Chapter 1
The Salle Pleyel concert hall was empty and dim. Beyond its walls, the spring sunlight was warming the city after a mild winter, but within them, only a single beam of light cut through the darkness to illuminate the stage, enveloping the piano in a halo of floating dust.
“I know, I’m almost done. Just once more and I’ll be out of here,” Thomas called in the direction of where the man was working backstage.
“You’ve got it down, believe you me,” a voice called back.
Others might have laughed off the musical advice of a lighting engineer, but Thomas trusted Marcel’s ear.
After all, the man had attended even more concerts than Thomas had.
Marcel had operated the lights for orchestras from all over the world, so why should his opinion be any less valid than that of Thomas’s conductor, who hadn’t even deigned to attend his final run-through?
“I have to get home, Mr. Thomas, and I can’t lock you in, though I’m sure you would love that.
Go think about something else for a while.
You must have something better to do at your age than spend the night here.
” Marcel approached the stage, his potbelly as prominent as his good nature.
“I’m telling you, you’ve got this. Rachmaninoff is rejoicing as he watches you from heaven, believe you me. ”
“I’d rather he listen than watch.” Thomas closed the cover over the keys. “And what makes you so sure he got into heaven? That monster composed some of the most difficult scores ever written.”
“That’s exactly how I know he’s up there.
” The lighting engineer escorted Thomas to the stage door.
“Fine, we’ll agree he’s listening. But let me just say, I watch you from my booth, and I see and hear the music coming from every part of you, even your eyes.
Even when they’re closed. If you play that way tomorrow, it’ll be a triumph. ”
“You’re too kind, Marcel.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Kind! I’ll show you kind!
Get out of here.” The technician pushed Thomas out the door.
“My wife is waiting for me, and if I stay here any later, the reception she gives me will be anything but kind. Go spend time with your girlfriend or do whatever you want, but stop letting your nerves control you. No good ever comes of that. See you tomorrow. I’ll be here an hour early if you want to practice one more time. ”
Pianists are overcome with loneliness the moment they walk out the stage door.
Thomas sometimes envied flautists, violinists, and bassists, who all took their instruments with them when they left the hall.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his blazer as he walked up Rue Daru, wondering what he should do with himself.
He could call his longtime best friend and invite him to dinner at a brasserie, but Serge had just gone through a breakup, and the very thought of making conversation with him exhausted Thomas.
Philippe would have been excellent company, but he was filming a commercial somewhere between Poland and Hungary.
Francois’s gallery was nearby, within walking distance, but the week before, Thomas had chosen to practice rather than attend the opening of his friend’s most recent show, and Francois knew how to hold a grudge.
As for Sophie, she hadn’t been answering Thomas’s messages lately.
She was probably putting an end to their on-again, off-again, mostly text-based relationship, no longer willing to welcome him into her bed whenever he sought a bit of warmth.
Or maybe she’d met someone else. If so, it wouldn’t last. Sooner or later, she’d be the one calling Thomas.
As he walked past La Lorraine brasserie, Thomas noticed a couple sitting together.
Given how they were gazing at the Place des Ternes, they could only be tourists or new lovers.
He crossed the street and headed toward the flower market at the center of the roundabout, where he picked out a heady bouquet of freesia and star jasmine.
White flowers were his mother’s favorite.
Bouquet in hand, he climbed aboard the 43 bus and took a seat by the window.
Passersby hurried down the sidewalk. When the bus stopped at a red light, a strikingly graceful young woman pulled up beside it on her bike.
She placed her hand on the window to avoid taking her feet off the pedals and smiled at Thomas.
When the bus started forward again, Thomas looked back and watched her disappear into the traffic on Rue de Monceau.
In that moment, a memory rose to the surface of his mind.
Thomas was twenty, with his father, the two of them on their way to the opening of a new exhibition by a Danish master.
As they left the Jacquemart-André Museum, Thomas met the eyes of a woman coming toward them on Boulevard Haussmann.
She passed them and continued on her way.
Noticing their exchange of glances, Thomas’s father took the chance to say he saw the street as an endless source of new acquaintances, a place where anything was possible.
Too many idiots wasted their time trying to woo women in bars, or shouting out unintelligible conversations over the din of clubs and trendy restaurants.
Raymond, though, was a natural Casanova—the complete opposite of his son, whose friends often teased him for his shyness.
Thomas got off at the Haussmann-Miromesnil stop and made his way toward Rue Treilhard. He pushed through the building’s huge front door and, minutes later, rang the bell of a fifth-floor apartment.
“Don’t you have your keys?” Jeanne asked, surprised, as she opened the door in her bathrobe.
“I gave them back to you—oh, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago?”
“Such a sweet way to greet your mother. And those flowers, are they for me or do you have a date?”
“Is there anything good in the fridge?” Thomas slipped into the entryway.
“So, they’re for me, then.” Jeanne took the bouquet. “They smell strong,” she added as she walked into the kitchen.
“A simple thank-you would have sufficed,” said Thomas.
“Don’t ever expect a woman to thank you for flowers. Instead, watch to see how carefully she arranges them in a vase. Didn’t your father teach you that?”
Thomas opened the door to the refrigerator and then turned toward his mother. “Can I eat the ham?”
“You make such fascinating conversation, sweetheart! Good thing you’ll be dining alone tonight. I’m going out and have no intention of changing my plans. But you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You can even sleep over if you want.”
Thomas put the plate down on the table and hugged his mother tightly.
“Is something wrong?” he asked sweetly.
“You’re squishing me,” she said, amused, as she extricated herself.
“The real question is, What’s wrong with you?
” Jeanne stood on her tiptoes to reach a vase on a top shelf.
“Is it your concert that’s got you in such a state?
Don’t worry, we’ll do what we always do: I’ll pretend I’m not coming, to avoid adding to your stress.
As the doting mother of an ungrateful son who couldn’t be bothered to reserve me a seat in the front row, I shall remain tucked away, out of sight in the back of the hall. ”
Feeling a mix of annoyance and affection, Thomas pulled two tickets out of his pocket. “One for you and one for Colette, but make sure she doesn’t clap at the end of every movement. It’s embarrassing.”
“I’ll do my best.” She took the tickets and slipped them into the pocket of her robe. “You still haven’t told me what I did to deserve such a beautiful bouquet,” she said, putting the finishing touches on the arrangement. “The scent is a bit too strong for my bedroom. You don’t mind, do you?”
“It’s the fifth anniversary of Dad’s death. I didn’t know if you’d remember, but I wanted to be with you . . .”
“Oh, sweetheart. He may have left you five years ago, but he left me long before that. So, anniversaries, you know, they don’t mean so much to me.”
“You should go get ready,” suggested Thomas. “I don’t know what your ‘plans’ are, but it’s getting late.”
“If I bore you that much, feel free to eat in the kitchen,” Jeanne said, and then she slipped away to her room.
Thomas watched as she walked down the hallway of the Haussmann-style apartment he’d grown up in.
Then he attacked his plate of ham while checking his messages.
Philippe had texted news from the set, some complaints about the snow and about how hard it was to manage a team that spoke barely a word of French and hardly more than that of English.
He reported that Warsaw was beautiful, though, and Polish women even more so.
Thomas had to agree. He’d been invited to play there by the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and he remembered the concert fondly, the hotel he’d stayed in less so.
He loved going on tour. It was an unparalleled privilege to travel the world and play with musicians from all different backgrounds. But his career as a soloist had had an impact on his love life as well.
For a time, he’d had a passionate relationship with Anna, a Sicilian violinist he’d met on tour in Italy two years earlier.
Over the span of six months, they’d managed to spend one December weekend together in Berlin, thanks to Shostakovich; a Thursday night in Milan in March, brought together by Bach; and a Friday in May in Stockholm, gripped in a Brahms-inspired fever.
Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor had accompanied their night together, and they’d decided it was their song.
For a pianist and a violinist, making love to a Brahms concerto is an unforeseen source of wonder.