Лия Криз – Concert A (страница 2)

"A week," she said. "Maybe two. Just tuning it is a day. But if you want to sell it for what it's really worth, it has to be put in order. Otherwise you'll sell treasure for the price of firewood."

Ilya was silent for a moment.

"Two weeks," he repeated. "Fine. You'll stay with Zinaida Petrovna, three houses down. She lets rooms. I've arranged it. You can have breakfast there too. Work whenever you like, I'll give you a key."

"And where will you be?"

"In my workshop. It's not far."

He had already turned to leave but stopped in the doorway.

"Varvara."

"Varya."

"Varya." He said it as if testing how the word tasted. "Do you really think it's worth that much?"

She stroked the piano lid the way you stroke a child's head.

"I think it's worth far more than anyone will pay for it. But that's another question."

Ilya didn't answer. He just gave her a long, unreadable look and left. The front door banged, the Niva's engine roared, and everything went quiet.

Varya was alone.

She ought to go to Zinaida Petrovna's, unpack, eat. But instead she pulled up the old piano stool, sat down and for a long time simply looked at the piano. Outside the sun was setting, and the Volga turned from silver to pink, and then to gold.

At last she took the tuning fork from her pocket, struck it on her knee and held it to her ear. A clear, ringing A above middle C. Four hundred and forty vibrations a second. The note every orchestra in the world begins with. The note everything else is built on.

She pressed the same key on the piano. Compared. The piano was nearly a semitone flat.

"It's all right," Varya whispered. "It's all right, my dear. We'll make you better."

She decided to check the action first. She removed the music desk and carefully took out the key slip. She shone her phone's torch inside, to where the hammers and dampers hid beneath the strings.

And she saw an envelope.

It had been pushed deep in, between the frame and the case, into a narrow gap you could never reach by accident. Someone had hidden it on purpose. Yellowed, frayed at the edges, with no stamp and no address.

Varya looked at it for a long time. Then carefully, with two fingers, she drew it out.

The envelope wasn't sealed. Inside was a single sheet folded in four. Squared paper, torn from a school exercise book. And a few lines in quick, flying, clearly masculine handwriting. The ink had faded to a pale violet.

"Tonya. I know you're angry. I know you won't forgive me straight away. But I'll come back by the time the ice breaks, do you hear? When the ice starts moving, wait for me on the landing stage. I'll come. Whatever happens, I'll come. Just wait for me. Yours, M."

Below was a date: "12 November 1963."

Varya read the letter three times. Outside it had grown completely dark. Somewhere on the river a steamer gave a long, drawn-out hoot.

Tonya. Antonina. Ilya's grandmother?

And who was M.?

And had he come back when the ice broke?

Varya folded the sheet, slid it back into the envelope and laid it on the piano lid. Then she thought again and put it in her bag. Tomorrow she would give it to Ilya. It was his grandmother, his family, his story.

But falling asleep that night in the little room at Zinaida Petrovna's, to the chirring of crickets and the distant splash of the river, Varya kept thinking about a stranger who had promised sixty years ago to come back. And about the woman who had hidden his letter in the very heart of the piano, where no one would ever find it.

No one except whoever came one day to tune it.

Chapter 2. A Town Where Everyone Knows Everything

Zinaida Petrovna was a woman of boundless proportions in every sense. Boundless figure, boundless voice and boundless curiosity. She was past seventy, wore flowery dressing gowns, painted her lips bright raspberry, and knew more about every resident of Zarechye than they knew about themselves.

"Eat up, eat up, dearie," she said, sliding a third pancake onto Varya's plate. "So skinny. Don't they feed you in Moscow? Have some sour cream. It's homemade, from the neighbour's cow, Zorka."

Varya sat on a veranda wrapped in wild vines and felt as if she had stepped back into childhood. She was embarrassed, warm and very well fed all at once. Sunlight broke through the leaves and painted trembling patches on the tablecloth.

"So you've come to Ilyusha," said Zinaida Petrovna, sitting down opposite with a cup of tea. It wasn't a question. It was the start of an interrogation. "To fix Tonechka's piano."

"To tune it. Did you know his grandmother?"

Zinaida Petrovna threw up her hands so hard her tea nearly spilled.

"Did I know Tonya! Dearie, the whole town knew her. Antonina Sergeyevna Belova. She taught at the music school for forty years. Half the town studied with her. I did too, only I've got no ear at all, like a stool. But she worked with me anyway. Patient, she was. Like a saint."

"What was she like?"

Zinaida Petrovna thought. Her face softened, and for a second she looked like the little girl who had once sat at the piano missing every key.

"Beautiful. Even when she was old, beautiful. Strict, but not unkind. Always walked straight-straight, as if she had a ruler instead of a spine. And her eyes were so... sad. She'd be smiling, but her eyes were still sad. When I was little I thought all music teachers had eyes like that."

"And her husband?"

"Pyotr Ivanovich? A good man. Quiet, hard-working. Built boats, like Ilyusha does now. It runs in the family. He loved her very much. Practically carried her around in his arms. Died twenty years ago, his heart."

Varya was silent for a moment, poking at her pancake with a fork.

"Zinaida Petrovna, do you happen to know... was there someone else in Antonina Sergeyevna's life? Before her husband. Someone whose name began with M?"

Zinaida Petrovna narrowed her eyes. Small and sharp as a sparrow's, they fixed on Varya.

"Why do you want to know?"

"No reason," said Varya, and felt herself blushing. "Just curious."

"Curious, she says." The landlady sipped her tea and gazed at the river for a long time. "There was something. Long ago. I was just a girl, I don't really remember. My mother said Tonya had a fiancé before Pyotr. Someone from outside. A geologist or a scientist, something like that. He went away and never came back. And a year later she married Pyotr. That's the whole story."

"Went away and never came back," Varya repeated quietly.

"That's how it goes, dearie," sighed Zinaida Petrovna. "Men are like that. They promise and promise... Eat your pancake, it's getting cold."

Varya found Ilya's workshop by its smell. Fresh shavings, resin, linseed oil. A long wooden shed right on the shore, with wide doors flung open. A boat's prow peeked out through them, pale, smooth, curved like a bird's wing.

Inside it was bright and cool. The smell of wood was so strong it made her head spin. Tools hung along the walls, each in its own place. Planes, chisels, saws, mysterious clamps. And in the middle, on wooden trestles, lay a boat. Still unfinished: its ribs stuck up like the bones of a whale.

Ilya stood with his back to her, planing a board. Long, precise strokes. Shavings curled into rings and dropped at his feet.

Varya stopped at the doors and simply watched for a few seconds. There was something mesmerising about it. A rhythm. The rasp of the plane, a breath, the rasp, a breath. Almost music, even though he didn't like music.

"Are you going to stand there long?" Ilya asked without turning round.

Varya jumped.

"How did you know?"

"Shadow." He nodded at the floor, where her long morning shadow lay. He put down the plane and finally turned. "Something wrong with the piano?"

"No. I mean yes. I mean..." Varya took the envelope out of her bag. "I found this inside. Yesterday. It was hidden between the frame and the case. I think it was your grandmother's."

Ilya wiped his hands on a rag and took the envelope. He drew out the sheet and unfolded it. Varya watched him read. At first indifferently. Then he frowned. Then his face became perfectly still, like water on a windless day.

He finished reading. Folded the sheet. Pushed it back into the envelope.

"My grandfather was Pyotr," he said evenly. "Not M."

"I know. Zinaida Petrovna told me your grandmother had someone before him. Someone from outside. Who went away and..."