The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  “There is not much room here, but there is enough. As Danilo is so seldom at home, his mother is loaning us his bed and chest of drawers. They will fit in the alcove; we measured yesterday.” She hesitated, then asked, “Is this what you want?”

  “Yes,” I said. I felt like singing and crying both.

  She searched my face for a moment, then nodded. “You will inform your father. If there is any question, he can come talk with me.” She stood, and in the movement showed her age. I stood with her. She walked around the table, held me briefly in a fierce embrace, then released me. “Go and sleep, figlio mio. It has been a busy day for us both. Bring your things over tomorrow after school, and if there are problems I will discuss them with your father.”

  Chapter 4

  By the time winter set in I was struggling with music as never before in my life. My lessons with Professor Schmitz were proving to be a tremendous strain. I would leave his office after our hour together and lean against the wall, feeling as though I had just been released from a straitjacket. I could not force enough air into my lungs.

  Professor Schmitz kept me on particular passages in that first piece for three months. He sought through endless repetition to break my desire to interpret and give the music a sense of emotional flow. He wanted me to become machine-like in my playing of what was there before me on the score. I resisted with an unreasoning terror, certain without knowing why that submission would mean the death of something precious.

  My unspoken defense infuriated him. He seldom spoke of it directly, but I could see it clearly enough—in the angry gaze and sucked-in cheeks and clenched fingers when I allowed the music to carry me away. I strived to hold back, to lock my spirit in a frozen little cell when I was there with him. Yet at least once a lesson the love I carried for my music slipped through. I would forget Professor Schmitz, forget his cigarettes and his cold voice and his yellowed fingers and his stale smell, and I would soar away. Then I would jerk awake and cast a fearful glance toward him, and see his anger bearing down on me.

  My grandmother had caught a cold that settled in her chest and refused to budge. At night I would awaken to the sound of her coughing, and in the morning see the shadow of her night-time struggles etched upon her face. As the fever continued to sap her strength, her objections to my helping out grew weaker. After school I tried to imagine all that might need my grandmother’s attention that day and did it.

  Christmas came and went, and still my grandmother’s health did not improve. In the mornings her eyes glittered from fever and fatigue, and her cheeks grew hollow. It began to affect my schoolwork and my practicing. Summer seemed very far away, and Como a dream from another lifetime.

  I usually made something warm for dinner, but it was seldom that my grandmother had energy to eat. I learned by doing and by making mistakes and by asking Mario’s mother. She would give me advice as she filled my shopping basket, and would never ask for money. My grandmother would pay her later, she always said, her dark eyes shining as she put something extra in the basket for me, a sweet or a fruit or a fresh-baked cookie. What was such a small thing among family?

  If my grandmother was awake in the evenings I would sit and play for a while. That seldom occurred more than once a week. On through the cold darkness of winter these evenings together remained the light that reassured, that comforted, that spoke of hope for better days to come.

  In late January I began climbing the dimly-lit stairs to the Levisto apartment. I sat silently through a number of their Friday evening concerts. The first few times they asked me to join them, but I was not interested in playing for strangers. I did not want to unearth the turmoil that surrounded my music just then. I was content to sit and sip spiced tea and smile when someone spoke to me and listen to their concerto and let them think that I was too embarrassed over the quality of my music to perform in public. The playing on those evenings was enthusiastically bad, their music hammered out with boundless energy and nailed into place with a relentless four-four beat. They were friends who met because they enjoyed playing and loved music in a simple wholehearted fashion. I returned downstairs after such evenings reeking of cheap cigar smoke and restored by the flavor of their happiness.

  Mario took it upon himself to draw me out. One night in February, after the store had closed and my grandmother was in bed, we were sitting upstairs in his workroom. Album covers littered the floor around his stereo. Mario had recently invested in an impressive pair of headphones. He handed them to me, shifted them around until he was satisfied how they rested on my ears, then lowered the turntable arm. Rock music exploded inside my head.

  I sat through a couple of minutes, then took off the headphones. The room seemed incredibly still.

  “How was it?”

  “Loud,” I said.

  Mario looked pained. “That was Santana, Gianni. He’s one of the best guitarists in the world.”

  “I don’t think I like it.”

  Mario made a production out of raising the turntable arm and cutting off his stereo. His back to me, he said, “You haven’t been around so much lately, Gianni.”

  “I’ve got a lot to do now. I have to look after my grandmother.”

  “It’s not natural, all this time you’re spending by yourself. You ought to be going out, having fun. You know, meeting people your own age.”

  I felt my face grow hot. “Who told you to say all that? Your mother?”

  Mario looked embarrassed. “She’s just worried about you, Gianni. That’s all.”

  “I’m okay,” I replied. “I just have a lot to do right now.”

  “A group of us are going to a concert this Friday. Chicago is playing here.”

  “I thought that was the name of a city.”

  “It is,” Mario said, exasperated. “It’s the name of a rock group too. They’re from America. You want to come?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My brother was asking about you last weekend when he was here. He wants to know when you’re coming to the base to play.”

  I stood up and made for the door. “I don’t feel like it right now, Mario. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  Saturday mornings my father would come to visit, always dressed in a suit and tie, always strained and gray-faced and formal. The visits had begun the week following my move to my grandmother’s apartment. I did not ask whether it was because of something she had said. My grandmother would sit as stiff and straight as her weakened state would allow. She refused to speak to him of her illness. I remained in the living room with them because my grandmother ordered me to, feeling nothing but the tide of emptiness as I sat and avoided looking at my father.

  * * *

  The second week of March arrived amid the worst snowstorm of the year. While I sat in the academy’s basement cafe and tried to work some warmth back into my frozen fingers, I listened glumly to the words swirl around me. The players for this year’s guitar recital had been announced and Professor Schmitz still had said nothing to me about it.

  The professor’s spring recital was on everybody’s mind—who was to play, who would not, who would do duets, who was that year’s rising star. It was one of the year’s highlights for the music academy, and from the second week of March when the players were announced until the recital itself the performers were the school’s chosen elite. That morning the entire cafe was filled with the talk of his recital. I sat in the corner table, ignored the occasional curious glance tossed my way, and listened to the talk swirl around me. No one said hello or asked me to join their discussions. Why should they? I was five or six years younger and a world apart from their long hair and blue jeans and endless cigarettes and noisy tumult.

  There was talk of the dress—black tuxedoes for male performers, black full-length gowns for the women. There was talk of contacts made for further study, and sometimes of offers from agents or concert masters to perform in festivals. There was talk of pressure and fear. There was talk of the student who had committed
suicide several years ago after botching his piece, and of the one who now played full time with the chamber ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic. I felt frustrated and hurt and angry that Professor Schmitz had said nothing to me about the recital, and knew that sitting here listening to the other students only made matters worse.

  The recital was given on the first of May. There were perhaps a dozen performers in all, six soloists and three duets. The recital always concluded with one or two pieces by the master himself. The event was held in the smaller of the two Staatstheater, which seated almost five hundred people. It was always full for the recital.

  Things were not going well. I had been working on the same composition for Professor Schmitz for nine weeks. It was only the third piece he had given me since I began lessons with him in September; before that time I had seldom spent more than a few weeks on any one piece. He was also working me through a series of études. An étude was a small run or study composed for technical purposes only that forced me to hit over and over at particularly difficult aspects of playing. They were grueling lessons in discipline, void of the emotional thrill that accompanied learning a new piece. I was forced to repeat them endlessly until I heard the dull emotionless repetitions in my sleep.

  The étude assigned for that week required me to hold a bar chord closed with my index finger—which meant all six strings were held tightly down with a rigid first finger—then play a rapid jouncing that alternated between the open base and the top three strings. The run concluded by forcing me to stretch my little finger out four frets while still holding the bar. I could not lunge for the note. It had to be done swiftly and cleanly so that the rapid trill of notes maintained the same beat and emphasis throughout.

  In order to perform it correctly I began and ended each day with stretching exercises. I fanned out my fingers on a table so that only the four fingertips touched the wood. I then bore down hard, pushing my fingers forward across the table, so they would stretch out as far apart as possible. I pushed and stretched until I could no longer bear the pain. I refused to think of the logic of this. I was determined to do it correctly. It became an ultimate challenge thrown down by Professor Schmitz. I was going to succeed.

  That lesson I played for Professor Schmitz exactly as I had intended, with an ease and flow that made it appear the most natural movement in the world. He ordered me to repeat the exercise. I did so, as cleanly as the first time. He hesitated, looked at me a long moment, then told me to play the assigned composition. I played the piece from beginning to end without pause or interruption. It was the first time this had ever occurred.

  When I finished he seemed unsure of what to do; he examined me for a long moment, then nodded his head once in a brief, sharp jerk. He plucked the score from the music stand, went to his filing cabinet, searched briefly, returned, and set another score on the stand. With quick motions and a few words he pointed out the more difficult sections in the first movement.

  He turned abruptly away, moved to his cigarettes on the windowsill, said, “Now you can go.”

  I remained very still, watching him, waiting for a word that I knew was not coming. He had not expected me to perform so well. I could see that now. It had disconcerted him. He had given me that étude thinking I would never play it correctly.

  He lit a cigarette, said, “Well? Did you not hear me dismiss you?”

  He was not going to mention the recital no matter what I did. It was all so clear now. What was to be gained by bringing it up? I glanced at my watch, said in a small voice, “Our lesson has lasted exactly seventeen minutes.”

  He filled those parchment-covered hands with other people’s work. “So?” His deep voice grated with irritation and cigarette smoke. “And one piece is not enough? Your lesson lasts as long as I say it lasts, and today you do not deserve any more of my time. My time is valuable. If you want more of my time, then you must earn it, with work, with discipline.”

  Professor Schmitz paused to drag deeply on his cigarette. It made his cheeks even more cavernous. He eyed me through the smoke and asked, “Now do you understand?”

  “Yes.” I understood that I was excluded from the recital. What else was there to be said?

  “So. You finally understand something. Good. You have made both our days. Now go.” He turned back to his work and his cigarette.

  The evening of the recital my grandmother was not feeling well. Her chest bothered her, she told me. I did not know what to say. I dreaded having to dress up in a suit and go downtown to the Staatstheater all by myself, but if I had to I would. My grandmother watched me mope around the apartment, pleading with her without saying anything out loud. Her voice took on a sharp tone and she told me to stop with the childishness. She could not go. The weather was bad and she did not feel well enough to wait by stage doors for autographs that night. All foolishness would be left for a time when she felt better.

  Her remark stung me. “I’m not going to collect autographs. I want to hear the music.”

  She examined my face with feverish eyes. “Is that anger I hear in your voice?”

  I did not back down. “I’m not interested in foolishness. Going to the recital is not foolishness. I need to hear them play.”

  “Ah,” she said, nodding her head. “I think I understand now. Someone feels he should be up there on the stage with them. Has this old head finally seen the light?”

  “It is not foolishness,” I replied weakly.

  She regarded me for a moment, then coughed, a racking sound that bent her almost double. It was the sound I had heard so often late at night. It sounded horrible up close.

  Her breath wheezed loudly as she slowly straightened. She reached in her sleeve for the lace handkerchief that was always there, and wiped her lips. “Night air would not be good for these old bones, figlio mio. You must go alone.”

  I did not argue anymore. “Are you all right?”

  “At my age health becomes relative, Giovanni. Yes, I am all right. This is just a cold. Sickness does not pass so quickly as when one is young and strong. It is nothing. Do not worry yourself.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing. Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Yes, I have seen the doctor, and I tell you not to worry. Finish. Now go get into your suit, the nice dark one you wore at Christmas. And find a clean handkerchief I can iron for your pocket.” She smiled at my concern, and her voice softened. “Go, my Giovanezzo. You have a concert to attend. Your grandmother will be fine. It is just a little German cold that will pass with the coming of summer.”

  I arrived at the concert hall two hours before the recital was to begin. I walked across the broad pebblestone courtyard, its miniature gardens alive with spring colors. The central glass doors were open to the warm air. Inside, cleaners were polishing the marble floor. No one challenged me as I entered and walked to the smaller of the two concert chambers. I pushed through the high broad doors, entered, and sat in the corner of the back row.

  Two cleaning ladies were dusting the aisles in front of the stage and talking in a language I could not understand. Only the floor lights along the empty stage were on. I sat in the shadows and watched them work, and thought. Before long they finished their cleaning and left through the side doors. The loudest sound in the room was my breathing.

  The seats rose steeply up from the large stage, with two modern sculptures set with lights hanging from the high ceiling. Heavy curtains flanked the stage, with a second set opening halfway back. For this night’s performance the second set would be closed, making the stage much smaller. They were open now, revealing a covered grand piano and a clutter of metal chairs and music stands.

  I heard footsteps echoing in the distance. Professor Schmitz appeared from behind the curtains and stepped out onto the stage. He was dressed in his dark suit and starched white shirt and thin dark tie. In one hand he carried his guitar case and a smoldering cigarette. The other hand gripped a coat hanger holding his tuxedo.

  Professor Schmitz walked to the
center of the stage and set down his guitar case. I held my breath. The stage lights glinted off his steel spectacles and turned the hollows of his cheeks into dark caverns. He dragged deeply on his cigarette and let the smoke seep slowly from his nose. He stood there for several minutes, silently smoking his cigarette and regarding the empty chamber. I did not move. When the cigarette was almost burning his fingers, he picked up his case and walked briskly off the stage. His footsteps echoed down the backstage corrider. When I could no longer hear his steps, I stood and left the auditorium.

  I walked out of the building, crossed the courtyard, and entered the Hofgarten, the city’s central gardens. Most of the trees were just beginning to show leafy buds, but the cherry trees were in full bloom. I walked down a path strewn with white and pink petals and thought about my grandmother, about the recital, about Professor Schmitz. As the sun fell lower the air began to chill, so I crossed the six-lane road separating the gardens from the Old Town. I walked down the Altstadt’s main street, which was barred to automobiles and lined with pubs and cafes. I stopped at one of the outdoor grills that served spicy meat with a lettuce and tomato topping in unleavened Arabic bread. I stood and ate and watched the people until it was time to return to the recital.

  I had not anticipated that it would disturb me so badly to be in the audience and not onstage. I sat near the back of the auditorium and listened carefully to the performances and to the applause, and I felt as if a knife were being turned in my gut. Over and over I thought, I should be up there. Me. I could outplay them all. I sat and listened and felt more keenly than ever the price I was paying for disobeying Professor Schmitz’s demand for cold-hearted discipline.

  When the recital was over I had difficulty rising to my feet for Professor Schmitz’s standing ovation. I listened to the applause and to the cries of bravo, and the hollow ache made me feel sick to my stomach. I pushed my way through the crowd and hurried from the auditorium.