Wives tales, p.13
The Schumann Proof, page 13
“Well, for one thing,” I said, coming up with the first excuse that popped into my head, “there’s Ulrike.”
“Ulrike?” Laura repeated. “Why should that bother you? I’m already persona non grata as far as she’s concerned. I can’t see how that would make any difference.”
What else could I say? That taking part in an important premiere was dangerously close to a brink from which I’d been recoiling for years? That it would simply be too public? That for all my love of playing the piano and working with talent like Laura’s, I never wanted to be that close to the spotlight? “I just don’t want to do it,” I said lamely. “Sorry, Laura.”
Mann sensed that some intervention was required. Perhaps he understood my ambivalence and realized now was not a good time to delve into it. “Well, perhaps you’ll change your mind,” he said conversationally. “Meantime, Laura, if you were to sing, would you consider using this man of Ulrike’s?”
“Bryce?” Laura looked sceptical.
“You don’t feel he’s good? Or is it that there might be a conflict because he plays for Ulrike? Yes, of course, that’s it. Silly of me to have suggested it. No matter; this is all very hypothetical at the moment. The premiere will not in any case be for some time.”
They continued to discuss the matter back and forth, a lot less hypothetically than Mann claimed, until Elly, mostly silent at her desk, stood up and announced it was time for her to go.
“I’ll leave you the key,” she told Mann, “even though I’m not supposed to. Just be sure to drop it off at the front desk on your way out.”
I got up to join her.
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” Laura asked. “Herr Mann and I are going to do some Mahler afterward. The Kindertotenlieder.”
The offer was tempting. Of all Mahler’s songs, the five comprising the Kindertotenlieder—Songs on the Death of Children—are my favourites. For such a painful subject, the emotional range is staggering. One day, Laura would be known for her interpretation, the way Kathleen Ferrier and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were in preceding generations.
She saw me waver and went to say something, but I shook my head. “Sorry. Gotta go.” I didn’t want Elly to see I’d lied about having a prior commitment. Moreover, I had the feeling that the longer I stuck around, the harder I’d find it to defend not getting involved with the Liederkreis premiere. I said goodbye to Mann, sketched a wave to Laura, and held the door for Elly. She made her own farewells and went ahead of me into the hall.
Downstairs, we encountered resistance to leaving her key with Mann. The ever-efficient Nils Janssen had already instituted new regulations following yesterday’s vandalism. No one was allowed in a studio unless they’d signed for the key themselves, their names duly inscribed on a big ledger sheet provided for that purpose.
“I’m really sorry, Miss Gardiner,” the girl minding the front desk told her, “the memo came down yesterday.” She slid a typewritten page over the counter. “You see, it says right here...” She pointed to a line highlighted with yellow marker.
“The person up there is Dieter Mann,” Elly countered starchily, “and he’s working with Laura Erskine, who is one of my students. If you have an ounce of sense, you won’t make me drag an eighty-year-old man down here to sign his name on a sheet. It should be enough that I’ve told you he’s up there. Just remember to buzz the studio before the building closes so they’ll know when to clear out.”
“I don’t know—”
A voice from behind broke in. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Karen.”
Elly and I turned around, coming face to face with the blond hair and catalogue model figure of David Bryce. Ulrike Vogel stood a few paces behind, fetchingly belted into her Ingrid Bergman trench coat. “Miss Gardiner’s a teacher,” Bryce explained, sidling up to the desk. “The president only means the new procedure for students renting out the studios.”
Karen looked doubtful, but he crinkled his eyes and showed just enough capped teeth to reassure her.
Ulrike moved closer. “Vikkan,” she said stiffly, “it is good that I run into you. Dieter told me you would be here, when I spoke to him this afternoon. I would pay you now. As you can see, David is quite recovered. I shall not be needing you again.” She handed me a folded cheque from a pocketbook. “I trust the amount is correct?”
I took it without looking. “It’s fine, I’m sure. Thank you.”
Bryce stepped between us. “If you don’t mind, Ulrike,” he said, “I’ll leave you here. I have some things to catch up on upstairs.” He took her hand and cocktail-kissed one of her cheeks. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ulrike followed him with her eyes as he went back to the counter and requested his key, then she nodded, murmured “Miss Gardiner,” and walked off.
Elly and I took the long corridor that runs past the Conservatory Music Store to get to the parking lot. Outside, the rain had let up, but the air was still thick and soft.
“Do you need a ride?” I asked.
“No, thanks. I have my car. Vikkan...”
“Yes?”
“Are you free tomorrow morning? I know you’re busy just now,”—her tone implied otherwise—“but I think we need to talk.”
“What time?”
“Nine o’clock?”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
I walked her to her car, a nice practical little Hyundai and said goodnight. I didn’t ask what she wanted to discuss; Mann’s discovery, and his plans for it, were as much on my mind as on hers.
Six
Ist’s mir doch, als könnt nicht sein!
(“T’is as if it cannot be!”)
—Liederkreis, Opus 39, XII
I enjoy my job at Evelyn. Most of the time, it feels as if there’s just me and the Yamaha on a spotlit island of parquet in the middle of the room. The lights make it difficult to see the patrons at the banquettes, and I tend to forget they’re there. The level of conversation rarely rises above a civilized hum, and I almost never get requests.
Thursday night was an exception. Around ten-thirty, a gang of Bay Street suits came in to celebrate some blood-soaked victory on the battlefield of high finance. Vestigial propriety kept their jubilation shy of toss-’em-out rowdy, but alcoholic guffaws still erupted periodically into the lounge’s cushioned ambiance.
And during my second set, the requests started coming in.
“Play something faster,” a florid-faced pin-striper asked. “You know, something with a beat.” I did my best with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”, but Ellington proved either unknown to him or too refined for his taste. As the evening wore on, his dissatisfaction grew. I finally suggested that if he wanted uptempo, he should try a dance club on Maitland Street. I guess he knew the place catered to gay men; his response impugned my parentage, my masculinity and my talent all in one fell swoop.
The unpleasantness set me on edge, so that when I got home, I couldn’t fall asleep. I tossed and turned until nearly five, cursing every Bay Street bozo who ever thought gambling with other people’s money made him master of the universe. When I climbed down from the loft three hours later, I was feeling grungy, wired and out of sorts. A quick look outside did nothing to improve my mood. A disheartening drizzle oozed out of low, charcoal clouds.
I checked the key sheet when I got to the Con at nine, but Elly hadn’t signed in. I took a seat on a leather couch in the lobby and stared gritty-eyed at the newly hung Alumni Gallery portraits.
Elly showed up at ten after, dressed in a sou’wester and carrying a flowered umbrella. It must have started raining hard after I’d got there; little puddles formed around her shoes as she signed for her key. I got up and joined her at the desk.
“Here, take this,” she said, giving me the umbrella. “There’s some music in boxes in my car. I want you carry them upstairs for me.” She handed me her car keys. “You’ll need these.”
There were three cartons, covered with a plastic drop sheet. Any one of them was heavy enough that Elly would have had trouble on her own. I wondered if she’d saved them for a day when I happened to be handy. I had to forego the umbrella in order to balance them in my arms, getting thoroughly soaked while she waited inside.
“I hear Morris-Jones got dressed down for her behaviour on Wednesday night,” she told me as we mounted the east wing staircase.
“By whom?”
“Russell Spiers. Laura had a meeting with him yesterday. She heard the two of them going at it while she was waiting outside his office. Here, let me get that.” She held the door at the top of the stairs. “I suppose we could have taken the elevator,” she said belatedly, a little out of breath.
“We’d still be waiting.” The Con elevator could hoist several grand pianos at once, but an elephant on Valium would move faster. “What else did Laura say?”
“She didn’t hear everything—Spiers had his door closed—but she did catch Dieter’s name a number of times. And when Morris-Jones came out, she was hopping mad, yelling something about how ‘that man can’t be allowed to get away with it.’ Spiers accused her of overreacting,” Elly unlocked her door, “and added a comment about her female monthly cycle.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed. I know she deserved the reprimand, but honestly, Vikkan, the way men—”
Elly came to a halt. With my arms full, I didn’t see her. I kept on walking and collided into her. The top carton tipped and fell to the floor, spilling its contents. “Shit. Sorry,” I muttered, hunkering down. “I hope this stuff wasn’t in any kind of order.”
“Vikkan...” Her voice sounded funny.
I looked up. “What’s the ma—?”
Her studio looked as if a hurricane had blasted through, scattering papers, hurling objects, overturning furniture. Her ungainly club chair rested on its side on the carpet. The arms of a fallen coat-tree protruded from behind the door. Wastepaper baskets spewed Styrofoam cups and balled-up Kleenex. The doors of the armoire behind the piano hung open. Music from the empty shelves littered the room. Her sturdy cachepots lay like toppled soldiers. The plants had been torn out, the potting soil dumped and spread on the floor. Gloxinias, violets and begonias wilted in a heap of shattered terra cotta and loam beneath the window. A wet breeze blew in through javelins of glass clinging to the frame around the upper pane.
Elly reached for my shoulder, missed, seemed not to notice. “Oh, no...” Her hand remained suspended as she gazed toward her desk.
Face down, her long dark hair snarled with blood and splintered bone, Laura Erskine sprawled beside the upended chair. A few metres away, limbs crooked in unnatural repose, Dieter Mann crumpled around the front of the piano.
An overlay of time and images: Christian, sleeping/not sleeping on a night-darkened lawn. Then, as now, my brain refused the evidence of my senses. My psyche folded in upon itself, contorting to accommodate the scene before me. Perspective flattened. I looked at Mann and Laura, knowing they would never move or speak again, and what I saw came to me through a glass wall. A movie, I thought. That’s it. I’m watching a movie. But not the right one. Someone had made a mistake. I waited for the error to fix itself: the bodies to get up, the room to restore itself, Elly to go on with...what had she been saying?
“Vikkan...” She began to teeter. I rose instinctively to steady her. Was she in the same unreal place as I? We stood, waiting for the scene to go away. An intimate odour like faeces seeped into my consciousness. My mind rejected the implied indignity out of hand. It could not—did not—emanate from the bodies on the floor.
“What do we do?” she asked, her head weaving back and forth in stunned slow motion.
My answer came back from a great distance. “Call the police?”
“The police?” She shook her head, clearing it, like someone shooing off a blackfly. “Of course. That’s it.” She seized on the idea like a drowning person thrown a lifebuoy. “We have to call the police.”
Again, my perspective shifted. Objective became subjective. This wasn’t a movie anymore. It was a detective novel. I was one of the characters. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t remember. Check the bodies for signs of life? Step carefully? Avoid disturbing evidence?
“Outside,” she said. “Not here. Outside.”
What was she talking about? Oh, yes, the telephone. She was saying to use the public phone beside her studio. I started to leave.
“Elly?” She didn’t seem to grasp that I wanted her to come with me. I touched her arm. “We should both go.”
The phone was in a converted utility closet. I forgot there was a low bench mounted between the walls, and barked my shins. The pain registered in a dull, disembodied way. “Nine-one-one,” Elly prompted through the door. “Call nine-one-one.”
My hand seemed disconnected from my brain. The distance from the 9- to the metal stopper of the old rotary dial took forever. Then 1-1 slipped by before I noticed. A brisk voice answered: “Which service, please?”
“Police.” I couldn’t think of the words I needed. “There’s been an accident...” What was the formula? I’d like to report a murder? That couldn’t be right; two people were dead. I’d like to report some murders? That wasn’t it, either. “I’m at the Royal Conservatory,” I tried. “There, uh...there’s been a break-in.” Shit. I took a deep breath. “Murder,” I said. “Two people have been murdered.”
The word galvanized me, or maybe it was the voice on the other end that instantly clicked into high, proper gear. A stream of questions followed, easy to answer, each coming like a sturdy pylon in the soft subsoil of shock. In what seemed like no time, I was replacing the receiver. Relief spread through me like a dose of morphine. Wheels were turning, the police would arrive shortly, everything would be taken care of.
“We have to stay here,” I said to Elly.
She looked toward her studio in alarm. “In there?”
“I don’t think so.” Two metal chairs flanked her door. “Here?”
She frowned as if affronted by the idea of waiting outside her own studio like a student. “Downstairs,” she announced, squaring her shoulders. “The police will almost certainly come to the front door. We’ll meet them there.” It sounded as if she were planning to receive dinner guests. I choked off an hysterical urge to giggle.
She set off down the hall without waiting. I caught up halfway and took her arm. “I can manage on my own,” she snapped, shaking me off.
She turned right at the doors at the end, heading for the stairs. “Shouldn’t we tell Janssen?” I said. His office lay in the other direction. She kept on as if she hadn’t heard me.
I thought her determined march—downstairs, through the twisting first floor corridors and past the front desk—was going to carry her all the way out to the street. The screaming of sirens brought her up short. On Bloor Street, four officers leapt from flashered cars, loped up the sidewalk, took the stairs two at a time, and pushed their way into the building.
It was only much later that I could see humour in what happened next. Clearly, none of the officers had been in the Con before. Faced with its daunting main staircase, and the choice of three hallways—left to the front desk, right toward the parking lot, and straight ahead to the administrative tower—the bravado of their entry faltered. The four of them looked left and right and bumped—one, two, three, four—into each other.
The officer in charge, a heavyset woman made even bulkier by her uniform, headed for the staircase. Had I told them where to go when they arrived? I couldn’t remember. The others followed, charging the steps two at a time again.
“Excuse me,” I said tentatively, and when they failed to stop, shouted: “Hey! Wait up!” The loudness of my own voice surprised me.
“Name?” the female officer demanded when Elly and I reached them on the landing.
“Vikkan Lantry. I was with Elly here when we...” Another phrase from cinema and fiction refused to come forward. Found the bodies? There had to be a better way to accommodate what was in her studio.
She turned to Elly. “And you?”
“Eleanor Gardiner. It’s my studio where—”
“Which way?”
They parted ranks and let us through. At the top of the stairs outside Janssen’s secretary’s office, one of the constables, a young linebacker-type with breath like garlic sausage, moved up beside me. Another took position beside Elly.
“We do need to tell him,” Elly said, more to me than the surrounding uniforms.
“The president,” I clarified. “Janssen. This is his office.” I nodded to my left.
The officer in charge barked out orders. “Marshall, Giotti—take care of it. Get him to act as liaison. Have the floor cleared. Meet the others downstairs. Move!”
Her take-charge manner sounded like a TV script, but apparently Marshall and Giotti didn’t think so. They peeled off at Janssen’s office while the rest of us carried on to Elly’s studio.
We weren’t allowed to enter. The pungent-breathed constable blocked the door while his superior took preliminary reconnaissance of the room. A walkie-talkie crackled at his belt, informing him reinforcements were on the scene. He turned aside and mumbled into it as if he didn’t want us to hear.
Shortly afterward, a battalion of police erupted into the corridor. The relief I’d felt earlier when I’d known they were coming evaporated. The invasion of uniformed brawn struck me as a violation of the Conservatory’s genteel corridors.
When I went to say something about it to Elly, I saw that her face had gone ashen. Under the wary eyes of the sentry constable, I helped her to a chair, but when we sat, it was I who slouched forward, head between my knees, warding off the reeling, bright darkness that heralds fainting.
I straightened up when the spell passed. Elly offered no assistance. She stayed motionless in her chair, ramrod straight, her hands clasped white-knuckled in her lap.
In shock or crisis, expected emotions and reactions go on hold. The mind and body conspire together to wall off trauma in unforeseen and selfish ways.
“Ulrike?” Laura repeated. “Why should that bother you? I’m already persona non grata as far as she’s concerned. I can’t see how that would make any difference.”
What else could I say? That taking part in an important premiere was dangerously close to a brink from which I’d been recoiling for years? That it would simply be too public? That for all my love of playing the piano and working with talent like Laura’s, I never wanted to be that close to the spotlight? “I just don’t want to do it,” I said lamely. “Sorry, Laura.”
Mann sensed that some intervention was required. Perhaps he understood my ambivalence and realized now was not a good time to delve into it. “Well, perhaps you’ll change your mind,” he said conversationally. “Meantime, Laura, if you were to sing, would you consider using this man of Ulrike’s?”
“Bryce?” Laura looked sceptical.
“You don’t feel he’s good? Or is it that there might be a conflict because he plays for Ulrike? Yes, of course, that’s it. Silly of me to have suggested it. No matter; this is all very hypothetical at the moment. The premiere will not in any case be for some time.”
They continued to discuss the matter back and forth, a lot less hypothetically than Mann claimed, until Elly, mostly silent at her desk, stood up and announced it was time for her to go.
“I’ll leave you the key,” she told Mann, “even though I’m not supposed to. Just be sure to drop it off at the front desk on your way out.”
I got up to join her.
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” Laura asked. “Herr Mann and I are going to do some Mahler afterward. The Kindertotenlieder.”
The offer was tempting. Of all Mahler’s songs, the five comprising the Kindertotenlieder—Songs on the Death of Children—are my favourites. For such a painful subject, the emotional range is staggering. One day, Laura would be known for her interpretation, the way Kathleen Ferrier and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were in preceding generations.
She saw me waver and went to say something, but I shook my head. “Sorry. Gotta go.” I didn’t want Elly to see I’d lied about having a prior commitment. Moreover, I had the feeling that the longer I stuck around, the harder I’d find it to defend not getting involved with the Liederkreis premiere. I said goodbye to Mann, sketched a wave to Laura, and held the door for Elly. She made her own farewells and went ahead of me into the hall.
Downstairs, we encountered resistance to leaving her key with Mann. The ever-efficient Nils Janssen had already instituted new regulations following yesterday’s vandalism. No one was allowed in a studio unless they’d signed for the key themselves, their names duly inscribed on a big ledger sheet provided for that purpose.
“I’m really sorry, Miss Gardiner,” the girl minding the front desk told her, “the memo came down yesterday.” She slid a typewritten page over the counter. “You see, it says right here...” She pointed to a line highlighted with yellow marker.
“The person up there is Dieter Mann,” Elly countered starchily, “and he’s working with Laura Erskine, who is one of my students. If you have an ounce of sense, you won’t make me drag an eighty-year-old man down here to sign his name on a sheet. It should be enough that I’ve told you he’s up there. Just remember to buzz the studio before the building closes so they’ll know when to clear out.”
“I don’t know—”
A voice from behind broke in. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Karen.”
Elly and I turned around, coming face to face with the blond hair and catalogue model figure of David Bryce. Ulrike Vogel stood a few paces behind, fetchingly belted into her Ingrid Bergman trench coat. “Miss Gardiner’s a teacher,” Bryce explained, sidling up to the desk. “The president only means the new procedure for students renting out the studios.”
Karen looked doubtful, but he crinkled his eyes and showed just enough capped teeth to reassure her.
Ulrike moved closer. “Vikkan,” she said stiffly, “it is good that I run into you. Dieter told me you would be here, when I spoke to him this afternoon. I would pay you now. As you can see, David is quite recovered. I shall not be needing you again.” She handed me a folded cheque from a pocketbook. “I trust the amount is correct?”
I took it without looking. “It’s fine, I’m sure. Thank you.”
Bryce stepped between us. “If you don’t mind, Ulrike,” he said, “I’ll leave you here. I have some things to catch up on upstairs.” He took her hand and cocktail-kissed one of her cheeks. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ulrike followed him with her eyes as he went back to the counter and requested his key, then she nodded, murmured “Miss Gardiner,” and walked off.
Elly and I took the long corridor that runs past the Conservatory Music Store to get to the parking lot. Outside, the rain had let up, but the air was still thick and soft.
“Do you need a ride?” I asked.
“No, thanks. I have my car. Vikkan...”
“Yes?”
“Are you free tomorrow morning? I know you’re busy just now,”—her tone implied otherwise—“but I think we need to talk.”
“What time?”
“Nine o’clock?”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
I walked her to her car, a nice practical little Hyundai and said goodnight. I didn’t ask what she wanted to discuss; Mann’s discovery, and his plans for it, were as much on my mind as on hers.
Six
Ist’s mir doch, als könnt nicht sein!
(“T’is as if it cannot be!”)
—Liederkreis, Opus 39, XII
I enjoy my job at Evelyn. Most of the time, it feels as if there’s just me and the Yamaha on a spotlit island of parquet in the middle of the room. The lights make it difficult to see the patrons at the banquettes, and I tend to forget they’re there. The level of conversation rarely rises above a civilized hum, and I almost never get requests.
Thursday night was an exception. Around ten-thirty, a gang of Bay Street suits came in to celebrate some blood-soaked victory on the battlefield of high finance. Vestigial propriety kept their jubilation shy of toss-’em-out rowdy, but alcoholic guffaws still erupted periodically into the lounge’s cushioned ambiance.
And during my second set, the requests started coming in.
“Play something faster,” a florid-faced pin-striper asked. “You know, something with a beat.” I did my best with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”, but Ellington proved either unknown to him or too refined for his taste. As the evening wore on, his dissatisfaction grew. I finally suggested that if he wanted uptempo, he should try a dance club on Maitland Street. I guess he knew the place catered to gay men; his response impugned my parentage, my masculinity and my talent all in one fell swoop.
The unpleasantness set me on edge, so that when I got home, I couldn’t fall asleep. I tossed and turned until nearly five, cursing every Bay Street bozo who ever thought gambling with other people’s money made him master of the universe. When I climbed down from the loft three hours later, I was feeling grungy, wired and out of sorts. A quick look outside did nothing to improve my mood. A disheartening drizzle oozed out of low, charcoal clouds.
I checked the key sheet when I got to the Con at nine, but Elly hadn’t signed in. I took a seat on a leather couch in the lobby and stared gritty-eyed at the newly hung Alumni Gallery portraits.
Elly showed up at ten after, dressed in a sou’wester and carrying a flowered umbrella. It must have started raining hard after I’d got there; little puddles formed around her shoes as she signed for her key. I got up and joined her at the desk.
“Here, take this,” she said, giving me the umbrella. “There’s some music in boxes in my car. I want you carry them upstairs for me.” She handed me her car keys. “You’ll need these.”
There were three cartons, covered with a plastic drop sheet. Any one of them was heavy enough that Elly would have had trouble on her own. I wondered if she’d saved them for a day when I happened to be handy. I had to forego the umbrella in order to balance them in my arms, getting thoroughly soaked while she waited inside.
“I hear Morris-Jones got dressed down for her behaviour on Wednesday night,” she told me as we mounted the east wing staircase.
“By whom?”
“Russell Spiers. Laura had a meeting with him yesterday. She heard the two of them going at it while she was waiting outside his office. Here, let me get that.” She held the door at the top of the stairs. “I suppose we could have taken the elevator,” she said belatedly, a little out of breath.
“We’d still be waiting.” The Con elevator could hoist several grand pianos at once, but an elephant on Valium would move faster. “What else did Laura say?”
“She didn’t hear everything—Spiers had his door closed—but she did catch Dieter’s name a number of times. And when Morris-Jones came out, she was hopping mad, yelling something about how ‘that man can’t be allowed to get away with it.’ Spiers accused her of overreacting,” Elly unlocked her door, “and added a comment about her female monthly cycle.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed. I know she deserved the reprimand, but honestly, Vikkan, the way men—”
Elly came to a halt. With my arms full, I didn’t see her. I kept on walking and collided into her. The top carton tipped and fell to the floor, spilling its contents. “Shit. Sorry,” I muttered, hunkering down. “I hope this stuff wasn’t in any kind of order.”
“Vikkan...” Her voice sounded funny.
I looked up. “What’s the ma—?”
Her studio looked as if a hurricane had blasted through, scattering papers, hurling objects, overturning furniture. Her ungainly club chair rested on its side on the carpet. The arms of a fallen coat-tree protruded from behind the door. Wastepaper baskets spewed Styrofoam cups and balled-up Kleenex. The doors of the armoire behind the piano hung open. Music from the empty shelves littered the room. Her sturdy cachepots lay like toppled soldiers. The plants had been torn out, the potting soil dumped and spread on the floor. Gloxinias, violets and begonias wilted in a heap of shattered terra cotta and loam beneath the window. A wet breeze blew in through javelins of glass clinging to the frame around the upper pane.
Elly reached for my shoulder, missed, seemed not to notice. “Oh, no...” Her hand remained suspended as she gazed toward her desk.
Face down, her long dark hair snarled with blood and splintered bone, Laura Erskine sprawled beside the upended chair. A few metres away, limbs crooked in unnatural repose, Dieter Mann crumpled around the front of the piano.
An overlay of time and images: Christian, sleeping/not sleeping on a night-darkened lawn. Then, as now, my brain refused the evidence of my senses. My psyche folded in upon itself, contorting to accommodate the scene before me. Perspective flattened. I looked at Mann and Laura, knowing they would never move or speak again, and what I saw came to me through a glass wall. A movie, I thought. That’s it. I’m watching a movie. But not the right one. Someone had made a mistake. I waited for the error to fix itself: the bodies to get up, the room to restore itself, Elly to go on with...what had she been saying?
“Vikkan...” She began to teeter. I rose instinctively to steady her. Was she in the same unreal place as I? We stood, waiting for the scene to go away. An intimate odour like faeces seeped into my consciousness. My mind rejected the implied indignity out of hand. It could not—did not—emanate from the bodies on the floor.
“What do we do?” she asked, her head weaving back and forth in stunned slow motion.
My answer came back from a great distance. “Call the police?”
“The police?” She shook her head, clearing it, like someone shooing off a blackfly. “Of course. That’s it.” She seized on the idea like a drowning person thrown a lifebuoy. “We have to call the police.”
Again, my perspective shifted. Objective became subjective. This wasn’t a movie anymore. It was a detective novel. I was one of the characters. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t remember. Check the bodies for signs of life? Step carefully? Avoid disturbing evidence?
“Outside,” she said. “Not here. Outside.”
What was she talking about? Oh, yes, the telephone. She was saying to use the public phone beside her studio. I started to leave.
“Elly?” She didn’t seem to grasp that I wanted her to come with me. I touched her arm. “We should both go.”
The phone was in a converted utility closet. I forgot there was a low bench mounted between the walls, and barked my shins. The pain registered in a dull, disembodied way. “Nine-one-one,” Elly prompted through the door. “Call nine-one-one.”
My hand seemed disconnected from my brain. The distance from the 9- to the metal stopper of the old rotary dial took forever. Then 1-1 slipped by before I noticed. A brisk voice answered: “Which service, please?”
“Police.” I couldn’t think of the words I needed. “There’s been an accident...” What was the formula? I’d like to report a murder? That couldn’t be right; two people were dead. I’d like to report some murders? That wasn’t it, either. “I’m at the Royal Conservatory,” I tried. “There, uh...there’s been a break-in.” Shit. I took a deep breath. “Murder,” I said. “Two people have been murdered.”
The word galvanized me, or maybe it was the voice on the other end that instantly clicked into high, proper gear. A stream of questions followed, easy to answer, each coming like a sturdy pylon in the soft subsoil of shock. In what seemed like no time, I was replacing the receiver. Relief spread through me like a dose of morphine. Wheels were turning, the police would arrive shortly, everything would be taken care of.
“We have to stay here,” I said to Elly.
She looked toward her studio in alarm. “In there?”
“I don’t think so.” Two metal chairs flanked her door. “Here?”
She frowned as if affronted by the idea of waiting outside her own studio like a student. “Downstairs,” she announced, squaring her shoulders. “The police will almost certainly come to the front door. We’ll meet them there.” It sounded as if she were planning to receive dinner guests. I choked off an hysterical urge to giggle.
She set off down the hall without waiting. I caught up halfway and took her arm. “I can manage on my own,” she snapped, shaking me off.
She turned right at the doors at the end, heading for the stairs. “Shouldn’t we tell Janssen?” I said. His office lay in the other direction. She kept on as if she hadn’t heard me.
I thought her determined march—downstairs, through the twisting first floor corridors and past the front desk—was going to carry her all the way out to the street. The screaming of sirens brought her up short. On Bloor Street, four officers leapt from flashered cars, loped up the sidewalk, took the stairs two at a time, and pushed their way into the building.
It was only much later that I could see humour in what happened next. Clearly, none of the officers had been in the Con before. Faced with its daunting main staircase, and the choice of three hallways—left to the front desk, right toward the parking lot, and straight ahead to the administrative tower—the bravado of their entry faltered. The four of them looked left and right and bumped—one, two, three, four—into each other.
The officer in charge, a heavyset woman made even bulkier by her uniform, headed for the staircase. Had I told them where to go when they arrived? I couldn’t remember. The others followed, charging the steps two at a time again.
“Excuse me,” I said tentatively, and when they failed to stop, shouted: “Hey! Wait up!” The loudness of my own voice surprised me.
“Name?” the female officer demanded when Elly and I reached them on the landing.
“Vikkan Lantry. I was with Elly here when we...” Another phrase from cinema and fiction refused to come forward. Found the bodies? There had to be a better way to accommodate what was in her studio.
She turned to Elly. “And you?”
“Eleanor Gardiner. It’s my studio where—”
“Which way?”
They parted ranks and let us through. At the top of the stairs outside Janssen’s secretary’s office, one of the constables, a young linebacker-type with breath like garlic sausage, moved up beside me. Another took position beside Elly.
“We do need to tell him,” Elly said, more to me than the surrounding uniforms.
“The president,” I clarified. “Janssen. This is his office.” I nodded to my left.
The officer in charge barked out orders. “Marshall, Giotti—take care of it. Get him to act as liaison. Have the floor cleared. Meet the others downstairs. Move!”
Her take-charge manner sounded like a TV script, but apparently Marshall and Giotti didn’t think so. They peeled off at Janssen’s office while the rest of us carried on to Elly’s studio.
We weren’t allowed to enter. The pungent-breathed constable blocked the door while his superior took preliminary reconnaissance of the room. A walkie-talkie crackled at his belt, informing him reinforcements were on the scene. He turned aside and mumbled into it as if he didn’t want us to hear.
Shortly afterward, a battalion of police erupted into the corridor. The relief I’d felt earlier when I’d known they were coming evaporated. The invasion of uniformed brawn struck me as a violation of the Conservatory’s genteel corridors.
When I went to say something about it to Elly, I saw that her face had gone ashen. Under the wary eyes of the sentry constable, I helped her to a chair, but when we sat, it was I who slouched forward, head between my knees, warding off the reeling, bright darkness that heralds fainting.
I straightened up when the spell passed. Elly offered no assistance. She stayed motionless in her chair, ramrod straight, her hands clasped white-knuckled in her lap.
In shock or crisis, expected emotions and reactions go on hold. The mind and body conspire together to wall off trauma in unforeseen and selfish ways.
