Violin

Chapter 12

This was a narrow canal; the gondola had turned from the Canale Grande into the strip of dark green reeking water between the rows of shoulder-to-shoulder palaces, windows of Moorish arches, all color bled out in the darkness. Great overbearing facades of clustered splendor rooted in water, an arrogance, a glory, this: Venice. Its walls on either side were so drenched and glazed with slime in the lamplight that Venice might have likely risen from the depths, bringing up nocturnal rot into the moon's light with sinister ambition.

Now I understood for the first time the sleekness of the gondola, the sly black facility of this long, high-prowed boat for striving swift between these stony banks, beneath these rocking feeble lanterns.

Young Stefan sat in the gondola, talking frantically to Paganini.

The man himself, Paganini, seemed enraptured. Paganini, with the large hooked nose and giant protuberant eyes given him in many a painting, a burning presence in which drama has surpassed ugliness effortlessly to make pure magnetism.

In our invisible window on this world, the ghost beside me shud dered. I kissed the fingers curled on my shoulder.

Venice.

From a high flapping shuttered window that opened out like a perfect square of yellow in the night, a woman threw flowers, shouting in Italian, the light spilling down on the blooms as they tumbled onto the virtuoso, her sentence ringing in a peculiarly Italian crescendo:

"Blessed Paganini, that he would play without recompense for the dead!" Like a necklace with the very mid-phrase flung out the farthest and then breath drawn back on the word for the dead.

Others echoed the same cry. Shutters opened above. From a rooftop, running figures heaved roses from baskets onto the green water ahead of the boat.

Roses, roses, roses.

Laughter shot up the damp crawling stones; the doors were alive with hidden listeners. Shapes hovered in the alleyways, and a man darted over the bridge just above as the gondola went under it. A woman in the very middle of the bridge leant down to bare her breasts in the light of the passing lantern.

"To study with you, I came," said Stefan, in the gondola, to Paganini. "I came with the clothes on my back, and without my father's blessing. I had to hear you with my own ears, and it was not the Devil's music, curse those who say that, it was the enchantment yes, ancient, most likely true, but not the Devil in this."

A great rip of laughter came from the more hunched figure of Paganini, whites of his eyes bright in the dark. Beside him, a woman clung to him, like a hump growing all over his left side, with only a handful of red curls snaking down his coat.

"Prince Stefanovsky," said the great Italian, the idol, the Byronic fiddler par excellence, the romantic love of little girls, "I've heard of you and your talent, of your house in Vienna, where Beethoven himself presents his work, and that once Mozart came there to give you lessons. I know who you are, you rich Russians. You take your gold from a bottomless coffer in the hands of the Czar."

"Don't mistake me," Stefan said, gentle, respecting, desperate. "I have money to pay you well for these lessons, Siguore Paganini," said Stefan. "I have a violin, my own, my cherished Stradivarius. I didn't dare to bring my violin, traveling the post roads, days and nights to get here, I came alone. But I have money. I had to hear you first, to know that you would accept me, that you see me as worthy-"

"Oh, but Prince Stefanovsky, must I school you on the history of Czars and their Princes? Your father is not going to permit you to study with the peasant Niccolo'

Paganini. Your destiny is the service of the Czar, as it has always been with your family.

Music was a pastime in your house, oh, don't take offense, I know that Metternich himself'-he leant forward to whisper to Stefan-" the happy little dictator himself, plays the violin and well, and I have played for him. But for a Prince to become what I have become. Prince Stefanovsky, I live by this, my violin!" He gestured to the instrument in its case of polished wood, which seemed ever so much like a tiny coffin. "And you my handsome Russian youth must live by Russian tradition and Russian duty. The military awaits you. Honors. Service in the Crimea."

Cries of praise from above. Torches at the dock. Women in rustling clothes rushing up against a new and steeper bridge. Pink nipples in the night, bodices laid back like wrapping to display them.

"Paganini, Paganini."

Roses again, falling down on the man as he brushed them away and looked intently at Stefan. The great cloaked hump of the woman beside him flashed a white hand down in the dark between Paganini's legs, fingers playing as if his private parts were a lyre, if not a violin. He seemed not even to notice.

"Believe me, I want your money," Paganini said. "I need it. Yes, I play for the dead, but you know of my stormy life, the lawsuits, the entanglements. But I am a peasant, Prince, and I will not give up my itinerant victories to prison myself up in Vienna in a drawing room with you-ah, the critical Viennese, the bored Viennese, the Viennese who did not even give Mozart his bread and butter; did you know him, Mozart?

No, and you cannot remain with me. Already, no doubt, Metternich, at your father's behest, has sent someone to look for you. I'll become accused of some nasty treason in all this."

Stefan was crushed, head bowed, cheeks so tender with pain, and deep-framed eyes glittering with the reflected light from the torpid but shiny water.

An interior:

A Venetian room, unkempt and blistered from the damp, chalky dark walls and soaring yellow ceiling with only faded remnants of a pagan swarm that had burnt so new and bright before its death in Stefan's rich Viennese palace. A long drape, a slash of dark dusty burgundy velvet and a deep green satin tangled with it, hung from a high hook, and out the narrow window, I saw the ochre colored wall of tile palace opposite so close that one could reach across the alley if one wished and knock upon the solid wood green shutters.

The unmade bed was heaped with tapestried robes and crumpled linen shirts with costly Reticella lace, the tables stacked with letters, wax seals broken, and here and there lay the stubs of candles. Everywhere bouquets of dead flowers.

But, look:

Stefan played! Stefan stood in the middle of the room, on the shiny Venetian oiled floor, playing not this, our spectral violin, but another undoubtedly by the same master.

And round Stefan, Paganini danced, playing variations that mocked Stefan's theme, a contest, a game, a duet, a war perhaps.

It was a somber Adagio Stefan played, by Albinoni, in G minor for strings and organ, only he had made it his solo, moving from part to part, his grief encompassing his fallen house, and through the music I could see the burning palace faintly in the Vienna cold and all the beauty turned to kindling. The music, slow, steady, unfolding, held Stefan himself so in thrall he seemed not to see the cavorting figure near him.

Such music! It seemed the very maximum of pain that could be declared with perfect dignity. It bore no accusation. It spoke of wisdom and deepening sadness.

I felt my tears come, my tears which are like hands to applaud, the signal of the empathy in me for him, this boyma n standing there, as the Italian genius made his Rumpelstiltskin circle about him.

Thread after thread from the Adagio Paganini pulled loose to race it into a caprice, a frolic of fingers darting too swiftly along the strings even to be traced, and then he would with perfect accuracy descend to catch the very phrase which Stefan at his somber pace had only just reached. Paganini's dexterity seeming sorcery, as it was always said, and in all this-this lone imperially slim figure played immune in his pain, and Paganini, the dancer who mocked or tore the shroud for its gleaming threads-there was nothing discordant but something wholly new and splendid.

Stefan's eyes were closed, his head tilted. His full sleeves were stained from rain perhaps, the fine pun to in aria lace torn at the cuffs, his boots streaked with dried mud, but his arm was perfect in its measures. Never had his dark straight eyebrows looked so smooth and beautiful, and as he took the organ part of this famous music now, I thought my heart would break for him, and even Paganini drew in, slipping into this most tortured of moments merely to play with Stefan, to echo him, to cry above him and below but with honor.

The two stopped, the tall boyish one looking down with utter wonder at the other.

Paganini laid down his violin carefully on the tasseled covers and pillows of the jumbled bed, all golden and midnight blue. His big pop eyes were generous and his smile demonic. The man seemed embraceable in his exuberance. He rubbed his hands.

"Yes, gifted, yes, you are! Gifted!"

You'll never play like that! That was my ghost captain whispering in my ear, even as his whole body clung to mine and pleaded with me for solace.

I didn't answer. Let the picture roll.

"You'll teach me then," said Stefan in flawless Italian, the Italian of Salieri and all his like, the wonder of the Germans and the English.

"Teach you, yes, yes, I will. And if we must get out of this place, then we shall, though you know what you do to me in these times, with Austria so bent on keeping my Italy under her thumb, you know. But tell me this."

"What?"

The little man with the huge eyes laughed; he walked up and down; his heels clicked on the oiled floor, his shoulders were almost humped, his eyebrows long and curling at the ends as if he'd enhanced them with stage paint when he hadn't.

"What, dear Prince, am I to teach you? For you know how to play, yes, that you can do. You can play. What is it that I must bring to a pupil of Ludwig van Beethoven?

An Italian levity perhaps, an Italian irony?"

"No," said Stefan in a whisper, eyes fastened on the pacing man. "Courage, Maestro, to throw all else aside. Oh, it is sad, sad to me that my teacher will never hear you.

Paganini paused, lips puckered. "Beethoven, you mean.

"Deaf, too deaf now even for the high notes to pierce, too deaf," said Stefan softly.

"And so he can't give you the courage?"

"No, you misunderstand!" Stefan held the gift violin that he had played, looked at it.

"Stradivari, yes, a present to me, fine as your own, no?" said Paganini.

"Indeed, perhaps better, I don't know," said Stefan. He took up the former point. "Beethoven could teach anyone courage. But he is a composer now, deaftiess forced this on him as you know, boxed the ears of the virtuoso until he couldn't play, and left him locked up with pen and ink as the only means of making music."

"Ah," said Paganini, "and we are the richer for it. I would so like just once to see him from a distance perhaps or have him watch me play. But if I make an enemy of your father, I'll never even enter Vienna. And Vienna is . . . well, after Rome, there is . . .

Vienna." Paganini sighed. "I cannot risk it, to lose Vienna."

"I'll see to all this!" Stefan said under his breath. He turned and looked out the narrow window, eyes roving the stone walls. How squalid this place looked compared to the confectionery corridors that had gone up in smoke, but it was perfectly Venetian.

Russet velvet piled on the floor, fancy satin shoes thrown about-a peach cut open and all the romance squeezed out here.

"I know," said Paganini now. "I understand. Had Beethoven been playing still in the Argentine and the Schdnbrunn and gone to London, and been chased by women, he might be as I am, not much for the composing but always for the center of the stage, for the man alone with the music, for the playing."

"Yes," said Stefan, turning. "You see, and it is playing that I want to do."

"Your father's palace in St. Petersburg is a legend. He'll soon be there. You can turn your back on such comforts?"

"I never saw it. Vienna was my cradle, I told you. I dozed on a couch once as Mozart played keyboard games; I thought my heart would burst. Look. I am alive within this sound, the sound of the violin, and not-like my great teacher-in writing notes for myself or others."

"You have the nerve to be a vagabond," said Paganini, his smile chilling just a little. "You do, but I cannot picture it. You Russians. You I will not..."

"No, don't dismiss me."

"I don't. Only resolve this thing at home. You must! This violin you speak of, yours which you took out of the fire, go home for it and take with it your father's blessing, otherwise they'll hound us, these merciless rich, that I've seduced from his duties to the Czar as ambassador's son. You know they can do it."

"I must have my father's permission," said Stefan, as if to make a memorandum of it.

"Yes, and the Strad, the long Strad of which you spoke. Bring that. I don't seek to take it from you. Look, you see what I have. But I want to play on that instrument too. I want to hear you play it. Bring that and your father's blessing, and the gossips we can handle. You can travel with me."

"Ah!" Stefan sank his teeth into his lip. "You promise me this, Signore Paganini?

My money is adequate but no fortune. If you dream of Russian coaches and. .

"No, no, little boy. You're not listening. I say I will let you come with me and be where I am. I do not seek to be your minion, Prince. I am a wanderer! That is what I am, you see. A virtuoso! Doors open to me for what I play; I needn't conduct, compose, dedicate, mount productions with screaming sopranos and bored fiddlers in the pit. I am Paganini! And you shall be Stefanovsky."

"I'll get it, I'll get the violin, I'll get my Father's word!" Stefan said. "An allowance will be nothing to him."

He smiled openly, and the little man advanced and covered his face with kisses, in an Italian style perhaps, or one that was purely Russian.

"Brave, beautiful Stefan," he said.

Stefan, flustered, ha nded back to him the precious gift violin. Looking down at his own hands, he saw his many rings, all jeweled. Rubies, emeralds. He removed one and held it out.

"No, son," said Paganini. "I don't want it. I have to live, to play, but you need no bribe to have my promise."

Stefan clamped Paganini's shoulders in his hands and kissed his face. The little man rumbled with a laugh.

"And that violin, you must bring it. An, I have to see this long Strad as they call it, I have to play it."

Vienna once more.

The cleanliness was the dead giveaway, every chair gilded or painted with white and gold, and parquet floors immaculate. Stefan's father, I knew him at once, as he sat in the chair by the fire, a blanket of Russian bear fur over his lap, looking up at his son, and in this room, the violins all there in cases as before, though this was not the splendid palace that had burned but some more temporary quarters.

Yes, where they had put up until we could make the move to St. Petersburg. I had come dashing back. I washed and sent for clean clothes before I came into the city gates.

Look, listen.

He did cut a different figure, spruced in the bright fashions of the time, a smart black coat with fine buttons, crisp white collar and silk tie, no pigtail anymore or any of that, hair lustrous and still long from his journey as though it were a badge of his coming detachment from all this, like the hair of rock singers in our day and age that shouts the words Christ and Outcast with equal power.

He was afraid of his father, the elder glowering up at him from the fire:

"A virtuoso, a wandering fiddler! You think I brought the great musicians into my house to teach you this, that you should run off with that cursed bedeviled Italian! That, that trickster that does pranks with his fingers instead of playing notes! He hasn't the nerve to play in Vienna! Let the Italians eat him up. They who invented the castrato so he could sing volleys of notes, arpeggios and endless crescendos!"

"Father, only listen to me. You have five sons."

"An, you will not do this," said the Father, his white hair Lenten as it tumbled to the shoulders of his satin robe. "Stop! How dare you, my eldest." But the tone was gentle. "You know that the Czar will soon command your first military service; we serve the Czar! Even now, I depend upon him for our restoration in St. Petersburg!" He cut the tone, softening it with compassion, as though the years between them had given him a wisdom that made him sorry for his son. "Stefan, Stefan, your duty is to the family and to the Emperor; you don't take the toys I gave you for delight and make them your mania!"

"You never thought them toys, our violins, our pianofortes, you brought the finest here for Beethoven when he could still play..."

The father leant forward in the big white-framed French chair, too broad and squat to be anything but Hapsburg. He turned his shoulder to a great ornamented stove that climbed the wall to the inevitably painted ceiling, the fire enclosed beneath gleaming glazed enameled white iron and dizzying gold curlicues.

I felt it, I felt it as if I and my ghostly guide were in the room, very near to those we saw so completely. Pastry smells rising; grand broad windows; the dampness here was clean, as fog is clean off the sea.

"Yes," said the Father, obviously struggling to reason, to be kind.

"I did bring the greatest of all musicians to teach you and delight you and make your childhood bright." He shrugged. "And I myself, I liked to play the violoncello with them, you know this! For you and your sister and brothers, I gave everything, as it had been done for me .

Great portraits hung on my walls before they burned, and you have always had the best of clothes, and horses in our stables, yes, the best of poets for you to read, and yes, Beethoven, poor, tragic Beethoven, I keep him near for you and for me and for what he is.

"But that is not the point, my son. The Czar commands you. We are not Viennese merchants! We don't seek taverns and coffeehouses full of gossip and slander!

You are Prince Stefanovsky, my son. They'll send you to the Ukraine, first, as they did me. And you will pass the necessary years before you go into the more intimate governmental service."

"No." Stefan backed up.

"Oh, don't make it so painful for yourself," said his father wearily. His gray mane hung down around his wobbling cheeks. "We have lost so much, so very much; we have sold all that was saved, it seems, to leave this city, and it was only here that I was ever happy."

"Father, then learn from your own pain. I can't, I won't give up the music for any Emperor near or far. I wasn't born in Russia. I was born in rooms where Salieri played, where Farinelli came to sing. I beg you. I want my violin. Just give me that. Give it to me. Release me penniless and let it out you couldn't stop my headstrong ways. No disgrace will fall on you. Give me the violin and I will go."

There came a subtle threatening change into the Father's face. It seemed there were steps nearby. But neither figure acknowledged any but each other.

"Don't lose your temper, my son." The Father rose to his feet, the bear rug falling to the carpeted floor. He was regal in his satin robe, with furs beneath it, his fingers covered with brilliant jewels.

He was as tall as Stefan, no peasant blood here it seemed, only the Nordic mixed with the Slav to make giants of the ilk of Peter the Great perhaps, who knows, but these were true princes.

His father came close to him, then turned to survey the bright, lacquered instruments that rested all along the sideboards with their rampant painted Rococo gardens on every cabinet door. Silk paneling in the walls, the long streaks of painted gold rising tc the muraled cove above.

It was a string orchestra. It made me shiver just to look at it. I didn't know this violin from any other there.

The Father sighed. The son waited, schooled obviously not to weep as he might have done with me, as he did now with me in this invisibility from which we watched. I heard him sigh, but then the vision overwhelmed again and held firm.

"You can't go, my son," the Father said, "to chase around the world with this vulgar man. You cannot. And you cannot take your violin. It breaks my heart to tell you. But you dream, and a year from now you will come to beg forgiveness."

Stefan could scarcely control his voice, looking at this heritage.

"Father, even if we dispute, the instrument is mine, I took it out of the burning room, I...

"Son, the instrument is sold, as are all the Stradivari instruments, and the pianofortes and the harpsichord on which Mozart played, sold, all, I assure you.

Stefan's face wore the shock I felt as I looked on. The ghost in the featureless dark beside me was too sad himself to mock, but only closed tighter to me, trembling as if all this were too much for him, this boiling cloud, and he couldn't clamp it back down into his magic cauldron.

"No . . . No, not sold, not the violins, not the . . . not the violin I-" He blanched and twisted his mouth, and the straight dark eye brows came together in a challenge of a frown. "No, I don't believe you, why, why do you lie to me!"

"Curb your tongue, my favorite son," said the tall gray-haired man, keeping one hand on the chair. "I sold what I had to sell to get the hell out of here and into our home in St. Petersburg. Your sister's jewels, your mother's jewels, paintings, God knows what, so as to salvage what I could for all of you, of what we had and must retain. To the merchant, Schlesinger, I sold the violins four days ago. He'll take them when we leave.

He was kind enough to-"

"No!" Stefan cried out. His hands went up to the sides of his head. "No!" he roared. "Not my violin. No, you cannot sell my violin, you cannot sell the long Strad!"

He turned, eyes frantic, searching the tops of the long, painted credenzas where instruments lay carefully on silken pillows, cellos propped against chairs, paintings set as if to be moved.

"I tell you it's done!" the Father cried out. Turning right to left, he found his silver cane and lifted it in his right hand, first by the knob and then the middle.

Stefan had found the violin with his eye. He rushed towards it. I saw it.

With all my heart, I thought, yes, get it, take it, save it from this awful injustice, this stupid turn of fate, it's yours, yours . . . Stefan, take it!

And you take it from me now. In the fathomless dark he kissed my cheek, but he was too heartbroken to oppose me. Watch what happens.

"Don't touch it, don't pick it up," the Father said, advancing on the son. "I warn you!" He swnng the cane around so that its ornamented knob was poised like a club.

"You don't dare smash it, not the Strad!" said Stefan.

A fury broke in the Father. It broke at these words, it broke as if over the stupidity of the assumption, the depth of mi sunderstanding.

"You, my pride," he said, lowering his head as he took one firm step after another.

"Your Mother's favorite and Beethoven's cherub, you, you think I'll smash that instrument with this! Touch it, and you'll see what I do!"

Stefan reached for the violin, but the cane came down on his shoulders. He staggered under the blow, bent nearly double, backing up. Again the silver cane struck him, this time on the left side of his head and the blood gushed from his ear.

"Father," he cried.

I was wild in our invisible refuge, wild to hurt the Father, to make him stop, damn him, don't you hit Stefan again, you will not, you will not.

"It is not ours, I told you this," the Father cried. "But you are mine, my son, Stefan!"

Stefan threw up his hand, and the cane whipped through the air.

I must have screamed, but this was far beyond any intervention. The cane so bashed Stefan's left hand that Stefan gasped and whipped the hand to his chest with his eyes closed.

He didn't see the blow descending on his right hand that came to cover the wounded one. The cane struck his fingers.

"No, no, not my hands, my hands, Father!" he screamed.

Rushing feet in the house. Shouts. A young woman's voice, "Stefan!"

"You defy me," said the old man. "You dare." With his left hand he grabbed the lapel of his son's coat, the son so shocked with pain he grimaced, unable to defend himself, and thrusting his son forward so that his hands fell on the credenza, he brought down the cane again on Stefan's fingers.

I shut my eyes. Open them, look what he does. There are instruments made of wood, and those that are made of flesh and blood and see what he does to me.

"Father, stop it!" cried the woman. I saw her from behind, slender, tentative creature, with a swan neck and naked arms in her Empire gown of gold silk.

Stefan stood back. He broke the dazzle and the agony. He backed up further and stared down at the blood streaming from his crushed fingers.

The Father stood with the cane poised to strike again.

And now it was Stefan's face that changed; all compassion gone as if it were never possible in such a mask of rage and vengeance.

"You do this to me!" he cried. He waved his useless bleeding hands in the air.

"You do this to my hands!"

Stunned, the Father took a backward step, but his face grew hard and stubborn.

The doors of the room were filled with those who watched, brothers, sisters, servants, I didn't know.

The young woman tried to come forward, but the old man ordered her: "Back away, Vera!"

Stefan flew at his father, and used what was left to use, his knee, kicking the man back hard against the hot enameled stove, then lifting the tip of his boot to kick the Father's crotch as the old man's hands let loose the cane, and the old man fell to his knees and struggled to protect himself.

Vera screamed.

"You do this to me!" said Stefan, "You do this to me, you do this to me," the blood pouring from his hands.

The next kick caught the old man beneath his chin and sent him down in a spineless slump onto the rug. Again Stefan kicked, and this time the boot struck the side of his father's head, and then again.

I turned around. I didn't want to look, I didn't. No, watch with me please. It was so soft, so imploring. He's dead, you know, dead there on the floor, but I didn't know it then. See, I kicked him again. Look. His knee doesn't rise, though the blow strikes him right where your mother's blow struck you, in the stomach I kick him, see. . . he was dead already from the kick to his chin perhaps, I never knew.

Parricide, Parricide, Parricide.

Men rushed forward, but Vera swnng around, stretching out her hands to block the path. "No, you will not touch my brother!"

It gave Stefan an instant to look up, hands still dripping blood, and in that instant he ran to the nearest door, knocking stunned servants out of his path, clattering down the marble staircase.

The streets. Is this Vienna?

From somewhere he'd procured a greatcoat, and bandages for his hands. He was a secretive figure, clinging to the walls. The street was old and crooked.

O gentle whore, what do you think, I had some gold left. But the news had electrified Vienna. I had killed my father. I had killed my father.

This was the Graben, now gone in reality; I knew it by its twists and turns, the place where Mozart lived, this neighborhood of eternal liveliness by day. But this was night, late night. Stefan waited in the shadows until a man emerged, with a sudden eruption of noise, from a tavern.

He shut the door on the warm world within, so full of smoking pipes, and the smell of malt and coffee, and the sound of talk and laughter.

"Stefan!" he whispered. He crossed the street and took Stefan's arm. "Get out of Vienna. You are to be shot on sight. The Czar himself has given Metternich the written permission. The city's full of Russian soldiers."

"I know, Franz," said Stefan, crying like a child, "I know."

"And your hands," said the young man, "what's been done?"

"Oh, not enough, not nearly enough, they're bound and twisted and broken and not set, it's all done, it's finished." He stood still, looking up at the tiny strip of Heaven.

"Oh, Lord God, how could this happen, Franz, how? How could I have come to this when a year ago we were all in the ballrooin[ and we were playing and even the Maestro was there, saying he enjoyed watching the movement of our fingers! How!"

"Stefan, tell me," said the young man called Franz. "You didn't really kill him.

They lie, they paint a picture. Something happened, but Vera says that they have unjustly..."

Stefan couldn't answer. His eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth drawn back. He didn't dare to answer. He broke loose from his friend and ran, cloak billowing behind him, boots clattering on the rounded cobblestones.

He ran and he ran and we followed him, and he became tiny in the night, and the stars arched over all, and the city vanished.

This was a dark wood, but a young wood, tender, with small leafed trees, and crunching leaves beneath Stefan's boots. The Vienna Woods I knew so well from one college glimpse and so ma ny books and so much music. A town lay ahead, and down into the town Stefan crept, hugging the bloody filthy bandaged hands, grimacing now and then at the pain, but fighting it off; as he entered the main street and a small square. It was late, the shops were all shut up, and the little streets looked picture-book to me in their quaintness. He hurried on his errand. He found a small, gated courtyard, but there were no locks here, and unseen he came inside.

How miniature this rural architecture after the palaces in which we'd witnessed horrors.

In the cool night air, full of the scent of pines and sweet burning stoves, he looked up at a lighted window.

A strange singing came from within, an awful bawling singing, but very happy and full of glee. A deaf man singing.

I knew this place, I knew it from drawings, I knew it was a place where Beethoven had once lived and written, and as we drew closer now, I saw what Stefan saw, as he climbed the little steps-the Maestro inside, swaying at his desk, dipping his pen and wagging his head and stomping his foot, and scratching out the notes, delirious it seemed in his own precious and safe corner of the universe where sounds might be combined as those with ears would never recommend or even tolerate.

The great man's hair was soiled, shot through with gray I hadn't seen before, the pockmarked face was very red, but his expression was relaxed and pure, with no scowl for anyone. He rocked back and forth again; he wrote. He sang that yammering stomping song that surely confirmed a path for him.

Young Stefan came to the door, opened it and stepped inside, peering down on the Maestro, the bandaged hands behind his back, then coming forward, went on his knees at Beethoven's arm.

"Stefan!" he cried out, his voice rough and loud. "Stefan, what is it?"

Stefan bowed his head and broke into tears, and suddenly, not meaning to, he raised his reddened bandaged hand as if to reach out and touch the Maestro.

"Your hands!" the Maestro went frantic. He stood up, throwing over the ink as he reached about on his desk. The conversation book, no, the blackboard, that was what he looked for, the companions of his deaf years, through which he spoke to everyone.

But then he looked down in horror and saw that both of Stefan's hands were useless for a pen as the younger knelt there, stricken, pleading with shakes of his head and shudders for mercy.

"Stefan, your hands, what have they done to you, my Stefan!"

Stefan raised his hand for quiet, raised it, desperate. But it was too late. In his protective panic Beethoven had brought others running.

Stefan had to escape. He clutched the Maestro for one moment, kissing him hard on the mouth, and then went to a farther door just as the one beside him sprang open.

Once again, he fled, Beethoven roaring in pain.

A small room: a woman's bed.

Stefan lay curled up in his tight pants, and a clean shirt, his profile sunk into the pillow, mouth open, face wet but still.

She, a thick and girl-faced woman, squarish and not unlike myself but young, bound fresh bandages around his hands. She doted on him, his still countenance, the battered hands she held, scarcely able to avoid tears. A woman who loved him.

"You must get out of Vienna, Prince," she said in the German of the Viennese, smooth and cultured. "You have to!"

He didn't stir. His eyes let in a little light perhaps or only gave away a tiny bit of white, which looked like death itself, except he breathed.

"Stefan, listen to me!" She took the intimate turn. "They bury your father in state tomorrow. His body will rest in the Van Meck tomb, and do you know what they mean to do, they mean to bury the violin with it."

He opened his eyes first, staring at the candle behind her, staring at the terra-cotta dish in which it rested, the dish that had already caught a pool of wax. Then he looked at her, turning, the wooden headboard plain and thick behind him. Surely this was the poorest place to which he'd ever taken us. A simple place, perhaps over a shop.

His dull eyes looked at her. "Bury the violin. Berthe ... you said . . .

"Aye, until his murderer is found and they can take the Father's remains home to Russia. It is winter now; you know they cannot make the journey anyway to Moscow.

And Schlesinger, the merchant he has given them the money for the thing, in spite of this. You know they set a trap for you, they think you will come for it."

"That's stupid," said Stefan. "That's mad." He sat up, his knee rising, his stockinged foot pushing into the lumpy mattress. His hair fell down as it was now, satin, undone. "A trap for me! To bury the violin in a coffin with him!"

"Shhh, don't be such a fool. They think you will come to steal it before it is sealed up. If not, it remains in the grave until you come, and they pounce on you. Or forever it lies with your Father until such time as you are found and executed for your crime. It is a grim affair; your sister and brothers are distraught, and not all of them so cruel of heart towards you, by the way.”

"No..." he murmured, musing, remembering possibly his escape.

"Berthe!" he whispered.

"And from your father's brothers comes the vengeful speech these men, how they huff and puff that the violin shall be buried with him whom you killed, so that you may never, never play it again. They picture yo u, a fugitive, who would steal it from Schlesinger."

"I would," he whispered.

A noise disturbed them both. The door opened and a small round-faced man appeared, a stubby and chunky man in a black cape and the undeniable upper-crust linen. He looked Russian, this man, his cheeks so full, his eyes small. One could see the Russian of today in him. He carried a big black cloak over his arm, a fresh garment which he laid down now on a chair. It had a hood to it.

Through small spectacles with silver frames he looked at the young man in the bed, at the girl who didn't even turn to greet him.

"Stefan," he said. He took off his top hat and smoothed back the remaining bits of gray hair that covered his pink skull. "They are guarding the house. They are in every street. And Paganini, they even accosted him in Italy with questions in all this, and the man has denied you, that he ever knew you.

"He had to do that," Stefan murmured. "Poor Paganini. What is that to me, Hans? I don't care."

"Stefan, I've brought a cloak for you, a big cloak with a hood, and some money to get you out of Vienna. "

"Where did you get it?" Berthe asked with alarm.

"Never mind," the man said, glancing at her dismissively, "except to say that everyone in your family is not heartless."

"Vera, my sister. I saw her. I saw her when they tried to catch me, she ran in front of them. Oh, my sweetest Vera."

"Vera says you must go away, go to America, to the Portuguese Court in Brazil, anywhere, but go where your hands can be properly set and where you can live, or there is no life! Brazil is far away. There are other countries. Even England, go there-to London, but get out of the Hapsburg Empire, you must. Look, we're in danger, helping you."

The young woman became furious. "You know the things he's done for you!"

she said. "I won't give him up." She glared at Stefan, and he tried to stroke her with the bandaged hands but stopped, like an animal pawing the air, his eyes suddenly dull from pain or simple despair.

"No, of course not," said Hans. "He is our boy, our Stefan, and always has been.

I only say that it is a matter of days before they find you somewhere. Vienna is not so big. And you with your hands like clubs, what can you do? Why do you stay?

"My violin," said Stefan in a heartbroken voice. "It's mine and I don't have it."

"Why can't you get it?" said the woman to the chubby little man, glancing up at him. She wrapped the gauze around Stefan's left hand still.

"Me? Get the violin?" asked the man.

"Why can't you go into the house? You've done it before. See to the confection tables yourself. See to the special tarts. God knows, when someone dies in Vienna it's a wonder everyone else doesn't die from eating sweets. Come with the bakers to see that all is right with the sweets yourself, it's simple enough, and slip upstairs and into the death room and take the violin. They stop you? Then say, you search for one of the family to beg news, you loved the boy so. Everybody knows it. Get the violin."

'Everybody knows it,' he repeated. It was these words that disturbed the little man who went to the window and looked out. "Yes, everybody knows it was with my daughter he spent his drunken hours anytime he wanted."

"And gave me beautiful things for it, which I have still, and will on my wedding day!" she said bitterly.

"He's right," Stefan said. "I have to go. I can't stay here and endanger both of you. They would think to come here, to watch..."

"Not so," she said. "Every servant to the house and merchant to the family loves you, and doted on you, and all those French women, that trash that came with the conqueror, they keep a watch on them, yes, because you are so famous with them, but not with the baker's daughter. But it's true what Father says, you have to go. What have I told you myself? You have to go. If you don't leave Vienna, it is only a few days before they catch you."

Stefan was deep in thought. He tried to rest his weight on his right hand, then caught the error and slumped back against the wooden bedstead. The ceiling was sloped above his head, the window tiny in the thick wall. He seemed so vivid amid all this, too long, too sharpened, too brilliant and fierce for such a small chamber.

The young image of my ghost who walks through great rooms and down broad avenues.

The daughter turned to her father.

"Go into the house and get the violin!" said the daughter.

"You are dreaming!" said the man. "You are brainsick with love. You are a stupid baker's daughter."

"And you, who would be a fancy gentleman, with your fancy cafe' in the Ringstrasse, you don't dare."

"Of course he doesn't," Stefan said with authority. "Besides, Hans wouldn't know the violin from any other."

"It lies in the coffin!" she said. "They told me." She bit the cloth with her teeth, and tore it in two and made another tight knot beneath his wrist. The bandage was already bloody. "Father, get it for him."

"In the coffin!" Stefan whispered. "Beside him!" It was full of contempt.

I would have closed my eyes, but had no such control over any physical body. I held this violin, the one of which they spoke, I had it in my arms, and I thought now, so this thing, this thing we follow through this bloody history is at this time, give it 1825 or more, lying already in a coffin! Has it been sprinkled with holy water, this thing, or will that only happen at the Last Rites, and the Requiem, and will that be beneath a Viennese church with gilt-and-sugar angels?

Even I knew the little man could not get the violin. But he struggled to defend himself, both to them and to his own heart, turning, pacing, lip jutting, glasses flecks of light.

"Why, how, you can't just walk into a room where a Prince in his coffin lies in state .

"Berthe, he's right," said Stefan gently. "It's unspeakable that I allow him to take such a risk. Besides, when could he do it? What is he to do, walk boldly up and seize the thing from the dead man's grasp and rush out with it?"

Berthe looked up; her dark hair was a frame for a white face, her eyes beseeching but clever. She had long lashes and a lush thick mouth.

"There are times," she said, "late in the night when the room will be nearly empty. You know it. When men will sleep. And only a few say their Rosaries, and these even most likely close their eyes. So, Father, you go in to tend the tables. When even Stefan's Mother sleeps."

"No!" Stefan said, but the thought had found a fertile place. He looked forward, absorbed in his plan. "Go up to the coffin, take it from him, it lies with him, my violin...."

"You can't do it," Berthe said. "You have no fingers with which to hold it." She was horror-struck. "You can't go near the house."

He said nothing. He glanced about himself, once again leaning on his hands and then quickly straightening on account of the pain. He saw the clothes that lay ready for him. He saw the cloak.

Then: "Tell me, Hans, tell me the truth, was it Vera who sent the money to me?"

"Yes, and your mother knows of it, but if you ever broadcast this, I will be destroyed; don't brag on this kindness with any other secret friends. Because if you do, neither your sister nor your Mother will have the power to protect me."

Stefan smiled bitterly and nodded.

"Did you know," said the little Hans, pushing his glasses up on his stubby nose,

"that your Mother hated your Father?"

"Of course," said Stefan, "but I have hurt her far worse now than ever he did, haven't I?"

He didn't wait for the little man to find an answer. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. "Berthe, I can't put on these boots."

"Where are you going?" She ran around the bed, to assist. She helped him with each foot, and then to his feet. She gave him his black wool frock coat, fresh and clean, supplied no doubt by his sister.

The chubby little man looked up at him, full of pity and sadness. "Stefan," he said, "there are soldiers all about the house, the Russian guard, Metternich's private guards, and police everywhere. Listen to me."

The little man came up to him and put his hand on Stefan's hurt hand, and when Stefan winced and drew back the wounded hand, the little man stopped, apologetic and full of shame.

"It's nothing, Hans. You have done kindness for me. I thank you. God can't look unkindly on that. You did not murder my Father. And my Mother put her blessing on all this, I see. That's my father's finest cloak, lined in Russian fox, you see? How she thinks of me. Or did Vera give it to you?"

"It was Vera! But mark my words. Leave Vienna tonight. If you are caught there will not be a trial for this! They'll see to it you are shot dead first before you can speak or anyone can speak who saw him hurt you."

"I have been tried in here," said Stefan, touching his coat with the wrapped hand.

"I killed him."

"Leave Vienna as I told you. Get to a surgeon who can yet mend your fingers.

Perhaps they can be saved. There are other violins for one who plays as you play. Go across the sea, to Rio de Janeiro, go to America, or east to IstanbuJ where no one will ask who you are. In Russia, have you friends, friends of your mother?"

Stefan shook his head, smiling. "All cousins to the Czar or his bastards, every one," he said with a small laugh. It was the first time in this ghostly life that I had seen this Stefan truly laugh. He looked carefree for a moment, and happiness took all the lines from his face and made him, as it customarily does to people, perfectly radiant.

He was full of quiet gratitude for the flustered little man. He sighed and looked about the room. It seemed the unadorned gesture of a man who might soon die and looks at all the simple things with loving regard.

Berthe tied his frills, made his collars peaked and straight against his neck. She knotted the white silk tie in front. She took a black wool scarf and wound it round his neck, lifting his groomed and shining hair and letting it fall down. Long, yet trimmed.

"Let me cut it. . ." she said. More disguise?

"No . . . it doesn't matter. The cape and the hood will hide me. I have no time left. Look, it's midnight. The long deathwatch has probably begun."

"You can't!" she cried.

"But I will! Will you betray me?"

The thought stymied her, stymied her f!ther. They shook their heads, silently and obviously vowing that they would not.

"Goodbye, darling, would I could leave you with something, some little thing...

"You leave me with all I'll ever need," she said softly. There was resignation in her voice. "You leave me with some hours that other women must make up or read about in stories."

He smiled again. Never in any setting had I seen him so perfectly comfortable. I wondered if the bleeding hands hurt him, because the bandages were bad already.

"The woman who fixed my hands," he said to Berthe, sticking to his point, "she took my rings in payment, all of them. I couldn't stop her. But this is my last warm room for the night, my last unhurried moment. Berthe, kiss me and I'll go. Hans, I can't ask you for a blessing, but a kiss, I do."

They all embraced. Stefan put out his arms, as if he could lift the cloak with the clubby hands, but Berthe was quick to get the cloak, and the man and the woman together put it over his shoulders and brought the hood up over his head.

I was sick with fear. I knew what was to come. I didn't want to see it.