The Archivist
Tess watched as the flesh of her arm bubbled like molten lava, the heat of the flames searing her with pain while her feet stayed rooted to the ground.
Her mother’s screams and Aunt Vivian’s crying sounded so faint they seemed to be seeping in from another dimension.
But the one voice she longed to hear was silent.
Silent forever, she thought as the flames swept around her and she erupted into a pyre of light.
She bolted up in bed, her pajamas soaked with cold sweat.
It was her third night at Aunt Vivian’s, and the dream had gotten worse every night.
What she hated most about this dream was its proximity to reality—as if her mind had taken a memory and twisted it two degrees to the left.
And when the dream came, as it too often did, the voices came with it—voices that had invaded her consciousness long ago and that even the best medications could not always keep at bay.
“You were screaming,” said a voice next to Tess. She looked up and saw Aunt Vivian in the yellow glow of the bedside lamp. Vivian pressed a hand gently against Tess’s arm. “A nightmare?”
“The same nightmare as always,” said Tess. “My therapist adjusted my meds, but some things can’t be medicated away.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” said Vivian in a soothing voice.
Tess looked up at Vivian’s placid face. She hadn’t really looked at her closely since arriving.
Although her hair had turned prematurely white in the ten years since the fire, other than that she looked just as Tess remembered from those happy days at the lake—her face, though now in its fifties, was largely unlined; her blue eyes sparkled with life and curiosity; the smooth curve of her cheeks and gentle subtlety of her smile were as welcoming as a hot cup of tea.
Vivian possessed a softness that was as much a factor of her gentle voice and kind eyes as of her slightly padded figure.
“Would a story make you feel better?” Vivian asked.
“I thought you had to wait for the stories to come to you.”
“One did,” said Vivian.
“While you were asleep? Like a dream?”
“Something like that,” said Vivian with a smile. “Now, did I ever tell you about working for Hilton Deramus?”
“Who was that?”
“He made his money in investments—I’m not sure if they called them hedge funds back in those days, but it was one of those make-billions-without-actually-doing-any-work sort of things.
But he was a decent man in other respects.
Good to his wife, loving to his children when they were home from boarding school. ”
“What did you do for him?”
“I was a cataloger. There were three of us. One for the paintings and the sculpture, one for the books, and one for the manuscripts. Did I mention he was a collector? I was the manuscript cataloger. Letters from famous people, signatures of every president, literary manuscripts, scientific manuscripts. But my favorites were the musical manuscripts. In addition to the Park Avenue apartment, he had this huge house in the Hamptons and in the living room he had a piano that had once belonged to Maurice Ravel. From the bench, you could look out and see the ocean. He let me play it whenever I wanted. Did I ever tell you I played piano?”
“No, Vivian, I don’t believe you ever mentioned it.
” There had been a battered old upright piano in the lake house, but Tess had never heard anyone play a single note—though Vivian had often sat on the bench during cocktail hour, when the adults drank gin and tonics and Tess nursed a Shirley Temple.
“Oh, yes. I once played Beethoven’s third piano concerto with the Radcliffe Symphony Orchestra, but that wasn’t the highlight of my musical career.”
“What was the highlight?”
“One day I was at the Hamptons house and a package arrived from Sotheby’s in London.
I was the only one there, working on cataloging an archive of E.
M. Forster letters, so I signed for the package and, since it was from Sotheby’s, I opened it.
I knew what Mr. Deramus had bought at the most recent auction and I couldn’t wait to see it.
Inside was a twenty-two page, previously unknown musical manuscript by Clara Schumann—my idol when it came to the piano.
The manuscript had been described as an ‘unfinished work for keyboard, never performed or recorded.’ I didn’t need to know any more than that.
I set the pages on Ravel’s Steinway and started to play.
“Oh my God, Tess, can you imagine? Hearing a piece of music that no one has heard except the composer who died a century ago? And having it come out of your fingers through Ravel’s piano and seeing the waves of the Atlantic whenever you glanced up?
I wept. When the housekeeper came in with the FBI, they found me sitting there weeping. ”
“I’m sorry, did you say the FBI?”
“Oh yes. FBI, SEC. Turns out Deramus was running a Ponzi scheme. Defrauded investors of something like two billion dollars. But, you know, easy come, easy go. It was the last time I ever went to the Hamptons. The government sold the Schumann manuscript along with everything else. I’ve no idea where it went.
But I remember it—I can’t play it note for note, but I can hum the themes and I can remember how it made me feel. They can never take that away.”
“Could you play a little of it for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Schumann,” said Tess. “If we went someplace with a piano, could you play some of it?”
“Don’t be silly, Tess,” said Vivian. “I don’t know how to play the piano.”
This was how it always went with Vivian’s stories—she told them with total commitment as if they had been a real part of her life.
Then as soon as the story ended, Vivian forgot all about it.
Quizzed on the details she’d look nonplussed and ask where in the world you got such a silly idea.
And yet the story soothed Tess, as Vivian’s tales so often did.
And it quieted the voices. They’d be back, Tess knew that, and she wouldn’t always be able to count on a new story from Vivian, but as she slipped back into a dreamless sleep, the voices were silent.