The ghost of frederic ch.., p.1
The Ghost of Frederic Chopin, page 1
PUSHKIN PRESS
In association with
WALTER PRESENTS
THE GHOST OF
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
In a world where we have so much choice, curation is becoming increasingly key. Walter Presents was first set up to champion brilliant drama from around the world and bring it to a wider audience.
Now, in collaboration with Pushkin Press, we’re hoping to do the same thing for foreign literature: translating brilliant books into English, introducing them to readers who are hungry for quality fiction.
The title of this book immediately caught my eye. Set in post-Communist Prague, the story revolves around a journalist who is tasked with investigating a seemingly ordinary widow, with no previous musical training, who claims she is visited by the ghost of Frédéric Chopin. What’s more, the great maestro is dictating dozens of wonderful musical compositions to her. Is it a hoax, a con or has the virtuoso’s spirit really taken hold of her? Roll over Beethoven, here comes The Ghost of Frédéric Chopin, a finely crafted, delicious, spellbinding mystery.
THE GHOST OF FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN
ÉRIC
FAYE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY SAM TAYLOR
This novel is very loosely inspired by the life of Rosemary Brown (1916–2001)
In artistic works, there is a twofold possibility of existence, he believed. Just as an ancient lotus seed will flower again when dug up and replanted, the work of art that is said to possess everlasting life can live again in the hearts of all times, all countries.
yukio mishima
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PART ONE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
PART TWO
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
PART THREE
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
COPYRIGHT
PART ONE
I
The cobblestones were damp and slippery but, all things considered, he decided it was better to risk twisting his ankle than to lose sight of the woman walking quickly a hundred feet ahead of him; this woman who, according to Slaný, was in communication with Frédéric Chopin a century and a half after his death. A strange case… If anyone had told him, ten years before, that ten years later – on this gloomy Monday, an All Saints’ Day in the twilight of the century – he would no longer be a member of the secret police but would be reduced to playing private detective in a country that had been sliced in half and converted to capitalism, he would have cursed the future. Then again, if that same someone had added that he would be spying on a former school dinner lady who transcribed dozens of posthumous scores dictated to her by the Polish composer, the fanciful part of his personality would have been awakened and he would have thought that, on further consideration, the future merited a closer look. And if, moreover, that mysterious someone had told him that the woman in question was the widow of a recalcitrant individual whom he had followed years before, he would have seen in his future occupation of detective the suggestive glow of destiny, of a torch handed on from past to present.
Yes, this woman and her ghost made a change from those dissidents who haunted bars into the small hours under the previous regime, those damned dissidents who had given him so many nagging chest infections over the years, from sitting and waiting in unheated cars, because this StB agent had suffered from weak lungs ever since he was a little boy.
The woman he was following, whose fame was starting to spread far beyond the mountains of Bohemia, had been called Věra Foltýnova since her marriage, twenty-six years earlier. She was born Věra Kowalski one June day in 1938 – nobody remembered the exact date – which made her fifty-seven on that particular All Saints’ Day in 1995.
When she reappeared in his field of vision, the former StB agent breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the first time she’d briefly vanished from sight that day, since leaving her apartment; each time he lost her like that, he started sweating, despite all his experience of shadowing people from a distance. And then her chubby figure would materialize again, a mischievous smile on her face. If that was the game, he was happy to play along.
She had been constantly on the move since mid-morning. And the detective hadn’t had a chance to rest in the past week.
Now that the street had straightened out, he thought things might get easier. He would follow her more closely to make sure he didn’t lose her again. Where could she be headed? One thing was sure: she wasn’t going home, because her home was in the opposite direction. It was almost noon… When she went into a food shop, he exhaled and celebrated this brief respite by lighting a cigarette. Just then, he remembered that the journalist had asked him to get in touch as soon as he had some news. He spotted a telephone booth a dozen feet from where he stood. It rang twice before the journalist answered.
‘Ludvík Slaný, Česká televize.’
‘It’s Pavel Černý. You asked me to keep you in the loop, and I’ve got a moment now because she’s nipped into a shop. She left home just before ten and went to Olšany to put flowers on her husband’s grave. Right now, I’m close to Vyšehrad.’ He went on like this for a few more sentences, then suddenly said: ‘Hang on, she’s coming out. She bought another pot of chrysanthemums. And now… yes, it’s just as I thought: she’s going up the street. I’ll call you again when I get a chance. I don’t want to lose her…’
II
One month before this, the ringing of the telephone interrupted the eight o’clock silence in the home of Ludvík Slaný, who began each morning by finishing the chapter that he’d started reading the day before. The journalist couldn’t stand it when the world intruded on him during this reading time, even if it was only the miaowing of his cat. He usually treated these attempts at intrusion with contempt, knowing that if he gave into them his day would be ruined, like a sleepwalker rudely awakened during his nocturnal perambulations. Slaný’s early-morning reading time was sacred. It was the antidote that allowed him to come back to life. After that, the world’s slings and arrows could rain down on him, but they never truly hurt him.
That morning, the telephone rang for so long that, after a few ineffective curses, he rushed across the room, knocking a photo frame from a shelf in his haste. The frame fell to the floor and he heard the glass smash. He picked up the phone in time and answered nervously: ‘Hello? … Oh sorry, it’s you. Excuse me, I thought… No, you’re not dis— Actually, I was just getting ready to leave… Lunch, today? Um, yes, I’m free… Of course, it would be my pleasure… It’s not bad news, is it?… Okay, Filip, see you inside at quarter past twelve. And you’ll book a table? Okay, bye.’
Ludvík picked up the pieces of glass and the frame and, in a flash of pain, he remembered the day he took that photograph of Zdeňka – a close-up of her beautiful Tatar face, or pre-Asiatic as he’d called it back then, at the beginning of their affair. It had been during that Sunday outing to Kutná Hora that he’d told her how much she resembled the Russian actress Tatiana Samoilova. And that wasn’t just a line – he really meant it. With her high cheekbones, almond eyes, flowing curls and dark eyebrows… Ironic that it should have been a call from Novák that caused the clip-frame to fall from the shelf. Perhaps, after all, it was time to find a drawer for that picture of his girlfriend… or ex-girlfriend? He no longer knew what to call her, since nothing remained of that love affair but the broken pieces.
What did his editor want, calling him at home so early in the morning instead of waiting for him to arrive at ČT1? True, Filip Novák did not like mixing with lowly reporters, but he could easily have called Ludvík’s desk phone later that morning and summoned him… He hadn’t said much on the phone – a habit from the old regime. And although Ludvík Slaný told himself that nobody invited you to lunch if they wanted to reprimand you, he knew that it would be a long morning, waiting to find out what his editor wanted. Everyone who worked in the editorial department feared the summons to Novák’s office on the third floor. Whenever someone was told to ‘go upstairs’, they would turn pale and ask if the boss had, by chance, said anything else? Nope, nothing else. Maybe he has a surprise for you, the others would say, sniggering. Or maybe he just wants to let you stew…
Later, on the tram, as he reluctantly surrendered his seat to an old lady, Ludvík thought that perhaps it was a good thing he was so wary of his editor. It’s never a nice feeling when you learn that a superior wishes to speak with you, but when that superior is Filip Novák the sense of unease takes on proportions difficult to imagine for anyone who doesn’t work for him. Particularly when you have reason to believe that you are his enemy.
*
Novák liked to give the impression that he had been a regular at Na Rybárně for several months now. He had his table, in the best room. The boss wants to join the new era, to mingle his t
It was the first time Ludvík had ever been inside this restaurant. He was early. He walked down the half-dozen steps and – surprise! – saw Novák already there, standing up from behind the table and reaching out to shake his hand, an uncustomary smile on his face.
Behind him, along the painted wall, raged a sea at dusk. A whaleboat rode the waves, listing dangerously for the fifteen fishermen who sat inside it. Over time, those waves had taken on the yellowish stain of tobacco. One man stood in the boat, paddle in hand, on the lookout, but during the rest of the meal Ludvík didn’t have a second to observe him, to see if he could spot the cetacean they were hunting, because Novák, being a busy man, gave him just enough time to order his food before getting down to business.
‘I’m looking for someone with a logical mind… you know, someone with a good head on his shoulders. Someone who can think clearly and won’t be distracted by a good story or some surprising revelations. And I think you are the rational man that I need.’
‘For what?’
‘A documentary of a particular kind, something close to my heart. It will require an unusual amount of time, thought and probably cunning too. It’s a delicate subject and it’ll need just the right approach. You’ll see why.’
‘If this is about politics or corruption… how can I put this?… I would rather not get…’
‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that. But it’s potentially even more explosive. Before I gave you the job, I wanted to talk with you and make sure you were up for it. You know what it’s like in our line of work: people can be jealous, ambitious, and it’s my job to manage those emotions. Did you hear the one about the journalist who committed suicide?’
Ludvík raised his eyebrows.
‘He threw himself from the top of his ego… No, seriously, I want to be certain that you’re committed to the project before I announce that you’re in charge of this investigation, because the slightest hesitation could be exploited. I could write a book, you know, about conflicts between rival reporters.’
‘And are you absolutely sure that—’
‘It’s your kind of thing, believe me. A story about a musical medium. None of the journalists who’ve investigated it up to now have been able to disentangle truth from fiction. You’re probably familiar with the name of the woman at the centre of this story: Věra Foltýnova.’
Ludvík Slaný had never heard of her before, and yet he shuddered, as if certain names, when uttered aloud, release a sort of electric tension and what one might call a memory of the future, a vague intuition of what is going to happen. The shudder lasted only a heartbeat, though, and by the following heartbeat he’d forgotten about it and his attention was riveted on Novák, who was telling him about musical mediums. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘since spiritism became fashionable in the second half of the nineteenth century, there have been those who claim to be visited by famous dead people, who continue their work and attempt to get recognition down here for their posthumous compositions. There was a spiritualist called Georges Aubert, in France, who said he was in communication with certain composers; there was Victor Hugo, who killed time during exile by communicating with the great men of history… And now, here, we have the case of this Foltýnova, who is fast becoming a media darling… Since we got freedom of speech, she’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that Chopin has dictated about a hundred pieces to her. She’s not talking about a handful of compositions, which it would be relatively easy to fake. No, she’s talking about a hundred. Mazurkas, ballads, études. We haven’t been spared anything.’
‘It all depends when she started composing, doesn’t it? How old did you say she was?’
‘Fifty-seven. Her father was Polish, so although she doesn’t speak French, she is fluent in Chopin’s native language. Supraphon sniffed an opportunity and they’re making a Best Of CD of his supposedly posthumous output, some of which will be played by our Věra. The other pieces will be played by a famous pianist, as a way of drawing attention to the music. The foreign press is getting carried away and journalists from all over Europe have started turning up at her apartment. Only this month she’s given interviews to the Guardian and La Stampa… Here, I brought you copies of them… So, yeah, this is already making waves in classical music circles. It hasn’t yet reached the wider public, but those in the know are fighting over the truth. Camps are forming. The biggest camp is the sceptics, who are merrily pointing out the weak spots in what they claim are simple pastiches. Then there are the true believers, who are deaf to any arguments against this miracle: some of them are just people who need a fairy tale in their lives; others genuinely think that these “dictated” pieces are by Chopin himself… Between these two camps there’s a grey zone of indeterminate geometry filled with fence-sitters of all stripes, the kind of people willing to follow the most cunning charlatans. Let’s call this the swamp of the bewildered. But anyway, back to Věra Foltýnova. I’m not going to ask you what you think of her…’
‘I don’t think there’s any point.’
‘Do you know what she claims?’
‘I feel like I’m about to.’
‘That she’s never had any musical training at all! An intriguing idea, obviously, and a lot of people have already fallen for it: fakers, cranks, mystics, gullible fools… but also some serious musicologists and musicians.’
‘No musical training… Like, none at all? Not even a few piano lessons in childhood? That seems unbelievable…’
‘I’m just telling you what’s being said. And given the number of articles and interviews being published at the moment, I’d say the press, too, is being swept up in this craze. And you know the press as well as I do: it never does anything by half. All those journalists who – whether from a lack of means or a lack of professionalism – never have time to dig deeper to find out the truth of a story, who just swallow whatever bullshit they’re told… Is that our job? No, for God’s sake! We’re not there to just regurgitate the lies we’re fed! Some days, it’s like we’re back in the Middle Ages, with cabalists, witches and alchemists. If this woman really is Chopin’s secretary, we need to demand proof. So, what I want from you is… a long documentary that will take the time to dismantle and dissect everything, and to expose the deception. Tear away the disguise. Prove that these pastiches really are fakes… You’re a respected journalist in your scientific niche, but maybe you need to broaden your horizons, don’t you think? To get out of your comfort zone for a while. You’ll have the time you need, but the investigation has to be finished and the documentary ready to be shown before that Supraphon CD comes out. That gives us three months. There have been plenty of excellent documentaries made in less time than that… So what do you say? We can’t just stand here and watch this happen. We have a duty to the public to set things straight. Let me be clear: we are not the prosecution here! Our role is to help people think, to question what seems set in stone. A serious documentary, one that will go down in history. I don’t want to make a fool of a good woman, of course… Just to provide the public with the facts.’
‘Okay, but I’m not sure how we can make people think, as you put it, and at the same time leave no room for doubt?’
Ludvík Slaný had been feeling nervous and uneasy for some time now. Sometimes he frowned, sometimes he scratched his chin or lifted up his glasses to rub his itchy eyelid. Something had awakened his suspicions. He felt nauseous, as if he were out there in that storm-tossed whaleboat with the men in the painting, as if this conversation were leading him on a long journey to an unknown destination.
‘I would like us to get to the truth, to tear back the curtain and show the world the real Věra Foltýnova. To reveal the hidden side of the human heart, where shameful secrets are conceived. Believe me, this case seems to me symptomatic of a world without rules, of a ballooning egotism, a thirst for sensationalism… And perhaps, by extension, it also reveals the changes that have overcome our society in the last six years… The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that that is why this story is so captivating. As if the valve of a pressure cooker had suddenly exploded… Obviously, all this would have been impossible seven or eight years ago; this woman would have gone to prison before the press knew anything about it… You want another one?’
