Marisha Pessl - Night Film

Olga was now at the coffee table, pouring chilled vodka from a black bottle painted with crude Russian letters. Beckman and I clinked glasses and drank. It was some of the best vodka I’d ever tasted: crisp and light, dancing down your throat.

“The notes weren’t played,” he went on. “They were poured from a Grecian urn. People went from indignation to shock to dazed worship. None of us could believe a mere child could play in such a way. The dark depths to which she had to descend … alone. ”

“The police are saying suicide,” I said.

He looked pensive. “It’s possible. There was something about her playing … a knowledge of darkness in the most extreme form.” He frowned. “But it’s quite common, isn’t it? What you tend to find in the personal lives of brilliant men is devastation akin to a nuclear bomb going off. Marriages mangled. Wives left for dead. Children growing up as deformed prisoners of war — all of them walking around with holes where their hearts should be, wondering where they belong, what side they’re fighting for. Extreme wealth, like the kind Cordova married into, only magnifies the size and scope of the fallout. Perhaps that’s how it was for Ash.”

“Ash?”

“It’s what they called her in the musical world. Ash DeRouin. The ashes from ruins. She was thirteen. But she played like someone who’d lived six lifetimes. Six births. Six deaths. And all the sadness, love, and yearning grasped at and lost in between.” He frowned, his thick eyebrows twitching together. “ That level of skill and feeling, compounded with the fact she was, without doubt, the most beautiful living child I’d ever seen. When we were leaving the concert hall, Véra, wiping away her tears, said she couldn’t be human. She meant that without exaggeration.”

“Do you know anything about her childhood?” I asked, pouring more vodka. “What she was like? You remember that anonymous phone call.”

He eyed me skeptically. “You mean, your mystery caller, John ?”

I nodded.

“You know I never believed in John. You were the victim of a prank. Someone pulled your leg. What would Cordova want with children’s clothes? On the other hand. A girl surrounded by daisies, Shetland ponies, and doting parents named Joanie and Phil could not play music in such a fashion. There is some dark cloud hanging over the family, I give you that. But covering what, how dense — if it’s simply smog, a category-five hurricane, or a black hole out of which no light has ever escaped — I don’t know.”

“Have you ever heard that Ashley had mental health problems? She was admitted to a clinic upstate in late August called Briarwood.”

He looked puzzled. “No.”

“She escaped the grounds with an unidentified male and died in the warehouse ten days later. Have you heard any rumors on the Blackboards?”

“Good God, McGrath, the Blackboards ?” Chuckling, he flung back his vodka, slapping the glass on the table. “I stopped logging on to that site years ago. I’m too old for such histrionics.”

This phony demurring was everything I expected from Beckman. Questioning him was always a rain dance around a campfire, requiring a delicate touch and three or four bottles of this vodka, which was more potent than opium and doubtless had origins in some Siberian bathtub.

“Where do you think Cordova is now?” I asked him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re back in your little motorboat, traveling alone up the Amazon. Is it revenge this time, because you ruined your career over him, or just nagging curiosity?”

“A little of both. I want the truth.”

“Ah, the truth. ” Beckman’s eyes fell onto the black hexagonal box on the coffee table. He was about to say something, but instead turned around and stared directly at his computer. The screen was still lit, and one of those goddamn cats — One-Eyed Pontiac, whatever the hell its name was — was rubbing against the legs of the desk.

He sat up in alarm. “Olga!” he bellowed. “Bring a plate of those Spanish sardines, would you? Boris has low blood sugar.” He turned back, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his glasses. “You know, I did hear something recently you might find helpful. Peg Martin. ”

“Peg Martin?”

“She had a small role in the first twenty minutes of Isolate 3 . Plays one of the custodians at the Manhattan law firm. That very gawky girl with her arm in a cast. Frizzy red hair. Flat nose. She disappears down the stairwell and never comes back. She did the Sneak magazine interview in the mid-nineties and talked about Cordova.”

I remembered. Five years ago, I’d dug up the article in my research.

“One of my students this semester has a terrier. She takes him to group obedience school in Washington Square Park, Sunday evenings at six. She told me, toward the end of the hour class, a wiry redhead enters the dog run with an ancient black Labrador and they sit shoulder to shoulder on a bench, watching the others wrestle and romp and play and laugh.” Beckman was sitting on the edge of his chair, playing the part of Peg Martin. “She speaks to … no one. Looks at … no one. Neither does the dog. Well. My student told me that woman is Peg Martin.”

“So?”

“So go down there. Talk to her. She might know something about the family. She was a junkie for fifteen years, so she might not be as steadfast as the others about remaining silent.” He frowned. “I’d also go through that 1977 Rolling Stone article. Cordova’s last interview before he plunged underground. I’ve heard there’s something crucial in there. I’ve looked through it, couldn’t find a thing. Maybe you can.”

“And Cordova? Where is he?”

Beckman drained his glass. “Hiding, probably. I imagine he’s brokenhearted. It’s funny to consider, given the horrors of his work. But I’ve always suspected the dark was there to reveal the light. He saw the mental suffering of people and hoped his films might be a refuge. His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerge charred doves. The fact that people don’t learn these days, that they’re weak, petty, so apathetic about this gift of life as if it were all a mere Pepsi commercial — I don’t blame him for going underground. Have you seen the world lately, McGrath? The cruelty, the lack of connection? If you’re an artist, I’m sure you can’t help but wonder what it’s all for. We’re living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it’ll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop. They say in the next twenty years we’re going to merge with computer chips to cure aging and become immortal. Who wants an eternity of being a machine ? No wonder Cordova hides.” Abruptly he fell silent, looking rather deflated in his chair.

The computer had at last gone dark. I checked my watch. It was after six. I had to get going.

“Thanks for the vodka,” I said. “I also want to formally apologize.”

Beckman said nothing, distracted by some gloomy thought, though after a moment his bright eyes again fell on the black Chinese box on the table. He reached forward, testing the lid with an index finger — but of course it would not open.

“Surprised you didn’t try to crack it open while I was out,” he muttered.

“I do have some scruples.”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Humoring him, I reached over and picked up the box — it was in the shape of a hexagon, quite heavy. I shook it, immediately recognizing the infamous dry thuds clunking inside. I didn’t know what they were— no one did, except the unidentified person who’d locked them in there.