Brandenburg by Glenn Meade Read Free Book Online

day.
    The black taxi drew up outside Number 21, and Volkmann paid the driver and stepped out. It was cloudy and cold, the sky threatening snow as he walked up the narrow front path. The garden was overgrown, dockweed climbing between the bare winter rosebushes.
    As Volkmann unlocked the door and stepped inside, he heard the faint sound of music coming from the room at the back of the house and smiled. Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”
    He left his overnight bag by the door and passed the small parlor, its door open to reveal the silver-framed photographs on the mantelpiece and the walnut sideboard, the bric-a-brac his mother had collected over forty years.
    In the kitchen, the big Aga range was fired, its metal throwing out a blanket of heat into the small room, the door at the end open, the music louder now as he stepped toward it.
    She sat by the window of the music room, her gray head bent close to the Steinway piano. The silver-topped walking cane lay on top of the black, polished wood. She looked up as he peered around the door, smiled before removing her glasses.
    “You’ve made an old woman very happy. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
    He smiled back warmly, crossed to where she waited, and kissed her cheek. “It’s only two days, I’m afraid. I’ve got to be back by Saturday.”
    She touched his face with her palm. “No matter, it’s good to see you, Joseph. How was your flight?”
    “Delayed, two hours. Why don’t we go into the kitchen? It’s warmer there.”
    He handed her the silver-topped cane and helped her toward the door, holding her arm as she limped. “I managed to get some tickets for the Barbican tonight. What do you think?”
    “Tonight? But that’s wonderful.”
    “It’s Per Carinni. He’s doing the three Beethovens.” He smiled down at the old woman. “And how’s the patient?”
    “Much better now that you’re here. You can tell me all the gossip about Strasbourg.”
    •   •   •
    It never changed, the house, remained always as he remembered it each time he returned: the same familiar smells, the same peaceful quiet that enveloped him like a warm cocoon, and always music somewhere in the background. The radio was on, Bach playing softly.
    They sat in the kitchen drinking tea. She had placed a plateful of cookies beside his cup, but he left them untouched, the old guilt creeping in on him again, the thought of her alone in the big old house, shuffling around on the silver-topped cane.
    Every time he returned Volkmann remembered her as younger. He glanced up at the photographs on the wall over the kitchen fireplace: his father and her, taken more than thirty years before, her dark hair falling about her face as she smiled out at the camera, himself a boy sitting on her knee outside the cottage in Cornwall.
    “Tell me about Strasbourg.”
    Volkmann put down the china cup. “There’s not much to tell. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and there’s a lot of distrust about. The French don’t trust the English; the English don’t trust the French.” He smiled at her. “And the Italians, of course, don’t trust anybody. So much for mutual-security cooperation.”
    “What about Anna? Do you hear from her?”
    “She telephones now and then. She met someone. She seems happy.”
    He stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder, smiled down at the wrinkled face. “Come. I’d like to hear you play for me. We have some time before the concert. Then I’ll call a cab and have them pick us up at seven.”
    •   •   •
    It was after one o’clock when the taxi taking them home after the concert turned into the street. The snow had stopped and when they reached the park, the old woman told the driver to stop, they would walk the rest of the way; she needed the exercise. Volkmann helped her out and gripped her arm, the snow soft underfoot, his mother ignoring his protests, saying she felt better, the evening had done her good.
    The trees of the