Prologue
You were eight years old. I was making breakfast while you gathered your things and put them into your backpack for school. Hearing your footsteps as you came into the kitchen, I turned around. You looked straight at me, your eyes wide, and asked, “Hey, Dad? What does it mean to be a father?”
After a moment’s silence, I said, “How about some eggs?” I was unable to reply with the few simple words you expected. My answer to your question could be found elsewhere: in my smile, in the look in my eyes, in my needing to know what you were willing to eat—not just for breakfast that morning, but for the rest of the day and all the days that followed. Maybe those thingsarewhat it means to be a father, but I didn’t know how to explain that to you. A kitchen table and forty years stood between us. As I looked at you, it occurred to me that I should have grown out of my selfish adolescence sooner, met your mother sooner, and conceived you sooner. Maybe you and I would have been closer if there’d been fewer years between us. I probably never answered you that day, but I never stopped asking your question of myself. Later, after I was gone, you started looking for your own answers, studying the precious moments we’d shared, replaying our past conversations. You began to unearth all those buried memories, carefully organizing them like you did your schoolbooks and notebooks in your backpack that morning. Trying to understand us better. Life is a strange game. Is that why I’m back here now? To bring us closer together now that you are not just my son, but also a man?
1
The Salle Pleyel concert hall was empty and dim. Beyond its walls, the spring sunlight was warming the city after a mild winter, but within them, only a single beam of light cut through the darkness to illuminate the stage, enveloping the piano in a halo of floating dust.
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is an intellectual piece. The kind that virtuosity alone cannot conquer. Each time Thomas played it, he found himself questioning every skill he thought he had mastered. Today, it also felt like he was searching for the invisible, experiencing at once all of the emotions he had ever felt, as if a path had been drawn from his first memories of childhood all the way to the next day, when a thousand people would come to listen to his performance and a few discerning ears would judge it. As he struck the final chord, the beam of light blinked three times. The lighting engineer was growing impatient.
“I know, I’m almost done. Just once more and I’ll be out of here,” Thomas called in the direction of where the man was working backstage.
“You’ve got it down, believe you me,” a voice called back.
Others might have laughed off the musical advice of a lighting engineer, but Thomas trusted Marcel’s ear. After all, the man had attended even more concerts than Thomas had. Marcel had operated the lights for orchestras from all over the world, so why should his opinion be any less valid than that of Thomas’s conductor, who hadn’t even deigned to attend his final run-through?
“I have to get home, Mr. Thomas, and I can’t lock you in, though I’m sure you would love that. Go think about something else for a while. You must have something better to do at your age than spend the night here.” Marcel approached the stage, his potbelly as prominent as his good nature. “I’m telling you, you’ve got this. Rachmaninoff is rejoicing as he watches you from heaven, believe you me.”
“I’d rather he listen than watch.” Thomas closed the cover over the keys. “And what makes you so sure he got into heaven? That monster composed some of the most difficult scores ever written.”
“That’s exactly how I know he’s up there.” The lighting engineer escorted Thomas to the stage door. “Fine, we’ll agree he’s listening. But let me just say, I watch you from my booth, and I see and hear the music coming from every part of you, even your eyes. Even when they’re closed. If you play that way tomorrow, it’ll be a triumph.”
“You’re too kind, Marcel.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Kind! I’ll show you kind! Get out of here.” The technician pushed Thomas out the door. “My wife is waiting for me, and if I stay here any later, the reception she gives me will be anythingbutkind. Go spend time with your girlfriend or do whatever you want, but stop letting your nerves control you. No good ever comes of that. See you tomorrow. I’ll be here an hour early if you want to practice one more time.”
Pianists are overcome with loneliness the moment they walk out the stage door. Thomas sometimes envied flautists, violinists, and bassists, who all took their instruments with them when they left the hall. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his blazer as he walked up Rue Daru, wondering what he should do with himself. He could call his longtime best friend and invite him to dinner at a brasserie, but Serge had just gone through a breakup, and the very thought of making conversation with him exhausted Thomas. Philippe would have been excellent company, but he was filming a commercial somewhere betweenPoland and Hungary. François’s gallery was nearby, within walking distance, but the week before, Thomas had chosen to practice rather than attend the opening of his friend’s most recent show, and François knew how to hold a grudge. As for Sophie, she hadn’t been answering Thomas’s messages lately. She was probably putting an end to their on-again, off-again, mostly text-based relationship, no longer willing to welcome him into her bed whenever he sought a bit of warmth. Or maybe she’d met someone else. If so, it wouldn’t last. Sooner or later, she’d be the one calling Thomas.
As he walked past La Lorraine brasserie, Thomas noticed a couple sitting together. Given how they were gazing at the Place des Ternes, they could only be tourists or new lovers. He crossed the street and headed toward the flower market at the center of the roundabout, where he picked out a heady bouquet of freesia and star jasmine. White flowers were his mother’s favorite.
Bouquet in hand, he climbed aboard the 43 bus and took a seat by the window. Passersby hurried down the sidewalk. When the bus stopped at a red light, a strikingly graceful young woman pulled up beside it on her bike. She placed her hand on the window to avoid taking her feet off the pedals and smiled at Thomas. When the bus started forward again, Thomas looked back and watched her disappear into the traffic on Rue de Monceau.
In that moment, a memory rose to the surface of his mind. Thomas was twenty, with his father, the two of them on their way to the opening of a new exhibition by a Danish master. As they left the Jacquemart-André Museum, Thomas met the eyes of a woman coming toward them on Boulevard Haussmann. She passed them and continued on her way. Noticing their exchange of glances, Thomas’s father took the chance to say he saw the street as an endless source of new acquaintances, a place where anything was possible. Too many idiots wasted their time trying to woo women in bars, or shouting out unintelligible conversations over the din of clubs and trendy restaurants. Raymond, though, wasa natural Casanova—the complete opposite of his son, whose friends often teased him for his shyness.
Thomas got off at the Haussmann-Miromesnil stop and made his way toward Rue Treilhard. He pushed through the building’s huge front door and, minutes later, rang the bell of a fifth-floor apartment.
“Don’t you have your keys?” Jeanne asked, surprised, as she opened the door in her bathrobe.
“I gave them back to you—oh, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago?”
“Such a sweet way to greet your mother. And those flowers, are they for me or do you have a date?”
“Is there anything good in the fridge?” Thomas slipped into the entryway.
“So, they’re for me, then.” Jeanne took the bouquet. “They smell strong,” she added as she walked into the kitchen.
“A simple thank-you would have sufficed,” said Thomas.
“Don’t ever expect a woman to thank you for flowers. Instead, watch to see how carefully she arranges them in a vase. Didn’t your father teach you that?”
Thomas opened the door to the refrigerator and then turned toward his mother. “Can I eat the ham?”
“You make such fascinating conversation, sweetheart! Good thing you’ll be dining alone tonight. I’m going out and have no intention of changing my plans. But you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You can even sleep over if you want.”
Thomas put the plate down on the table and hugged his mother tightly.
“Is something wrong?” he asked sweetly.
