Nocturnes_ Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro [69]
“Look,” she said, “you’re probably too angry with me just now to think about this. But I’d like to help you. If you do decide you want to talk this over, I’m staying over there. At the Excelsior.”
This hotel, the grandest in our city, stands at the opposite end of the square from the cafe, and she now pointed it out to Tibor, smiled, and began to walk off towards it. He was still watching her when she turned suddenly near the central fountain, startling some pigeons, gave him a wave, then continued on her way.
OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS he found himself thinking about the encounter many times. He saw again the smirk around her mouth as he’d so proudly announced Petrovic’s name and felt the anger rising afresh. But on reflection, he could see he had not really been angry on his old teacher’s behalf. It was rather that he had become accustomed to the idea that Petrovic’s name would always produce a certain impact, that it could be relied upon to induce attention and respect: in other words, he’d come to depend on it as a sort of certificate he could brandish around the world. What had so disturbed him was the possibility that this certificate didn’t carry nearly the weight he’d supposed.
He kept remembering too her parting invitation, and during those hours he sat in the square, he found his gaze returning to the far end, and the grand entrance of the Excelsior Hotel, where a steady stream of taxis and limousines drew up in front of the doorman.
Finally, on the third day after his conversation with Eloise McCormack, he crossed the piazza, entered the marbled lobby and asked the front desk to call her extension. The receptionist spoke into the phone, asked his name, then after a short exchange, passed the receiver to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he heard her voice say. “I forgot to ask you your name the other day and it took me a while to figure out who you were. But of course I haven’t forgotten you. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about you an awful lot. There’s so much I’d like to talk through with you. But you know, we have to do this right. Do you have your cello? No, of course you don’t. Why don’t you come back in an hour, exactly one hour, and this time bring your cello. I’ll be waiting here for you.”
When he returned to the Excelsior with his instrument, the receptionist immediately indicated the elevators and told him Miss McCormack was expecting him.
The idea of entering her room, even in the middle of the afternoon, had struck him as awkwardly intimate, and he was relieved to find a large suite, the bedroom closed off entirely from view. The tall French windows had boarded shutters, for the moment folded back, so the lace curtains moved in the breeze, and he could see that by stepping through onto the balcony, he’d find himself looking over the square. The room itself, with its rough stone walls and dark wood floor, had almost a monastic air about it, softened only partially by the flowers, cushions and antique furniture. She, in contrast, was dressed in T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and trainers, as though she’d just come in from running. She welcomed him with little ceremony—no offer of tea or coffee—and said to him:
“Play for me. Play me something you played at your recital.”
She had indicated a polished upright chair carefully placed in the centre of the room, so he sat down on it and unpacked his cello. Rather disconcertingly, she sat herself in front of one of the big windows so that he could see her almost exactly in profile, and she continued to stare into the space before her all the time he tuned up. Her posture didn’t alter as he began to play, and when he came to the end of his first piece, she didn’t say a word. So he moved quickly to another piece, and then another. A half-hour went by, then a whole hour. And something to do with the shaded room and its austere acoustics, the afternoon sunlight diffused by the drifting lace curtains, the background hubbub rising from the piazza, and above all, her presence, drew from him notes