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By Root 438 0

It was not until later that it occurred to him that his reluctance was rooted in the same ground as his desire to leave school, as if to return such a predictable gesture would have placed him among the throngs who populated the most generic, mundane sectors of society, the very ones he wanted to escape with a career in the theater. More intriguing had been a man near the Pont Neuf who in the dusky twilight had looked at and through him while touching the brim of his hat with one hand and suggestively shifting his other in the front pocket of his trousers. Though Lucien had again walked past, not acknowledging the gesture, he understood that he had witnessed a type of code, one that he had first become aware of at the theater and that left him wanting to know more.

With the hour almost up, Lucien drove all such thoughts from his mind; the last thing he wanted was to appear confused or lonely to Manuel García. He reminded himself that he was only fifteen—with his life ahead of him—and after gently slapping his cheeks and jumping up and down a few times, he walked with renewed determination to the mansion. After he rang the bell, a footman in scarlet livery appeared and led him through the front entrance into a huge reception foyer, where Lucien asked for and was given a moment to admire the vaulted ceilings some three stories above before he was ushered into a smaller if no less formidable drawing room, and here left with a promise of the professor’s imminent arrival.

Minutes came and went. Lucien worried he would wilt like a parched flower in the white light that caromed off the mirrors and crystal, but he dared not remove his jacket, since he had yet to meet Monsieur García and wanted to make the most of his first impression. When he finally heard footsteps, he drew himself to attention but could not restrain himself from smiling rather too broadly—almost gawking—at the professor, who in contrast to the huge dimensions the man had taken on in his mind, was quite short, slender and balding, with the droopy eyes of a hound. Lucien felt more composed during an exchange of pleasantries as the professor led him down a hallway and into the music salon. This room also featured twenty-foot coffered ceilings but was less formal, thanks to a faded oriental rug, an old armchair—threadbare in spots, as though someone actually used it—and endless shelves of musical scores, books, and stationery.

García sat down at the piano, lifted the cover, and tossed off a few chords with an ease that announced the presence of a musician of serious ability. “On commence?” he asked as he flattened the sheet music against the stand. Lucien nodded slowly but intently, wanting to convey his appreciation for the jolt of adrenaline that prefaced any performance of meaning. But just before his entrance—and apparently less focused than he thought—he detected a sound, not so much a knock as a light tap, something that distracted him enough so that—putain de merde!—he missed his cue and instead offered up something between a gag and a cough.

Wearing the shocked expression of one who has just seen the tip of an arrow emerge through his chest, Lucien contemplated whether to hurl himself out the window, even as the knocking resumed with greater force. García, who had also heard the knock but, presumably less nervous, had chosen to ignore it, stopped playing and yelled that whoever or whatever was there would have to wait. A garbled but impassioned female voice responded, and with a sigh of resigned frustration that Lucien understood conveyed the sad fact that even the best voice teacher in the world could not conduct an audition without being interrupted by annoying trivialities, García got up and, in one quick motion that sent the piano bench stuttering back along the wood floor, took three compact steps to the door, which he opened just wide enough to allow one of his professorial eyes to peer through. “Pauline?”

“Oui—c’est moi.” There in the foyer—thanks to his height Lucien could see over the professor—stood Pauline García Viardot, one of the city’s