Chapter Four
Four
Music first wove its way into Marcel’s dreams, a soundtrack to the images flashing through his mind. Then it pulled him to wakefulness, its tug irresistible even when fighting exhaustion. He opened his eyes, expecting the song to fade like the dream.
It didn’t.
He blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling, awareness easing into place.
The room was far more luxurious than any he’d ever slept in, so ludicrously far from the POW camp that he couldn’t help but remember Grigoryan in the next moment.
The sheets beneath him were softer than a cloud, and he wore borrowed silk pajamas as delightful as they were ridiculous.
And that was Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C minor. One of the most beautiful—and most challenging—piano solos ever written. A recording?
He listened for a moment, sitting up to clear his head and ears of down pillows and silk cases. Definitely not a record. He pushed to his feet and nearly exited the room then and there—thankfully, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
Right. Oversized pajamas. That wouldn’t do.
Grigoryan had waved a hand at the armoire when he’d shown Marcel to this room yesterday afternoon, saying he’d find clothing in there.
Now he tugged open the drawers, caught between a frown and a laugh.
Those were his clothes. As in, the ones he’d left in his flat, thinking he’d return in a month or two.
He’d been a prisoner of war by the time the rent he’d prepaid would have run out, and he’d assumed his belongings had been tossed into the rubbish bin.
Grigoryan had said he’d been planning this for a long time—clearly he’d meant it, if he’d collected Marcel’s things for him. He opened other drawers around the room, too, and saw that each one was filled with his possessions.
Tears stung his eyes. Not lost. His things . . . and him. All he’d worked for. Every dream he’d dreamed. Not lost. Here, cared for by a stranger who’d decided they’d be friends.
Rachmaninoff demanded his attention again.
A quick change and he was following his ears down the stairs and into a chamber that doubled as both library and music room. He must have been expecting to step inside and see one of his colleagues, another recruit of Grigoryan’s. He was wrong.
Zelie Bellerose played with the posture of one who’d had a strict teacher, the skill of one who’d spent long hours studying, and the passion of one who loved music to her very soul.
He edged farther into the room, trying to stay out of her peripheral vision so he didn’t distract her and yet catch a glimpse of her face.
The window helped, letting him see a dim reflection of her as the piece moved toward its ending under her slender, elegant fingers.
He was accustomed to professionals—people who had trained not only their fingers but their expressions.
Zelie’s face showed rapture and grief both—dulce and doloroso—in a mix so intoxicating he had to lean against a bookcase for support.
It was the sudden freedom—that was all. Hope after a year of hopelessness. French air after months of German. It wasn’t her, lovely as she was. Just all she represented.
A perspective that helped him stand straight again as she played the last notes. As her fingers held still over the keys, he stepped forward, clapping.
Zelie spun on her bench, eyes wide. “Oh! I didn’t know anyone else was in the house.”
Amusement tugged at his lips. When, in a house this size, was it ever truly empty? Though perhaps she was of that class capable of considering staff to be no one. “Do you only play when alone?”
“No, but . . .” Color infused her cheeks, making her look younger than she likely was. “I don’t generally play in front of professionals who put me to shame. Or for that matter, patrons who are at the Paris Opera every week.”
Ah. By anyone, she’d specifically meant him and their host. He moved closer, though it was the piano he focused his gaze on now. “You play beautifully.”
Her laugh was but a breath, bordering on self-mocking. “No need to flatter me, monsieur. I know every note I got wrong.”
“Do you know how many you got right?” He glanced at her even as he ran an appreciative hand over the Bosendorfer. Was it . . . ? Yes. A Concert Grand Artisan, a piano so lauded that Debussy and Ravel wrote pieces specifically for it and insisted other pianos would never do the works justice.
He could attest to the truth of the claim.
This one was so ornate he couldn’t catalogue the features fast enough. He spotted cherry, walnut, maple, pear, and mahogany woods, and that was to say nothing of the gold vines dancing up the legs, around the sides, and under the lid.
Zelie frowned. “How many I got right? I don’t suppose I do.”
He angled a smile her way. “Why focus on the few mistakes when what’s right so far outweighs them? You’re an excellent pianist. I don’t know many nonprofessionals who attempt Rachmaninoff.”
Her breath came out in an exhale that barely avoided being a huff. “I’ve let myself get rusty. Even before I had the handy excuse of a war that sent me away from my own piano. Motherhood does that, I suppose.”
He tried to recall if Colonel Bellerose had mentioned his children but came up blank. He hadn’t been around the man that often. Marcel honestly hadn’t even known he was married. “Are your children here in Paris with you?”
She shook her head and slipped out from in front of the piano, waving toward the seat in an obvious invitation. “They’re with my mother, near Cannes.” Her voice said the separation was killing her by degrees.
He eased onto the bench and let his fingers caress the polished keys. Not so much as a speck of dust greeted his fingers—a far cry from the gritty piano he’d played at the camp. “How old are they?”
“Blaise is the elder—he’s nine for two more months, attending a boarding school in Marseille.
That’s where my family is from. I actually grew up in Shanghai, until my father died when I was thirteen—he was a diplomat, assigned there.
Then there’s Elise, who’s six. Blaise is smart as a whip but prefers sport to books, and aircraft to absolutely everything.
Elise is quite possibly the stubbornest child to ever grace the earth.
” She laughed as she said it, love for them evident in every single feature that he glanced over to see. “And the sweetest.”
He found himself grinning in response as he played a quick scale to get a feel for the keyboard.
“My mother’s youngest sister is only nine years my elder.
Her children are the same age as yours. They lived but a street over from me until the war, so I was at their flat several times a week.
” He’d heard that they’d evacuated Paris before the invasion and had gone home to Marseille for a few months before moving again.
Yet another something they had in common. He glanced her way as he debated what to play. “I imagine you know my family is also from Marseille.”
She nodded. “I’ve met them—your parents, when I was meeting with your cousins at their parents’ home, right next door.
That’s your father’s brother and his wife, correct?
And your mother’s sister, Josephine, and her family were there too, visiting your mother.
Those young cousins of yours played with my children over the Christmas holidays, while I spoke with Gustave and Emile. ”
How much she knew of him, how interwoven their lives had become while he was a prisoner.
He’d known, intellectually, that the world had kept on spinning while he was locked away.
Still, it was strange to see the paths it had cut through his universe.
The people who had become important before he even knew who they were.
I know the plans I have for you. The verse, memorized so long ago, filtered into his mind unbidden. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
From his bunk at the camp, the very thought of the future had been vague and unbelievable.
Marcel hadn’t quite dared to hope he’d have any real part in it.
His entire world had contracted to the plot of Germany between those fences and guard towers, the comrades within it, the guards who would either sneer at him or tap their feet to his rhythm.
How foolish he’d been, to think God had been trapped in those fences too.
His fingers teasing out the opening notes to Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau,” Marcel studied her. “Under whom did you study? Did you attend a conservatory?”
“Almost. I was admitted to the Paris Conservatory in ’29, but I got married instead.”
“Are you serious?” He could tell by her lopsided grin that she knew why he asked. His lips curved up to match. “We would have been classmates.”
“I know.” She leaned against the boards, gaze on his fingers. “How can you play and carry on a conversation at the same time?”
Marcel chuckled, tickling out the next phrase, the notes mimicking the playfulness of raindrops. “The credit for that goes to my brother, Raoul, and our cousins. Ours was a madhouse of laughter and shouting. If you couldn’t do something amidst interruptions, it never got done.”
“That does sound like Raoul—and like Emile and Gustave, for that matter.”
Her familiarity with them still boggled him. “How did you meet them?”
She kept her attention on his hands. “Your brother and mine served together in the air force. And from Raoul, it isn’t a far trip to your cousins. Rascals, those three. Especially when together.”
“We always called them the triplets.” Gustave and Emile were only eleven months apart, and Raoul was right between them.
The three had always been inseparable—while he, the boring older brother and cousin by two to three years, had tried and failed to herd them toward responsibility.
“Troublemakers, all of them.” He said it with another grin.
Hers went downright impish. “Given that now they’re directing that trouble toward the Nazis, I heartily approve.”