City of Lost Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

pocket. “What does dear Pollina have in store for us today?” Harriet murmured. “Oh God. Strauss. Well, we must endure. That’s for you, is it? I hear you’re off to Vienna. I admit I find Vienna something of a sphinx. You’ll meet quite a lot of them there. Sphinxes. And not just on buildings and lampposts.”
    Sarah smiled politely.
    “Oh, you are prepared,” Harriet laughed. “That was a very Viennese smile. Giving away nothing and concealing everything.”
    Max came and sat down on the other side of Harriet, who took his hand.
They make a nice couple,
Sarah told herself sternly, hoping she wouldn’t be forced to make small talk, since at the sight of Max all her resolution dissolved and she had to admit there was just a tiny possibility that she might leap over Ms.
Masterpiece Theatre
and grab Max by his monogrammed wrists and tell him that—
    Fortunately a hush fell over the room as a tall, silver-haired woman carrying a violin entered the Music Room, followed by Pols, walking slowly with one arm on a uniformed museum guard. The crowd instantly grew silent and attentive as the young girl seated herself at the piano and the violinist arranged her own music on a stand in front of her.
    The first piece—“Vienna Blood” by Johann Strauss II—was perhaps better translated as “Vienna Spirit.” It was Vienna as it liked to think of itself: sprightly, charming, and sensual. But Pols seemed to be finding something else in the music, as if the charm of Vienna concealed something broken. She was giving the merry waltz an almost sinister quality, revealing a darker truth. Pollina then launched into Schumann’s “Träumerei,” a piece usually played slowly and introspectively. The young girl broke that convention immediately, handling the ascensions with a nervous and almost threatening pace. Next was Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 14. The ease with which Pollina played this was breathtaking, but Sarah saw she was distracted. Her thin face occasionally broke into frowns or smiles, as if she were conducting a conversation with the composer, sometimes praising and sometimes scolding. The violinist and a teenage cellist wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl joined for the final offering: Luigi’s Piano Trio, op. 97. (Sarah always thought of Ludwig van Beethoven by his favorite nickname.) According to a contemporary account of Beethoven’s performance at the premiere, “In
forte
passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in
piano
he played so softly that whole groups of notes were omitted.” It had marked Luigi’s last public performance as a pianist.
    Pols was in the middle of the second movement when she started coughing. She tried valiantly to keep playing, but finally stopped, chest heaving.
    Sarah and Max both ran down the aisle to help the girl to her feet.
    “I’m sorry,” Pollina whispered.
    “I’m going to find someone who can help you,” Sarah promised. She looked at Max over the girl’s head. His eyes said,
Hurry.

THREE
    N icolas Pertusato was not in the best of spirits. This was annoying, since he had been imbibing the best of spirits for a long time now and should have been feeling more cheerful. Of course, plane travel was no more a comfortable experience for him than it was for people with less abbreviated statures. On the one hand, he had more leg room than most adults. On the other hand, he could not make use of the overhead bins without engaging a flight attendant, and there were no attractive ones on this particular flight to London. You had to fly to Dubai to get a shapely stewardess these days. Although the ones on Japan Air were still fairly delectable.
    Nico watched the giantess in the window seat next to him attempt to eat her dinner. Like the other behemoths on the aircraft, her arms were wedged so tightly in the seat she could use only wrist movements and a kind of lizardlike head bobbing to forage. That was diverting.
    Well, and the appearance