Лия Криз – Concert A (страница 3)

"Zinaida Petrovna," Ilya interrupted, "will tell you anything. She's probably told you about me already."

"No," Varya said honestly. "She hasn't got round to you yet."

"She will." He held the envelope out to her. "Keep it. Or throw it away."

Varya didn't take it.

"But it's your grandmother's letter. It's her life."

"It's her past." Ilya put the envelope on the workbench next to the plane. "She hid it. So she didn't want anyone to see. Let it stay that way."

"But she didn't throw it away," Varya said softly. "She kept it for sixty years."

Ilya didn't answer. He picked up the plane again and turned back to the board. The conversation was over.

Varya stood a little longer, looking at his back. Broad, tense. Then she turned and left.

The envelope stayed on the workbench.

She worked all day.

First she removed the entire action, gently, like a surgeon. Hammers, levers, dampers. She laid everything out on the old grandmother's table, covered with newspapers. Cleaned every part. Checked every little spring. Half the felt needed replacing, and she made a list of what would have to be ordered from Moscow.

Then she turned to the strings. She tightened them bit by bit, a little at a time, so they wouldn't snap after all those years. The piano creaked, groaned, complained. Like an old man being woken from a long sleep.

"I know, I know," Varya muttered, turning the lever. "It's unpleasant. Bear with me. It'll get easier soon."

She always talked to instruments. It used to annoy Kirill. "You're like a cat lady," he'd say. But Varya felt that instruments could hear. Better than some people, at any rate.

By evening her back ached so badly she could hardly straighten up. Her hands were black with old dust and grease. But the bass was nearly in tune now, and somewhere deep inside the piano that same voice she had heard yesterday was beginning to wake.

She sat down on the stool, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and, unable to resist, played a few bars. Nothing special. The opening of a Chopin nocturne she had played since childhood. E-flat major, Opus 9, Number 2. The melody drifted through the empty house, still uncertain, a little sour in the upper register, but already alive.

She finished the phrase and froze.

Ilya was standing in the doorway.

She didn't know how long he had been there. He wasn't moving. In his hand was the envelope.

"Don't stop," he said hoarsely.

"It's not properly tuned yet. The top is off..."

"I don't care. I can't hear the difference."

Varya hesitated. Then she laid her hands on the keys again and started from the beginning.

She played without looking at him. She looked at her fingers, at the yellowed keys, at the window, where the Volga was fading. The nocturne slowly unfolded, like a flower, like a conversation between two people who haven't seen each other for a long time and don't know where to begin.

When the last chord melted into silence, Ilya was still standing in the doorway.

"She played that," he said. "Gran. When I was little. Every evening. I'd fall asleep to it upstairs." He paused. "I'd forgotten. Completely forgotten. And just now I heard it and..."

He didn't finish. He turned to the window.

Varya said nothing. She knew that sometimes the right thing is to say nothing at all.

"I reread the letter," Ilya said at last, without turning round. "It mentions the ice breaking."

"Yes."

"Every spring Gran went down to the landing stage. When the ice was moving. Every spring, for as long as I can remember. She'd get dressed, take her stick and go. She'd stand there an hour, two. Sometimes Grandad went with her. More often alone. I thought she just liked watching the ice. It's beautiful, after all." He gave a joyless smile. "I even took photos of her there. I thought it was a tradition."

He turned round. In the dusk his face looked completely different. Younger. More lost.

"Sixty years," he said. "She went to that damned landing stage for sixty years."

Varya got up from the stool. She went over to him and stopped beside him at the window. Below, the river was darkening, and a small light was slowly moving across it, a boat or a buoy.

"Maybe she was just remembering," said Varya. "Not waiting, remembering. They're not the same thing."

"How would you know?"

Varya shrugged.

"I don't. That's just what I think."

They stood in silence. Somewhere in the garden a nightingale began to sing, hesitantly, as if testing its voice, like the piano that morning.

"Varya," said Ilya. It was the first time he had said her name on his own, without being prompted. "If you find anything else in there... in the piano. Tell me. All right?"

"All right."

He nodded and handed her the envelope.

"Keep it for now. I don't know what to do with it."

Varya took the letter. Their fingers touched for a second, and she felt how warm his hands were. Ilya immediately pulled his away and pushed them into his pockets.

"Good night," he said, and left.

Varya watched him go for a long time. Then she looked at the piano, dark and silent in the dusk.

"Well," she whispered. "What else are you hiding?"

The piano didn't answer, of course. But it seemed to Varya that one of the bass strings hummed softly all on its own. As if it had sighed.

Chapter 3. Letters No One Sent

Varya made her second discovery three days later.

By then she knew the house by heart. She knew which stair creaked, which window frame stuck, and at what hour the sun reached the piano and lay across the keys in a warm stripe. She knew that Zinaida Petrovna baked pies on Thursdays and that the neighbours' cat, Baron, turned up at the porch at noon sharp, demanding milk.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «Литрес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на Литрес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.