Unfinished Symphony

By Mary Locke

Lily Lindstrom, a music history professor from a small Lutheran college in Minnesota, has returned home after spending the winter semester in Vienna, Austria. During her time in Vienna, she discovered a lost song by Franz Schubert and fell in love with Stephen Cameron, an American from Atlanta who was working on a special assignment for the DEA.

In this sequel to The Schubert Connection, Lily leaves Minnesota again, this time traveling to Sweden. Her purpose is to set up a study program focusing on Swedish composers and musicians. However, as she delves more deeply into the music of Sweden, she finds not only an unexpected instrumental treasure, but also an unplanned romantic adventure when a charming opera star vies with Stephen for her affection.

The gentle beauty of Swedens lakes and forests, the elegance of Stockholm, and the endless vistas of the sea provide the backdrop to Lilys summer excursion. Whether shes walking the streets of Stockholm, riding a ferry through the archipelago, or gathering wildflowers in fragrant meadows, she once more manages to explore more than just musical mysteries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546231554

Mary Locke

Mary Locke is a teacher, musician, and writer who was born and raised in the Midwest and who has Swedish roots. She lives with her husband in Crozet, Virginia.

Book preview

Du bist die Ruh

Du bist die Ruh

Der Friede mild,

Die Sehnsucht du

Und was sie stillt.

You Are Peace

You are peace,

Gentle harmony,

You are longing

And what soothes it.

Music by Franz Schubert

Text by Friedrich Rückert

CHAPTER ONE

It was a beautiful morning in Minnesota, my home state. The lake was calm and clear. The mist drifted like a curtain of gauze above its surface, blurred the edges of the cottages along the shore, and softened the outlines of the birch and pine trees behind them. The oars of my old rowboat creaked as I leaned forward, then pulled back. I stroked through the water in a steady rhythm, created my own trail of ripples. A flock of geese honked as they flew overhead; a fish jumped and splashed a few feet away. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and inhaled the fresh, cool air.

I’d flown in from Vienna a week ago, returned from the world of coffee houses, wine gardens, and concert halls. I was back in the land of lakes and prairies, of steady and pragmatic people. I felt strangely disoriented, as if I might blink and find myself on a streetcar gliding past the Opera, instead of in a rowboat in the middle of the lake I’d been fishing in all my life. I stopped rowing and let the boat drift while I picked up the anchor and dropped it over the side.

The sky turned pink as the rising sun shone through the mist. Bubbles rose to the surface of the water while the anchor sank to the rocky bottom; the oars bumped against the sides of the boat when I pulled them in. I reached for the minnow pail at my feet, baited my hook, and cast my line out over the silky surface of the lake. The red and white bobber swished as it skimmed along and then settled. I kept my eye on it, hoped that the fish were as hungry as I was, hoped that if I focused on the small ripples around my line I could stop thinking about the man who’d captured my heart last winter in Vienna.

His name is Stephen Cameron; he’s from Atlanta. He was following a couple of Hungarian drug smugglers, and I was looking for a lost Schubert song when we bumped into each other on a streetcar last January. I found a song and he caught the smugglers, but that’s just the beginning of the story, or so I hope. I don’t know the ending yet, since we still seem to be in the middle of things. I haven’t seen him since February; it feels like forever.

He’s returned to his job at the Centers for Disease Control, if that’s where he really works. I have my doubts. My Viennese friend Sophie thinks that he’s a secret agent, but she has a very vivid imagination. Stephen told me that he was working on a cooperative project with the Drug Enforcement Agency last winter. I have no idea whether that’s true or not. If I ever see him again I’ll try to find out, but he’s a hard man to pin down. We’ve stayed in touch by e-mail, text messages, and Internet phone calls while I finished teaching the winter semester of my college’s Vienna program, but I haven’t heard from him since the middle of May. It’s the first week of June now. I try not to worry, but I can’t help it. Worry is as natural as shyness and modesty for a born and bred Minnesota Lutheran, although my brothers maintain that I’ve been forever altered, not necessarily for the better, by my experiences in Vienna.

They’re impossibly protective, and they’re upset by the mail I’ve been receiving since the appearance of my article about the unpublished Schubert song which was dropped into my lap in Vienna. I’m a bit unnerved by the letters too; I had expected a reaction to the evidence of what some scholars had already theorized about Schubert’s love life, but I hadn’t anticipated such virulent hate mail, especially from Minnesotans. My dad, who is a psychologist with extensive training in Jungian analysis, says that the letter writers were probably influenced by some of our national politicians, those who have not completed the important tasks of individuation and integration and are displaying the classic manifestations of shadow projection. That’s not all he says; he tends to go on at great length about the current political climate and mutter about cognitive dissonance and denial. My mom, on the other hand, says that it’s just the usual fanatics and not to worry, because soon they’ll move on to something else. She advises me to cope by practicing more, her solution for almost all of life’s difficulties.

I hope that she’s right. I have been practicing a great deal, mainly Bach, my mom’s favorite composer, in hopes that his music will help put my thoughts, not to mention my life, in order. I seem to have lost my taste for academic research and can hardly bear to listen to Schubert. These are worrisome symptoms for someone as devoted to his music as I am. I have wondered if listening to the music of Willie Nelson, a habit I picked up in Vienna last winter, might be having a detrimental effect on my psyche. I’m afraid to bring up that possibility with my dad, nor do I want to tell him that I’ve been feeling somewhat adrift lately, as directionless as the bobber floating ten feet from my rowboat.

I extended my arm, flicked my fishing rod back and forth with a quick motion of my wrist, and watched the bobber bounce along until it settled again. Then I wedged the rod between my knees, held it there while I poured a cup of coffee from my thermos and took a bite of the sweet cardamom roll I’d grabbed on my way out of the cottage. It wasn’t a Viennese pastry or my favorite breakfast, a chocolate croissant, but it was the next best thing, a tasty treat from the Swedish bakery in town. I was chewing it and thinking of my Grandma Lindstrom, who used to bake rolls just like this, when two things happened in quick succession. First, the bobber, which had been floating aimlessly, suddenly vanished underwater, and, since I wasn’t holding onto it, my fishing rod almost followed it. I set my coffee cup and what was left of the roll on the bench next to me, grabbed the rod with one hand, and wound the reel with the other. While the tip of the rod arced toward the circle of ripples forming around the line, my cell phone began playing the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony from inside its waterproof pouch in my pocket. Though it sounded somewhat muted, it let me know that Sophie was calling. She loves Mahler, but she usually sends text messages to save money, so something important must be on her mind. I needed one more hand.

I had to let the phone keep playing Mahler while I reeled in what turned out to be a good sized yellow perch. It fixed its glassy eyes on me while I held it firmly in one hand, extracted the hook from its gaping mouth with the other, then threaded the stringer through its gills and dropped it over the side of the boat. This may sound difficult, but it’s nothing compared with playing a Bach Three Part Invention, and I do have strong, well-coordinated hands. I was thankful for the tightly fitted fishing gloves my dad had given me to protect them while dealing with sometimes sharp finned fish. This one looked like a perfect dinner to me as it floated beside the boat. It was a good thing that my brothers had taught me early to be heartless about the lives of fish, to think only of how delicious they’d taste fresh from the lake and sautéed in butter.

It’s not as if they have souls, Lily, they’d said to me. I had believed them about that, as well as about almost everything else they’d told me when I was growing up. Right now, though, I couldn’t contemplate the lives of fish. I wiped my gloved hands on my jeans and pulled the phone from my pocket. Sophie greeted me with a string of Austrian epithets I won’t translate; only when she had to stop for breath did I manage to interrupt her tirade.

What in the world is wrong with you?

She cleared her throat and inhaled. It’s not what’s wrong with me. I waited for her to continue. It’s Janos! Then I heard the name which caused me to lose my grip on the phone; I had to catch it with my other hand. And Stephen. I did my best to focus on what Sophie was trying to say, in a garbled mixture of German and English, punctuated by gasps and sniffs. "They’ve gone off the Stari Most, that famous bridge in Mostar. At that crucial moment, I lost my phone signal. Coverage is very spotty on the lake, and I was lucky to have received the call at all, or maybe not. Surely there was more to the story? What did she mean, Gone off?" Were they pushed? Did they jump?

I had so many questions for Sophie. How high is this bridge? What flows under it? They both know how to swim, right? And where, exactly, is Mostar? My fingers were not as agile as usual as I aimed for the numbers on my phone; it didn’t help that they were still a bit slippery too. I peeled off my fishing gloves and tried again. No matter what I did, though, I couldn’t get the signal back, and by the time I’d pulled up the anchor and pointed the boat toward shore my hands were shaking slightly from the effort. Either from that or from the caffeine and the anxiety.

I had a hard time finding my rhythm as I leaned into the oars and dipped them into the water. I shut my eyes for a moment and willed myself to focus on the motion while I steered the boat. It seemed to take forever to move across the lake, but the cottage, at first just a blurry silhouette in the distance, gradually grew larger as I kept rowing, pulling myself toward our dock. I loved the peacefulness of the rowboat as much as my dad did, but now and then I wished that he’d give in and buy a small outboard motor.

My dad must have been watching for me. He had been drinking coffee on the porch and working on a poem when I left. He writes every day. I don’t always understand his poetry, but I like the sound of it, the rhythm of the phrases. He stood on the dock now, a tall thin Minnesotan shading his eyes with one hand as he watched me guide the boat into place. When it bumped against the dock, he reached for the line, tied it to a post, then leaned down to take the minnow pail from my hands. I handed him the coffee thermos next, then my coffee cup, and finally the remains of my cardamom roll. He set everything on the dock and held out his hand to me. I grabbed it and stepped onto the weathered boards.

You weren’t out long. Did you catch anything? His eyes searched mine, probably saw far more than I wanted him to see at that moment. I let go of his hand, leaned down to unclip the stringer, hoped he wouldn’t notice that I was a bit unsteady.

Just one, a perch, but it’s good sized. I held it up. It wriggled on the stringer, iridescent in the morning light, its golden body flashing as it moved.

Where there’s one perch biting, there are usually several more waiting in line. His eyes asked the question he didn’t voice; they were grey green, like mine, and I had always believed that they could see straight through into my brain.

I had to stop as soon as I pulled that one in. I blinked before he did. I got an important phone call.

In the middle of the lake?

I wouldn’t say that my dad raised his voice. He rarely does that. He did, however, manage to convey his displeasure. He does not like the idea of technology following him to his refuge, of omnipresent phone calls and e-mail. He comes here for peace and quiet, to get away from people and their constant problems and messages. He does bring his cell phone for emergencies, but he keeps it on mute and rarely checks for messages. It drives my mother crazy.

Yes. I handed him the stringer and pulled out my phone. From Sophie, my Viennese friend. I tried to step around him. She was telling me the strangest story of Janos and Stephen going off a bridge. I had barely finished my sentence when the Mahler began to play again; I slipped past my dad and ran up the dock with the phone to my ear.

Finally! Her voice was uncharacteristically shrill. Why did you hang up on me?

I concentrated on placing one foot in front of another. I could feel my dad’s eyes on my back.

I didn’t hang up on you, Sophie. I tripped on a rock, caught myself quickly. I was fishing in the middle of our lake in Minnesota, and I lost the connection!

Oh. She paused. Well then.

I kept listening, but heard nothing more. I focused on negotiating the path to the gravel road in front of our cottage.

Sophie! Are you still there? I held the phone directly in front of me, checked to make sure that I still had a signal. I need to hear the rest of the story!

I don’t know the rest of the story, Lily. All I can tell you is what Inspector Krenek told me when he called.

By now I had begun to pace back and forth on the road. And that is?

Exactly what I said before. Her usually strong voice quivered. "He said that they went off the Stari Most, that they are bruised and exhausted from everything they’ve been through, but not badly injured, and lucky, all things considered, to be on their way to safety."

Everything they’ve been through? I stopped in the middle of the road, kicked at the gravel beneath my feet, began to trace small circles with my toes. What were they doing in Mostar? I’m not sure exactly where that is, by the way. I turned to look at the cottage and saw my dad standing by the door gazing back at me. I started to walk again. How did they go off that bridge? What did you call it? I could hear my voice becoming more strident, but seemed to have no control over it. How high is it, and where are they now?

No need to shout!

I mumbled my response while I paced.

Sorry.

I’ll answer your questions in order. Sophie seemed to be in better control of her emotions now, but she also seemed to know more about the situation than I did.

I don’t know exactly what they’ve been doing. She lowered her voice to a whisper. It may be undercover work, you know.

I took a deep breath before I answered.

I know what you think, Sophie. I exhaled. But that doesn’t mean that it’s true.

I’m not making this up, Lily.

I wish that you were. I turned around, made a complete circle in the road. Please go on.

I don’t know whether they were pushed, or whether they jumped in, or even dove off of it. It’s a popular bridge, you know. Look it up, Lily. Look up Mostar too. I’m disappointed in you; I thought that you were better informed than the average American! Now it was Sophie who was raising her voice.

I did feel a twinge of embarrassment. I’ll look it up later. I walked as fast as I could toward the road in front of our neighbor’s cottage where the signal was sometimes stronger. Just tell me where they’re going before I lose the connection again.

I’m pretty sure that he said they were on their way to Sweden, but that makes no sense to me. Why would they need to go there? It’s so out of the way. Why not Vienna? Spoken like a true Viennese.

Who knows? There must be a reason. I resumed pacing, this time out of sight of my dad. Perhaps they’re meeting with some Nordic secret agents or something.

Not funny, Lily.

You never know.

Anyway, he said that they would be in touch once they had arrived and had a secure line.

So that could be anytime?

It could be, Lily. I hope it will be very soon.

Me too, Sophie.

We said good-bye; I thanked her, put my phone in my pocket and turned back toward our cottage. By the time I’d made it down the path and pulled open the cottage door, my dad had cleaned and filleted the perch. I won’t describe his technique except to say that he transforms the quick, merciful death and gutting of a fish into an art form, another kind of poetry. He was putting it into the freezer when I stepped inside; he turned toward me, watched me, but didn’t say a word. What he did was hold out his arms to me; I walked into them and rested my head on his shoulder while he stroked my back.

It was later, after we’d showered and locked up the cottage, that we finally talked about it. We were in the car on the way to see his mom, my Grandma Lindstrom. I was looking up Mostar on the Internet, relieved to have a strong signal again, when he asked whether I needed to tell him anything,

Um. Just a minute. I stroked the screen as I scrolled through a list of options. Aha. There it is. I’d found an article about Mostar and a picture of the bridge. I began to read aloud.

"Mostar is a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, situated on the Neretva River. It was named after the bridge keepers (mostari) who guarded the Stari Most (Old Bridge) over the Neretva. Built by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century, it is one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s most recognizable landmarks, and is considered one of the most exemplary pieces of Islamic architecture in the Balkans."

My dad, who was driving, never took his eyes off the road, but nodded and said, Um, hum in what I think of as his professional voice. I’m sure that you’re going to tell me why this is important.

Yes, soon. Just let me finish this part. I cleared my throat and continued. The old bridge, which spans the raging Neretva River… I tried not to gasp at that adjective, but I did choke on the word and had to take a breath before I could go on. …was destroyed in November, 1993, during the war in that region. Its reconstruction was completed in 2004. I clicked on a link to the bridge and saw a picture of a beautiful arched stone structure.

It is traditional for the young men of the town to leap from the bridge into the Neretva. As the bridge is very high and the river is very cold, deep, and often fast moving, especially during the late spring, this is a very risky feat and only the most skilled divers will attempt it.

There was a moment of silence after that last section; my dad is trained to let the silence continue, to wait for the story to emerge from the person sitting with him. I knew that he could hear the catch in my breath, but didn’t realize that he could see me clenching my fists.

Lily. He said my namely softly. Inhale, sweetheart. Hold my hand. He reached out to me, but kept one hand on the steering wheel. For a few moments, neither of us said a word, until finally he spoke.

So, you’re worried about Stephen, and your concern has something to do with this famous bridge in Mostar.

Yes.

Can you tell me more about it?

I pulled my hand away from his, went back to surfing the Internet. I’ve told you everything I know so far. Sophie said that he and Janos had gone off the bridge somehow, but were okay and on their way to safety in Sweden of all places. I stopped to click on another link. Oh, here’s some more information on the Neretva.

Lily. Is this about how deep the Neretva is? My dad paused. Or about how deep your feeling for Stephen is? He knew about my relationship with Stephen. That is, he knew as much as I’d been willing to tell him, which is to say, not much. However, he is trained to figure out what people fail to say out loud.

I didn’t respond, and he went on. Is this about what you don’t know about his work and how this particular incident fits into it, or is this about what you don’t know about his entire life and how you might or might not fit into it?

My dad did get right to the heart of matters, but then so could I.

I love him, Dad. That’s all I know for sure right now.

CHAPTER TWO

That declaration of my love for Stephen was still hovering between us when we pulled into the parking lot at Grandma Lindstrom’s new home. My dad had not said a word in response to my statement, had shown only with a nod of his head that he had heard me. I was relieved that he’d have to focus on his mother now, rather than on me, at least while we were visiting her. She lives in a residence for the memory impaired, the currently accepted euphemism for dementia, on a lovely campus, another euphemism, not too far from Minneapolis. No matter what you call it, this cluster of stone and timber buildings nestled on the prairie is the last home my grandmother will ever know.

She has lived all her life among the wildflowers and forests we could see in the distance. There were flowers blooming around the buildings here too, but they looked as rigidly regimented as the residents of this facility. Some of these residents were out strolling, pushing their walkers while aides kept pace beside them, herding them as if they were sheep. It was quite idyllic if you didn’t look too closely at the expressions on the faces under the fuzzy white heads bent over their walkers or slumped forward in their wheelchairs. I glanced away off toward the prairies. I didn’t want to be here; I wanted to be at Grandma and Grandpa’s comfortable old bungalow, wanted the flowers to be hers. The only sign that my dad might be having trouble with his feelings too was in the set of his jaw and the stiffness of his shoulders as he hurried toward the building where his mother lives now.

We threaded our way through the families clustered in the lobby, signed in at the front desk, entered the security code at the locked door for her unit, and walked down the carpeted hallway to the central gathering area. It was a large sunny room full of comfortable chairs. Some residents were sitting in those chairs, and others were busy at the various activity centers set up around the room, little areas which looked as if they could have been alcoves reconstructed from