“Surprise!” I said. There was a sort of terrible empty moment while she looked around the restaurant. Then she put her hand on my arm, and with an enormous effort of her conscious mind she opened her eyes all the way, and turned to face me. She did not laugh or clap her hands, and her face did not light up as it had when I had surprised her before. “It’s your birthday,” I added. “Didn’t you guess I might surprise you for your birthday?”

She looked through her open eyes to mine in silence for perhaps ten seconds. “Thank you for being here,” she said at last, looking straight into me, and in that moment it was as though she could see everything—Bernard, her accusations, my love for her, Paris, how much I needed for her to get well, how frightened I was, how the appointment to see the recording studio had been rescheduled, how I, too, was learning this new Chinese, how I had left London after just ten days—all of it in the depths of my eyes. “Thank you for being here, Harry,” she said again, simply, still holding me in that immense look; and when she said my name her voice went up, as though it were headed elsewhere.

Then, “Good trip, Harry?” said Freddy, and my father said he had been worried all day about whether I would be at the restaurant on time, and we settled into birthday conversation.

“So what do you think of your mother in a wig?” my mother asked in the light voice she had been using ever since her surgery, and I assured her that she had never looked better. “Either you’re becoming a very accomplished liar,” she rejoined, “or your standards have been slipping in England.”

• • •

That winter I went back and forth every month. I was preparing for my recording, and had to be in England to go over details and talk to engineers. I also had a rigorous performance schedule, and had to get to various European and Asian destinations. At the time, I had no American engagements; I had been trying to make a foreign career first, so that I might burst on America already glorious. I accompanied a friend who sang lieder, worked on the Mozart, and learned everything Schubert had ever written for the piano. The Beethoven sonata became a standard encore piece for me, and I studied more early Beethoven. For a festival in Warsaw I polished up all the Chopin waltzes, and these were a great success. In Russia, I played Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto; when I finished, a stout woman came up to me in tears to tell me she had worked as a housekeeper for the great man. “I think,” she said, “that you are very sad, or you could not play so well this piece. For me, your sadness is very beautiful, and I think there will be more of it, for your whole life.” I thought this was a little grim, but Bernard assured me that the Russians are like that.