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“Do you practice the arts, Mr. Magnus?” asks Clara von Closen.
Albrecht is out on another of his 'errands,' as he insists they be called. Not that Jonah hasn’t been offered a seat in the carriage. But his friend’s idea of a day’s entertainment lasts the whole day and then some. Jonah had hoped that the frequent journeys into town would help him grow his catalogue of local legends, but Albrecht’s inner circle tend to meet his probing smiles with frowns and change the subject. After the third eternity in a row playing cards with the boisterous and uninspired, Jonah regrettably begins to take ill. Since then, here in Albrecht’s library he has stayed, raking through a well-loved collection of eccentricities and fairy tales for anything useful.
She almost startles him, asking her question from the shadows of a glittering armchair. Jonah resists the urge twitch, lest he blot the page of his journal. The lady of the house is a rare sight indeed. She is something of a recluse, absent but for her sweet viola ringing through empty corridors at odd hours. Sometimes, she is accompanied by a piano. Jonah suspects that she, too, tires of her husband’s limitless energy and hides herself away with whatever trusted companion or indulgent fool to play along. He won’t complain; the estate is almost peaceful without his friend bouncing off the walls.
Some part of him never fully relaxes. He blames the silence. It never quite settles, like the moment between a tuning orchestra and the first movement. An expectant silence, an anticipation of a beginning you cannot control and an end you cannot prevent.
“What a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Von Closen,” he tries. He has seen her before. During Smirke’s gatherings, he sometimes catches glimpses of her amused face in the reflection of his wineglass. He has done his best to inquire after her habits, her tastes and sensibilities, but the staff are tight-lipped and Albrecht merrily oblivious. He does not know how to flatter her, how to ask after the town secrets. He doubts she would give them away. Those who prefer to recede into the background tend to set him on edge, these days.
“The arts, Jonah Magnus. Are they of interest to you?” She asks again. The shutters remain firmly latched in the library. Dusk has settled over the manor. Jonah detests this moment, and yet it comes every day. The last threads of sunlight linger in the air, too bright for candles but too dim to read. The perfect moment to obscure, to give ground to the shadows. The perfect moment to answer the terrible dread clenching through his fists.
He can see her delicate hands, relaxed on the arm of her chair. Her nails poke under her gloves, tapping lightly. Unhurried, but moving all the same. A musician’s hands, made for plucking and drawing across strings.
“I much enjoy the sound of your playing, if this is your way of asking,” he offers. “But I assume you ask for a reason.” A familiar feeling, too soft to name until this moment, rings dreadfully in his ears. It is a predatory feeling, one that makes him feel small and stunted, stumbling through dangers he cannot yet name, cannot yet feel the shape of in his mind.
Clara’s face shifts, but he cannot distinguish playful frown from dangerous smile, so he does the sensible thing and waits.
“Let me rephrase.” Her dress ripples in the golden-purple light, both brilliant and muted. Such contradictions are characteristic of the evening. “Which do you prefer; the piano or the paintbrush?”
“I prefer writing to both, if you’ll forgive me.” Jonah closes his journal as casually as his hands permit, shifting in his seat to give her his full attention. Clara stands, then, as if passed his momentum. She moves silently across the room, out of his line of sight. He resists the irritated urge to reposition his chair.
“An easy answer to a question I did not ask. You seem well-acquainted with talking your way in circles, Mr. Magnus. But tell me; do you prefer music or drawing?” A warm glow punctuates the end of each sentence as she lights the oil lamps in a loose crescent around the library.
“To practice or to appreciate?”
“My dear, what is the difference?” His eyes follow her figure. As she arrives at each lamp, she sways instead of stopping, carrying herself in little loops and twirls before moving to the next.
“Painting,” he says. His hand shakes. He clenches it still. “I prefer to paint. To transform a blank canvas into any world you desire, piece by piece.”
Clara hums in acknowledgement. She hums in appreciation. She hums a note he has heard before, sashaying gently about the room. Her bow echoes her, turning the air itself, carrying his words over rows upon rows of dusty, dry, tucked-away men, once desperate to be heard.
“Observing a painting has always been a favorite pastime of mine. Each detail warrants speculation on its inclusion. You might spend as much or as little time as you wish dissecting it. And if you dedicate your life to mastering the art, you will survive on chapel ceilings and in proud museums. All who fix their eyes on your work will wonder about it, about who made it. As time goes on, mystique sets the work loose into millions of imaginations.”
“Is that what you want?” Clara asks. She finally arrives at the lamp across from him, directly above her arm chair. She turns, leaving it unlit, and he can see her grin tucked into the chin guard of her viola. “Indulge me, if you will. Shall we play a duet?”
Jonah does not wish to answer. His neck is stiff, but he finds himself rising to the small piano that had escaped his notice. How had it escaped his notice?
“I prefer music,” she cuts through the pointed silence in C sharp minor, and he finds himself, miraculously, horrifically, following. “If you unveiled a painting in the Louvre this very day, it is true that many would look. But a glance and a smile is enough for polite company, from the most highly esteemed painters to the child with his charcoals. One can set a letter--” she dips the graceful neck of her viola towards his desk, “--or a book aside and let its words sit on coffin-shelves until they become dust.”
Jonah wants to interject, to disagree. But he is unable to do anything but follow as the nocturne crescendos into something passionate and venomous.
“But who wouldn’t stop for a song, Mr. Magnus? Who would dare leave the concert hall? It’s not proper,” she lilts. “Music is communal. We sing, we play, we listen. If we were to paint together, we would crowd the canvas.” A high note draws out between them, unresolved but inviting, and Jonah twists his head to meet her amused gaze.
He is so tired of people who pull him along. Who refuse to take him seriously.
“But the painting will last,” he says. “Music is bound by its temporal insignificance. Present, then absent. I would paint something that stays, no matter who comes across it. They need not have an instrument or know the notation; they need only look.”
Clara comes much closer than he prefers, and tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear. She seems to find what she’s looking for in his barely-contained rage. Her satisfaction only stokes his anger and his fear.
“Absence and presence are not as opposite as you think. One day we’ll all be gone, that much is true. But when I play a song, I choose how long you spend here with me.”
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” he grits. “Who accompanies you on the piano, in lieu of guests like myself?”
“Why, my mother of course. I take after her, you know,” she says.
“I’m not a fool, you know,” he spits, pushing away from the piano stool and scrambling backward. “Nor uneducated enough not to recognize the monstrous under the meek. Smirke--”
“Oh, spare me his taxonomy . I get enough of it from Albrecht,” she scoffs, something ugly overtaking her expression. Her hands flex under the gloves. “But rest assured, I mean you no harm. Play your little games, Magnus. I’m sure one day you’ll learn enough to sing along with the best of us.” She slinks into darkened hallway, and her music strikes up again. From the other end of the house, her duet partner echoes forte into the dark.
When Jonah’s illness lightens as mysteriously as it descended and he departs the Von Closen family in a haste, he swears he will never let them take from him again.
“We’ll be here waiting for you,” Clara promises.