Corpus Christmas by Margaret Maron Page A

elbow and kissed him exuberantly.
    By their fourth trip down, Oscar had a long briar scratch across his forehead and Sigrid had jammed her right index finger.
     Climbing back to the top of the ravine each time left them winded, wet, and red-cheeked, yet both were somehow reluctant to
     end this brief return to childhood pleasures and go inside.
    On the other hand, warmth and the expectation of good food did offer certain inducements. Not to mention the adult pleasures
     of stripping off their wet clothes and rediscovering other physical joys.
    “What are you smiling about?” Nauman asked suspiciously.
    “I was thinking about raw clams on the half-shell.” “You want to eat first?” “No.” Her slender fingers touched the red scratch
     on his head, caressed his left ear, then slipped to his bare shoulder. “I was remembering my cousin Carl. One of my Southern
     cousins. He bought a cottage down on Harker’s Island and it took him more than ten years before he’d even taste a raw clam.
     He’s been trying to make up for lost time ever since.”
    “I don’t know that I like being compared to raw clams,” Nauman grumbled.
    “But they’re so delicious,” she murmured wickedly, running her hand down his muscular flank.
    * * *
    Lunch was just as leisurely, and afterwards, Sigrid curled up in one of the large chairs before the fire in Nauman’s studio
     and opened the
Times
to the puzzle page. The large crossword appeared to contain a humorous yuletide limerick, and she became so absorbed in penning
     in the answers that she didn’t notice when Nauman, perched on a tall stool at his drawing table, began to sketch her, his
     pencil moving rapidly across the pages of his notebook.
    He hadn’t done a figurative portrait in years, not since his student days, probably, but there was something about her eyes,
     the line of her long neck, the angularity of the way she sat that intrigued him. If he could catch her on paper—
    Sigrid glanced up. Nauman’s eyes were a clear deep blue and the intelligence which usually blazed there had become remote
     and fathomless. She moved uneasily and saw the remoteness disappear as his eyes softened.
    “What did Francesca Leeds mean when she said a retrospective isn’t a ninth symphony?” she asked, abandoning her puzzle.
    Nauman closed the notebook before she could become self-conscious and began to relight his pipe. “It’s something that seemed
     to start with the composer Gustav Mahler.”
    He looked down at the elaborately carved pipe in his hand as if he’d never before seen it. Today’s was shaped like a dragon’s
     head and fragrant smoke curled from the bowl.
    “Mahler noticed that Beethoven and Bruckner had both died after composing ninth symphonies, so he decided nine was a jinx.
     Tried to cheat—
Das Lied von der Erde
after his eighth. Said it wasn’t a symphony—was, though. Decided he was being silly, wrote his ninth. Died before he finished
     tenth. Dvorák and Vaughan Williams, too.”
    “But surely that’s a coincidence?” From the way Nauman’s speech had suddenly become telegraphic, Sigrid knew he was absorbed
     by parallel lines of thought. “By the time a composer reaches his ninth symphony, wouldn’t he be old and near the end of his
     life anyhow?”
    “Like an artist with a retrospective,” Nauman said bleakly.
    “Then you
are
superstitious?” “And you’re avoiding the issue. I’ll be sixty goddamned years old next July, old enough to be your—”
    “How many symphonies did Mozart compose?” she interrupted.
    “Hell, I don’t know. Forty or fifty.” “And he was thirty-five when he died. How many retrospectives do you think Picasso had
     before he kicked off at the tender age of—what was it? Ninety? Ninety-one?”
    “Okay, okay.” Nauman smiled, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll do it.”
    “Only if you want to,” Sigrid murmured demurely, and suddenly they were no longer talking about art exhibits.

    BURRIS