Forever (31 page)

The little bird flew off and Madame sang a
few lines, her voice surprisingly strong, rising and trilling and
swooping delicately, and Stephanie understood once and for all that
a voice was truly an instrument. Then the old lady let the song
trail off and fell silent, smiling at some pleasant distant
memories in her past.

Stephanie said: 'You were going to explain
what the gypsy meant when she spoke so mysteriously to Lili.'

'Very well.' Madame Balasz sighed, clearly
annoyed at being jerked so abruptly from her reveries. 'After Lili
left Budapest, it was quite some years before we saw each other
again. By then, of course, I was under contract to the Staatsoper
here, while she was quite famous around the world. I remember when
she returned - Budapest was the last stop of her hugely successful
world tour. She was to star in several operas - Tosca, Madame
Butterfly, Der Rosenkavalier - as well as to give some solo
performances. Having been if not exactly old friends, then at least
good acquaintances, she insisted I get a large role in each of the
operas. I was, naturally, honoured, delighted, and extremely
grateful - for nothing, as it turned out! Lili left here without
singing a single note in public. Her revenge upon Budapest for her
inauspicious beginnings here, I suspect. But that is another story
entirely. The point I am making, Ms Smith, is that I knew Lili. Do
you understand? I knew her! And, we were the same age and, of
course, looked the same age!' She paused and eyed Stephanie
speculatively. 'Do you follow me?'

'I think so,' Stephanie said slowly,
although she wondered where in heaven this could be leading.

'I have a photograph from back then. It is
inside - ' Madame Balasz gestured fluidly towards the open French
doors. ' - atop the Bosendorfer.'

'The large one,' Stephanie asked, 'where you
are both wearing powdered white wigs and gowns?'

'
Igen
. You saw it, then. It was taken
during dress rehearsals, shortly before Lili cancelled all the
performances and left.' Madame Balasz still stroked Aida, each
movement of her hand identical to the last, and her eyes seemed to
have glazed over with memories. 'It was many years before my path
crossed Lili's again. The next and last time was during a trip I
took to London, not long before her death. 1949, I think it was.
Igen
. 1949. She was Lady Hughes-Coxe then, and gave a small
dinner party for me. Her husband was there. And Maria Callas came
with her husband, the little Italian doctor.'

'Meneghini . . . '

'
Igen
. Dr Meneghini. Go inside. On
the piano is a small Faberg6 frame. Behind the others. You cannot
miss it: the frame is of raspberry enamel. Bring it out here.'

Stephanie put down her wineglass, went
inside, and found the exquisite frame where Madame Balasz said it
would be. She first blew and then wiped the coat of dust off it,
went back outside, and held it out.

The old lady shook her head.
'Nem
,'
she said. 'I am quite familiar with it. Go ahead. You. You look at
it!'

Something in her tone caused Stephanie to
hesitate, made the fine downy hairs on her arms and at the nape of
her neck rise, as though they were the hackles of a threatened
cat.

'Well?' Madame demanded impatiently. 'What
are you waiting for? Look. Look':

Stephanie held the photo up to the light. It
was black-and- white, faded and cracked. It was easy to date it by
the wide-shouldered fashions of the time. There, on the left, was
Madame Balasz at about age forty. And beside her - an incredulous
expression came over Stephanie's face - a beautiful young Lili
Schneider, who looked twenty-nine, thirty at most.

'Well?' Madame Balasz demanded in a sibilant
whisper. 'Do you see?'

'Yes, but some people age differently.'

'Now you have closed your mind.' Madame
Balasz sighed with disappointment. 'We were born the same year,
Lili and I. She was Gemini, I am Capricorn. Yes, Ms Smith.' The old
lady sat abruptly forward, her eyes bulging like the bloated
abdomens of black widow spiders.'Both of us were the exact same age
when this picture was taken! Both of us were thirty-nine!

'But . . . what about makeup . . . skin care
... the different ways people age?'

'You are making excuses. I do not see why.
Tell me, Ms Smith. Don't I look thirty-nine in the picture?'

'Y-yes . . . ' Stephanie admitted
cautiously.

'And Lili? How old does she look?'

'Twenty-nine ... no more than thirty.'

'Exactly!' The wide-open spidery lashes were
perfectly still. 'You see, Ms Smith, the beautiful gypsy was right,
wasn't she? Lili had found the fountain of youth. What else could
have accounted for it? And why else, before the dinner guests
arrived on the day this picture was taken, did Lili beg me not to
let anyone know that we were the same age? Mm? Of course you know
why. Even if you do not want to admit it. Because she was
frightened that people would discover her secret and demand to
share it!' She paused and added: 'Oh, yes. Lili was very, very
frightened of that!'

Stephanie stared down at the sluggish river
on which a long, low white excursion steamer, all giant black
windows, glided soundlessly downstream, ugly as a stretch
limousine. For a moment she shut her eyes. For all the normalcy of
the scene, things were not normal, were far, far from normal. Or so
the old lady claimed. Yet there had to be a simple, innocent,
logical explanation for the photograph. Yes. Cosmetic surgery, at
the time still in its infancy . . . experimental sheep-cell
injections . . . something like that. Yes.

Because, believing Lili Schneider to be
alive, perhaps well preserved but definitely an old, old woman,
could be ... yes, logically and easily explained; someone else
might have burned to death in her house, and that person might be
buried in her tomb. But that Lili, still alive, could, at age
eighty-three, still be a beautiful young woman even today? No.
Logic, common sense, even science defied the very idea. There was
no fountain of youth. It was a fairy tale, a legend, a castle in
the air -

The thought persisted: But what if it does
exist. . . ?

She drove the idea from her mind. Rubbish.
Eternal youth did not exist. Could not exist. It simply did not . .
. logically ... fit into the neat scheme of things as she knew
it.

Straightening her spine, Stephanie turned to
the old lady. 'Madame Balasz,' she asked softly, 'after your trip
to England. Did you ever see Lili again?'

Madame Balasz shook her head. '
Nem
.
The following year was that terrible fire. A horrendous
tragedy.'

'And you are certain that Lili died in
it?'

'Of course she died in it! Lili was only
human. Why do you ask?' The false lashes blinked rapidly.

Stephanie frowned. 'Then you don't believe
there's a possibility, however remote, that she's still alive
somewhere?'

'Lili? Of course not! How would such a thing
be possible?'

'Well, perhaps she wasn't in the house when
the fire broke out,' Stephanie suggested.

'She had to have been. True, she was burned
beyond recognition, but she died. Her dental charts proved it. And
the funeral was a worldwide event.'

'I wonder . . . ' Stephanie murmured half to
herself.

'But what are you saying? The old lady's
voice quavered. 'That Lili did not burn to death?'

'I really don't know,' Stephanie said
slowly. 'Somebody died, that much is clear. But if Lily was
frightened because her secret - if it indeed existed -'

'It did! Madame Balasz insisted. 'I saw the
results with my own two eyes!'

'Then she surely knew that since she didn't
age like her contemporaries, word of her perpetual youth would soon
leak out. Think about it. If she'd really wanted to guard it,
wouldn't she have had to disappear and go into hiding?'

Madame Balasz blanched. 'Stop this at once!'
she demanded, her voice rising shrilly. 'You are frightening me!
Lili is dead and buried. Do you hear? Dead and buried!'

'But is she?' Stephanie whispered.

'Why can you not let her rest in peace? Was
her life not tragic enough without you trying to resurrect her
ghost? Now please. You have outstayed your welcome. Leave, Ms
Smith, and do not return. Leave Lili in peace! Leave me in peace!
Go. Go!

Stephanie didn't move. 'If she did indeed
die,' she asked softly, 'what happened to her secret?'

Madame Balasz's polite facade suddenly
cracked and all her pent-up rage at Lili blazed through. 'She took
it to her grave with her, the bitch!' she spewed, spittle flying.
'What do you think happened to it?'

Stephanie was taken aback by the woman's
violent reaction. 'You're sure?'

'Of course I'm sure!' The thick starry
lashes narrowed. 'Oh, how I begged her to share her secret with me
- for old time's sake, for money - anything she wanted! Anything!
But did she? Oh, no! She refused me! Refused! She had to keep it
for herself, that stingy Nazi wretch! And look at me now! Ancient!
Decrepit!'

Weeping openly, the old lady yanked off her
red gloves and tossed them wearily aside. Tears streamed down her
face as she slid the rubber band out from under her chin and pulled
off the wig. Her stretched features suddenly sagged; flesh hung in
folds like wattles. Her head had but a few meagre wisps of white
hair.

She raised her ancient hands. 'Look at me!'
she moaned. 'Oh, look at me, look at me! I'm hideous! Old! On
death's very doorstep! And to think I could still have the first
flush of youth! If Lili had only shared her secret, I'd still have
my entire life ahead of me! But instead, I'm old.'

Now keening softly, she hugged herself with
her arms, painfully twisting her torso from one side to the other
while mascara ran down the folds of her face in streaky black
rivulets.

Stephanie, transfixed, could only stare. It
was frightening but fascinating, the woman's transformation.
Without the props, all the aggressive style and remarkable chic
were gone; left in their place was the brittle shell of just
another old woman with incongruous, clownish false eyelashes.

After a moment, Madame Balasz became aware
of Stephanie's gaze. She raised her head, body taut, a viper about
to strike.

'Out!' she shrieked suddenly in such a
piercing banshee screech that Aida leapt off her lap and fled
inside with Othello - two blurry black streaks seeking escape.

Like me, Stephanie thought, wishing she was
already gone. She got to her feet and stood there, her jaw
tightening, about to say something. Then she thought better of it,
turned on her heel, and marched quickly inside. She started to set
the photograph back down on the piano, but on impulse, she slipped
it inside her purse. I'm not stealing it, she told herself. I'm
merely borrowing it. Who knows? It might come in handy. Then she
looked back out.

On the balcony, Madame Balasz was once again
singing Delibes's Nightingale, but instead of her voice rising
joyfully and soaring freely, there was something fettered about it:
something hauntingly sad, excruciatingly dirgelike. And as she
sang, the weeping old woman, hands clasped in her lap, was still
twisting her torso from side to side, the song rising to a
lament.

Yes, she was just another very old woman.
Even her voice sounded weak now. Ancient, strained, scratchy,
cracked.

Before she let herself quietly out,
Stephanie looked over her shoulder one last time. At a shrivelled,
slowly dying nightingale. Practising its swan song.

Madame knew nothing, that much was
clear.

'Strike one,' Stephanie said softly to
herself.

Salzburg, Austria • Budapest, Hungary

When Holly Fischer landed at Salzburg
airport, the hotel's car and driver were already waiting for her.
The car was a big blue Mercedes and the driver was a blond young
man named Rolf. He deposited her luggage in the trunk, and they
were soon underway.

Rolf explained why he wouldn't be able to
drive her right up to the hotel entrance. 'The Goldener Hirsch
hotel is located in the old town,' he said in an Arnold
Schwarzenegger voice, 'in a section which is strictly pedestrian.
All vehicular traffic is forbidden. We will have to park in one of
the Festival Hall parking garages and make the rest of the way on
foot.'

'That's fine,' Holly Fischer told him, and
turned back to the view outside the tinted glass: purple mountains,
the city gathered around the foot of the hill on top of which the
ancient fortress hulked broodingly, the shallow Salzach River
spanned with bridges, the domes and spires of baroque churches.
Salzburg. Birthplace of Mozart and site of the world-renowned
Glockenspiel and the even more renowned music festival.

Holly Fischer wore her blonde hair severely
pulled back, and had on a rust-coloured, belted silk jacquard dress
and a matching Mad Hatter's hat - both from Christian Lacroix - and
rust-red Ferragamo sling-back heels. From the rearview mirror, Rolf
calculated that she had at least twelve thousand dollars on her
back; her Vuitton bag and three Vuitton suitcases, he reckoned, had
surely set her back another four thousand dollars and
Gott
alone knew how many tens - perhaps even hundreds - of thousands of
dollars in clothes and jewels she had packed.

After parking the car in the garage, he
whipped the three suitcases out of the trunk and led the way.

The Goldener Hirsch hotel had been going
strong for eight hundred years. Ideally located between the
Getreidegasse, Mozart's birthplace and now a crowded pedestrian
street of whimsical, crooked houses with gilded, wrought-iron shop
signs hanging over the entrances of expensive boutiques, and the
Festival Hall, where the annual world-famous Salzburger Festivals
are held, it was enchanting, elegant, and picturesque.