“Ah, but consider, my insubordinate fellow: we were just two floors down from where you sit now—two floors, and nineteen years. Imagine it: the excruciating absence of sound, of breath. The conductor with sweat in his eyes. His baton darts. And oh, the music! Begun awry! Whose was the sour voice? There’s a shuffle of bending backs. Everyone leans steeply into the work, a ferocious concentration takes us all. And the sourness disappears. We sail smoothly over large waves, ride them out, each grace note cut like a dream. My mother sways; the Magar closes his eyes. Ravel is a full-billowed sail.
“Then, suddenly, that little worm of poison again. His eyes snap open. It’s in the woodwinds, I think, and dare a glance. There he is—that blubbering clarinetist! He has ceased playing, is squeezing his wrist in agony; he is having some sort of attack! And then the buffoon leaps up, red-faced, lurching from his row—”
“Stop!” Anton’s hand is shaking.
“And the white-haired French horn player gapes at him and catches his sleeve, and the clarinetist shoves him back against the musicians behind, and the loving audience convulses in a shout of dismay—”
“I am leaving, Colonel!”
“And the soloist turns her back to the audience, hoping someone will shoot her. And my mother rises from her own chair, haggard, clutching the piccolo in her big arthritic hands, and groaning for breath. The conductor thrashes out the lost tempo with insane animation, and then. Anton. The final, unbearable train wreck of the strings! And the Magar—”
“Be quiet!” screams Anton, backing to the door.
“—the Magar has waited for this. He barks a command, and we are suddenly surrounded by dozens of guards, men with naked bayonets; they just swarm in like fleas and drive the audience out. And the Magar throws open the door to the west yard, and in rush, I swear before God, dozens and dozens of swine—”
“No! No! No!”
“—huge hogs from that Posnr fellow—”
“Christ!”
“—men behind with German shepherds, and they are so horrified, filthy, shoving, pissing, squealing…”
“Bastard! Liar!”
Anton turns and runs. His one thought is that if he hears any more, he will rip the telegraph from its wiring, smash it, and later be called a saboteur. I can still think practically, he tells himself, on the verge of another scream. Lupescu. Pigs. Why such horrible nonsense?
The hallway bucks under his feet. His breastbone resonates with the storm. He gropes for reason, like a life vest he might yet slip into, but all he can think of is that gentle Lupescu has been a long, long time alone.
The Summer Ballroom is awash with rain: staghorn ferns weep it from high chains on the balconies; skylights thrash it upon the dance floor. Anton stands in the doorway, slowing his breath. A famous room, this, where princes and later prime ministers and dictators waltzed their wives or lovers. He tries to see them, the unapproachable ones: prim, powdered, a night in every respect opposite this one; a blushing cheek, a sextet—
He kicks away the doorstop. No heating this room.
But then, over the storm: footsteps. Someone has ducked into the dressing chambers.
“Faraz?”
In the wet moonlight, nothing. But quick footfalls echo in the rooms beyond. Anton lifts his torch, dashes through the spray, cursing. It can only be Faraz, the Shiite porter; abandoning his post to nose about the Magar’s rooms, perhaps make off with something. No one else is inside the palace gate, save lumbering Tatiana.
Anton bursts into the master dressing room, finds it untouched. But sounds tease from a room adjoining: left, right? No, behind him, the bathchambers. Water splashing into the tub! Anton leaps for the door, but hears the bolt slide home even as he pushes.
“Have you gone mad, Faraz?” Anton hurries to the other door. Also locked. He beats furiously. The splashing stops.
Now the footsteps approach his door. Knuckles rap from inside, once.
“It is for you.”
“The bath? For me?”
“Don’t you want to be clean?” The voice is distinctly mocking.
“Who’s there?” Anton cries. “Faraz?”
“You don’t know me?”
“I don’t know if I know you! But no one is to run a bath without my express permission! No one is to do anything without my permission while our Commander is afield! And if it is you, Faraz, I will have you in stocks, like a common deserter, for leaving your post. Do you realize—”
“Call me a deserter.” The other speaks with slow contempt.
“Let me in! I order you!”
The footsteps retreat.
“Come. I unlocked the door while you were bellowing.”
He has indeed. But as Anton swings the door open, the other—the door on the opposite wall—crashes shut. Anton runs through the steamy chamber, grabs at the knob, pushes.
It will not budge. A foot is against it.
Anton throws his whole weight against this door, but his whole weight amounts to little. The owner of the planted foot snickers.
“Go on, laugh. You won’t be laughing long.”
The other obliges, laughs louder. Anton is ready to explode. But with a tremendous effort he does not. He dislikes hysteria, really. And he is on duty.
“Faraz, listen. I’m not angry. But you’ve got to take a message to town. We’re under attack!”
“No one ordered me to run you a bath.”
“What?”
“I said no one made me to do it. You might show some appreciation.”
“What?”