Paganini's Ghost (32 page)

Yevgeny nodded.

“We meet there,” he said. “After you leave. We start talking; we get on well. We swap mobile numbers. Then on the Monday afternoon, Mirella call me, ask if I want to go for a drive. Mama is not there; she has gone shopping.”

“She thought you'd gone off with Vladimir Kousnetzoff,” I said.

Yevgeny's eyes opened wide with surprise.

“Kousnetzoff? Why would I go with him?”

“He phoned your hotel room that afternoon, didn't he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Why?”

“Because he want to manage my career. He has approach me before, but he is wasting his time. I always tell him no. Mama thought I go to meet him? She knows I would never do that. What do I want with agent? I have her.”

“That's not how she sees it. She was convinced you'd walked out on her. Or even that Kousnetzoff had kidnapped you.”

“
Kidnapped
me? But that is ridiculous.”

“Worried mothers don't always think rationally. Why didn't you leave her a note saying where you'd gone?”

“I do not think I will be gone a long time. We go for drive; then we go to bar; then we have a meal in a restaurant. Those are ordinary things to most people our age, but I have never done them. I have never been out for a meal with a girl. Mama has never allowed it.”

“You could have phoned her later.”

“Later? I meant to, I really did, but . . .” He paused. “I drink too much wine. We go back to Mirella's flat, in Milan, and, well, things happen.”

He looked away, colouring slightly.

“Yes, I understand,” I said quickly. This was not an area into which I wished to stray.

“It's all my fault,” Mirella interjected.

“No, no . . .” Yevgeny protested.

“It is. I could've driven you back the next day, but I didn't. We came out here instead.”

“But that is what I want,” Yevgeny said.

He looked directly at me, his expression tense, grave.

“You do not know what it is like for me, the life I have been leading since I was a child. I needed to get away for a while. I needed space to think. I know I should have called Mama, but after I stay away that one night—the first night I have ever been apart from her in twenty-three years—I could not face it. I could not face her anger, her disappointment in me. I have always been a disappointment to her.”

“I don't think you have,” I said.

“Oh, I have. Nothing I do is ever good enough. Right from early age, my only clear memories of Mama are her saying, ‘You can do better than that, Yevgeny.' ”

“I'm sure she's only ever wanted you to fulfil your potential. She's always had your best interests at heart.”

“I know that.” He straightened up, his posture defiant now. “But why should I not go off for few days? Why should I not be with Mirella? Why I have to tell my mother where I am all the time? I am not a child. She must see that.”

He swallowed hard.

“Gianni, you must help me tell my mother this. Tell her that things must change. I do not know how. You must give me advice. You have age, experience.”

He was gazing at me imploringly. I could see the confusion and anguish in his eyes. He'd been foolish and thoughtless, but I couldn't bring myself to be too hard on him.

“I've never been under the delusion that age and experience qualify you to give advice to anyone,” I said.

“But I need it,” Yevgeny said. “It is partly because of you that I have done this.”

“
Me?
” I said incredulously. “What have I—”

“No, do not take it wrong way,” he interrupted hurriedly. “I am not blaming you. It was Sunday that did it, that finally make me decide that something in my life has to change.”

“Sunday?”

“When we play quartets at your house. I enjoy it so much, just playing music for pleasure—no pressure, no expectations. I have been playing the violin for nearly twenty years. I start when I am four. I can read music before I can read the alphabet. It has been my whole life. Everything else has been unimportant. The violin was all that mattered. Scales, practice, exams, performances. That is all I know for twenty years and I get tired of it. I want something more. And on Sunday, you show me that music can be fun. Nothing else. Just fun. And fun is what I have never had—in music or anything else.”

He looked at me anxiously, seeking my approval, and I caught a glimpse of the little boy in him. The four-year-old in short trousers trying desperately to please his mother, and still trying now he was a grown man. I noticed Mirella squeezing his hand tightly, pressing closer to him in an instinctive gesture of support. I couldn't really blame her for any of this. She wasn't the cause; she was just the catalyst for a reaction that was always going to occur, sooner or later.

“You want to give up your career?” I said.

“Not give up. I just want to do it different. Make some changes, get off treadmill.” He glanced at Mirella again. “Get more of a life outside music.”

“Then talk to your mother about it.”

“That is the problem. I cannot talk to her. I have tried, but she will not listen. She always knows best. To be honest, I'm scared of her, scared of how she might react.”

I stood up from my armchair.

“Get your things. I'm taking you back to Cremona.”

He didn't argue. He knew what had to be done. I was there simply to set the wheels in motion.

They went into the bedroom to gather up their belongings, and I found a poker by the hearth and knocked out the remains of the wood fire. The handle of the poker was dusted with soot, which came off on my hands, so I went along the hall to the bathroom to wash it off.

I was drying my hands on a towel when I noticed the handwritten notice stuck to the wall, giving instructions about how to operate the cottage's hot-water system. The handwriting was familiar. I stared at the notice, studying the shape of the letters, looking for the individual characteristics that make each person's handwriting distinctive. I realised suddenly where I'd seen it before—in the margins of the book about Elisa Bonaparte that I'd borrowed from Vittorio Castellani's office.

I went back out into the hall. Yevgeny and Mirella were emerging from the bedroom in their coats, Mirella clutching a small holdall.

“It was good of Professor Castellani to let you use his cottage,” I said.

Mirella looked at me blankly.

“Professor Castellani?”

“This is his house, isn't it?”

“No, it's Marco's.”

“Marco?”

“He was at the reception, too. Marco Martinelli. He's an associate lecturer in the music department. This is his family's cottage. Loads of people use it; Marco doesn't mind.”

She eyed me apprehensively.

“You're not wanting me to come with you, are you? To see Yevgeny's mother.”

“No, I don't think that would be advisable just yet,” I said. “Perhaps later.”

I've never seen anyone look so relieved.

“Okay,” she said.

“I'll leave you to say good-bye to each other,” I said tactfully. “I'll be waiting in the car, Yevgeny.”

So it was Marco's book that I took from Castellani's office, I thought as I ran through the rain to my car. Why would Marco have had a book about Elisa Baciocchi? And for the second time that day, a surname was bothering me. First Bianchi, now Martinelli. Why did the name Martinelli sound familiar?

 

 

I phoned Ludmilla from the foyer of the Hotel Emanuele, then left Yevgeny in an armchair and went upstairs alone. Ludmilla was waiting for me, standing in the open doorway of her room, her eyes scanning the empty corridor behind me.

“Yevgeny . . .” she said.

“We need to talk first,” I said.

“He is well? Tell me he's all right.”

“He's all right,” I said.

“Where's he been? Why hasn't he come up with you?”

I closed the door and made her sit down. She perched on the edge of her chair, her hands clutched tightly together, her lips pinched. Her whole body was tense.

“I want to see him,” she said. “Why isn't he here? What's going on?”

I pulled out another chair and sat facing her.

“All in good time, signora,” I said.

“You've got bad news, haven't you?” she said. “What is it? He's signed with Kousnetzoff, is that it? Tell me. Is he leaving me? I must know.”

“He is not leaving you,” I said.

“Then why isn't he here?”

“He asked me to speak to you first.”

“Speak to me? Speak to me about what?”

“About the future.”

“The future? What do you mean?”

I told her where Yevgeny had been, and with whom. And I told her what he'd said to me at the cottage and then later in the car as we drove back to Cremona. She stared at me for a long moment, absorbing everything I'd said; then her eyes flashed angrily.

“What nonsense is this? He's going to throw away all these years of struggle for a girl? Has he lost his mind?”

“He's throwing nothing away,” I said calmly.

“Of course he is. Who is she, this Mirella? A student, you said. An opportunist, no doubt. Some pretty little thing with an eye for a meal ticket, latching onto Yevgeny because he's on his way to the top. Dear God, men! What is the stupid boy playing at? I want to meet this Mirella. Is she downstairs, too?”

Ludmilla stood up and headed for the door. I cut her off before she could reach the handle.

“This is none of my business,” I said. “But Yevgeny has asked me to talk to you, and I have not finished yet. Please sit down.”

“Who are you to tell me what to do? He's
my
son. I will sort this mess out with him.”

“Signora, please sit down.”

I held her eyes. She stared back at me belligerently. I was blocking her exit, and she knew I wasn't going to step aside without a fight. She glared at me for a few seconds longer, then swirled round and strode back across the room.

“So finish what you have to say,” she snapped. “Then I'll deal with Yevgeny and this . . . this gold-digging girl.”

“I cannot talk to you while you are in this state,” I said.

“ ‘This state'?”

“You are angry.”

“I have a right to be angry, don't you think? He has disappeared for a week. No note, no phone call. I have been to the police; they have been searching for him. And now he comes back and expects everything to be all fine and rosy.”

“I understand why you're angry,” I said. “He has behaved very badly, caused a lot of trouble and pain. He knows that. But getting angry with him isn't going to help.”

“Isn't it? He needs to have some sense knocked into him. He needs to see just how foolish he's been, how this girl is using him. He should get rid of her now and concentrate on his career again. He has concerts coming up. Since the Premio, the offers have been pouring in. He cannot afford to waste the opportunities he is being offered. It's what he's always dreamt of. What we've both dreamt of.”

“Maybe Yevgeny has other dreams, too,” I said.

“Nothing is as important as his career.”

“To him, or to you?”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that he can have a successful career and other things, too. A social life, friends. Don't paint him into a corner. Don't make him choose between you and Mirella.”

“
Mirella?
A girl he has known for just a few days? I am his mother. We have been together for twenty-three years. You think that counts for nothing?”

“It counts for so much that you shouldn't put it at risk,” I said. “He's not a child. Twenty-three-year-old men need more than their mothers. Listen to me, Ludmilla. All he wants to do is to make a few changes, to do things a little differently. He's not abandoning his career, or you. Don't overreact. He has a girlfriend, that's all. That's normal for a boy his age. Mirella might last a month, or she might last a lifetime. There's no point in guessing which now. Just let things take their course. Give Yevgeny the freedom to make his own choices, and his own mistakes. Because if you don't, he will break away from you now and never come back.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. I resisted the temptation to fill
it. I'd said what I had to say, what Yevgeny had asked me to say. It was up to Ludmilla now to take the initiative. To take it, or to reject it.

“Why didn't Yevgeny talk to me about this?” Ludmilla said eventually. “Why did he send you?”

“You want the honest answer? Because he's scared of you.”

She flinched.

“Scared of me? Don't be ridiculous.”

“He said he'd tried to discuss it with you, but you would never listen.”

Ludmilla looked away pensively. Her forehead creased. I tried to interpret her feelings from the pattern of wrinkles and saw hurt and puzzlement and disbelief.

“He actually said that? That he was scared of me?” she asked, turning back to me.

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

We fell silent again.

“Will you ask him to come up?” Ludmilla said softly.

“You're ready?”

“Yes, I'm ready.”

I went to the phone and spoke to the receptionist in the foyer. Then I opened the door and waited for Yevgeny. He came slowly along the corridor, his gaze fixed on my face, searching for some kind of signal—a signal I couldn't give him, for I didn't know what Ludmilla was going to do. Just before the threshold, he paused, unsure whether to enter the room. Then he steeled himself and came on. He regarded his mother warily, bracing himself for a confrontation.

Ludmilla said something in Russian. I didn't understand the words, but she didn't sound angry. Yevgeny replied in the same language. They looked at each other uncertainly. I knew it was time for me to go. I gave Yevgeny a quick smile of encouragement and headed for the door.