And After the Fire Read online

  A thin boy in a striped shirt raised his hand.

  “Yes, Joshua?”

  “When are we going to hear about bathrooms on the Space Station?”

  Other voices rose in support of this question.

  “Thank you for asking. That’s the next chapter. I know we’re all excited to learn about taking a bath and doing private bathroom activities on the Space Station,” she said, and the kids squirmed and giggled, “so you’ll be looking forward to library hour next week. But first we have to learn about food. So let’s begin: ‘On the International Space Station, the astronauts eat three meals a day and enjoy nutritious snacks . . .’”

  When Susanna had first visited this library a year ago, the paint was peeling and the windows were filthy. The overhead lights didn’t work. When she’d touched the furniture, her fingers came away sticky. The air had reeked of dampness and neglect. The old library had only four shelves of nonfiction books and three shelves of storybooks. There were no computers.

  “‘The astronauts have the same need for good nutrition as the rest of us . . .’”

  Now, murals covered the walls: birds nested in trees, lions lounged amid grasses, and a basketball player leapt into the air to make a shot. The windows were new and clean. Modern ceiling fixtures illuminated the room. Three separate reading areas had been set up, from pillows on the floor for the youngest children to study tables with computers for the older kids. The brand-new book shelves were packed with brand-new books. Special-interest displays filled the center of the room, from sports to biography to a Who We Are section of books that reflected the backgrounds of the kids in the school, from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

  “‘The astronauts choose their food before they go into space. This way, each astronaut can enjoy the food that he or she likes best . . .’”

  Along with Rob and Cornelia Barstow and representatives from the Fund for Public Schools, Susanna had been here several weeks ago for the official opening celebration. But ribbon-cutting ceremonies revealed nothing about how a project actually played out. Follow up, fly-on-the-wall style, was the most important part of Susanna’s job.

  “‘The astronauts enjoy orange juice and lemonade.’”

  Ms. Davis paused. “Do you enjoy orange juice and lemonade?” she asked the kids.

  They affirmed that they did.

  “I do, too,” Ms. Davis said. “‘For snacks, they can choose from nuts and dried fruit . . .’”

  The book made the International Space Station sound appealing.

  “‘As you go about your day on earth, remember that just like the astronauts in space, you need to eat nutritious food in order to stay healthy and do everything you want to do at home and at school.’ And that’s the end of the chapter. Let’s talk about what we learned. Do the astronauts choose the food they eat?”

  Several kids raised their hands.

  “What do you think, Emory?” Ms. Davis asked.

  “Yes, they do.” Emory was a serious-looking girl who wore her hair in pigtails tied with ribbons.

  “That’s right. What would you pick to eat, if you were going into space? Let’s start with breakfast.”

  “I’d pick cereal,” Emory said.

  “I’d pick cookies,” Joshua said.

  “Are cookies a good breakfast?” Ms. Davis asked.

  “Oatmeal cookies are. Maybe. It depends.”

  A spirited discussion followed on the topic of oatmeal cookies and whether they were, in fact, a type of cereal.

  The bell rang, signaling the change of classes.

  “I’ll see you next week,” Ms. Davis told the children as they stood and lined up. “And let’s not forget that while we’re here in the library reading about the International Space Station, the astronauts are circling the earth and doing everything we’re reading about.”

  With their teacher, the kids filed out. Ms. Davis joined Susanna.

  “This is very impressive,” Susanna said. “I might have to return next week to find out about bathroom procedures on the Space Station.”

  “I’m eager to learn about that, too. And you’re always welcome to visit us. Please tell Mr. and Mrs. Barstow how grateful the whole school is for what the foundation has done for us.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “For the first time in about twenty years, I feel as if I’m working in a real library.”

  “I’ll tell them that. I know they’ll appreciate hearing it.”

  The next class, of older kids, came in.

  “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” Ms. Davis said to Susanna, before joining the newcomers. “Good morning, class. Let’s start with everybody choosing a book to take home for the week.” The kids fanned out across the room, following their interests.

  Susanna positioned herself at the doorway. This afternoon she was going to Granville College to meet with Daniel Erhardt, and she had to get to Penn Station for her train. Nevertheless she lingered. The kids showed one another books and debated which to check out. After the success here, she’d be quick to recommend to Rob that the foundation fund other library renovations.

  Not so fast, her pragmatic side cautioned: Rob would want to know whether reading scores on standardized tests improved at the schools with renovated libraries, including this school. She wondered, too. She’d begin gathering the statistics, even as she knew that standardized tests couldn’t measure the developing minds of kids who, for example, had the opportunity to imagine themselves living on the International Space Station.

  Chapter 8

  After disembarking from the local train at the Granville stop, Susanna stood on the platform. The college buildings rose in the distance, up a gentle incline. Green lawns spread before her. She waited for the music she was listening to on her phone to end.

  Trying to educate herself, she’d downloaded a Bach’s Greatest Hits collection from iTunes. Each piece was mesmerizing. Of course, that’s what a greatest hits set was for, to show off the best, but nonetheless she was surprised by the buoyant charge of energy the music gave her.

  She took out her earbuds and put her phone away. She seemed to hear the music still playing in her mind, its patterns spinning onward. As she got her bearings, the train departed behind her. When the clattering faded, the air was silent. She was alone on the platform. She walked up the college’s ceremonial central path, beneath an arch of oak trees. When the path became steeper, a series of steps eased the way. The deserted campus was beautiful, but Susanna felt a disturbing sense of solitude. Where was everyone? She preferred a city, where people were always nearby. When she was attacked, strangers gathered to help her. If she were attacked here, no one would be close enough to notice.

  At the top of the path, she made her way around the main administration building and through a series of gardens, following Daniel Erhardt’s directions. She spotted the low, bunkerlike building that he’d described. When she entered it, she confronted a double-story glass wall overlooking a forest. Deer grazed amid the foliage. The sounds of practicing filled the air, piano, violin, trumpet, and voices, singing.

  She walked up the stairs and found his office. Leaves pressed against his office’s wall of glass.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  “Thank you.” To ease their way into conversation, she said, “This is an unusual building.”

  “Prizewinning modern architecture, or so we’re told. Have a good trip?”

  “It was faster than I expected.”

  “Good. I got coffee for us.” He indicated the cups on his desk. “It should still be hot: from years of experience I know how long the walk takes from the station, so I timed the coffee accordingly. Took my chances and put milk in yours. Here’s the sugar, if you use it.” He pulled out the dictation tray of his desk and pushed a chair to the far side, for her.

  “Thank you.” She sat down. By now she’d googled him. She knew more about his several books and many articles, and about his work tracing music manuscripts that had disappeared at the end of
World War II, appropriated by the Russian army. As she drank her coffee, she looked around the office . . . floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed with musical scores, shelves of CDs, a piano. Family photos covered his desk, featuring a blond woman, soft and pretty. Midwestern, Susanna decided. Some of the photos included a child, photographed from babyhood to girlhood. Susanna glanced at Dan’s hand and saw his wedding ring. She made an assumption: happily married, one child.

  Yes, surely this was the proper course. Susanna’s intuition that Dan would be a reliable and discreet consultant had been correct. She had tried to negotiate a fee with him via e-mail, but again he’d refused.

  “So.” Dan sounded upbeat and positive. “Let’s see this music manuscript you’ve inherited.”

  Susanna put her coffee on the far side of the desk. Opening her tote bag, she took out the manuscript. Turning it so that the title page faced Dan, she placed it on the desk’s dictation tray before him.

  Dan had already planned what he would say. After dropping Becky off at school, he’d formulated a response for Susanna Kessler. Words to let her know as gently as possible that what she’d discovered was a worthless copy. Nothing wrong with a handwritten copy, however. It was a nice keepsake, even if it wasn’t valuable to anyone outside your family.

  And yet, when he stared at the manuscript placed before him, he couldn’t say those words. Instead he remembered the occasions when he’d handled the Bach autographs at the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, and the New York Public Library. He rubbed the wrapper, which was the name for the outside covering, and the roughness of the paper against his fingertips was just like those autographs.

  The heading on the wrapper began with the indication Dominica Exaudi: Concerto. This meant that the piece was a cantata and had been written to be performed, or rendered (the proper term for musical works included in a religious service), on the Sunday after Ascension. Bach often called his cantatas concertos, which could be confusing because people didn’t refer to cantatas that way anymore. The name of the piece was Wir das Joch nicht tragen können. This was a reference to the Bible, Dan knew without needing to look it up. Acts 15:10. The literal translation would be We are unable to bear the yoke. “Of the law of Moses” would be understood to finish the line. The cantata title was unfamiliar to him.

  But that couldn’t be. He knew the titles of all of Bach’s 1,100 extant works, as well as their catalog numbers in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. He had a good memory for such things, because he’d learned them when he was young. Same with the Bible: his parochial school had stressed Bible study, and biblical references had been imprinted in his brain.

  The annotations on the wrapper indicated three separate scripts. One, listing the title and the instruments, was a handwriting he knew. He recognized it, incredibly, as Johann Sebastian Bach’s.

  Dan wasn’t familiar with the next script, but he could read it: Sollte nicht catalogisiert werden, “Not to be cataloged,” followed by the place and date, Berlin, den 9. Juni 1783.

  The third hand had written, Im Privat-Kabinett halten, “Keep in the private cabinet.”

  So, concealment from early on.

  He opened the wrapper. J.J. was written in the upper left hand corner of the first page of music. Bach almost always began his compositions with the initials J.J., meaning Jesu Juva, “Jesus, help me.” Then the title was repeated, Wir das Joch nicht tragen können. On the upper right was the signature, di J. S. Bach.

  Dan could and would compare the signature to other examples illustrated in the Bach reference works on his shelves. He chose to ignore the signature for now. Any decent forger could copy a signature. Other things weren’t so easy to imitate.

  The piece began with a section for virtuoso solo violin accompanied by oboes, orchestral strings, and organ. This filled two pages of music. Then the bass voice came in, declaiming, Wir, wir, wir das Joch . . . Dan didn’t remember encountering this text or its musical setting before.

  As usual in autograph cantata scores of Bach’s, the words were essentially illegible to modern readers. Dan, however, had spent years reading and studying old German script. He would need to investigate the libretto carefully later, but glancing through the piece, he was able to get an overview.

  No, he certainly didn’t recall this text appearing in any other Bach cantata. The arias for the most part were biblical in origin. He didn’t know any textual sources for the recitatives. The first recitative read, in his quick translation, We are at fault for not striking them dead. The second said, Burn their synagogues . . . and bury anything that doesn’t burn. The others continued in a similar, extremely troubling vein.

  He turned his attention away from the text, to the musical notations. Composers often had striking idiosyncrasies in their writing of musical noteheads, rests, clefs, and so on. Dan could identify the general characteristics of the musical handwriting of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn. And of Bach. This looked like Bach.

  The manuscript certainly had the general appearance of being old, with the ink eating into the paper and creating mirror images on the opposite side. For ink to corrode the paper like this took a fairly long time.

  Indeed, the manuscript looked like a composing score, with cross-outs and compositional revisions throughout. Sometimes a composing score showed scrapings where corrections had been made. As Dan turned the pages, he saw that this score had a few such scrapings, and even a small hole. Smudges showed where the composer (or the forger) touched the still-wet ink with the side of his (or her) hand. Here and there the composer (or forger) had paused for an instant, and in doing so had left a blot of ink on the paper.

  In the lower margin of the third page, there was a small, rough sketch of a few measures of music, intended for the top of the next page, an aide-memoire for the composer (or a bit of high verisimilitude for a forger?), while he waited for the ink on this page to dry. On another page was an example of tablature, the use of letters to represent notes when space was short at the end of a line. The fourth page had a large ink spill toward the bottom.

  A fantasy spun out in Dan’s mind . . . Bach in his apartment in the Thomasschule, next to the Thomaskirche, in Leipzig, children and students tumbling over one another, ceaseless noise. Bach sat at his composing desk, and as usual, he was in a rush, working under what today would be called a deadline. For at least his first five years in Leipzig, he composed a masterpiece cantata for virtually every Sunday church service (except during the penitential times of year, when cantatas weren’t rendered). An astonishing achievement, although Bach himself, judging from his surviving personal correspondence, may not have perceived how remarkable it was. On this particular day, a child ran over to him, breaking his train of thought. Depending on the circumstances, Bach laughed or scolded or comforted the child. In the confusion, he spilled a blob of ink onto the margin of his composing score.

  Dan felt a chill as he imagined the scene.

  At the end of the autograph, the letters SDG appeared. This meant Soli Deo Gloria, “To the Glory of God Alone.” Bach almost always put these initials after the last bar of his compositions, liturgical and secular alike.

  Dan returned to the beginning and reviewed the score again. This time, he followed only the music. He heard it in his mind. From the first notes it was vibrant and thrillingly motoric—and a piece he’d never heard before. The first chord was itself a sort of musical signature move of Bach’s, a V7-of-IV. At the first episode, Dan saw that the bass line, spectacularly, was an extended augmentation canon in contrary motion, set in the dense, chromatic, baroque harmonic language of, well, Johann Sebastian Bach. Most assuredly no one except Bach could pull off such a formidable compositional feat. A forger would need to be as musically brilliant as Bach himself to create this kind of music.

  Dan held a sheet up to the light.

  “What are you doing?” Susanna asked, startling him. He’d forgotten about her. Now he felt delighted to think that she might enjoy this next detail.
r />   “I’m checking for the watermark. In Bach’s day, paper was made with a distinctive watermark. Only very fancy paper is made this way nowadays, with words or pictures impressed into the paper and barely visible unless you hold the paper up against the light. Look.” He held the sheet at an angle so she could see. He watched the recognition gradually come to her.

  “A deer. With antlers. And the letters IAI.”

  “Watermarks are a field of study unto themselves. Let’s look it up.”

  From the bookcase, he pulled out the Katalog der Wasserzeichen in Bachs Originalhandschriften, a two-volume, large-format German publication cataloging the watermarks on the various papers that Bach had used.

  “We need a deer with its head in profile, and a round tail and dark eye, combined with the letters IAI, which are presumably the initials of the paper maker.” Dan leafed through the book, showing Susanna pictures of leaping unicorns, knights in armor, hunters on horseback, crescent moons.

  “There.” She pointed.

  He held up to the light a sheet from the manuscript score, and she held up the book beside it.

  “You’re right. A perfect match.”

  “What does the watermark tell us?”

  “We don’t know yet. This particular deer watermark is given the identification number ‘six’ in the catalog. So we look in the accompanying commentary volume . . .” He made his way through the charts. “Ah,” he said when he found it.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s the same, somewhat infrequently encountered watermark as for Cantata 43, a cantata for Ascension. That makes sense, because Exaudi is the Sunday after Ascension. And IAI apparently stands for Johann Adam Jäger, a paper maker from Bohemia. In older German spelling, the letters I and J were often interchangeable.”

  “So?”

  “I need to think about this.”

  A realization swept over him, too involved to explain to Susanna, even though she gazed at him expectantly. He turned away from her and stared out the window. The fact was, the Exaudi cantata from Bach’s third annual cantata cycle in Leipzig, the piece that would have followed Cantata 43 in the liturgical calendar, was missing. Was Susanna’s manuscript the lost cantata?