Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

CELLISTS

IT WAS OUR THIRD TIME playing the Godfather theme since lunch, so I was looking around at the tourists seated across the piazza to see how many of them might have been there the last time we’d played it. People don’t mind hearing a favourite more than once, but you can’t have it happen too often or they start suspecting you don’t have a decent repertoire. At this time of year, it’s usually okay to repeat numbers. The first hint of an autumn wind and the ridiculous price of a coffee ensure a pretty steady turnover of customers. Anyway, that’s why I was studying the faces in the piazza and that’s how I spotted Tibor.

He was waving his arm and I thought at first he was waving to us, but then I realised he was trying to attract a waiter. He looked older, and he’d put on some weight, but he wasn’t hard to recognise. I gave Fabian, on accordion right next to me, a little nudge and nodded towards the young man, though I couldn’t take either hand off my saxophone just then to point him out properly. That was when it came home to me, looking around the band, that apart from me and Fabian, there was no one left in our line-up from that summer we’d met Tibor.

Okay, that was all of seven years ago, but it was still a shock. Playing together every day like this, you come to think of the band as a kind of family, the other members as your brothers. And if every now and then someone moves on, you want to think he’ll always stay in touch, sending back postcards from Venice or London or wherever he’s got to, maybe a Polaroid of the band he’s in now-just like he’s writing home to his old village. So a moment like that comes as an unwelcome reminder of how quickly things change. How the bosom pals of today become lost strangers tomorrow, scattered across Europe, playing the Godfather theme or “Autumn Leaves” in squares and cafes you’ll never visit.

When we finished our number, Fabian gave me a dirty look, annoyed I’d nudged him during his “special passage”-not a solo exactly, but one of those rare moments when the violin and clarinet have stopped, I’m blowing just quiet notes in the background, and he’s holding the tune together on his accordion. When I tried to explain, pointing out Tibor, now stirring his coffee beneath a parasol, Fabian seemed to have trouble remembering him. In the end, he said:

“Ah yes, the boy with the cello. I wonder if he’s still with that American woman.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Don’t you remember? That all came to an end at the time.”

Fabian shrugged, his attention now on his sheet music, and then we were starting our next number.

I was disappointed Fabian hadn’t shown more interest, but I suppose he’d never been one of those particularly concerned about the young cellist. Fabian, you see, he’s only ever played in bars and cafes. Not like Giancarlo, our violin player at that time, or Ernesto, who was our bass player. They’d had formal training, so to them someone like Tibor was always fascinating. Maybe there was a tiny bit of jealousy there-of Tibor’s top-drawer musical education, of the fact that his future was still in front of him. But to be fair, I think it was just that they liked to take the Tibors of this world under their wing, look after them a little, maybe prepare them for what lay ahead, so when the disappointments came they wouldn’t be quite so hard to take.

That summer seven years ago had been an unusually warm one, and even in this city of ours, there were times you could believe we were down on the Adriatic. We played outdoors for over four months-under the cafe awning, facing out to the piazza and all the tables-and I can tell you that’s hot work, even with two or three electric fans whirring around you. But it made for a good season, plenty of tourists passing through, a lot from Germany and Austria, as well as natives fleeing the heat down on the beaches. And that was the summer we first started noticing Russians. Today you don’t think twice about Russian tourists, they look like everyone else. But back then, they were still rare enough to make you stop and stare. Their clothes were odd and they moved around like new kids at school. The first time we saw Tibor, we were between sets, refreshing ourselves at the big table the cafe always kept aside for us. He was sitting nearby, continually getting up and repositioning his cello case to keep it in the shade.

“Look at him,” Giancarlo said. “A Russian music student with nothing to live on. So what does he do? Decides to waste his money on coffees in the main square.”

“No doubt a fool,” Ernesto said. “But a romantic fool. Happy to starve, so long as he can sit in our square all afternoon.”

He was thin, sandy-haired and wore unfashionable spectacles-huge frames that made him look like a panda. He turned up day after day, and I don’t remember how exactly it happened, but after a while we began to sit and talk with him in between sets. And sometimes if he came to the cafe during our evening session, we’d call him over afterwards, maybe treat him to some wine and crostini.

We soon discovered Tibor was Hungarian, not Russian; that he was probably older than he looked, because he’d already studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, then spent two years in Vienna under Oleg Petrovic. After a rocky start with the old maestro, he’d learnt to handle those legendary temper tantrums and had left Vienna full of confidence-and with a series of engagements in prestigious, if small, venues around Europe. But then concerts began to get cancelled due to low demand; he’d been forced to perform music he hated; accommodation had proved expensive or sordid.

So our city’s well-organised Arts and Culture Festival-which was what brought him here that summer-had been a much-needed boost, and when an old friend from the Royal Academy had offered him a free apartment for the summer down near the canal, he’d taken it up without hesitation. He was enjoying our city, he told us, but cash was always a problem, and though he’d had the occasional recital, he was now having to think hard about his next move.

It was after a while of listening to these worries that Giancarlo and Ernesto decided we should try and do something for him. And that was how Tibor got to meet Mr. Kaufmann, from Amsterdam, a distant relative of Giancarlo’s with connections in the hotel world.

I remember that evening very well. It was still early in the summer, and Mr. Kaufmann, Giancarlo, Ernesto, all the rest of us, we sat indoors, in the back room of the cafe, listening to Tibor play his cello. The young man must have realised he was auditioning for Mr. Kaufmann, so it’s interesting now to remember how keen he was to perform that night. He was obviously grateful to us, and you could see he was pleased when Mr. Kaufmann promised to do what he could for him on his return to Amsterdam. When people say Tibor changed for the worse that summer, that his head got too big for his own good, that this was all down to the American woman, well, maybe there’s something in that.

TIBOR HAD BECOME A WARE of the woman while sipping his first coffee of the day. At that moment, the piazza was pleasantly cool-the cafe end remains shaded for much of the morning-and the paving stones were still wet from the city workers’ hoses. Having gone without breakfast, he’d watched enviously while at the next table she’d ordered a series of fruit-juice concoctions, then-apparently on a whim, for it wasn’t yet ten o’clock-a bowl of steamed mussels. He had the vague impression the woman was, for her part, stealing glances back at him, but hadn’t thought too much about it. “She looked very pleasant, beautiful even,” he told us at the time. “But as you see, she’s ten, fifteen years older than me. So why would I think anything was going on?”

He’d forgotten about her and was preparing to get back to his room for a couple of hours’ practice before his neighbour came in for lunch and turned on that radio, when suddenly there was the woman standing in front of him.

She was beaming broadly, everything in her manner suggesting they already knew each other. In fact it was only his natural shyness that stopped him greeting her. Then she placed a hand on his shoulder, as though he’d failed some test but was being forgiven anyway, and said:

“I was at your recital the other day. At San Lorenzo.”

“Thank you,” he replied, even as he realised how foolish this might sound. Then when the woman just went on beaming down at him, he said: “Oh yes, the San Lorenzo church. That’s correct. I did indeed give a recital there.”

The woman laughed, then suddenly seated herself in the chair in front of him. “You say that like you’ve had a whole string of engagements lately,” she said, a hint of mockery in her voice.

“If that is so, I’ve given you a misleading impression. The recital you attended was my only one in two months.”

“But you’re just starting out,” she said. “You’re doing fine to get any engagements at all. And that was a good crowd the other day.”

“A good crowd? There were only twenty-four people.”

“It was the afternoon. It was good for an afternoon recital.”

“I should not complain. Still, it wasn’t a good crowd. Tourists with nothing better to do.”

“Oh! You shouldn’t be so dismissive. After all, I was there. I was one of those tourists.” Then as he began to redden-for he hadn’t meant to give offence-she touched his arm and said with a smile: “You’re just starting out. Don’t worry about audience size. That’s not why you’re performing.”

“Oh? Then why am I performing if not for an audience?”

“That’s not what I said. What I’m saying to you is that at this stage in your career, twenty in the audience or two hundred, it doesn’t matter. Should I tell you why not? Because you’ve got it!”

“I have it?”

“You have it. Most definitely. You have… potential.”

He stifled a brusque laugh that came to his lips. He felt more reproach towards himself than for her, for he had expected her to say “genius” or at least “talent” and it immediately struck him how deluded he’d been to expect such a comment. But the woman was continuing:

“At this stage, what you’re doing is waiting for that one person to come and hear you. And that one person might just as easily be in a room like that one on Tuesday, in a crowd of just twenty people…”

“There were twenty-four, not including the organisers…”

“Twenty-four, whatever. What I’m saying is that numbers don’t matter right now. What matters is that one person.”

“You refer to the man from the recording company?”

“Recording? Oh no, no. That’ll take care of itself. No, I mean the person who’ll make you blossom. The person who’ll hear you and realise you’re not just another well-trained mediocrity. That even though you’re still in your chrysalis, with just a little help, you’ll emerge as a butterfly.”

“I see. By any chance, might you be this person?”

“Oh, come on! I can see you’re a proud young man. But it doesn’t look to me like you have so many mentors falling over themselves to get to you. At least not ones of my rank.”

It occurred to him then that he was in the midst of making a colossal blunder, and he considered the woman’s features carefully. She’d now removed her sunglasses, and he could see a face that was essentially gentle and kind, yet with upset and perhaps anger not far away. He went on looking at her, hoping he’d soon recognise her, but in the end he was forced to say:

“I’m very sorry. You are perhaps a distinguished musician?”

“I’m Eloise McCormack,” she announced with a smile, and held out her hand. Unfortunately, the name meant nothing to Tibor and he found himself in a quandary. His first instinct was to feign astonishment, and he actually said: “Really. This is quite amazing.” Then he pulled himself together, realising such bluffing was not only dishonest, but likely to lead to embarrassing exposure within seconds. So he sat up straight and said:

“Miss McCormack, it’s an honour to meet you. I realise this will seem unbelievable to you, but I beg you to make allowances both for my youth and for the fact that I grew up in the former Eastern bloc, behind the Iron Curtain. There are many film stars and political personalities who are household names in the West, of whom, even today, I remain ignorant. So you must forgive me that I do not know precisely who you are.”

“Well… that’s commendably frank.” Despite her words, she was clearly affronted, and her ebullience seemed to drain away. After an awkward moment, he said again:

“You are a distinguished musician, yes?”

She nodded, her gaze drifting across the square.

“Once again I must apologise,” he said. “It was indeed an honour that someone like you should come to my recital. And may I ask your instrument?”

“Like you,” she said quickly. “Cello. That’s why I came in. Even if it’s a humble little recital like yours, I can’t help myself. I can’t walk by. I have a sense of mission, I guess.”

“A mission?”

“I don’t know what else to call it. I want all cellists to play well. To play beautifully. So often, they play in a misguided way.”

“Excuse me, but is it just we cellists who are guilty of this misguided performance? Or do you refer to all musicians?”

“Maybe the other instruments too. But I’m a cellist, so I listen to other cellists, and when I hear something going wrong… You know, the other day, I saw some young musicians playing in the lobby of the Museo Civico and people were just rushing past them, but I had to stop and listen. And you know, it was all I could do to stop myself going right up to them and telling them.”

“They were making errors?”

“Not errors exactly. But… well, it just wasn’t there. It wasn’t nearly there. But there you go, I ask too much. I know I shouldn’t expect everyone to come up to the mark I set for myself. They were just music students, I guess.”

She leaned back in her seat for the first time and gazed at some children, over by the central fountain, noisily soaking one another. Eventually, Tibor said:

“You felt this urge also on Tuesday perhaps. The urge to come up to me and make your suggestions.”

She smiled, but then the next moment her face became very serious. “I did,” she said. “I really did. Because when I heard you, I could hear the way I once was. Forgive me, this is going to sound so rude. But the truth is, you’re not quite on the correct path just now. And when I heard you, I so wanted to help you find it. Sooner rather than later.”

“I must point out, I have been tutored by Oleg Petrovic.” Tibor stated this flatly and waited for her response. To his surprise, he saw her trying to suppress a smile.

“Petrovic, yes,” she said. “Petrovic, in his day, was a very respectable musician. And I know that to his students he must still appear a considerable figure. But to many of us now, his ideas, his whole approach…” She shook her head and spread out her hands. Then as Tibor, suddenly speechless with fury, continued to stare at her, she once again placed a hand on his arm. “I’ve said enough. I’ve no right. I’ll leave you in peace.”

She rose to her feet and this action soothed his anger; Tibor had a generous temperament and it wasn’t in his nature to remain cross with people for long. Besides, what the woman had just said about his old teacher had struck an uncomfortable chord deep within him-thoughts he’d not quite dared to express to himself. So when he looked up at her, his face showed confusion more than anything else.

“Look,” she said, “you’re probably too angry with me just now to think about this. But I’d like to help you. If you do decide you want to talk this over, I’m staying over there. At the Excelsior.”

This hotel, the grandest in our city, stands at the opposite end of the square from the cafe, and she now pointed it out to Tibor, smiled, and began to walk off towards it. He was still watching her when she turned suddenly near the central fountain, startling some pigeons, gave him a wave, then continued on her way.

OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS he found himself thinking about the encounter many times. He saw again the smirk around her mouth as he’d so proudly announced Petrovic’s name and felt the anger rising afresh. But on reflection, he could see he had not really been angry on his old teacher’s behalf. It was rather that he had become accustomed to the idea that Petrovic’s name would always produce a certain impact, that it could be relied upon to induce attention and respect: in other words, he’d come to depend on it as a sort of certificate he could brandish around the world. What had so disturbed him was the possibility that this certificate didn’t carry nearly the weight he’d supposed.

He kept remembering too her parting invitation, and during those hours he sat in the square, he found his gaze returning to the far end, and the grand entrance of the Excelsior Hotel, where a steady stream of taxis and limousines drew up in front of the doorman.

Finally, on the third day after his conversation with Eloise McCormack, he crossed the piazza, entered the marbled lobby and asked the front desk to call her extension. The receptionist spoke into the phone, asked his name, then after a short exchange, passed the receiver to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he heard her voice say. “I forgot to ask you your name the other day and it took me a while to figure out who you were. But of course I haven’t forgotten you. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about you an awful lot. There’s so much I’d like to talk through with you. But you know, we have to do this right. Do you have your cello? No, of course you don’t. Why don’t you come back in an hour, exactly one hour, and this time bring your cello. I’ll be waiting here for you.”

When he returned to the Excelsior with his instrument, the receptionist immediately indicated the elevators and told him Miss McCormack was expecting him.

The idea of entering her room, even in the middle of the afternoon, had struck him as awkwardly intimate, and he was relieved to find a large suite, the bedroom closed off entirely from view. The tall French windows had boarded shutters, for the moment folded back, so the lace curtains moved in the breeze, and he could see that by stepping through onto the balcony, he’d find himself looking over the square. The room itself, with its rough stone walls and dark wood floor, had almost a monastic air about it, softened only partially by the flowers, cushions and antique furniture. She, in contrast, was dressed in T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and trainers, as though she’d just come in from running. She welcomed him with little ceremony-no offer of tea or coffee-and said to him:

“Play for me. Play me something you played at your recital.”

She had indicated a polished upright chair carefully placed in the centre of the room, so he sat down on it and unpacked his cello. Rather disconcertingly, she sat herself in front of one of the big windows so that he could see her almost exactly in profile, and she continued to stare into the space before her all the time he tuned up. Her posture didn’t alter as he began to play, and when he came to the end of his first piece, she didn’t say a word. So he moved quickly to another piece, and then another. A half-hour went by, then a whole hour. And something to do with the shaded room and its austere acoustics, the afternoon sunlight diffused by the drifting lace curtains, the background hubbub rising from the piazza, and above all, her presence, drew from him notes that held new depths, new suggestions. Towards the end of the hour, he was convinced he’d more than fulfilled her expectations, but when he had finished his last piece, and they had sat in silence for several moments, she at last turned in her chair towards him and said:

“Yes, I understand exactly where you are. It won’t be easy, but you can do it. Definitely, you can do it. Let’s start with the Britten. Play it again, just the first movement, and then we’ll talk. We can work through this together, a little at a time.”

When he heard this, he felt an impulse just to pack away his instrument and leave. But then some other instinct-perhaps it was simply curiosity, perhaps something deeper-overcame his pride and compelled him to start playing again the piece she had requested. When after several bars she stopped him and began to talk, he again felt the urge to leave. He resolved, just out of politeness, to endure this uninvited tutorial for at most another five minutes. But he found himself staying a little longer, then longer again. He played some more, she talked again. Her words would always strike him initially as pretentious and far too abstract, but when he tried to accommodate their thrust into his playing, he was surprised by the effect. Before he realised, another hour had gone by.

“I could suddenly see something,” he explained to us. “A garden I’d not yet entered. There it was, in the distance. There were things in the way. But for the first time, there it was. A garden I’d never seen before.”

The sun had almost set when he finally left the hotel, crossed the piazza to the cafe tables, and allowed himself the luxury of an almond cake with whipped cream, his sense of elation barely contained.

FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, he returned to her hotel each afternoon and always came away, if not with the same sense of revelation he’d experienced on that first visit, then at least filled with fresh energy and hope. Her comments grew bolder, and to an outsider, had there been one, might have seemed presumptuous, but Tibor was no longer capable of regarding her interventions in such terms. His fear now was that her visit to the city would come to an end, and this thought began to haunt him, disturbing his sleep, and casting a shadow as he walked out into the square after another exhilarating session. But whenever he tentatively raised this question with her, the replies were always vague and far from reassuring. “Oh, just until it gets too chilly for me,” she had said once. Or another time: “I guess I’ll stay as long as I’m not bored here.”

“But what’s she like herself?” we kept asking him. “On the cello. What’s she like?”

The first time we raised this question, Tibor didn’t answer us properly, just saying something like: “She told me she was a virtuoso, right from the start,” then changing the subject. But when he realised we wouldn’t let it go, he sighed and began to explain it to us.

The fact was, even at that first session, Tibor had been curious to hear her play, but had been too intimidated to ask her to do so. He’d felt only a tiny nudge of suspicion when, looking around her room, he’d seen no sign of her own cello. After all, it was perfectly natural she wouldn’t bring a cello on holiday with her. And then again, it was possible there was an instrument-perhaps a rented one-in the bedroom behind the closed door.

But as he’d continued to return to the suite for further sessions, the suspicions had grown. He’d done his best to push them out of his mind, for by this time, he’d lost any lingering reservations about their meetings. The mere fact that she was listening to him seemed to draw fresh layers from his imagination, and in the hours between these afternoon sessions, he’d often find himself preparing a piece in his mind, anticipating her comments, her shakes of the head, her frown, the affirming nod, and most gratifying of all, those instances she became transported by a passage he was playing, when her eyes would close and her hands, almost against her will, began shadowing the movements he was making. All the same, the suspicions wouldn’t go away, and then one day he came to the room and the bedroom door had been left ajar. He could see more stone walls, what looked to be a medieval four-poster bed, but no trace of a cello. Would a virtuoso, even on holiday, go so long without touching her instrument? But this question, too, he pushed out of his mind.

AS THE SUMMER WENT ON, they began to prolong their conversations by coming over to the cafe together after their sessions, and she’d buy him coffees, cakes, sometimes a sandwich. Now their talk was no longer just about music-though everything always seemed to come back to it. For instance, she might question him about the German girl he’d been close to in Vienna.

“But you must understand, she was never my girlfriend,” he would tell her. “We were never like that.”

“You mean you never became physically intimate? That doesn’t mean you weren’t in love with her.”

“No, Miss Eloise, that is incorrect. I was fond of her, certainly. But we were not in love.”

“But when you played me the Rachmaninov yesterday, you were remembering an emotion. It was love, romantic love.”

“No, that is absurd. She was a good friend, but we did not love.”

“But you play that passage like it’s the memory of love. You’re so young, and yet you know desertion, abandonment. That’s why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it’s not about joy, it’s about the memory of a joyful time that’s gone for ever.”

They had conversations like this, and he was often tempted to question her in return. But just as he’d never dared ask Petrovic a personal question in the whole time he’d studied under him, he now felt unable to ask anything of substance about her. Instead, he dwelt on the little things she let fall-how she now lived in Portland, Oregon, how she’d moved there from Boston three years ago, how she disliked Paris “because of its sad associations”-but drew back from asking her to expand.

She would laugh much more easily now than in the first days of their friendship, and she developed the habit, when they stepped out of the Excelsior and crossed the piazza, of linking her arm through his. This was the point at which we first started noticing them, a curious couple, he looking so much younger than he actually was, she looking in some ways motherly, in other ways “like a flirty actress,” as Ernesto put it. In the days before we got to talking with Tibor, we used to waste a lot of idle chat on them, the way men in a band do. If they strolled past us, arm in arm, we’d look at each other and say: “What do you think? They’ve been at it, yes?” But having enjoyed the speculation, we’d then shrug and admit it was unlikely: they just didn’t have the atmosphere of lovers. And once we came to know Tibor, and he began telling us about those afternoons in her suite, none of us thought to tease him or make any funny suggestions.

Then one afternoon when they were sitting in the square with coffee and cakes, she began to talk about a man who wanted to marry her. His name was Peter Henderson and he ran a successful business in Oregon selling golfing equipment. He was smart, kind, well respected in the community. He was six years older than Eloise, but that was hardly old. There were two young children from his first marriage, but things had been settled amicably.

“So now you know what I’m doing here,” she said with a nervous laugh he’d never heard from her before. “I’m hiding out. Peter has no idea where I am. I guess it’s cruel of me. I called him last Tuesday, told him I was in Italy, but I didn’t say which city. He was mad at me and I guess he’s entitled to be.”

“So,” said Tibor. “You are spending the summer contemplating your future.”

“Not really. I’m just hiding.”

“You do not love this Peter?”

She shrugged. “He’s a nice man. And I don’t have a lot of other offers on the table.”

“This Peter. He is a music lover?”

“Oh… Where I live now, he would certainly count as one. After all, he goes to concerts. And afterwards, in the restaurant, he says a lot of nice things about what we just heard. So I guess he’s a music lover.”

“But he… appreciates you?”

“He knows it won’t always be easy, living with a virtuoso.” She gave a sigh. “That’s been the problem for me all my life. It won’t be easy for you either. But you and me, we don’t really have a choice. We have our paths to follow.”

She didn’t bring Peter up again, but now, after that exchange, a new dimension had opened in their relationship. When she had those quiet moments of thought after he’d finished playing, or when, sitting together in the piazza, she became distant, staring off past the neighbouring parasols, there was nothing uncomfortable about it, and far from feeling ignored, he knew his presence there beside her was appreciated.

ONE AFTERNOON when he’d finished playing a piece, she asked him to play again one short passage-just eight bars-from near the close. He did as asked and saw the little furrow remain on her forehead.

“That doesn’t sound like us,” she said, shaking her head. As usual, she was sitting in profile to him in front of the big windows. “The rest of what you played was good. All the rest of it, that was us. But that passage there…” She did a little shudder.

He played it again, differently, though not at all sure what he was aiming for, and wasn’t surprised to see her shake her head again.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You must express yourself more clearly. I do not understand this ‘not us.’”

“You mean you want me to play it myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

She’d spoken calmly, but as she now turned to face him, he was aware of a tension descending on them. She was looking at him steadily, almost challengingly, waiting for his answer.

Eventually he said: “No, I’ll try again.”

“But you’re wondering why I don’t just play it myself, aren’t you? Borrow your instrument and demonstrate what I mean.”

“No…” He shook his head with what he hoped looked like nonchalance. “No. I think it works well, what we’ve always done. You suggest verbally, then I play. That way, it’s not like I copy, copy, copy. Your words open windows for me. If you played yourself, the windows would not open. I’d only copy.”

She considered this, then said: “You’re probably right. Okay, I’ll try and express myself a little better.”

And for the next few minutes she talked-about the distinction between epilogues and bridging passages. Then when he played those bars once more, she smiled and nodded approvingly.

But from that little exchange on, something shadowy had entered their afternoons. Perhaps it had been there all along, but now it was out of the bottle and hovered between them. Another time, when they were sitting in the piazza, he’d been telling her the story of how the previous owner of his cello had come by it in the Soviet Union days by bartering several pairs of American jeans. When he’d finished the story, she looked at him with a curious half-smile and said:

“It’s a good instrument. It has a fine voice. But since I’ve never so much as touched it, I can’t really judge it.”

He knew then she was again moving towards that territory, and he quickly looked away, saying:

“For someone of your stature, it would not be an adequate instrument. Even for me, now, it is barely adequate.”

He found he could no longer relax during a conversation with her for fear she would hijack it and bring it back onto this territory. Even during their most enjoyable exchanges, a part of his mind would have to remain on guard, ready to shut her off if she found yet another opening. Even so, he couldn’t divert her every time, and he’d simply pretend not to hear when she said things like: “Oh, it would be so much easier if I could just play it for you!”

TOWARDS THE END OF SEPTEMBER-there was now a chill in the breeze-Giancarlo received a phone call from Mr. Kaufmann in Amsterdam; there was a vacancy for a cellist in a small chamber group at a five-star hotel in the centre of the city. The group played in a minstrels’ gallery overlooking the dining room four evenings a week, and the musicians also had other “light, non-musical duties” elsewhere in the hotel. Board and accommodation terms were available. Mr. Kaufmann had immediately remembered Tibor and the post was being held open for him. We gave Tibor the news straight away-in the cafe the very evening of Mr. Kaufmann’s call-and I think we were all taken aback by the coolness of Tibor’s response. It was certainly a contrast to his attitude earlier in the summer, when we’d fixed up his “audition” with Mr. Kaufmann. Giancarlo, in particular, became very angry.

“So what is it you have to think over so carefully?” he demanded of the boy. “What were you expecting? Carnegie Hall?”

“I’m not ungrateful. Nevertheless, I must give this matter some thought. To play for people while they chat and eat. And these other hotel duties. Is this really suitable for someone like me?”

Giancarlo always lost his temper too quickly, and now the rest of us had to stop him from grabbing Tibor by his jacket and shouting into his face. Some of us even felt obliged to take the boy’s side, pointing out it was his life, after all, and that he was under no obligation to take any job he was uncomfortable with. Things eventually calmed down, and Tibor then began to agree the job had some good points if viewed as a temporary measure. And our city, he pointed out rather insensitively, would become a backwater once the tourist season was over. Amsterdam at least was a cultural centre.

“I’ll give this matter careful thought,” he said in the end. “Perhaps you will kindly tell Mr. Kaufmann I will give him my decision within three days.”

Giancarlo was hardly satisfied by this-he’d expected fawning gratitude, after all-but he went off all the same to call back Mr. Kaufmann. During the whole of this discussion that evening, Eloise McCormack had not been mentioned, but it was clear to us all her influence was behind everything Tibor had been saying.

“That woman’s turned him into an arrogant little shit,” Ernesto said after Tibor had left. “Let him take that attitude with him to Amsterdam. He’ll soon get a few corners knocked off him.”

TIBOR HAD NEVER TOLD Eloise about his audition with Mr. Kaufmann. He’d been on the verge of doing so many times, but had always drawn back, and the deeper their friendship had grown, the more it seemed a betrayal that he’d ever agreed to such a thing. So naturally Tibor felt no inclination to consult Eloise about these latest developments, or even allow her any inkling of them. But he’d never been good at concealment, and this decision to keep a secret from her had unexpected results.

It was unusually warm that afternoon. He’d come to the hotel as usual, and begun to play for her some new pieces he’d been preparing. But after barely three minutes, she made him stop, saying:

“There’s something wrong. I thought it when you first came in. I know you so well now, Tibor, I could tell, almost from the way you knocked on the door. Now I’ve heard you play, I know for certain. It’s useless, you can’t hide it from me.”

He was in some dismay, and lowering his bow, was about to make a clean breast of everything, when she put up her hand and said:

“This is something we can’t keep running away from. You always try to avoid it, but it’s no use. I want to discuss it. The whole of this past week, I’ve been wanting to discuss it.”

“Really?” He looked at her in astonishment.

“Yes,” she said, and moved her chair so that for the first time she was directly facing him. “I never intended to deceive you, Tibor. These last few weeks, they haven’t been the easiest for me, and you’ve been such a dear friend. I’d so hate it if you thought I ever meant to play some cheap trick on you. No, please, don’t try and stop me this time. I want to say this. If you gave me that cello right now and asked me to play, I’d have to say no, I can’t do it. Not because the instrument isn’t good enough, nothing like that. But if you’re now thinking I’m a fake, that I’ve somehow pretended to be something I’m not, then I want to tell you you’re mistaken. Look at everything we’ve achieved together. Isn’t that proof enough I’m no fake anything? Yes, I told you I was a virtuoso. Well, let me explain what I meant by that. What I meant was that I was born with a very special gift, just as you were. You and me, we have something most other cellists will never have, no matter how hard they practise. I was able to recognise it in you, the moment I first heard you in that church. And in some way, you must have recognised it in me too. That’s why you decided to come to this hotel that first time.

“There aren’t many like us, Tibor, and we recognise each other. The fact that I’ve not yet learned to play the cello doesn’t really change anything. You have to understand, I am a virtuoso. But I’m one who’s yet to be unwrapped. You too, you’re still not entirely unwrapped, and that’s what I’ve been doing these past few weeks. I’ve been trying to help you shed those layers. But I never tried to deceive you. Ninety-nine per cent of cellists, there’s nothing there under those layers, there’s nothing to unwrap. So people like us, we have to help each other. When we see each other in a crowded square, wherever, we have to reach out for one another, because there are so few of us.”

He noticed that tears had appeared in her eyes, but her voice had remained steady. She now fell silent and turned away from him again.

“So you believe yourself to be a special cellist,” he said after a moment. “A virtuoso. The rest of us, Miss Eloise, we have to take our courage in our hands and we unwrap ourselves, as you put it, all the time unsure what we will find underneath. Yet you, you do not care for this unwrapping. You do nothing. But you are so sure you are this virtuoso…”

“Please don’t be angry. I know it sounds a little crazy. But that’s how it is, it’s the truth. My mother, she recognised my gift straight away, when I was tiny. I’m grateful to her for that at least. But the teachers she found for me, when I was four, when I was seven, when I was eleven, they were no good. Mom didn’t know that, but I did. Even as a small girl, I had this instinct. I knew I had to protect my gift against people who, however well-intentioned they were, could completely destroy it. So I shut them out. You’ve got to do the same, Tibor. Your gift is precious.”

“Forgive me,” Tibor interrupted, now more gently. “You say you played the cello as a child. But today…”

“I haven’t touched the instrument since I was eleven. Not since the day I explained to Mom I couldn’t continue with Mr. Roth. And she understood. She agreed it was much better to do nothing and wait. The crucial thing was not to damage my gift. My day may still come though. Okay, sometimes I think I’ve left it too late. I’m forty-one years old now. But at least I haven’t damaged what I was born with. I’ve met so many teachers over the years who’ve said they’d help me, but I saw through them. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell, Tibor, even for us. These teachers, they’re so… professional, they talk so well, you listen and at first you’re fooled. You think, yes, at last, someone to help me, he’s one of us. Then you realise he’s nothing of the kind. And that’s when you have to be tough and shut yourself off. Remember that, Tibor, it’s always better to wait. Sometimes I feel bad about it, that I still haven’t unveiled my gift. But I haven’t damaged it, and that’s what counts.”

He eventually played for her a couple of the pieces he’d prepared, but they couldn’t retrieve their usual mood and they ended the session early. Down in the piazza, they drank their coffee, speaking little, until he told her of his plans to leave the city for a few days. He’d always wanted to explore the surrounding countryside, he said, so now he’d arranged a short holiday for himself.

“It’ll do you good,” she said quietly. “But don’t stay away too long. We still have a lot to do.”

He reassured her he’d be back within a week at the most. Nevertheless, there was still something uneasy in her manner as they parted.

He’d not been entirely truthful about his going away: he hadn’t yet made any arrangements. But after leaving Eloise that afternoon, he went home and made several phone calls, eventually reserving a bed at a youth hostel in the mountains near the Umbrian border. He came to see us at the cafe that night, and as well as telling us about his trip-we gave him all kinds of conflicting advice about where to go and what to see-he rather sheepishly asked Giancarlo to let Mr. Kaufmann know he’d like to take up the job offer.

“What else can I do?” he said to us. “By the time I get back, I’ll have no money left at all.”

TIBOR HAD A PLEASANT enough break in our countryside. He didn’t tell us much about it, other than that he’d made friends with some German hikers, and that he’d spent more than he could afford in the hillside trattorias. He came back after a week, looking visibly refreshed, but anxious to establish that Eloise McCormack had not left the city during his absence.

The tourist crowds were beginning to thin by then, and the cafe waiters were bringing out terrace heaters to place among the outdoor tables. On the afternoon of his return, at their usual time, Tibor took his cello to the Excelsior again, and was pleased to discover not only that Eloise was there waiting for him, but that she’d obviously missed him. She welcomed him with emotion, and just as someone else, in a surfeit of affection, might have plied him with food or drink, she pushed him into his usual chair and began impatiently unpacking the cello, saying: “Play for me! Come on! Just play!”

They had a wonderful afternoon together. He’d worried beforehand how things would be, after her “confession” and the way they’d last parted, but all the tension seemed simply to have evaporated, and the atmosphere between them felt better than ever. Even when, after he’d finished a piece, she closed her eyes and embarked on a long, stringent critique of his performance, he felt no resentment, only a hunger to understand her as fully as possible. The next day and the day after, it was the same: relaxed, at times even jokey, and he felt sure he’d never played better in his life. They didn’t allude at all to that conversation before he’d gone away, nor did she ask about his break in the countryside. They only talked about the music.

Then on the fourth day after his return, a series of small mishaps-including a leaking toilet cistern in his room-prevented him going to the Excelsior at the usual hour. By the time he came past the cafe, the light was fading, the waiters had lit the candles inside the little glass bowls, and we were a couple of numbers into our dinner set. He waved to us, then went on across the square towards the hotel, his cello making him look like he was limping.

He noticed the receptionist hesitate slightly before phoning up to her. Then when she opened the door, she greeted him warmly, but somehow differently, and before he had a chance to speak, she said quickly:

“Tibor, I’m so glad you’ve come. I was just telling Peter everything about you. That’s right, Peter’s found me at last!” Then she called into the room: “Peter, he’s here! Tibor’s here. And with his cello too!”

As Tibor stepped into the room, a large, shambling, greying man in a pale polo shirt rose to his feet with a smile. He gripped Tibor’s hand very firmly and said: “Oh, I’ve heard all about you. Eloise is convinced you’re gonna be a big star.”

“Peter’s persistent,” she was saying. “I knew he’d find me in the end.”

“No hiding from me,” said Peter. Then he was pulling up a chair for Tibor, pouring him a glass of champagne from an ice-bucket on the cabinet. “Come on, Tibor, help us celebrate our reunion.”

Tibor sipped the champagne, aware that Peter had pulled up for him, by chance, his usual “cello chair.” Eloise had vanished somewhere, and for a while, Tibor and Peter made conversation, their glasses in their hands. Peter seemed kindly and asked a lot of questions. How had it been for Tibor growing up in a place like Hungary? Had it been a shock when he’d first come to the West?

“I’d love to play an instrument,” Peter said. “You’re so lucky. I’d like to learn. A little late now though, I guess.”

“Oh, you can never say too late,” Tibor said.

“You’re right. Never say too late. Too late is always just an excuse. No, the truth is, I’m a busy man, and I tell myself I’m too busy to learn French, to learn an instrument, to read War and Peace. All the things I’ve always wanted to do. Eloise used to play when she was a kid. I guess she told you about that.”

“Yes, she did. I understand she has a lot of natural gifts.”

“Oh, she sure does. Anyone who knows her will be able to see that. She has such sensitivity. She’s the one who should be having those lessons. Me, I’m just Mr. Banana Fingers.” He held up his hands and laughed. “I’d like to play piano, but what can you do with hands like these? Great for digging the earth, that’s what my people did for generations. But that lady”-he indicated towards the door with his glass-“now she’s got sensitivity.”

Eventually, Eloise emerged from the bedroom in a dark evening dress and a lot of jewellery.

“Peter, don’t bore Tibor,” she said. “He’s not interested in golf.”

Peter held out his hands and looked pleadingly at Tibor. “Now tell me, Tibor. Did I say a single word to you about golf?”

Tibor said he should be going; that he could see he was keeping the couple from their dinner. This was met by protests from both of them, and Peter said:

“Now look at me. Do I look like I’m dressed for dinner?”

And though Tibor thought he looked perfectly decent, he gave the laugh that seemed expected of him. Then Peter said:

“You can’t leave without playing something. I’ve been hearing so much about your playing.”

Confused, Tibor had actually started to unfasten his cello case, when Eloise said firmly, some new quality in her voice:

“Tibor’s right. Time’s getting on. The restaurants in this town, they don’t keep your table if you don’t come on time. Peter, you get yourself dressed. Maybe a shave too? I’ll see Tibor out. I want to speak with him in private.”

In the lift, they smiled affectionately at each other, but didn’t speak. When they came outside, they found the piazza lit up for the night. Local kids, back from their holidays, were kicking balls, or chasing each other around the fountain. The evening passeggiata was in full flow, and I suppose our music would have come drifting through the air to where they were standing.

“Well, that’s it,” she said, eventually. “He’s found me, so I guess he deserves me.”

“He is a most charming person,” Tibor said. “You intend to return to America now?”

“In a few days. I suppose I will.”

“You intend to marry?”

“I guess so.” For an instant, she looked at him earnestly, then looked away. “I guess so,” she said again.

“I wish you much happiness. He is a kind man. Also a music lover. That’s important for you.”

“Yes. That’s important.”

“When you were getting ready just now. We were talking not of golf, but of music lessons.”

“Oh really? You mean for him or for me?”

“For both. However, I don’t suppose there will be many teachers in Portland, Oregon, who could teach you.”

She gave a laugh. “Like I said, it’s difficult for people like us.”

“Yes, I appreciate that. After these last few weeks, I appreciate that more than ever.” Then he added: “Miss Eloise, there is something I must tell you before we part. I will soon leave for Amsterdam, where I have been given a position in a large hotel.”

“You’re going to be a porter?”

“No. I will play in a small chamber group in the hotel dining room. We will entertain the hotel guests while they eat.”

He was watching her carefully and saw something ignite behind her eyes, then fade away. She laid a hand on his arm and smiled.

“Well then, good luck.” Then she added: “Those hotel guests. They’ve got some treat coming up.”

“I hope so.”

For another moment, they remained standing there together, just beyond the pool of light cast by the front of the hotel, the bulky cello between them.

“And I hope also,” he said, “you’ll be very happy with Mr. Peter.”

“I hope so too,” she said and laughed again. Then she kissed him on the cheek and gave him a quick hug. “You take care of yourself,” she said.

Tibor thanked her, then before he quite realised it, he was watching her walking back towards the Excelsior.

TIBOR LEFT OUR CITY soon after that. The last time we had drinks with him, he was clearly very grateful to Giancarlo and Ernesto for his job, and to us all for our friendship, but I couldn’t help getting the impression he was being a little aloof with us. A few of us thought this, not just me, though Giancarlo, typically, now took Tibor’s side, saying the boy had just been feeling excited and nervous about this next step in his life.

“Excited? How can he be excited?” Ernesto said. “He’s spent the summer being told he’s a genius. A hotel job, it’s a comedown. Sitting talking to us, that’s a comedown too. He was a nice kid at the start of the summer. But after what that woman’s done to him, I’m glad we’re seeing the back of him.”

Like I said, this all happened seven years ago. Giancarlo, Ernesto, all the boys from that time except me and Fabian, they’ve all moved on. Until I spotted him in the piazza the other day, I hadn’t thought about our young Hungarian maestro for a long time. He wasn’t so hard to recognise. He’d put on weight, certainly, and was looking a lot thicker around the neck. And the way he gestured with his finger, calling for a waiter, there was something-maybe I imagined this-something of the impatience, the off-handedness that comes with a certain kind of bitterness. But maybe that’s unfair. After all, I only glimpsed him. Even so, it seemed to me he’d lost that youthful anxiety to please, and those careful manners he had back then. No bad thing in this world, you might say.

I would have gone over and talked with him, but by the end of our set he’d already gone. For all I know, he was here only for the afternoon. He was wearing a suit-nothing very grand, just a regular one-so perhaps he has a day job now behind a desk somewhere. Maybe he had some business to do nearby and came through our city just for old times’ sake, who knows? If he comes back to the square, and I’m not playing, I’ll go over and have a word with him.