Fatal Lies by Frank Tallis (novels in english txt) 📗

black satin dress, and her hair fell in thick lustrous locks around her shoulders. Above her heart, she had pinned a brooch—shaped like a horned moon—which burned with a fiery white adamantine light. Her expression was serious and purposeful. She curtsied, gripped the violin beneath her chin, and waited for the clapping to subside. Then, closing her eyes, she drew her bow across the strings.

A strange, improvisatory scraping filled the hall: the opening bars of Tartini's G-minor sonata, more popularly known as The Devil's Trill (on account of the composer's insistence that it was revealed to him by Satan in a dream). The melody was serpentine, sinister, and creeping, occasionally finding a major key and offering the listener hope, only to dash it again by twisting back into a tonal wasteland of eerie ambiguities.

Liebermann had heard The Devil's Trill performed once before, at the Saal Ehrbar, but it had not affected him so deeply. In that concert, the work had been performed with a piano accompaniment, which had only diminished the music's power. The lone voice of the violin was more haunting, more mysterious—imbued with a raw, chilling urgency.

Of course, thought Liebermann. When the devil played to Tartini, he played alone!

Trezska did not open her eyes, but communed with her violin, swaying and rolling from side to side. The demonic obliquity of her eyebrows and the rapture of her playing stirred in Liebermann memories of Faust: a capricious notion that this woman might once have gambled with her soul in exchange for greater mastery of her instrument. The sheer spectacle of her performance charmed the audience into forgiving any technical deficiencies. She was like a magician, artfully misleading by means of a carefully choreographed danse macabre.

The conservative second movement was followed by the opening bars of the third, a fortissimo howl that might have escaped from the mouth of a doomed Florentine in Dante's hell. Jerking rhythms led to fluid accelerandi and savage down-bowed chords. Then the famous trills: frenzied, dizzying, convulsive, becoming louder and louder— climbing in pitch and volume. Trezska leaned backward, and her tresses tumbled off her shoulders. Her eyes opened. In the sulfurous gaslight they appeared incandescent with infernal rage. When the music finally reached its arpeggiated dissolution into nothingness, almost everyone listening had been persuaded that this extraordinary composition was, indeed, the devil's handiwork.

Trezska completed her recital with a less dramatic piece: Tartini's Pastorale for violin in scordatura. Gradually, its gentle rusticity and bucolic breeziness dispelled the stench of brimstone, and visions of eternal torment were replaced by idyllic vales, drones, pipes, and slumbering shepherds.

When the final notes had faded and Trezska had removed the violin from beneath her chin, the audience responded with noisy delight. Several of the dignitaries in the front row jumped to their feet—and others seated behind copied them, clapping and cheering. Through the mass of bodies, Liebermann caught a glimpse of white and gold— and saw Trezska bend to take the bunch of flowers from the Austrian general.

After collecting his coat from the cloakroom, Liebermann left the hall and set off toward the Ringstrasse. He passed a Bosnian hawker, in crimson fez and pointed slippers, who attempted to sell him a kettle and an inlaid snuffbox. The sound of Tartini's diabolical trills still persisted in the young doctor's mind. They had acquired a siren-like quality, exerting a subtle tractive power that slowed his step. Moreover, he had begun to question the propriety of his precipitate departure. Trezska Novak had sent him a personal invitation. Surely it was discourteous to leave without congratulating her. This simple point of etiquette was frequently observed in musical circles, was it not? Such were his justifications.

Liebermann stopped, turned around, and made his way back to the concert hall, slipping down a side alley that led to the artists’ entrance. He rapped on the door, which was opened by a porter. Jangling some loose change in his pocket, he asked the functionary to convey his compliments to Fräulein Novak. Some silver coins changed hands and the porter disappeared. A few minutes later the door reopened and Liebermann was admitted into a narrow corridor. A few gentlemen were standing at the far end: one of them was Bertalan Szép. He was smoking a cigar, and his arm was casually slung around the shoulders of his cello case. The porter indicated Trezska's dressing room.

A gentle tap on the paneling produced an invitation to enter.

Trezska was seated in front of a large mirror.

“How good of you to come.”

“It was my pleasure.”

She did not stand to greet her visitor but remained perfectly still, conversing with Liebermann's reflection.

“I like to sit quietly after a concert.” She smiled softly. “I find it… necessary.”

“Yes. One needs to recover after expending so much emotional energy—and the pieces looked physically taxing, too. It was a very impressive performance: I have never heard the great G-minor sonata played unaccompanied before.”

Something like a shadow passed across Trezska's face. “I was pleased—although some would say that I took liberties with the andante… and the allegro was somewhat uninspired, don't you think?”

Liebermann understood that a musician of her quality was not seeking a blithe denial.

“The problem lies—at least in part—with the composition itself. The allegro is musically inferior. Even so… I enjoyed it immensely.”

“You are fond of music,” said Trezska, her gaze becoming more penetrating. “I was right—wasn't I?”

“Yes.”

“What is your instrument?”

“The piano.”

Trezska looked satisfied, almost smug, and without uttering a single word managed to communicate something like: Yes, of course you're a pianist—how could you be anything else?”

Now that he was close to her, Liebermann noticed that Trezska's cheek was still a little swollen. She had used make-up to disguise her injury.

“How is your graze?”

“Sore… but getting better.”

“Good.”

There was a knock on the door, followed by the appearance of Szép. He acknowledged Liebermann with a bow, and said to Trezska: “We are off to Csarda.… Kiss is coming. Count Dohnányi and his guest will be joining us later.”

Liebermann noticed that Trezska's eyes flicked toward the bunch of flowers