After a month with nothing more sociable than the crush in my mother’s hospital room or a late-night drink with Helen, I suddenly had parties to go to. What was happening in New York remained inexplicable, but it also turned into anecdote, so that I could speak of it with the same fluidity I brought to the continuing situation with Norman and the question about Patrick. At dinner at Claire and Michael’s house, we discussed the nature of illness and the advantages and disadvantages of American hospitals and the National Health. At Frieda’s drinks party, she introduced me to a woman called Elaine who had had exactly what my mother had about ten years earlier and who was now divorcing her second husband since the illness. Jane seated me at her house next to a friend of hers whose mother had recently died; we made polite but rather uncomfortable conversation. Everyone took me aside to tell me how anxious Bernard was. “I’ve been talking to him every day,” Claire told me. “He’s keeping us all posted. And he’s so worried for you. Michael’s been absolutely worried about Bernard being so worried.” I smiled and observed that this was very like Michael, and generally said how lucky I felt I was. And in fact, though I had spent the month mostly feeling cursed, I did feel that week that I was lucky.

• • •

My mother and I spoke regularly on the phone. Usually I called her, but the day before my concert it was she who called me, in the afternoon. “How are you doing?” asked my mother.

“I’m fine,” I said. I was trying to practice and I was frustrated by the interruption. “How are you?”

“Well, I have a new collection of revolting symptoms, but perhaps I’ll wait and tell you about them some other time. Are you feeling ready for the concert tomorrow?”

I said that I had been practicing constantly. “It’s not going to be a very difficult concert. It’s all music I’ve played before. And it should be an easy audience. Tolerant subscription people and Mozart lovers.”

“You sound tired,” said my mother.

I was not aware of sounding tired. I was, in fact, not aware of being tired until she mentioned it. “I had a strange dream last night,” I said. I had forgotten it until that moment. “I was playing the Schubert at a very big concert in some kind of great arena, a sort of amphitheater. I was playing it perfectly, better than I’d ever played it before, and then suddenly, in the middle of the Andante, I realized that I couldn’t remember which movement came next. And so I kept playing one phrase over and over again, hoping I would remember, so I could go on, but I couldn’t remember. I woke up in a cold sweat.”