul McCartney on the middle eight.
I hold the guitar close against me and close my eyes and my fingers find it—that one note. The one Bach needed when a child died. The one John Lennon needed when he woke up alone. The one I need now.
I bungle the opening phrase. Twice. And then I hit it and I’m off, pulled along by Lennon’s wry and gorgeous hook, caught fast in his sad harmonies. Drowning in the music.
I play the song through and as the last notes lengthen and fade, I hear a tiny thud. I open my eyes and see a shiny euro lying in the guitar case. A man, older and carrying a cane, is walking away.
For a few seconds, I can’t figure it out, and then it dawns on me—he thinks I’m homeless. I can see how he would, since I’m sitting on a bench with my boots off and all my worldly possessions spread out around me, but still.
“Hey!” I shout. “Wait!”
I scoop up the coin and run after him in my stocking feet, guitar in hand. I tell him he made a mistake. I’m not homeless, it just looks that way. I try to hand the money back. He tells me I misunderstand. The money is not charity; it’s payment for my lovely music. He enjoyed it very much.
He looks wistful in his overcoat, with his gray hair and gray beard, and it must be the extra pill I took this morning because for a few seconds I see him. Not as he is. As he was. When he first heard that song. A young man in Paris. Did he once have a girl? I can see in his old, sad, beautiful eyes that he did.
He touches the brim of his hat. “Thank you, miss. Goodbye,” he says, and walks on.
I stare after him, and then at the coin in my hand. I put it in my pocket, sit down on the bench, and play.
One note at a time.
16
It’s Wednesday morning.
One day down, twenty to go.
I stayed out late last night to avoid my father. He had a dinner to go to and I didn’t come back here until I was certain he was gone. I stayed by the river and played guitar for hours. Then I went hunting for more junk shop treasures for my mother. I hit a late-night FedEx and sent it all to Vijay. Dr. Becker will only intercept anything I send directly to her so I’m hoping Vijay can smuggle the goods in during a visit. I called him and he said he’d try.
I’m sitting at one end of the dining room table now. I’ve taken the Vinaccia out of its case and laid it on the table and I’m fiddling with the case’s broken lock, waiting for my father to get off the phone. I want to talk to him. I’ve cooked up a plan. Because I can’t take one more day like yesterday, never mind three whole weeks like yesterday.
Dad’s sitting at the other end of the dining room table, talking with G on speakerphone. G goes into some detailed info on the Bourbons—Louis XVI’s family—and the Habsburgs—Marie-Antoinette’s. I keep fiddling with the prong, trying to get it to come up out of the bottom half of the lock, so the case will close properly. If someone picked it up by its handle, and the strap wasn’t wound around it, the guitar could fall out and break. I can’t bear to even think about that. I tried sticking a paper clip into the lock and wiggling it. It didn’t work. Neither did a pen cap, a corkscrew, or a fruit knife. Now I’m trying a plastic fork.
I hear Dad tell G goodbye. I twist the fork too hard and it breaks. A piece flies across the table and lands on my father’s laptop. He looks at me. I look at him. We’re not fighting at this particular moment, and when we’re not fighting, we don’t have much to say to each other.
“So … Paris, Belgium, and Germany, huh? G’s doing three sets of tests?” I say.
“Yes. It’s complicated,” Dad replies.
“I can handle complicated. I’m a genius, remember?”
He ignores that. “G wants to make sure no one can question the results of the tests. Either the science behind them or the agenda.”
“Agenda?” I say. “Why would there be—”
The intercom buzzer goes off, interrupting me.
“That’s my cab,” Dad says, shrugging into his coat.
“Hey, Dad, wait a second.…”
“What is it, Andi? I have to go,” he says.
“If I do my outline, can I go home?”
“You are going home. We have return flights booked for the twenty-third.”
“I mean earlier. If I get it done by the weekend, can I fly home on Sunday?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not? You said I had to get an outline done, so I’ll get it done. And when I get home, I’ll behave myself. I swear. I’ll call you every day. You can have Rupert Goode check up on me. Well, maybe not Rupert. How about Mrs. Gupta?”
“You’ve thought this all out,” he says, picking up his briefcase.
“Yeah, I have.”
He looks at me long and hard, and I look back at him long and hard and I’m surprised to see that there’s more gray in his hair, and there are more lines around his eyes, than I remember.
“I thought …” he starts to say, then shakes his head. “I don’t know what I thought. You used to like Paris so much.”
I don’t say anything. I still like Paris. Paris is not the problem and we both know it. But I’m not going to point that out. For once I’m going to keep my mouth shut. Because I desperately want him to say yes.
“All right. But there are conditions. Number one—the outline has to be good. Actually, it has to be excellent in order to get you out of the hole you’ve dug. I want to see A material, not C. Are you still set on doing the musical DNA idea? In PowerPoint?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then I want to see a good, solid draft of the introduction as well as the outline. So I can see how it’s all going to play out. Plus, I want the outline to show a general bibliography, primary sources, and a list of the visuals you intend to use.”
Yeesh. An intro as well as an outline. By Sunday.
“Do we have a deal?” he says.
“We do,” I say. And I mean it. I mean it so much that I’ve got the Vinaccia back in its case and one of G’s books on Malherbeau open on the table before Dad has his coat buttoned.
He pauses on his way out the door. “Well, I’m glad to see that something can motivate you,” he says. “Even if it’s only the thought of getting away from me.”
I try to think of something to say. Something nice, but not so wildly untrue that I’ll embarrass the both of us by saying it.
But it’s too late. The door slams. The sound echoes through the room.
He’s gone. Once again.
17
… so we see that 1795 was indeed a turning point for Malherbeau, the year he broke from the musical conventions of his time and forged a unique harmonic style. How? Why 1795? As yet, no one has answered these questions. Our knowledge of Malherbeau’s early life, his parentage, the town of his birth, his early musical education, is nonexistent. We know only that he arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1794 and, once there, began to earn his living by composing for the theater.
In the following chapter, we shall look at an early work—the Concerto in A Minor, also known as the Fireworks Concerto. Why Malherbeau
referred to the piece by this name, like much else about the composer, remains unknown. Unlike, for example, Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, commissioned by Britain’s George II to commemorate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, the Fireworks Concerto was not commissioned by royalty, nor are there records of its being played during a state event. Though the concerto lacks the sophistication and finesse of his later works, it is nonetheless of singular significance. Composed during the summer of 1795 in his rooms in the Marais, the Fireworks Concerto marks the beginning of Malherbeau’s abrupt and stunning harmonic reorientation.
I lean back in my chair and stretch. My stomach growls. I look at my watch. It’s almost three and I haven’t eaten a thing all day. I’ve been too busy reading. Trying to get some background on Amadé Malherbeau.
He’s a mystery. The books say a lot about his music, but not much about the man himself. He appeared in Paris at the age of nineteen, basically wrote Muzak for some city theaters, then quit and started writing the stuff that made him famous. He never married or had children, and he made enough money by his forties to buy a swank house by the Bois de Boulogne. He died at the age of fifty-eight and left the house to the Paris Conservatory.
It’s a start, but I’m going to need a lot more or I’m not getting out of here on Sunday, and I’ve already booked my ticket. I couldn’t get a normal flight to New York on such short notice—something that departs in the morning and gets me into the city the same day. All I could get was a flight that departs Orly at nine p.m. and involves a seven-hour layover in Dublin. It’s going to be a nightmare, but it’s either that or wait until the twenty-third, which would be a bigger nightmare.
Now … where else can I find more on Malherbeau?
The old guitar case is lying across from me on the table. I pull it over so I can mess with the lock while I’m thinking. G said there was a collection of Malherbeau’s music at the Abelard Library. Which is in central Paris. I could go there and look at the collection. Maybe photograph it. That would be both a primary source and a visual. I could go to Malherbeau’s house and check out his stuff. Take a look at the portrait that’s hanging there. And then what? This is hard. People like Vijay with his quotes from world leaders really raise the bar.
That prong is still stuck. It won’t budge no matter how much I jiggle it. It’s really pissing me off. I head to the kitchen and start digging around. Five minutes later, I reemerge with a nail set, a screwdriver, a crochet hook, and a bottle of olive oil.
I take the guitar out of the case, then move the case to the middle of the table, right under the chandelier so I can see what I’m doing. I tilt it on its side, drip a tiny bit of oil into the lock and get to work.
Half an hour later I’m nowhere. The nail set wouldn’t fit into the lock. The screwdriver was useless and I bent the crochet hook. I’m really mad now and leaning way over the table, trying to tilt the case just right so that the light from the chandelier shines directly into the lock, when I hear a soft little clunk.
I look down. It’s Truman’s key. It slipped out of my shirt and knocked against the side of the case. What are the chances, I wonder? I take the key off and try it. It fits into the lock, but it won’t budge when I try to turn it. I twist it a little harder. Just a little. I don’t want to break anything. Still nothing. I try to pull the key back out but it’s stuck.
I start to panic. I shouldn’t have taken it off. I never take it off. I twist it again—too hard. My hand slips and I slice a knuckle on the edge of the lock. I suck on the cut, then try again. I want Truman’s key back.
I’m pulling and pushing and twisting it as hard as I can. My fingers are hurting and my knuckle’s bleeding and I’m swearing and about to give up when suddenly there’s a scraping sound and the key turns and the prong rises and sinks again, but the key keeps turning. It should stop, but it doesn’t. It’s still turning and suddenly there’s a kachunk sound and a thin crack appears along the side of the case.
I’ve broken it. Oh, shit no. I look closer, wondering how in the world I’m going to explain this to G, and I see that the crack’s perfectly straight with no splintery edges, which is weird. I wedge my fingers into it, widening it a little, and a strange spicy smell wafts out. There’s a bit of resistance, and then I hear a small, soft sound, like a groan. The top slowly raises, and as it does, I gasp.
Because underneath it is Truman’s face. Looking up at me.
18
“It’s the drugs,” I whisper. “I took too many pills again. I’m seeing things.”
I close my eyes tight. But when I open them again, he’s still here.
A few seconds later, when my heart stops trying to crash through my ribs, I see that it’s not Truman’s face at all—it’s another boy’s. But still, I know it somehow. It’s painted on a small oval of ivory, framed in gold. The boy’s eyes are blue, his hair is blond and curling like Truman’s, but his features are different, more delicate. He’s wearing an old-fashioned lace-collar shirt and a gray jacket.
Next to it, pressed down into the velvet lining, is a little muslin sack tied with a blue ribbon. I pick it up, press it to my nose—cloves. There’s a book, too—small and leather-bound with no title. I open it. The pages are stiff, brown at the edges, and covered with writing. The first one has a date on it—20 April 1795. That’s over two hundred years ago. Which is kind of mind-blowing.
Can this book possibly be that old? I start reading. It’s slow going. The French is old-fashioned and the writing is wild and scrawly.
20 April 1795
History is fiction.
Robespierre said that and he should know. For the last three years, he has written it.
It is my turn now.
These pages you now hold in your hands are no fiction. They are a truthful account of these bitter, bloody days. I write them in haste and in hope—hope that by reading what is contained within them, the world will learn the truth. Because the truth will make you free.
Robespierre did not say that. Jesus did. And lest you think me a fool, I am well aware what became of him.
If you have found this account, then I am lost. And this last role I have played, that of Green Man, over.
But he still lives. In fear and misery—yet he does live. Plots are hatched to free him, but they fail.
Do what I could not. Get this account out of Paris. Get it to London, to a Fleet Street man there who can print it and put it about. Once the world knows the truth, he will be free.
Only make haste. Please, please make haste.
They keep him in the Tower, in a cold, dark room with one window, small and high. The guards are cruel. There is no stove to warm him. No privy. His filth piles up in a corner. He has no playthings. No books. Nothing but rats. What food he is given, he puts in a corner, to draw them off. He does not know his mother is dead and writes these words with a stone on his wall—Mama, please …
You know of whom I speak. The prisoner in the Tower. Yes, he.
Do not close these pages. Read on, I beg you. Once you were brave. Once you were kind. You can be so again.
My name is Alexandrine Paradis.
I am seventeen years of age.
I will not last much longer.
I stop reading.
The writer mentions Robespierre and a prisoner in a tower.
That Robespierre? That prisoner?
“Can’t be,” I say. “No way.”
I pick up the miniature of the boy. I look at his face, at his solemn blue eyes, and I realize where I’ve seen him before—in G’s stack of photographs, the ones he and Dad were looking at the night we arrived. There was one of the son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, mixed in with the photos of the heart in the glass urn.
What happened to those photos? Where did they go? I think back to that dinner—Lili got mad at G and scooped them all off the table. Where did she put them? I start hunting, still clutching the tiny portrait. The photos aren’t on the dining table. They aren’t in the kitchen.
They aren’t on top of the coffee table. And they aren’t on any of the bookshelves. Maybe they’re not here at all. Maybe they’re in Dad’s briefcase. Maybe G took them to Belgium. I keep looking and nearly pounce when I finally spot them on top of a stack of books.
I riffle through them, find the one I want, and hold it next to the portrait. The clothes are different. The hair in the miniature is longer. But still, it’s him—Louis-Charles, the lost king of France.
“Can’t be,” I say again.
But it is, a voice inside me whispers.
It is.
19
I put the photo away. Put the portrait back in the case. And the diary, too. And then I lock it as fast as I can.
I tell myself it’s a bummer, that diary, a sorry trip. And I don’t need someone else’s sorry trip. I’m already on one of my own.
But the truth is that I’m afraid of it and I don’t know why. Reading it feels like taking candy from strangers. Hitchhiking. Riding the subway late at night.
I flop down on the sofa, turn on G’s TV, and watch CNN. Two minutes later, I turn it off, call Vijay, and get his voice mail. I pick up the book I’m reading on Amadé Malherbeau and flip it open.
… the surviving scores show us that his pieces for the theater were pleasing but undistinguished. In no way did they presage the brilliance and complexity of his later work…