The Silver Swan Read Free

return to New York for a few days if I get restless.”
    The old man was anxious. “You’re not planning to go again soon, are you? I get very lonely when you leave me here with nurses who never have anything interesting to say and can’t make a decent martini!” She laughed and stood up, reaching across the table to remove his glass. A small fire glowed across the room in the immense fireplace.
    “No, I’m not leaving you. I haven’t found one good reason to go to New York in months, except to check on my apartment. I’m staying here, Papa.”
    Outside, it was dark, and the holiday lights Mariana had strung on the evergreens in front of the house illumined the fresh snow. They had had no such lights when she was a child and they came to this house in the Berkshires for the holiday season. Her parents opposed them. “We are Jewish, after all,” her mother said. But now her mother was dead, and her father took pleasure in the sparkling display. A large Christmas tree, cut on the property, stood in the entrance hall. Under it, Mariana had placed the presents for Alexander that arrived each day from friends and students and fans. There were many. He was impatient for Christmas morning and asked her often to tell him how many days he would have to wait.
    “I’m going to the kitchen to fix your drink and tend to dinner,” she announced, leaning down to kiss the top of his head.“Why don’t you play for a little while? This would be a good time.” She positioned his wheelchair, turning it away from the table, and put on the brakes. The Silver Swan rested on the paisley shawl covering the grand piano. Mariana brought it to him. Then she applied resin to his bow. With the fire at his back, he began to play as she took up his empty glass and left the room.
    Standing at the bar in the butler’s pantry, Mariana opened the glass cabinet doors and removed the gin and vermouth. She filled the silver shaker with ice and carefully measured Alexander’s martini, then poured herself a glass of white wine. Since her mother’s death, they had spent so many evenings this way, alone or with company, winter and summer. Mariana had managed the beautiful old house, giving dinners and parties for the musicians who played at Tanglewood, inviting Alexander’s friends, students, and former colleagues, and a few of her own, to visit. She had flown with him to dozens of “farewell” concerts, to master classes and competitions and festivals in Puerto Rico, Germany, Spain, France, Korea, China, Japan, and Argentina. But in the past year, he had grown frail, tired, and forgetful. His eyesight had failed. He wanted less company but kept her at his side.
    The great irony for Mariana was that this life she now shared with Alexander was all her mother ever wanted. More and more despondent, her mother had waited for him to grow tired of traveling and concertizing, to come home, to take up a life with her — a life like this, shared evenings by the fire, idle conversation, hands touching as they watched the stars above the mountains. She felt deeply sad that her mother had missed Alexander’s new sweetness, the gentle humor and tenderness he expressed in these last years. Gone were thefearsome outbursts of temper, the anger and egotism that terrorized her and suffocated Pilar. Here was this loving old man who needed her. Her mother had died too soon.
    Alexander’s night nurse was eating her dinner at the kitchen table. She smiled at Mariana, arching her eyebrow at the extra martini on the tray, but said nothing. The old man must have his small pleasures, they had all agreed. Returning to the living room, Mariana set the drinks on the table and sat down. Alexander was playing the G-Major Bach Suite, the one he best remembered. His eyes were closed. The Silver Swan, its sound a resonant liquid gold, filled the room and vibrated in her chest. As she listened and sipped her wine, she imagined the Swan in the eighteenth-century Cremonese atelier