After the Count had led Viktor Stepanovich into the hall, where they could confer for a moment in private, he returned to the ballroom. Finding Sofia still at the piano, he took a seat at her side with his back to the keys.
They were both silent.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were studying piano?” the Count asked after a moment.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” she said. “For your birthday. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry if I did.”
“Sofia, if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. You have done nothing wrong. On the contrary. That was wonderful—and unambiguously so.”
Sofia blushed and looked down at the keyboard.
“It is a lovely composition,” she said.
“Well, yes,” agreed the Count with a laugh, “it is a lovely composition. But it is also a piece of paper with circles, lines, and dots. Nearly every student of piano for a century has learned to play that little bit of Chopin. But for most of them, it is an act of recitation. Only one in a thousand—or even a hundred thousand—can bring the music to life as you just have.”
Sofia continued to look at the keyboard. The Count hesitated. And then with a touch of trepidation, he asked:
“Is everything all right?”
Sofia looked up, a little surprised. Then seeing how grave her father’s expression was, she smiled.
“Of course, Papa. Why do you ask?”
The Count shook his head.
“I’ve never played an instrument in my life, but I understand something of music. To have played the opening measures of that piece with feelings so perfectly evocative of heartache, one can only assume that you have drawn on some wellspring of sorrow within yourself.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. Then with the enthusiasm of a young scholar she began to explain: “Viktor Stepanovich calls that the mood. He says that before one plays a note, one must discover an example of the composition’s mood hidden away in one’s heart. So for this piece, I think about my mother. I think of how my few memories of her seem to be fading, and then I begin to play.”
The Count was quiet, overwhelmed by another wave of astonishment.
“Does that make sense?” Sofia asked.
“Abundantly,” he said. Then after a moment of reflection, he added: “As a younger man, I used to feel the same way about my sister. Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”
They were both quiet now. Then looking about him, the Count gestured with his hand.
“This was a favorite room of hers.”
“Of your sister’s?”
“No, no. Of your mother’s.”
Sofia looked around with some surprise.
“The ballroom . . . ?”
“Most definitely. After the Revolution, all the old ways of doing things were abandoned—which was the point, I suppose. But the new ways of doing things had yet to be established. So all across Russia, all manner of groups—trade unions, citizens’ committees, commissariats—gathered in rooms like this one in order to hash things out.”
The Count pointed to the balcony.
“When your mother was nine, she would crouch up there behind the balustrade to watch these Assemblies for hours on end. She found it all very thrilling. The shuffling of chairs and the heartfelt speeches and the pounding of the gavel. And in retrospect, she was perfectly right. After all, a new course for the country was being charted right before our eyes. But at the time, what with the crawling and the hunching, it just gave me a crick in the neck.”
“You would go up there too?”
“Oh, she insisted.”
The Count and Sofia both smiled.
“Come to think of it,” added the Count after a moment, “that’s how I came to know your Aunt Marina. Because every other visit to the balcony, I’d split the seat of my pants.”
Sofia laughed. Then the Count wagged a finger in the manner of one who has remembered something else.
“Later, when your mother was thirteen or fourteen, she would come here to enact experiments . . .”
“Experiments!”
“Your mother was not one to take anything on faith. If she hadn’t witnessed a phenomenon with her own eyes, then as far as she was concerned it was a hypothesis. And that included all the laws of physics and mathematics. One day, I found her here testing the principles of Galileo and Newton by dropping