City of Lost Dreams

TWELVE

Pollina Rutherford was tired. Her head was very stuffy and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. God was increasing His tests of her every day. She took her hands off the keyboard and began massaging them. Oksana had taught her some stretching exercises, and Pols was supposed to do them every few hours. The girl stood up. Max had given her a private rehearsal space at the palace and outfitted it with everything she might need.

“Boris. Yoga mat,” she said in a loud, firm voice.

She listened to the sound of her elderly mastiff rising, heard the jingle of his collar make its way to a corner of the room, then cross to her. Boris nudged her knee and deposited his favorite chew toy, a mangled stuffed lion missing its tail, at her feet.

“Good boy,” said Pols. Her dog was becoming nearly as deaf as she was blind. He was also pretty blind. It was important to consider his feelings, though, and be encouraging. Boris may not be able to see her, or hear her, but he knew she wanted something, and he had offered her the best thing he possessed.

Pollina shut her mind to the thought that Boris would not be around forever. It would be impious to feel sad about Boris dying, since his death would deliver him to the arms of God. Also, she still had music to learn today.

A blind musician could learn music in one of two ways. The first was to read Braille manuscripts, a laborious and time-consuming process, as she had to use one hand to read and the other to play, and then switch, and then combine both parts. Pollina had once described this process to Sarah as being like trying to understand a book by reading every other word, then going back and reading all the words you missed, and then combining them. Sarah had gotten in touch with several assistance programs for the visually impaired and found a network of people who volunteered to record themselves reading scores for the blind, note by note.

Pollina wondered how long it would take Sarah to realize that science was good, but art was better. Sarah was a natural conductor and she needed Sarah to conduct her opera. She had decided that it would be about the Golden Fleece. There would be a lot of conflicting musical motifs, and Sarah would be able to control the musicians. She could be quite impressive when she put her mind to it, and very perceptive for a sighted person. Pols reached down, scratched Boris’s head, and, feeling that she had rested long enough, sat back down at the piano. She put the earbuds of her iPod back in.

Memorizing Mozart took a lot of concentration. She had to be quite disciplined and focus simply on the notes until she had it. Otherwise she had a tendency to drift while learning, feeling Wolfgang’s thought process, his energy, his joy, his pain. These things were very distracting.

Pols flexed her fingers over the keyboard and repeated a passage. And again. And again. Her mind was drifting. She was tired. She was dreaming a lot. Bad dreams. About Sarah, and a round white room. She didn’t feel very well, to be honest. There was pain. Sometimes it was in just her lungs, and sometimes it was everywhere.

And the pain was bad. She needed to think about something else. Someone else. That was the way out of pain.

Sarah is in danger.

The voice was clear in her head. Pols stopped playing and stood up.

She heard voices in her head. She always had. These voices came from God, and so there was no question of Pols being crazy. She was not crazy. Sarah was in danger.

Nico had said he would be going to see Sarah in Vienna. Nico was a good protector, but he didn’t always take things seriously. She should speak with him. Pollina thought he was probably with Max in his study.

“We’re going to go see Max,” she shouted at Boris. “Good boy.” Boris barked an assent, pleased to have a job. They moved into the hallway. Pols knew the palace well and she did not need her cane here. She moved down the hall, touching the walls lightly with her fingertips.

Oksana was in Max’s office, too. Pollina could hear her voice in the hallway. Oksana wasn’t happy with the way her body was responding to the drugs. Maybe she would make the doctors stop forcing her to take them. They really only seemed to make things worse.

It would not be right to eavesdrop on their conversation. It would, however, be polite to wait until they stopped talking. And if she accidentally overheard things from the hallway? Well, she couldn’t help having good hearing. She was blind and her nose was stuffed up! She only had two operating senses!

“This man who accosted you in the church,” Nico was saying, “I can’t find any trace of him. I checked homeless shelters and mental health clinics.”

“Maybe faster to ask my friends to find him,” Oksana said.

“Is there any place the Russian mafia isn’t connected?” Max asked.

“No,” said Nico and Oksana simultaneously.

“You want me also run check on Harriet?” Oksana asked. “Is routine in good families to do background check on girlfriends. The ones who don’t, they are sorry.”

That’s when Pollina heard it. A very small noise coming from the door next to Max’s office. But that was Max’s bathroom. She moved quickly to the door and wrenched it open.

“Oh!” said a voice, and then the sound of the toilet seat squeaking and movement. Harriet, Max’s stupid girlfriend. “Oh, hello!”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, not to worry. I had quite finished and it’s just us girls!” Toilet flushing, and then Harriet stepped past, clacking in her high heels. “Pollina, dear, may I help you with anything?”

Pols could hear a sudden silence from Max’s office.

“Bathroom,” she mumbled, stepping in and shutting the door. Well, Harriet wasn’t going to make her a liar. She would go since she was here. She reached forward.

Funny. The lid was down. She hadn’t heard Harriet put the lid down, just flush. And the top of the lid was warm. So Harriet had just been sitting there? No. Pollina had heard bare feet on the tiles of the bathroom and then Harriet had walked past her in heels. She had been standing on the toilet. Why?

The answer became clear when Pols stood on the toilet herself. She was smaller than Harriet, but reaching up she could feel that the sound was coming through a small grated vent. A taller person could put her ear against that vent. Pols didn’t need the vent, though. Her ears were sharp enough to hear what Harriet must have been listening to.

“Oh, Harriet,” said Max, in his office. “Come in. Nico and Oksana were just leaving.”