Violin

Chapter 17

Sleepy and sluggish from the long flight south, past the equator, over the Amazon and down to Rio, we were dazed as the vans carried us through a long black tunnel, beneath the rain-forested mountain of Corcovado. That splendor-the granite Christ on the peak with his arms outstretched-I had to see this Christ before we left.

I carried the violin now all the time in a new padded burgundy velvet sack, stuffed with cushioning, and safer to sling from my shoulder.

There was no hurry for us to see all the wonders of this place-Sugarloaf Mountain, and the old palaces of the Hapsburgs who had come here in fear of Napoleon and with reason, as he dropped his shells on Stefan's Vienna.

Something touc hed my cheek. I felt a sigh. Every hair on my body stood on end.

I didn't move. The van jolted along.

As we came out of the tunnel, the air was cool and the sky immense and bountifully blue.

As soon as we plunged into the thick of Copacabana, I felt the chills on my arms, I felt as if Stefan were next to me; I felt something brush my cheek and I hugged the violin in its soft safe sack of velvet, trying to fight off this fit of nerves and see what lay around me.

Copacabana was dense with towering buildings and sidewalk shops, with street vendors, businessmen and -women on the march, slouching tourists. It had the throb of Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, or midtown Manhattan, or Market Street in San Francisco at noontime.

"But the trees," I said. "Look, everywhere, these huge trees."

They sprang up straight, verdant, spreading out in scalloped umbrellas of large green leaves to make a pure and lovely shade in the pressing heat. Never in such a dense city had I seen anything so green and rich, and these trees were everywhere, rising out of soiled pavements, undaunted by the shadows of skyscrapers, the swarm of those on the pavements.

"Almond trees, Miss Becker," our guide said, a tall willowy young man, very pale, with yellow hair and translucent blue eyes. He was named Antonio. He spoke with the accent I heard in my dream. He was Portuguese.

We were here. We were in the place surely of the foaming sea and the marble palace. But how was it to unfold?

I felt a great warm shock pass over me when we hit the beach and took a turn; the waves were quiet but it was the sea of my dreams, most perfectly. I could see its farthest limits, before us and behind, the arms of mountains stretching out, which marked it off from the other many beaches of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Our sweet-voiced guide, Antonio, spoke of the many beaches that went on and on south to the Atlantic, and how this was but one in a city of eleven million people.

Mountains rose up straight from the earth. Grass-roofed huts along the sand sold cool drinks. Everywhere buses and cars pushed for room, springing free to race. And the sea, the sea was a vast ocean of green and blue seemingly without limit, though in fact it was a bay and did have beyond its horizon other hills we couldn't see. The sea was God's finest harbor.

Rosalind was overcome. Glenn snapped pictures. Katrinka stared with faint anxiety at the endless train of white-dressed men and women wandering on the broad band of beige sand. Never had I seen a beach as wide as this, as beautiful.

There was the patterned sidewalk I had glimpsed in my dreams -the strange design which I now saw was a careful mosaic.

Our guide, Antonio, spoke of a man who had built the whole long Avenue of the Atlantic along the beach, with these mosaic patterns, to be seen from the air. He spoke of the many places we might go, he spoke of the warmth of the water, of the New Year's and the Carnivale, those special days for which we must return.

The car made a left. I saw the hotel rise up before us. The Copacabana Palace, a grand old-style white building of seven floors, its broad second-floor terrace lined with pure Roman arches. No doubt the convention rooms and the ballrooms lay behind those huge arches. And the comely white plaster facade had an air of British dignity to it.

The Baroque, the faint last echo of the Baroque, here amid all the modern apartment towers that had crowded up against it but could not touch it.

Almond trees clustered in the middle of its circular drive, trees with big broad shiny green leaves, none too great, as though nature itself kept them to a human scale. I looked back. The trees spread down the boulevard, they spread in both directions. They were the same lovely trees of the busy streets.

One could not see all of this. I shivered, holding the violin.

And look, the sky over the sea, how quickiy it changes, how rapidly its vast banks of clouds move. Oh, God, how the sky rises.

Like it here, dear?

I went rigid. Then at once made a little defensive laugh, but I felt him touch me.

Like knuckies against my cheek. I felt something tug at my hair. I hated it. Don't touch my long hair. My veil. Don't touch me!

"Don't start having bad thoughts!" said Roz. "This is bee-utiful!"

We moved into the classic circular drive, made the turn before the main doors, and the concierge came out to meet us-an Englishwoman, her name Felice, very pretty and immediately polite and charming, as the English always seem to me, like a species preserved from the modern obsession with efficiency that debased all the rest of us.

I climbed out of the van and walked back away from the drive so that I could look up the full facade of the hotel.

I saw the window above the main arch of the convention floor.

"That's my room, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Becker," said Felice. "It is right in the center of the building, the very middle of the hotel. It's the Presidential Suite, as you requested. We have suites on the same floor for all your guests. Come, I know you must be tired. It's late at night for you, and here we are at midday."

Rosalind was dancing for joy. Katrinka had spied the nearby jewelers, the dealers in the precious emeralds of Brazil. I saw the hotel

had arms, with other shops: a little bookstore full of Portuguese titles. American Express.

A host of bellhops descended upon our bags.

"It's damned hot," said Glenn. "Come on, Triana, come inside."

I stood as if frozen.

Wby not, darling?

I looked up at the window, the window I had seen in my dream when Stefan first came, the window I knew that I would look out from, onto this beach and the waves, waves now quiet, but which would rise perhaps to create that very foam. Nothing else here had been exaggerated.

Indeed this seemed the greatest harbor or bay I'd ever beheld, more beautiful and vast even than San Francisco.

We were led inside. In the elevator, I shut my eyes. I felt him beside me and his hand touch me.

"So? Why here of all places?" I whispered. "Why is this better?"

Allies, my darling.

"Triana, stop talking to yourself," said Martin, "everybody will think you're really crazy."

"How can that matter now?" said Roz.

We scattered, attended, guided, offered cool drinks and kind words.

I walked into the living room of the Presidential Suite. I walked straight towards that small square window. I knew it. I knew its clasp. I opened it.

"Allies, Stefan?" I asked. I made my voice soft, as if I were mur muring Hail Marys of thanks. "And who would they be, and why here? Why did I see this when you first came?"

No answer but the full pure breeze, the breeze that nothing can soil, flooding past me into the room, over the conventional furnishings, the dark carpet, flooding in from beyond the immense beach and those dark figures moving leisurely in the sands or in the shallow quiet surf. Above, the clouds hung down in glory.

"Do you know everything that I dreamed, Stefan?"

It's my violin, my love. I don't want to hurt you. But I must have it back.

The others were busy with bags, windows and vistas of their own; room service carts were brought into the suite.

I thought, This is the purest, finest air I've ever breathed in all my life, and I looked way out over the water, at a steep granite mountain rising sharp from the blue. I saw the perfect shimmering horizon.

Felice, the concierge, came to my side. She pointed to the distant cliffs. She gave names. Below the buses roared between us and the beach. It did not matter. So many people wore the loose short-sleeve white,it seemed the clothing of the country. I saw skin of all colors. Behind me the soft Portuguese voices sang their song.

"Do you want me to take the violin, to perhaps-"

"No, I keep it with me," I said.

He laughed.

"Did you hear that?" I asked the Englishwoman.

"Hear something? Oh, when we close the windows, the room is very quiet. You will be happily surprised."

"No, a voice, a laugh."

Glenn touched my elbow. "Don't think about those things."

"Ah, I am so sorry," said a voice. I turned and saw a dark-skinned beautiful woman with rippling hair and green eyes staring at me, a racial blend beyond the boundaries of imagined beauty. She was tall, her arms naked, her long hair Christlike, and her smile made of blood-red lipstick and white teeth.

"Sorry?"

"Oh, we mustu't talk of it now," said Felice with haste.

"It got into the papers," said the goddess with the rippling hair, holding her hands as if to entreat me to forgive. "Miss Becker, this is Rio. People believe in spirits, and your music is much loved here.

Your tapes have been coming by the thousands into the country.

People here are very deeply spiritual and mean no harm."

"What got into the papers?" Martin demanded. "That she's staying at this hotel?

What are you talking about?"

"No, everyone has expected that you will be at this hotel," said the tall brown woman with the green eyes. "I mean the sad story that you have come here to look for the soul of your child. Miss Becker-" She extended her hand. She clasped mine.

Even as I felt her warm touch, the chills went over me, circuit after circuit. I felt weak looking into her eyes.

And yet in all this, there was something horribly thrilling. Horribly so.

"Miss Becker, forgive us, but we could not stop the rumors. I'm sorry for this pain.

There are reporters downstairs already-"

"Well, they'll have to go away," said Martin. "Triana has to sleep. We've been flying for over nine hours. She has to sleep. Her concert is tomorrow night, that's barely enough time...

I turned and looked at the sea. I smiled, then turned back and took the young dark woman's hands.

"You are a spiritual people," I said. "Catholic and African, and Indian as well, deeply spiritual, or so I've heard. What is the name of the rituals, the ones the people practice? I can't remember."

"Mogambo, Candomble'." She shrugged, grateful for my forgiveness. Felice, the British one, stood aloof, disturbed.

I had to admit-no matter what joy we knew wherever we went-someone on the periphery was always disturbed. And now it was this Englishwoman who feared offenses to me which weren't possible.

Aren't they? You think she's here, your daughter?

"You tell me," I whispered. "She's not your ally, don't try to make me think that." I looked down and said it under my breath.

The others retreated. Martin saw them out.

"What do you want me to tell those damned reporters?"

"The truth," I said. "An old friend said that Lily had been reborn in this place." I turned again to the window and to the sweet thrust of the wind. "Oh, God, look at this sea, look. If Lily should come again, which I don't believe, why not in a place like this?

And do you hear their voices? Did I ever tell you about the Brazilian children she loved, who lived near us in those last years?"

"I met them," Martin said. "I was there. That family came from Sao Paulo. I won't have you upset by these things."

"Tell them we are looking for Lily but we don't seek to find her in any one human being, tell them something nice, tell them something that will fill up their municipal auditorium where we're to play. Go ahead."

"It's sold out," said Martin. "I don't want to leave you alone."

"I can't sleep till it gets dark. This is too much, too gorgeous, too perfectly shining.

Martin, are you tired?"

"No, not much. Why, what do you want to do?"

I thought. Rio.

"I want to go up in the rain forest," I said, "go up to the top of Corcovado. Look at the sky, how clear it is. Do we have time to do that before dark? I want to see Christ up there with his arms outstretched. I wish we could see Him from here."

Martin made the arrangements by phone.

"What a lovely thought," I said, "that Lily should come back alive and claim a long life in such a place as this." I closed my eyes and thought of her, my luminous one, bald and smiling, nestled in my arms, the little white collar of her checked dress turned up, so that in her steroid plumpness, her adorable roundness, we called her "Humpty."

I heard her laugh as clearly as if she were sitting astride Lev, who lay on his back on the cold grass of the rose garden in Oakland. Katrinka and Martin had taken us that day. We had that picture some where, perhaps it was with Lev-Lev lying on his back, and Lily sitting on his chest, her small round face beaming at the heavens. Katrinka had taken so many wonderful pictures.

Oh, God, stop it.

Laughter.

You can't make it sweet, no, you can't do that, it hurts too much and that you think, perhaps she hates you, that you let her die, perhaps your Mother too, and here you are in the land ofthe spirits.

"You take your strength from this place? You're a fool. The violin's mine. I'd burn it before I let you have it."

Martin spoke my name. No doubt behind me, he stood watching me talk to nothing, or maybe the wind hushed the words.

The car was ready. Antonio waited for us. We would drive to the tram. We had two bodyguards with us, both off-duty policemen hired for our safety, and the tram would take us up through the rain forest and we would have to walk the last steps to the foot of Christ at the very summit of the mountain.

"Are you sure," asked Martin, "that you're not too tired for this?"

"I'm excited. I love this air, this sea, everything around me . .

Yes, said Antonio, there was plenty of time to make it to the tram. It would not be dark for five hours. But look, the clouds, the sky was darkening, it was not suc h a perfect day for Corcovado.

"It's my day," I said. "Let's go. Let me ride shotgun with you," I said to Antonio.

"I want to see everything that I can."

Martin and the two bodyguards climbed into the back.

We had only pulled off when I noticed the obvious reporters, laden with cameras, clustered at the door, one small group in an intense argument with the English concierge Felice, who gave no sign that we were in fact within earshot.

I knew nothing much about the tram, except that it was old, like the wooden streetcars of New Orleans, and it would be pulled up the mountain, like the cable cars of San Francisco. I think I had heard it was dangerous at times to ride it. But none of this mattered.

We rushed from the van to the tram car just as it was about to depart the station.

Only a scattering of people were on board, and seemed for the most part to be Europeans.

I heard people speaking in French, Spanish and what had to be the melodious angelic Portuguese again.

"My God," I said, "we 're going right into the forest."

"Yes," said our Antonio, our guide. "This forest is all the way up the mountain, this is a beautiful forest, this forest is not the original forest . .

"Tell me," I said. In astonishment I reached out to touch the bare earth, we rode so close, to touch the ferns lodged in the cracks, to see above us the trees leaning over the tramway.

Others chattered and smiled on the tram.

"It was a coffee plantation, you see, and then, when this man came to Brazil, this rich man, he saw that the rain forest should be brought back, and he had it replanted.

This is a new forest, this is a forest only fifty years old, but it is our rain forest of Rio, and it is for us, and he did this for us. All of this, you see, he carefully replanted."

It looked as wild and unspoiled as any tropical paradise I'd ever beheld. My heart was thumping.

"Are you here, you son of a bitch?" I whispered to Stefan.

"What did you say?" asked Martin.

"Talking to myself, saying my Rosary, my Hail Marys for good luck. Glorious Mysteries; Jesus Rises from the Dead."

"Oh, you and your Hail Marys."

"What do you mean by that? Look, the earth's red, absolutely red!" We rose, turning slowly curve by curve through deep gashes in the mountain and then emerging on an equal footing with the soft, dense and drowsy trees.

"Ah, I see the fog coming," said Antonio, smiling sadly, his voice so apologetic.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "It's too lovely the way it is, it's to be seen in all ways, don't you think? And when I do this, ride like this, up and up a mountain towards the sky and Christ, well, I can take my mind off other things."

"Good to do that," said Martin. He had lighted a cigarette. Katrinka wasn't there to tell him to put it out. Antonio did not smoke and did not mind, and seemed in his courtesy surprised to have been asked now by Martin if the smoking was permitted.

The tram made a stop; it picked up a lone woman with several bundles. She was dark-skinned, wore soft shapeless shoes.

"You mean it's like a streetcar?"

"Oh, well, yes," sang Antonio's voice, "and there are people who work up above, and those who come here and there, and you see there is one of a very poor place...

"The shantytowns," Martin said. "I've heard of them, we're not going into them."

"No, we don't have to."

Laughter again. Obviously no one else heard it. "So you're that spent, are you?" I whispered. I pushed down the window! I leant out the open window, ignoring Martin's warnings. I could see the leafr branches coming, I could smell the earth. I talked into the wind. "You can't make yourself visible and you can't make anyone else hear you?"

I save my finest for you, my love, you who took your own hold steps into the cloisters of my mind, even as I played there, singing your vespers to a chime inside me that I myself didn't hear. For you I will he a worker of more miracles.

"A liar and a cheat," I said beneath the rattle of the tram. "Keeping company with ragged ghosts?"

The tram stopped again.

"That building," I asked. "Look, there's a beautiful house there to the right, what is it?"

"Ah, well, yes," said Antonio, with a smile. "We can see it on the way down. In fact, let me call now." He pulled out his small cellular phone. "I will have the van come up to meet us there if you like. It was a hotel once. It is abandoned now."

"Oh, yes," I said, "I have to see it." I looked back, but we had turned the bend. We went higher and higher.

Finally we had come to the end, and to the crowd of tourists waiting to return. We stepped onto the cement platform.

"Ah, yes, well," said Antonio. "Now we climb the steps to Christ."

"Climb the steps!" declared Martin.

Behind us, the bodyguards sauntered side by side, moving their knaki vests back so we and everybody else could see their shoulder holsters and their black guns. One of them gave me a tender respectful smile.

"It is not so bad," said Antonio. "It is many many steps, but it is broken up, you see, and there are places to stop at every . . . how would you say it? ... stage, and you can get something cool to drink. You do wish to carry the violin yourself? You don't want me to-?"

"She always carries it," said Martin.

"I have to go to the top," I said. "Once as a child, I saw this in a film, Christ with his arms outstretched. As if on a crucifix."

I walked ahead.

How lovely it was, the crowds slack and lazy, and the little shops selling cheap trinkets and canned drinks, and people sitting idly at the scattered metal tables. All so mellow in this beautiful heat, and the fog blew up the mountain in white gusts.

"These are clouds," said Antonio. "We are in the clouds."

"Magnificent!" I cried. "The balustrade, it's so beautifully done, Italian isn t it?

Martin, look, here everything is mixed, old and new, European and foreign."

"Yes, it is very old, this balustrade, and the steps, see, they are not steep."

We crossed landing after landing.

Now we walked in perfect dense whiteness. We could see each other and our feet and the ground, but scarcely anything else.

"Oh, this is not Rio," said Antonio. "No, no, you must come back when the sun is out, you cannot see.

"Point out Christ, which direction?" I asked.

"Miss Becker, we are standing at the very base of the statue. Step back here and look up."

"To think we are standing in the heavens," I said.

Like Hell.

"It's all mist to me," said Martin, but he gave me an amiable smile. "You're right, this is some country, some city." He pointed to the right where a great hole had opened up and we could see the me tropolis below, greater than Manhattan or Rome, sprawled out before us. The gap closed.

Antonio pointed above.

Suddenly a common miracle occurred, small and wondrous.

The great giant granite Christ appeared in the white mist, only yards away from us, his face high above us, and his arms rigid as they reached out, not to embrace but to be crucified; then the figure vanished.

"Ah, well, keep watching," said Antonio, pointing again.

A pure whiteness covered the world, and then suddenly the figure appeared again, in the obvious thinning of the air. I wanted to cry, and I started to cry.

"Christ, is Lily here? Tell me!" I whispered.

"Triana," said Martin.

"Anyone can pray. Besides, I don't want her to be here." I backed up; the better to see Him again, my God, as once again the clouds opened and closed.

"Ah, it's not so bad on this cloudy day, perhaps, as I supposed," said Antonio.

"Oh, no, it's divine," I said.

You think this will help you? Like pulling your Rosar,' out from under the pillows that night I left you?

"Are there any cloisters left to your mind?" I barely moved my lips, the words a near senseless murmur. "Didn't you learn anything from our dark journey? Or are you all bent out of nature now, like the wraiths that used to ragtag after you? I wasn't supposed to see your Rio, was I, only the memories of my own for which you hungered.

Jealous that I love it so? What holds you back? The strength is ebbing away, and you hate and you hate..."

I wait for the ultimate moment for your humiliation.

"Ah, I should have known," I whispered.

"I wish you wouldn't say the Hail Marys out loud," said Martin lightly. "It makes me think of my Aunt Lucy and the way she made us listen to the Rosary on the radio every evening at six o'clock, fifteen minutes, kneeling on the wooden floor!"

Antonio laughed. "This is very Catholic." He reached out, touched my shoulder and Martin's shoulder. "My friend, it is going to rain. If you want to see the hotel before the rain, we should go to the tram now."

We waited for the clouds to break one final time. The great severe Christ appeared. "If Lily's at peace, Lord," I said, "I don't ask that you tell me."

"You don't believe that crap," said Martin.

Antonio was shocked. Obviously he couldn't know how much everyone in my immediate family lectured me daily and eternally.

"I believe that wherever Lily is, she has no need of me now. I believe that of all the truly dead."

Martin didn't listen.

There, once more, loomed our Christ, arms rigid as though he were on the crucifix at the end of the Rosary.

We hurried to the tram.

Our bodyguards, lounging against the balustrade, crunched their drink cans and tossed them into the trash bin and followed along.

The mist was wet by the time we reached the car.

"It's the first stop?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, and we can't miss it," Antonio said. "I have called for the car. It is a very steep drive up, but not so hard down, you see, and we can take our time if you like, and then it won't matter if it rains, of course, I mean I am sorry that the sky is not clear. .

"I love it."

Whoever used this first tram stop? This stop beside the abandoned hotel?

There was a parking lot here. Some drove up, no doubt, in pow erful little cars, parked here, and took the tram to the summit. But there was nothing else to shelter one here.

The vast ocher-colored hotel was solid, but obviously utterly in neglect.

I stood spellbound looking at it. The clouds did not press so far down here, and I could see the view of the city and the sea that these shuttered windows had once commanded.

"Ah, such a place . .

"Yes, well," said Antonio, "there were plans, many plans, and perhaps . . . see, here, look through the fence." I saw a walkway, I saw a courtyard, I looked up at the faded ocher shutters that covered the windows, at the tiled roo£ To think, I could... I really could.. . if I wanted to...

Some impulse was born in me, some impulse I hadn't felt anywhere else in our travels, to stake out some beautiful retreat on this spot, to come here at times away from New Orleans and breathe the air of this forest. There seemed no more beautiful place on earth than Rio.

"Come," said Antonio.

We walked past the hotel. A thick cement railing guarded us from a gorge. But we could see now the great depth of the building and how it was positioned out over the valley. It broke my heart, this loveliness. Beneath me, the banana trees plunged in a straight line, down and down the mountainside as if following the path of one root or spring, and all round the lush growth reached up, and the trees swayed over our heads.

Across the road, in back of us, the forest was steep and dark and rich.

"This is Heaven."

I stood quiet. I let it be known. Just a moment. I didn't have to ask. It was matter of gestures. The gentlemen moved away, smoking their cigarettes, talking. I couldn't hear them. The wind didn't blow here as it did on the peak. The clouds were moving down, but slowly and thinly. It was quiet, and still, and below lay the thousands upon thousands of houses, buildings, towers, streets, and then the exquisite placid beauty of the endless blue water.

Lily was not here. Lily had gone, as surely as the spirit of the Maestro had gone, as surely as most spirits go, the spirit of Karl, the spirit of Mother, surely. Lily had better things to do than to come to me, either to console or torment.

Don't be so certain.

"Be careful with your tricks," I whispered. "I learned to play from pain from you.

I can do it agam ,"I said. "I'm not easily deceived, you should know that."

What you will see will chill your blood and you will drop the violin, you will beg me to take it, you will let it fall! You will back off from all you have so admired! You 're not fit for it.

"I think not," I said. "You must remember how well I knew them all, how much I loved them, how much I loved the sickbed and the last small detail. Their faces and their forms are perfect in my memory. Don't try to duplicate that. We'll be at wits against each other."

He sighed. There was a falling off, a sliding away, a longing that chilled my arms and neck. I think I heard the sound of crying.

"Stefan," I said, "try, try not to cling to me or this but. .

I curse you. Damn you.

"Stefan, why did you choose me? Were the others such lovers of death, or just music?"

Martin touched my arm. He pointed. Some distance down the road, Antonio was beckoning for us.

It was a long way down. The bodyguards stood watch.

The mist was very wet now, but the sky was clear. Perhaps that's what happens.

The mist melts to rain and becomes transparent.

There was a small clearing before us, and what seemed an old concrete fountain far back, and round in a circle what appeared to be castoff plastic sacks, vividly blue, simple grocery or drugstore sacks. I'd never seen them in such a color.

"Those are their offerings," said Antonio.

"Who?"

"The Mogambo people, the Candomble. See? Each sack has an offering to a god.

One has rice in it, one has something else, perhaps corn, see, they make a circle. See?

There were candles here."

I was delighted. Yet no sense of the supernatural came over me, only the wonder of human beings, the wonder of faith, the wonder of the forest itself creating this small green chapel for the strange Brazilian religion, so mixed with Catholic saints, that no one could ever untwine the varying rituals.

Martin asked the questions. How long ago had they met here? What had they done?

Antonio struggled for words... a ritual purification.

"Would that save you?" I whispered. Of course, I spoke to Stefan.

No answer came.

Only the forest lay around us, the sparkling forest as the rain came floating down.

I closed my arms tight around the well-covered violin lest some dampness get inside, and I stared at the old circle of

strange tacky blue plastic sacks, the stubs of the candles. And why not blue sacks?

Why not? In ancient Rome, had the lamps of the temple been that different from the lamps of a household? Blue sacks of rice, of corn . . . for spirits. The ritual circle. The candles.

"One stands. . . you know, in the center," Antonio sought for his English, "to perhaps be purified."

No sound from Stefan. No whisper. I looked up through the mesh of green above.

The rain covered my face soundlessly.

"It’s time to go," said Martin. "Triana, you have to sleep. And our hosts. Our hosts have some grand plan of picking you up early. Seems they are inordinately proud of this Teatro Municipale."

"But it is an opera house," said Antonio, placatingly, "and very grand. Many people do enjoy to see it. And after the concert there will be such crowds."

"Yes, yes I want to go early," I said. "It's full of beautiful marble, isn't it?"

"Ah, so you know about it," he said. "It is splendid.

We drove back in the rain.

Antonio confessed with laughter that in all the years he had done such tours he had never seen the rain forest during the rain, and this was quite a spectacle to him. I was wrapped in beauty, and no longer afraid. I figured I knew what Stefan meant to do.

Some thought was taking shape that almost seemed a plan.

It had begun in my mind in Vienna, when I had played for the people of the Hotel Imperial.

I never slept.

The rain teemed on the sea.

All was gray and then darkness. Bright lights defined the broad divisions of Copacabana Boulevard, or the Avenida Atlantica.

In a pastel bedroom, air-conditioned, I dozed perhaps, watching the gray electric night seal up the windows.

For hours, I lay peering at what seemed the real world of the ticking clock, in this the Presidential bedroom of the suite, peering through thin closed eyelids.

I put my arms around the violin, curled against it, holding it as my mother held me, or I held Lily, or as Lev and I, and Karl and I, had snuggled together.

Once in panic I almost went to the phone to call my husband, Lev, my lawfully wedded husband, whom I had so stupidly given away. No, that will only cause him pain, both him and Chelsea.

Think of the three boys. Besides, what made me think he would come back, my Lev? He shouldn't leave her and his children. He should not do that, and I should not think of it, or even wish for it.

Karl, be with me. Karl, the book is in good hands. Karl, the work's done. I drew the haggard confused figure back from the desk. "Lie down, Karl, all the papers are in order now."

There came a loud banging sound.

I woke up.

I must have been asleep.

The sky was clear and black beyond the windows.

Somewhere in the living room or dining room of the suite, a window had blown open. I heard it flapping, banging. It was the window in the living room, the window in the very center of the hotel.

In sock feet, the violin in my arms, I walked across the dark bedroom and into the living room, and felt the strong push of the cleansing wind. I looked out.

The sky was clear and studded with stars. The sand was golden in the electric lights that ran the length of the boulevard.

The sea raged on the broad beach.

The sea rolled in, in countless glassy overlapping waves, and in the lights, the curl of each wave was for an instant almost green, and then the water was black and then there arose before me the great dance of foaming figures.

Look, it was happening all up and down the beach, with every wave.

I saw it once, twice, I saw it to the right and to the left. I studied one great chorus after another. Wave after wave brought them rising with their outstretched arms towards the shore or towards the stars or towards me, I couldn't know.

Sometimes the stretch of the wave was so long and the foam so thick that it broke into eight or nine lithe and graceful forms, with heads and arms and bowing waists, before they lapsed back and the next band came rolling after them.

"You're not the souls of the damned or the saved," I said. "Oh, you are only beautiful. Beautiful as you were when I saw you in prophetic sleep. Like the rain forest on the mountain, like the clouds crossing the face of God.

"Lily, you are not here, my darling, you are not bound to any place any longer, not even one as beautiful as this. I could feel it if you were here, couldn't I?"

There came that thought again, that half-finished plan-that half-conceived prayer to fight him off.

I drew up a chair, and I sat down by the window. The wind blew my hair back.

Wave after wave brought the dancers forth, no one ever the same, each company of nymphs different, as were my concerts, or if there was a pattern to it, only the geniuses of chaos theory knew it. Once in a while, one dancer came so tall as to have legs that seemed ready to leap free.

I watched it until morning.

I don't need sleep to play. I'm crazy anyway. Being crazier still could only help.

The dawn came and all the rapid traffic, and the milling people below, the shops opening their doors, the buses rolling. Swimmers were in the waves. I stood at the window, the sack of the violin hanging over my shoulder.

A sound disturbed me.

I turned, jumped. But it was only a bellman who had come in, and in his arms he held a bouquet of roses.

"Madam, I knocked and knocked."

"It's fine, it was the wind."

"There are young people down there. You mean so much to them, they have come so far to see you. Madam, forgive me."

"No, I want to do it. Let me hold the roses and wave to them. They'll know me when they see me with the roses and I'll know them."

I went to the window.

The sun glared on the water; in an instant I found them, three slim young women and two men, scanning the face of the hotel with shaded eyes, then one saw me, saw the woman with the brown bangs and brown hair holding the red roses.

I lifted my hand to wave. I waved and waved. I watched them jump up and down.

"There is a song in Portuguese, a classic song," said the bellman.

He was fussing about with the little refrigerator right near the window, making certain of the drinks and the temperature.

The kids down there leapt in the air. They threw kisses.

Yes, kisses.

I threw them kisses.

I drew back, throwing kisses until it seemed the moment had reached its fullest, and then I let the window close. I turned to the side, the violin like a hump on my back, the roses in my arms. My heart was pounding.

"The song," he said. "It was famous in Arnerica, I think. It is 'Roses, Roses, Roses.'