American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [45]
My love, he said.
The Sultan looked at one of the guards and a rush of bodies pushed from the sides of the room inward toward Avedis. Suddenly, chaos. The Alchemist remained calm as the storm rushed toward him. He stood reveling in the reverberations of his love. Parvin sensed the Sultan’s glare upon her and turned to glance back into his fury. He looked on her as he might look at a smear of shit underfoot. Then his face contorted into a different level of disgust, and under his eyes appeared half-moons bred from fear. Then again, his mouth opened and from the back of his dark throat he said: Another whore. Clutching his sword he strode forward into the crowd of bodies.
Parvin stared at Avedis as he was dragged out of his workshop, the cymbals dropping to the floor and clanging, before circling on their rims in a final, spiraling dance.
It seemed to her that the dark room was swallowing her up into one of its elixirs. She tried to stand but found herself frozen in place. She felt a familiar hand grip her arm. Follow me, a low voice said. The voice betrayed nothing as it led her through a dark passageway and out of Avedis’s workshop and just as they entered the twilit gardens Parvin lifted her head from staring at the ground in front of her feet and saw her dark handsome beloved striding purposefully forward, her hand in his. I have been instructed to dispose of you, he said, turning around quickly. Hyacinth looked in her eyes as if to say: Everything will be fine. But she couldn’t be sure. The gardens bled into a palace stairway. The two figures made a sharp left onto the stairs. A crowd of the Sultan’s henchmen passed them, dragging Avedis. His cries faded away as they hurried off.
We were wrong.
We were.
She won’t end up with Avedis.
It doesn’t look like it.
She was putting on her coat and turning on the lights.
It’s time to go. The nurse is coming.
Don’t go.
She stopped buttoning her coat.
I’ll be here tomorrow.
She kept buttoning.
Don’t go.
I have to go.
•
When Joe and Vivian said good-bye inside the car it was a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn and the sun was out. He held her awkwardly in the front seat and she was crying and with his eyes closed he remembered when he’d seen her cry before, that day at the museum. He remembered the way her tears had been reflected in the glass, drops of gold sliding downward to the jungle floor. He heard the hollow sounds of children’s voices echoing in the vast room. He felt Vivian’s restrained yet passionate presence standing next to him. He saw her face on the body of a tiger.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1936
Pearl stood in the doorway holding the door open when he came home. She was wearing a pretty blouse and her smart skirt and she had a dish towel in her hand. Her face was glistening with perspiration and her hair was pulled back at the sides and then loose in back. Her face looked young like a twelve-year-old girl’s but her hands were thin and veined and he never liked to look at her knuckles. They showed how hard she had to work. Her wedding band swam around on her finger like a Life Saver. Her ankles were crossed and she was wearing heels. She almost always wore heels. He could smell a pot roast in the oven and through the doorway he could see the living room in a haze of afternoon light, the simple furniture blurred and softened and welcoming and beyond that a shaft of late sun slicing through the kitchen and he could glimpse it and it looked like home.
At dinner she said, How did it go? Did the band like you?
They did. Nice guys.
He took a forkful of vegetables. He chewed them thoroughly. He chewed for a long time.
Do they have any gigs coming up?
A few. Out of town.
She was getting him more roast.
Anything overseas?
Possibly. But that work is harder to get, you know. Not as many