The Human Stain

When I happened to look back toward the shed, I could see inside, under the lights on the stage, that the eight beautiful bass fiddles were in a neat row where the musicians, before going off to take a break, had left them resting on their sides. Why this too should remind me of the death of all of us I could not fathom. A graveyard of horizontal instruments? Couldn't they more cheerily have put me in mind of a pod of whales?

I was standing on the lawn stretching myself, taking the warmth of the sun on my back for another few seconds before returning to my seat to hear the Rachmaninoff, when I saw them returning-apparently they'd left the vicinity of the shed only to walk the grounds, perhaps for Coleman to show her the views off to the south—and now they were headed back to hear the orchestra conclude its open rehearsal with the Symphonic Dances. To learn what I could learn, I decided then to head directly toward them for all that they still looked like people whose business was entirely their own.

Waving at Coleman, waving and saying "Hello, there. Coleman, hello," I blocked their way.

"I thought I saw you," Coleman said, and though I didn't believe him, I thought, What better to say to put her at her ease? To put me at my ease. To put himself at his. Without a trace of anything but the easygoing, hard-nosed dean-of-faculty charm, seemingly irritated not at all by my sudden appearance, Coleman said, "Mr.

Bronfman's something. I was telling Faunia that he took ten years at least out of that piano."

"I was thinking along those lines myself."

"This is Faunia Farley," he said to me, and to her, "This is Nathan Zuckerman. You two met out at the farm."

Closer to my height than to his. Lean and austere. Little, if anything, to be learned from the eyes. Decidedly uneloquent face. Sensuality?

Nil. Nowhere to be seen. Outside the milking parlor, everything alluring shut down. She had managed to make herself so that she wasn't even here to be seen. The skill of an animal, whether predator or prey.

She wore faded jeans and a pair of moccasins—as did Coleman —and, with the sleeves rolled up, an old button-down tattersail shirt that I recognized as one of his.

"I've missed you," I said to him. "Maybe I can take you two to dinner some night."

"Good idea. Yes. Let's do that."

Faunia was no longer paying attention. She was looking off into the tops of the trees. They were swaying in the wind, but she was watching them as though they were speaking. I realized then that she was quite lacking in something, and I didn't mean the capacity to attend to small talk. What I meant I would have named if I could.

It wasn't intelligence. It wasn't poise. It wasn't decorum or decency —she could pull off that ploy easily enough. It wasn't depth —shallowness wasn't the problem. It wasn't inwardness—one saw that inwardly she was dealing with plenty. It wasn't sanity—she was sane and, in a slightly sheepish way, haughty-seeming as well, superior through the authority of her suffering. Yet a piece of her was decidedly not there.

I noticed a ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The stone was milky white. An opal. I was sure that he had given it to her.

By contrast to Faunia, Coleman was very much of a piece, or appeared so. Glibly so. I knew he had no intention of taking Faunia out to dinner with me or anyone else.

"The Madamaska Inn," I said. "Eat outside. How about it?"

Never had I seen Coleman any more courtly than when he said to me, lying, "The inn—right. We must. We will. But let us take you. Nathan, let's speak," he said, suddenly in a rush and grabbing at Faunia's hand. Motioning with his head toward the Music Shed, he said, "I want Faunia to hear the Rachmaninoff." And they were gone, the lovers, "fled away," as Keats wrote, "into the storm."

In barely a couple of minutes so much had happened, or seemed to have happened—for nothing of any importance had actually occurred —that instead of returning to my seat, I began to wander about, like a sleepwalker at first, aimlessly heading across the lawn dotted with picnickers and halfway around the Music Shed, then doubling back to where the view of the Berkshires at the height of summer is about as good as views get east of the Rockies. I could hear in the distance the Rachmaninoff dances coming from the shed, but otherwise I might have been off on my own, deep in the fold of those green hills. I sat on the grass, astonished, unable to account for what I was thinking: he has a secret. This man constructed along the most convincing, believable emotional lines, this force with a history as a force, this benignly wily, smoothly charm- ing, seeming totality of a manly man nonetheless has a gigantic secret.