Täubner.”
Margaret rose and walked down the length of the flat. As she neared the doctor’s door, music flowed loud from inside the chamber, a stereo playing at high volume—harpsichord, violin, cello, and soprano.
Somehow—and mark well, it was merely by chance—Margaret had an impulse to open only one panel of the French doors. She turned her shoulders and slipped into the room, and she caught a glimpse of the old woman behind her desk, upright, her giant head wobbling on her narrow neck. The music blared: something seventeenth-century, pure, operatic, without vibrato. What was it? Margaret thought she knew the melody. Yes, it was Dido and Aeneas.
Just at the moment of recognition, a very quick and confusing series of stimuli bore down on her. The music reached a height of emotion—the words “in my breast” were sung, full of pain. A dim, silver light passed at high speed across her left shoulder by her ear, from fore to aft, and the air was displaced; a flicker of a breeze puffed her hair. In a fraction of an instant, there was the sound of a thunk at the French doors behind her, loud enough to be heard over the ballooning music, followed by a vibrating twang. She spun around in the direction of the shuddering.
A small knife quivered in the wood—the panel of the French door that Margaret had left closed—in a target made of cork attached at eye level, a red- and yellow-striped bull’s-eye. There were two other small steak knives also standing in the target perpendicular. At the sight of the knives, Margaret cried out. She ducked her head in a belated reflex. There was a sense of the room coming apart, as if it had been thrown, the entire box, into black space. The doctor, for her part, held her head rigidly, facing the door. Margaret yelled to the doctor, “Did you just throw a knife?”
“What?”
The music blared painfully beautiful harmonics, shaking the room in a tumbling stretto. And then Margaret could make out the words remember, and fate plummeting over each other in polyphony.
“Did you throw a knife at the door?” Margaret yelled.
“Comrade! I’m going to have to turn down the music. I can’t hear you.” The doctor trailed her hand against the wall, leading herself to the stereo in the cupboard, where she finally managed to turn off the CD.
In the silence that followed, the rogue knife, long since home in its target, still quivered like a tuning fork. The doctor’s rasping breath marked the time.
“I turned on the music when I heard you were here because I thought you’d help me with the lyrics. I can’t make out what’s being said. You’re a native speaker of English.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, breathing heavily. “I suppose I can.”
“All the music is in English these days. In exchange, now that I’m your mentor, I would help you with the Wagner librettos.”
“I don’t need any help with the Wagner librettos,” Margaret said.
“Oh.” There was a quiet. “The part I’m wondering about is in the beginning of Dido’s lament. It sounds as though she’s saying”—and here the doctor spoke in an English so heavily accented Margaret almost did not recognize it as English—“ ‘May my ahms create no trouble in thy breast.’ ”
“ ‘May my arms,’ ” Margaret corrected. “Is that what you said?”
“Yes. Ahms.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” the doctor agreed. “What are ahms?”
“Arrrrrms,” Margaret said, emphasizing the American r. And then in German: “Arme.”
“Oh!” the doctor said with excitement. “Comrade, you’re very clever.”
“But still it doesn’t make sense,” Margaret said. “ ‘May my arms create no trouble in thy breast’?” The doctor was now busily scanning the CD. She played the section of track again, and Margaret listened. “May my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast,” Margaret said, when she realized what it was.
“You’re lovely, my dear. Very efficient.” The doctor sat down.
But Margaret remained standing, still trembling like the knife. “Did you throw a knife at the door just now?” she asked.
The room around her was dusty and lush. The only light was from the windows, which, with their thick curtains on either side, and their inner blinds of parchment muslin, let through only a dusky light. Margaret noticed that now, in contrast with last time, there was a potted orange tree with lush foliage taking up much of the free space to the left of the examination table, growing halfway to the ceiling. Its leaves seemed to rustle now and then.
“I was practicing my aim,”