The Ocean Liner

The English Channel

The radio transcript was delivered to Commodore Randall as he dined in Tourist Class, which it was his habit to do two or three times on each voyage. Unlike some captains, he was not above joining the hundred-dollar passengers now and then, and conferring upon them the reflection of his glory.

They were having a rough crossing of the Channel. Plates slid across the tables as Manhattan rolled. Half the tables in the dining room were empty. Commodore Randall’s dinner companions included the Russian composer Stravinsky and his companion, Miss Wolff, who had both been staring at their plates during his anecdotes, showing little of the sympathy or excitement one might have expected from highly sensitive persons.

Randall paused in his narrative as the steward put the slip of paper into his hand, and studied the message. The first line was enough to make Randall swiftly fold it again and put it into his jacket pocket. He glared at the fool who didn’t know better than to bring such messages into dining rooms, but the man was already hurrying away. He would make sure someone had a word with him later.

‘And so it was,’ he continued, steadying his wayward plate, ‘that the story, which began so badly, had a happy ending.’

The German boy with the swastika on his lapel, who had been the only listener hanging eagerly on the captain’s words, spoke anxiously in his guttural English. ‘But you have not said what happened next. Was nobody drowned?’

‘We didn’t lose a single soul,’ Commodore Randall replied. ‘It was all in a day’s work for me and my crew, but for some reason the newspapers got a hold of the story, and imagine my surprise, on returning to New York, to be given a ticker-tape parade.’

‘What is this, please?’

Randall smiled indulgently at the pale youth. ‘I and my crew were driven in an open car down Broadway, from the Battery to City Hall. We were showered with confetti and streamers all the way.’ Randall was already pushing back his chair preparatory to leaving the table. ‘But I must excuse myself. We’ll be in Southampton by morning. I bid you good night, ladies and gentlemen.’

With a snappy salute, he left the dining room, nothing loth to forego the rest of his dinner, a hash of beef which, between the fat and the gristle, required careful navigation. He would fill the empty place inside him later. For now, he was more concerned to examine the transcript he had been handed.

He read it on the bridge, watched by a group of officers who already knew the contents. It consisted of a series of Marconigrams. The first read:

The position given was in the Western Approaches, along the route which Manhattan herself would shortly be traversing. The second Marconigram, sent an hour later, read:

The third was also from the Pearl Princess, and had been sent to the British Admiralty some six hours later:

Randall folded the paper and looked up at his officers. ‘Anything since?’

‘Nothing, Commodore.’

‘Well, gentlemen. We know what we’re up against. We’ll be setting special watches. I’ll order a lifeboat drill as soon as we leave the British Isles.’

‘Will we be plotting an evasive course, sir?’

‘No.’

The first officer cleared his throat. ‘The British Admiralty advised—’

‘I’m fully aware of the advice of the British Admiralty,’ Commodore Randall growled, turning a cold eye on the man. ‘It applies to British shipping. We are a United States vessel.’

‘Yes, Commodore.’

There was a silence. The Admiralty announcement had been sent from London on the first day of the war, advising all shipping to travel at speed in a zigzag pattern to avoid submarine attacks. Randall’s officers watched him, waiting.

‘Well?’ he demanded, glaring back at them. ‘Spit it out.’

‘Sir,’ the navigator began, ‘we’re going to be carrying fifteen hundred passengers on this trip. The Athenia—’

‘The Athenia was making full steam, showing no lights, and plotting a zigzag course. Am I wrong in what I say?’

‘No, Commodore.’

‘And she was still torpedoed?’

The men all took an automatic step to maintain their balance as Manhattan rolled in a trough. ‘Yes, Commodore.’

‘There you have it. A fatal decision by the British skipper. A darkened ship, jinking constantly, making full speed. What would arouse greater suspicion in a U-boat captain? The German assumed Athenia was a troopship or an armed merchant cruiser. He acted accordingly.’

The officers shuffled, but nobody made a reply.

‘Running and hiding is not the answer. Creeping along is not the answer. Remember Farragut at Mobile Bay, gentlemen. Damn the torpedoes. Safety lies in boldness. I may go so far as to say that glory lies in boldness. I will plot the same passage that I have sailed all my life. We will show lights at night. We are Americans, and I’ll be damned if we will skulk like curs. The world knows that it tangles with the United States at its cost.’

The reference to Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay had not had a reassuring effect on the ship’s officers, and when Commodore Randall had left the bridge to complete his dinner in his cabin, there was a muttered confabulation among them. While not quite old enough to have served in that glorious engagement, Commodore Randall was now in his sixties, and as one of them remarked, ‘The old man has survived so many adventures that now he believes he is immortal.’

The Morgenstern cousins had not attended the evening meal. They had stayed in their cabin for most of the day. Masha had cried so much that she could hardly see to pack.

Rachel took her arm. ‘Enough nonsense with the suitcase, please.’

‘Why don’t you cry?’

‘They couldn’t make me cry at kindergarten. They couldn’t make me cry at school. They couldn’t make me cry at the conservatory. I will not let them make me cry now.’

‘But our parents,’ Masha said. ‘Oh my God, poor Mama and Papa. To think of them cold and alone in some terrible place. We should never have left them.’ She returned blindly to folding things into the valise.

‘There is nothing you can do, Masha,’ Rachel said flatly. ‘We knew this would happen. That is why they made such a great effort to get us out. It’s hateful to think of squandering that sacrifice.’

‘I’m going back to join them.’

‘To be sent to a camp?’

‘They’re old and weak. I can at least take care of them, wherever they are.’

‘Do you imagine they will be happy to see you come back?’

Masha swept the things off her side table into the valise. ‘I don’t want to be the last.’

‘Think of it as being the first,’ Rachel replied.

‘Do you realise that our family name will die out?’ Masha asked, taking clothes off the hangers in the closet.

Rachel reached in her bedside drawer for the little bottle of smelling salts. ‘My dear, our family name died out a hundred and fifty years ago. Nobody even remembers what it was. They chose to call us after the morning star in the hopes that it would stop the Gentiles from persecuting us, but it only made us easier for them to find.’ She waved the vial under Masha’s nose. Masha’s head jerked involuntarily as the fumes of sal volatile struck her sinuses. She reeled back from the suitcase she had been packing. ‘It was a long struggle,’ Rachel went on, ‘and now it is over. There will be no Jews left in Germany.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Masha begged in a broken voice. ‘That stuff stinks. Put it away.’

Rachel closed the lid of the suitcase. She put an arm around her cousin’s soft shoulders. ‘When we reach New York we’ll get information about them. And if the information is not good, we’ll have a kaddish sung for them. But you will not get off the boat at Southampton.’

‘You cannot stop me.’

‘I will have you locked in the hold, if necessary.’

Masha peered at her blearily. ‘Don’t you have feelings?’

‘I have feelings,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘I have feelings inside, without displays or fuss.’

Masha wept in silence for a while, her head on Rachel’s shoulder. At last she said, ‘You’re different from me. You’re brave. It takes a special kind of person to want to live when everyone you love has vanished. I am not such a person. I will get off the boat at Southampton. The British authorities must send me back to Germany. You take the rubies, go to America on your own. I don’t want to live with this burden any more.’

‘The burden of life, you mean.’

‘Yes, I mean the burden of life. This life. We grew up like those fish in glass bowls. We knew that terrible things were happening just beyond the glass, but we looked inward.’

‘And now the bowl has broken.’

‘Yes. But the bowl was our life. I can’t survive outside it.’ She sat up. ‘Let me pack my suitcase, Rachel. Don’t stop me.’

‘Very well,’ Rachel said after a pause. ‘If that is what you really want. I’m going to dinner.’

Stravinsky looked up from his plate as the young woman took the empty seat at their table. She was a German Jewess of the blonde type, it seemed, very pale, and with a set expression on her face.

‘I may as well say from the start that I’m not an admirer of your music, Monsieur Stravinsky.’ She spoke good French with little accent. ‘But my cousin is. She’s the one who attempted to speak to you the other night, here, at dinner. You remember?’

Stravinsky glanced at Katharine, who was frowning, then back at the Jewess. ‘I am at a loss, Fräulein.’

‘She is very pretty, with brown hair. She wore a red leather coat.’

‘Perhaps I recall such a person,’ Stravinsky said dubiously. ‘What of her?’

‘Her name is Masha. She is in our cabin now, packing her suitcase. She intends to disembark at Southampton.’

‘Indeed.’

‘But we are on our way to New York. Our families sacrificed everything so that we could leave Germany. We have heard that all those who remain of our families – both hers and mine – have been sent to Silesia.’ Stravinsky saw her eyes land on the swastika that gleamed in Thomas’s buttonhole. ‘Now Masha says she is going back to Germany to perish with them. She won’t listen to me.’

‘What is it particularly about my music that you do not like?’

The young woman’s eyes flashed. ‘I am not here to talk about your music. I am here to talk about my cousin. Don’t you hear me? She intends to disembark tomorrow and go back to her death in Germany.’

Katharine leaned forward. ‘What is it you expect Monsieur Stravinsky to do?’

‘Talk to her. Persuade her out of this suicidal course of action.’

Stravinsky rested his cheek wearily on his fist. ‘And what makes you think I might have the slightest influence on your cousin?’

‘She is a passionate admirer of your music. So much so that when she listened to your Rite of Spring, she felt her heart leap out of her chest. She became speechless in your presence. She’ll listen to you if to nobody else on this ship.’

‘Young woman, if I have no desire to continue my own life, I can hardly persuade a stranger to cling to hers.’

‘You’re old, and it’s fit you should feel that way. She’s a child. There is not much time. We will be in Southampton in a few hours.’ The young woman rose abruptly. ‘Her name is Masha Morgenstern, and she is in Cabin 321.’

She hurried away from the table without looking back.

‘The melodramas of youth,’ Katharine remarked dryly. ‘Extraordinary.’

Stravinsky pushed away the congealing bowl of stew, which he had barely touched. ‘You don’t believe this tale?’

‘I find it, as I say, theatrical.’

‘You don’t think I should follow it up?’

‘I think you should go to bed. You look exhausted. Don’t get involved in these histrionics.’

Stravinsky turned to Thomas. ‘And what do you think, Thomas?’

Thomas was staring after Rachel. ‘It’s true that her friend came to our table, but couldn’t speak. The two of them usually sit over there.’ He turned and pointed to an empty table across the room.

‘Ah. You’ve noticed them. Why? Because they are pretty?’

‘I notice everyone,’ Thomas said, the sharp ridges of his cheekbones colouring.

‘You hear this?’ Stravinsky said to Katharine. ‘Two sparrows are sold for a farthing, but one does not fall without Thomas noticing.’

‘You’re not thinking of going to these young women? It is certain to be a trap of some kind.’

‘I’m not so much afraid of that,’ he replied, dabbing his pendulous lips with his napkin and pushing away from the table, ‘but I don’t think I can be of any use in their present predicament. You are right, chérie. Let’s go to our beds.’

Rachel heard the tap at the door, and hurried to open it. She was bitterly disappointed to find that the caller was not Stravinsky, but the German boy who had been sitting beside him.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded curtly.

He was blushing hotly. ‘I have – I have—’

‘Did Stravinsky send you?’

He shook his head dumbly, staggering a little as the ship rolled.

‘Then why have you come sniffing around here?’

‘I have something to show the other Fräulein.’

‘You can have nothing to say that she would be interested in,’ Rachel retorted. She indicated the swastika on his jacket. ‘Take that hideous thing off.’

‘I made a promise to always wear it.’

‘To the Führer?’

‘To my mother.’

‘Your mother is a good Nazi, it seems.’

Masha came to peer over Rachel’s shoulder with swollen eyes. ‘Who is it? Oh, it’s Monsieur Stravinsky’s little friend. Why are you here?’

The boy, acutely shy, swallowed, the knot of his Adam’s apple jumping in his lean throat. ‘I would like – like to show you something.’

Masha glanced interrogatively at Rachel, who shook her head. ‘Well, I suppose you should come in, then.’

Rachel glared at Masha. ‘The boy is a Hitler spy. I don’t want him in our cabin.’

‘He is a child,’ Masha said wearily. ‘What harm can he do?’

‘You know what harm these people can do,’ Rachel retorted. But against her wishes, Masha admitted the boy.

‘What is it you want to show me?’ Masha asked.

‘Here.’ He took something from under his arm.

Masha looked at it blearily. ‘A book is always a good thing. First, what’s your name?’

‘Thomas König.’

Masha patted the space beside her on the bunk, where her suitcase lay open. ‘Then come and sit with me, Thomas König, and show me your book.’

The boy opened the book eagerly on his lap. ‘It’s about the World’s Fair in New York. I’m— I’m going there.’

‘You must be very excited, Thomas König.’

‘Oh, yes!’ He showed her the photographs, some of which were in colour. ‘This is the Trylon, and this is the Perisphere. The Perisphere is eighteen storeys tall and 628 feet in circumference. The Trylon is sixty storeys tall. You can see them from five miles distant.’

Rachel was on the point of pushing the youth out, with his cropped head and his proudly displayed swastika. But Masha, for some reason, was willing to indulge him. ‘That is very tall.’

‘And look, this is the Court of Power. It’s joined on to the Plaza of Light. These are the fountains which play music and are lit in colours at night. And here is the Singing Tower of Light.’ He bent his narrow head over the photograph. ‘It says “Westinghouse”. That’s an American electrical company. They have a display of all the ways electricity can be used.’

‘Including to extract confessions?’ Rachel asked.

Masha laid a finger on her lips to silence her cousin. ‘What else?’

He turned to a page he had marked. ‘This is the General Electric Pavilion. Do you see this apparatus? It creates a lightning bolt of ten million volts. The onlookers are blinded and deafened.’

‘Isn’t that frightening for them?’ Masha asked gently.

‘Yes, but I will go there nevertheless. I’m not afraid.’

‘You are very brave.’

‘There are a lot of statues of naked people. Both men and women. But you don’t have to look at them if you don’t want to. And all the film stars are there. Johnny Weissmuller comes every day. He is Tarzan, you know. His name is German, but he is Hungarian.’

‘So much the worse for him,’ Rachel said dryly.

‘And Gertrude Ederle. She was the first woman to swim the English Channel. Her parents were Germans.’

‘Have you done?’ Rachel demanded.

The boy began to stammer again. ‘There are inventions of all kinds – and – and – there are robots and machines—’

Masha laid her hand on the book. ‘Tell me, Thomas, why do you want to show me these things?’

‘I invite you to come and see them with me, Fräulein.’

Masha uttered a little sound like a laugh. ‘How kind of you.’

‘I have two tickets.’ Carefully, he took the bright coupons out of the inside cover of the book. ‘This one is for a child and the other is for an adult. The adult one is for you. Look, they have the Trylon and the Perisphere printed on them. You see? And underneath it says “The World of Tomorrow, Admit One”. Take it.’

‘I will not be going to America, but thank you.’

‘Please,’ he said.

‘Thomas, this ticket surely belongs to a relative. An uncle, perhaps.’

‘No, it’s yours. I am giving it to you.’

‘What has got into your head?’ she asked wonderingly.

His ears were glowing red again, but he met her eyes. ‘If you get off the boat in Southampton, you will not be able to see the World’s Fair with me,’ he said. ‘And if you go back to Germany, they will kill you.’ There was a silence. The boy got up, all elbows and knees. Even his thighs were flushing now. ‘You may keep the book as long as you like. I’ve read it all.’ He presented it to her, and bowed formally. ‘You mustn’t lose the ticket, Fräulein, or you will have to buy another.’

He hurried to the door, and waited there with his face averted until Rachel, without a word, let him out.

When he reached his cabin, Thomas found Stravinsky lying on his bunk, half-undressed, with one arm flung over his eyes.

‘You have to do something,’ he said sharply.

Stravinsky peered at him with bleary eyes. ‘About what?’

‘About Fräulein Morgenstern.’

‘Is that where you have been? To her cabin?’

‘I gave her my ticket to the World’s Fair. But I don’t think she will use it.’

‘Thomas,’ Stravinsky said wearily, ‘didn’t you promise me that you would stay in character? That you wouldn’t betray yourself to anyone on board this ship?’

‘Yes,’ Thomas replied tersely.

‘Well, then? What good Nazi would bother himself with the fate of a Jewess?’

‘They will kill her there!’ the boy burst out. ‘Don’t you understand? You cannot be so cold!’

‘You remind me of my own children,’ Stravinsky replied ironically. ‘I feel quite paternal when you insult me. Are you in love with this female?’

Thomas’s face twisted. ‘I am only a boy in her eyes.’

‘That is certainly true, and remember that you are even younger than you claim. I hope you understand that there is no chance of her returning your feelings.’

‘My feelings have nothing to do with it.’

‘It seems to me they have a great deal to do with it. What is she to you?’

‘She is beautiful,’ Thomas shot back. ‘The most beautiful girl I ever saw.’

‘I assure you she is quite an ordinary young person,’ Stravinsky said gently.

‘She is not ordinary. She is sensitive, and kind, and gentle, and special. How can you think her ordinary?’

‘And you love her.’

‘If that’s what you want to call it.’

‘You are certainly a very strange boy,’ Stravinsky commented. He stared at the pale, passionate face. ‘What do you expect me to do, Thomas?’

‘You must think of something. You are the only one she respects. It’s your duty!’

‘I warn you, Thomas, if you give yourself away because of this infatuation, they will turn you back in New York, and you will be sent home to Germany.’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘But I do.’

‘You must help!’

‘If I agree to think about it, will you leave me in peace? I have a migraine.’

‘Yes, I promise.’

Stravinsky covered his aching eyes again. ‘Then not a sound more out of you until morning.’

Thomas sat hunched on the edge of his bunk as Stravinsky drifted into an uneasy sleep. His mind was in turmoil. He had blurted out his feelings without thought. But from the instant he had seen Masha Morgenstern, something magical had entered his life, something that made him feel strong enough and brave enough to endure the loss of his family and face the terrors of an unknown future.

It was as though, in the arid desert that his young life had become, he had stumbled across an oasis, a pool full of sweet water that rippled and shimmered and that might sustain him.

In her presence he felt a quiet joy, in her absence an empty yearning. He had fastened on her, and though he could not have said why, he knew that what he felt was as intangible as the air he breathed, and as real.

Was this love, as Stravinsky had called it? He hadn’t thought of it as that. Love, he had been taught, was what you felt for God. But God hadn’t given Thomas much cause to love Him. His father, always so remote and severe, had climbed proudly into the Gestapo truck, and had embraced martyrdom in the name of love. He had led with him his brother and their wives, leaving Thomas an orphan.

He had always seemed more real in his church than in their home, where he was so often silent. When the Brownshirts had picketed Saint-Johannes, turning away parishioners and breaking the stained-glass windows, his face had been alight with joy. He had marched past the glowering faces and threatening rifle butts with his head held high.

That was admirable, to be sure. It was in the tradition of Martin Luther, the founder of their church. But what Thomas felt was something different. It was not a desire to die, but a desire to live. God could do without him. God was already claiming truckloads of lives. If he was to serve, Thomas would serve Masha. If he was to love, he would love Masha. He knew that there was a gulf between them, and it was unlikely that he could ever bridge it, but the thrilling, breathtaking fact of her existence was enough to give his life meaning.

Stravinsky cried out quietly in his sleep, an inarticulate sound of grief. Thomas covered him gently with the blanket, soothing him. Here was another strange, dry man, who had imperceptibly taken the place of his father. He trusted Stravinsky, and trusted that he would find a way to keep Masha Morgenstern from marching, as his father had done, to her doom.

A bitter wind swept off the Channel, scouring the superstructure of the Manhattan. On the promenade deck, sheltered by the canvas awnings that the crew had stretched to keep out the wet, Toscanini and Carla huddled under rugs. Both had been wretchedly sick. The mountainous grey waves rolled past, queasily glimpsed by the light that was flaked off Manhattan by the gale.

‘Yet again you have betrayed me,’ Carla said. ‘Yet again. After so many betrayals and humiliations.’

‘Is now the time to discuss this?’ he growled into his blanket.

‘I found her letters when I was packing in Kastanienbaum.’

Toscanini grunted. ‘I hope you were entertained.’ But he glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes.

‘I was disgusted. An old man like you. Shameful.’

He drew his bushy eyebrows down, huddling deeper into the rug, wishing he could shut out her voice, which shook with anger and pain. ‘I do not expect you to understand.’

‘Understand!’ Carla retched futilely over the bowl she held. Her stomach had long since emptied. ‘No, I do not understand. I found the menstrual bandages she sent you. The posies of her pubic hair. Flowers from my little garden. What kind of woman sends such things to a man?’

‘A woman such as you could never understand.’

‘A sexual maniac. Pathological. And younger than your own daughters.’

‘She is not younger,’ he muttered.

‘She is barely older than them. She was their friend. What would they say if they knew? Did you think of that, Arturo? As for the correspondence, I have never read such obscenities. They appalled me.’

‘Why did you persist in reading, then?’

‘The folly of it, Arturo. What if her husband comes across these things? She will end up like poor Gretel Neppach.’

‘Don’t be melodramatic.’

‘Melodramatic! If this thing is discovered, you will be ruined. We will all be ruined. What possessed you to take such a risk?’

‘Her marriage is unhappy.’

‘You were jealous of her husband, you mean. He is young and virile. While you can barely empty your bladder.’

‘In any case, it is all over now.’

She retched again, groaning. ‘Did it take another war to end it?’

‘What did you do with the correspondence?’ he asked, his voice barely audible above the wind that battered the canvas awnings.

‘I burned the flowers from her little garden.’

‘And the letters?’

‘I have brought them to you. So that you can see your folly.’

He made no reply, but he thought, thank God, they are all that’s left me.

‘She must be a madwoman. And you are the same. A mad old man. Psychopathia sexualis senilis. That is what Dr Eisenberger called it.’

He opened one eye. ‘You showed the correspondence to Eisenberger?’

‘I asked for his opinion on your sanity. He said it was a form of sexual dementia of the elderly. He attributed it to syphilis.’

‘I do not have syphilis,’ he snarled, glaring at her. ‘You had no right to show my private letters to that prating Swiss fool. Is that what you were occupied with all this time, while I waited for you in an agony?’

‘I nearly didn’t come.’ She lay back in the deckchair, exhausted. ‘I wish I were dead. You have broken my heart for the last time.’

‘You have never understood my passionate nature, Carla.’

‘Haven’t I supported you for forty years? Looked after your business affairs? Nursed you when you were ill and put up with all your madness? And you say I do not understand you.’

‘There is a dimension of me that you never shared. That you always refused to share.’

‘The old story again. Your justification for licentiousness. It’s finished, Artú. I am leaving you.’

‘I will never give you a divorce,’ he said quickly.

‘A divorce?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I will not dignify your treachery with a divorce. Besides, unlike you, I believe in the sanctity of marriage.’

‘What are you talking about, then?’

‘A legal separation. I will go my way and you will go yours. I want nothing more to do with you.’

‘What about the children?’

‘You old fool, do you think they don’t know by now what you are? Worry about your public, rather. When they find out that the great Toscanini is a fraud, a lying, deceitful wretch who cannot keep his hands off women half his age, then you will have something to worry about.’

‘Carla, I cannot live without you.’

‘You should have thought of that before.’ She heaved herself to her feet with difficulty. She had once been a ballerina, her body alive with grace. In the past forty years her body, like her face, had grown heavy. What had once been a grave beauty had become lumpishness. ‘I’m going to my cabin. You may stay here and freeze to death, for all I care.’

Toscanini watched her make her way down the deck, tottering as the ship surged. She had been allocated a stateroom to herself, a great honour on such a crowded voyage, but the door was clearly locked to him.

When she had vanished, he lowered his chin on to his chest. How was he going to face an existence without Carla? His art had been his life, and she had taken care of all the rest for four decades. She had been the roof under which he had sheltered.

Of course he had been unfaithful to her. But the daemon that possessed him demanded the regular sacrifice of a young woman’s body. Sometimes two or three at a time. The daemon insisted that he obey its commands to sin, to lose himself in passion without considering the consequences. To be as wild as those ancients who rutted with every woman they met, with goats and birds and trees and stones. Without that wildness, the daemon would withdraw its gift, and he would be nothing.

His gift was everything to him – this ability to bring out the best in a performer, an orchestra, a lover.

He allowed the thought of Ada Mainardi to come into his mind. The gulf of separation was sickening. He missed her with a pain that was like death. And mingled with the pain, that rush of desire to the heart.

Those last weeks in Kastanienbaum had been dreadful. The agonising difficulties of seeing Ada for more than a fleeting moment had driven him half-mad. And then, out of a clear sky, the thunderclap of Gretel Neppach’s death. The daughter of his dear friend, Bruno Walter; that lovely girl, who for years had been begging her husband for a divorce. Instead, he had shot her as she slept, and then turned the revolver upon himself.

The tragedy had burst on them all like the judgment of a wrathful God. The days after it had been a slow nightmare: the wretched funeral, at which the only other mourners had been the Walters and Ezio, Gretel’s lover. The pitiful spectacle of Bruno, shattered by grief, begging him to take his place at the Lucerne Festival. Of course, he’d had to agree. But how had he managed to conduct Mozart in Bruno’s place? Mozart 40! The G minor symphony! With the tears streaming down his face on the podium!

And of course, Carla was right, in her blunt way. It could have ended like that with him and Ada. If Mainardi had lost his reason as Neppach did, who knew how it could have ended?

As much as the eruption of war into their lives, it had been those two revolver shots that had sobered them. That what if.

There had been moments over the course of the affair when he would have welcomed a bullet in the heart, either to end the wretchedness, or because Ada had given him a joy he would not experience again in his life.

Yes, he had been mad. A madness that Carla would never understand. He clutched the blanket in his hands as he remembered Ada, in that hotel room, crouched between his thighs, his manhood quivering in her mouth. Those terrible kisses that had sucked his soul from his body.

And then he, in turn, returning that cannibal kiss, intoxicated by her, addicted to her, while she cried out Artú, Artú, you are my god.

Yes, he had begged Ada for those flowers from her garden, for the handkerchiefs stained with her blood, the downy curls from her sex. He had been unable to think of a life without her. And now it was here, that life without her. She in Fascist Italy, he on his way to America. It was not likely they would ever meet again, in this world or the next.

How would he survive, without Ada, without Carla?