Read Online Chamber Music by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online

thousand miles, had caused me. I asked him if he would care to stay the night and he accepted gracefully, with no hesitation. “It is very good of you to think of it.”
    â€œNot at all. You’re an old friend. We’re both pleased to see you again.”
    But Robert said nothing. He seemed nervous, rubbing on his lower lip in his old way. After his illness of September his energies were low in the evenings. He excused himself to go early to bed. Weeks seemed disappointed but showed no surprise at his departure. “He looks very tired. It must have been a severe illness.”
    â€œIt was. And as usual he refused to have anything done for him, anything professional, that is. He waited it out, as he likes to say. But he’s much recovered now.”
    â€œI see, yes. And you’re looking very well.”
    â€œThank you. And you.” It was true. His pale skin had been colored by his ocean voyage, he looked sturdy, healthy, and, somehow, American. The Berlin cut of his coat could not disguise his country look.
    â€œI am about to be married,” he said. “I wanted to tell you both, but Robert went up before I was able to.”
    I took a deep breath and relaxed in my hard chair, almost unable to say anything to this news. “You can tell him in the morning. I’m so pleased for you. To someone from the conservatory?”
    â€œNo. The daughter of my mother’s close friend. The three of them visited me in Germany last year. We’ve been in correspondence ever since. The wedding is to be at Christmas in Milwaukee. Do you think you and Robert could come?”
    â€œSurely,” I said, very quickly, and then checked myself. “That is, yes, of course we would both love to, but I must consult Robert about his schedule.”
    â€œI’ll send you an invitation in plenty of time to arrange for it.”
    I showed Weeks his room. On my way to ours I felt light-headed, almost giddy, uplifted by his news. Now I believed it all to be a sick fancy. The letters did not exist or they were merely literary exercises, romantic jokes exchanged by the two men. Robert was asleep when I came to bed. I lay awake for some time thinking of how time, by means of its simple accumulation, had wiped out the apprehensiveness that had lasted so long. Weeks left the next morning before Robert was awake.
    Robert worked very hard in the next month, to catch up, he said. Because money was still a problem for us, he took on a third pupil, a boy of eleven named Paul Brewster whose self-taught prowess was almost miraculous, said Robert. Now three pupils occupied his afternoons, always the best hours of his day. He kept his mornings, in which he was usually very slow to start, for composition, and in those hours he worked with such concentration that he abandoned his walk with the collie, taking him out only in the late afternoon. Paderewski had grown very old since our return from Europe; his still stately gait was now very slow and deliberate. This satisfied Robert, who was weary from working for nine hours before the walk. I would sometimes come upon the two old companions ambling along the paths of the park, Robert dazed and self-absorbed, Paderewski looking back at him every now and then.
    We made our plans to take a Pullman room on the Twentieth Century train to Chicago and then on to Milwaukee for Churchill Weeks’s wedding. I had persuaded Robert he ought to go. But in the end we did not do so. In early December Robert had a letter from his mother. It was a stiff, formal, strange letter:
    I wish to tell you, Rob, that I feel very close to the end of my days. I am now almost always bedridden with what my physician has called a disease of the heart. My feet and ankles swell badly at times so that I am unable to walk at all. I would not concern you with this but my physician has issued a warning to me, advising me to communicate with my relations in America so that I will not be alone in a