Anne Rice - Violin

There was the patterned sidewalk I had glimpsed in my dreams -the strange design which I now saw was a careful mosaic.

Our guide, Antonio, spoke of a man who had built the whole long Avenue of the Atlantic along the beach, with these mosaic patterns, to be seen from the air. He spoke of the many places we might go, he spoke of the warmth of the water, of the New Year's and the Carnivale, those special days for which we must return.

The car made a left. I saw the hotel rise up before us. The Copacabana Palace, a grand old-style white building of seven floors, its broad second-floor terrace lined with pure Roman arches. No doubt the convention rooms and the ballrooms lay behind those huge arches. And the comely white plaster facade had an air of British dignity to it.

The Baroque, the faint last echo of the Baroque, here amid all the modern apartment towers that had crowded up against it but could not touch it.

Almond trees clustered in the middle of its circular drive, trees with big broad shiny green leaves, none too great, as though nature itself kept them to a human scale. I looked back. The trees spread down the boulevard, they spread in both directions. They were the same lovely trees of the busy streets.

One could not see all of this. I shivered, holding the violin.

And look, the sky over the sea, how quickiy it changes, how rapidly its vast banks of clouds move. Oh, God, how the sky rises.

Like it here, dear?

I went rigid. Then at once made a little defensive laugh, but I felt him touch me.

Like knuckies against my cheek. I felt something tug at my hair. I hated it. Don't touch my long hair. My veil. Don't touch me!

"Don't start having bad thoughts!" said Roz. "This is bee-utiful!"

We moved into the classic circular drive, made the turn before the main doors, and the concierge came out to meet us-an Englishwoman, her name Felice, very pretty and immediately polite and charming, as the English always seem to me, like a species preserved from the modern obsession with efficiency that debased all the rest of us.

I climbed out of the van and walked back away from the drive so that I could look up the full facade of the hotel.

I saw the window above the main arch of the convention floor.

"That's my room, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Becker," said Felice. "It is right in the center of the building, the very middle of the hotel. It's the Presidential Suite, as you requested. We have suites on the same floor for all your guests. Come, I know you must be tired. It's late at night for you, and here we are at midday."

Rosalind was dancing for joy. Katrinka had spied the nearby jewelers, the dealers in the precious emeralds of Brazil. I saw the hotel

had arms, with other shops: a little bookstore full of Portuguese titles. American Express.

A host of bellhops descended upon our bags.

"It's damned hot," said Glenn. "Come on, Triana, come inside."

I stood as if frozen.

Wby not, darling?

I looked up at the window, the window I had seen in my dream when Stefan first came, the window I knew that I would look out from, onto this beach and the waves, waves now quiet, but which would rise perhaps to create that very foam. Nothing else here had been exaggerated.

Indeed this seemed the greatest harbor or bay I'd ever beheld, more beautiful and vast even than San Francisco.

We were led inside. In the elevator, I shut my eyes. I felt him beside me and his hand touch me.

"So? Why here of all places?" I whispered. "Why is this better?"

Allies, my darling.

"Triana, stop talking to yourself," said Martin, "everybody will think you're really crazy."

"How can that matter now?" said Roz.

We scattered, attended, guided, offered cool drinks and kind words.

I walked into the living room of the Presidential Suite. I walked straight towards that small square window. I knew it. I knew its clasp. I opened it.

"Allies, Stefan?" I asked. I made my voice soft, as if I were mur muring Hail Marys of thanks. "And who would they be, and why here? Why did I see this when you first came?"

No answer but the full pure breeze, the breeze that nothing can soil, flooding past me into the room, over the conventional furnishings, the dark carpet, flooding in from beyond the immense beach and those dark figures moving leisurely in the sands or in the shallow quiet surf. Above, the clouds hung down in glory.

"Do you know everything that I dreamed, Stefan?"

It's my violin, my love. I don't want to hurt you. But I must have it back.

The others were busy with bags, windows and vistas of their own; room service carts were brought into the suite.

I thought, This is the purest, finest air I've ever breathed in all my life, and I looked way out over the water, at a steep granite mountain rising sharp from the blue. I saw the perfect shimmering horizon.

Felice, the concierge, came to my side. She pointed to the distant cliffs. She gave names. Below the buses roared between us and the beach. It did not matter. So many people wore the loose short-sleeve white,it seemed the clothing of the country. I saw skin of all colors. Behind me the soft Portuguese voices sang their song.

"Do you want me to take the violin, to perhaps-"

"No, I keep it with me," I said.

He laughed.

"Did you hear that?" I asked the Englishwoman.

"Hear something? Oh, when we close the windows, the room is very quiet. You will be happily surprised."

"No, a voice, a laugh."

Glenn touched my elbow. "Don't think about those things."

"Ah, I am so sorry," said a voice. I turned and saw a dark-skinned beautiful woman with rippling hair and green eyes staring at me, a racial blend beyond the boundaries of imagined beauty. She was tall, her arms naked, her long hair Christlike, and her smile made of blood-red lipstick and white teeth.

"Sorry?"

"Oh, we mustu't talk of it now," said Felice with haste.

"It got into the papers," said the goddess with the rippling hair, holding her hands as if to entreat me to forgive. "Miss Becker, this is Rio. People believe in spirits, and your music is much loved here.

Your tapes have been coming by the thousands into the country.

People here are very deeply spiritual and mean no harm."

"What got into the papers?" Martin demanded. "That she's staying at this hotel?

What are you talking about?"

"No, everyone has expected that you will be at this hotel," said the tall brown woman with the green eyes. "I mean the sad story that you have come here to look for the soul of your child. Miss Becker-" She extended her hand. She clasped mine.

Even as I felt her warm touch, the chills went over me, circuit after circuit. I felt weak looking into her eyes.

And yet in all this, there was something horribly thrilling. Horribly so.

"Miss Becker, forgive us, but we could not stop the rumors. I'm sorry for this pain.

There are reporters downstairs already-"

"Well, they'll have to go away," said Martin. "Triana has to sleep. We've been flying for over nine hours. She has to sleep. Her concert is tomorrow night, that's barely enough time...

I turned and looked at the sea. I smiled, then turned back and took the young dark woman's hands.

"You are a spiritual people," I said. "Catholic and African, and Indian as well, deeply spiritual, or so I've heard. What is the name of the rituals, the ones the people practice? I can't remember."

"Mogambo, Candomble'." She shrugged, grateful for my forgiveness. Felice, the British one, stood aloof, disturbed.

I had to admit-no matter what joy we knew wherever we went-someone on the periphery was always disturbed. And now it was this Englishwoman who feared offenses to me which weren't possible.