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bad health, his money problems, one domestic crisis after another; his deafness. Playing these pieces, the pianist understood that the composer sacrificed his life for his music, a succession of masterpieces. Triumphs of will. Triumphs of concentration, of inspiration, of unspeakable courage. Of devotion, yes. She looked directly at him and said no more.
    He did not know what she meant. He murmured something about genius.
    There are no Beethovens here, she said.
    He shook his head, certainly not.
    But I thought when it came time for you to give your life, you would give it for me.
    He turned quickly and fetched his coat. When he looked back she had vanished. He let himself out, closing the door with a sharp bang. The neighbor down the hall stepped into the corridor; his face filled with alarm. When Sydney glared at him, he shrugged and stepped back inside. Standing in the bar on the corner, drinking one Scotch after another; Sydney thought about the kind of apartment building where raised voices were cause for concern. Everyone in the building had too much time on their hands, but instead of a devil's workshop they had created a police state where everyone knew everyone else's business and was quick to judge, and inform if need be.
    She, too. Quick to judge and to set the ethical standards which all the world was required to meet, except her; like an absolute monarch, she made her own laws. But he had hurt her and she had hurt him back, and so that was that. The bar was dark, a family tavern with Rheingold on tap and pickled eggs in a glass jar and a silent white-aproned bartender with more troubles than you had. The place reminded him of the locker room at his father's club, the Abenaki, with its dark wood and odor of sweat and air conditioning, and the rustle of men's voices around the card tables near the fireplace, someone telling a joke and the laughter that followed. The bartender used an ivory spatula to clear the head from the beer steins. Sydney remembered languid afternoons with his father; the old man exhausted after eighteen holes and a hundred, hundred and five strokes, in and out of the rough. God, he was a terrible golfer but always cheerful, except the one time when he admitted that he hated not being able to keep up with his foursome. He'd played with them for thirty years. He didn't want to beat them, only keep up with them.
    So she was born in Czechoslovakia, his father had said. My goodness, she's a pretty girl. And a musician? I don't know about Czechoslovakia, he said, but I know about musicians. You'll have your hands full.
    Now it was ended. He stared at the Rheingold sign back of the bar while he fought to keep his fear in check. My God, what have I done? But there was no going back, too much had been said that could not be unsaid. Sydney had difficulty assembling her many arguments; he had not listened carefully to her any more than she had listened carefully to him. But wasn't that normal, the way of the world? Of course people carried their baggage with them. If you were brought up in a Connecticut suburb—church on Easter and a Ford in the garage next to the outdoor grill and the golf sticks—you carried that. If you were born in Czechoslovakia and fled at the age of four with your terrified mother; leaving your father behind to fight Germans, you carried that. And later, if Czechoslovakia seemed to disappear into a kind of civic limbo, neither Czech nor Soviet, neither toxic nor benign, you made what excuses you could. The Nazis were defeated and the Reds in charge. It would take time for the Czechos to find their own way. Karla and her mother had the mentality of displaced persons, worried always that their papers were not in order or that their belongings would be confiscated or that their husbands would disappear.
    He signaled the barman for a fresh drink.
    Impossible to wind back the film. Not his, not Karla's. Nor Rosa's. If only Karla were different, he thought. She had no faith in