They are recruiting many new cadets all the time. All talk is of Morocco.
Send my love to Mamá and I hope you have news of Luisa, Percival, and Tía, since I haven't heard much from them. Do you send them money, now that you are a famous musician? Or does that come later?
Con cariño,
Enrique
Alberto's moods continued to wax and wane. On the upswings, he brought out new pieces of music and lectured me about various composers and their styles and strategies, the particular problems they'd had to solve, and the times that had shaped them. On the downswings, he slept late and retired early, leaving me to practice old pieces to death, fussing with the bowings and trying to correct the tinny quality of my open strings or the woof of my high F. The more I played, the less happy I felt with my playing. My ear was improving faster than my hands, my expectations rising ahead of my abilities. It was not pleasant to spend so many hours alone.
In December of that year, I turned sixteen. I was no taller than I'd been at fifteen, but deeper voiced, and certainly more prone to dark moods of my own. The novelty of playing all day and doing little else was wearing thin. I listened to the phonograph more and more, but the recordings, primitively made as they were, only made me more morose. Symphonic music in particular brought me to tears—all those instruments playing together, so much richer and more complex than the simple études and salon pieces I played without accompaniment. Still, I cranked on, starting before five and continuing longer and longer past seven each evening. One night, at a quarter to nine, Alberto flung open his door, stomped into the parlor, and snatched the Beethoven record that had been playing. His hands shook as he turned left and right, looking for a place to crack it in two. Then his shoulders slumped. He turned away and set the record on a chair.
"Get out," he growled, pointing to the door. "I need quiet. Here." He thrust his hand into his pocket, then extended his fist to me. "A boy shouldn't be inside all these hours. Go find something to do. Go." He released the coins into my palm, and I saw that his hand was still shaking. "To the waterfront. To the wax museum. Waste some money. Waste some time! Get out of this building and act your age."
That was how I found the book. If the phonograph had wedged open a gap in my confidence, suggesting that perhaps my own music-making was nothing special, then the book split my confidence in two, exposing me as unexceptional, untalented, and—despite my own best efforts—woefully untrained.
I had walked toward the waterfront, as Alberto had suggested. Past the glittering lights of the Liceo opera house, past the vendors and cafés, toward the lower, seedier streets where prostitutes milled about, flaunting their cleavage beneath the city's gaslights. Two blocks short of the waterfront, where the statue of Columbus stands on a high pedestal with his back to the city, I turned left. A half-block more, and I arrived at the Museo de Cera.
Waiting behind a line of couples at the ticket window, I studied the museum posters under dirty glass. The main attraction seemed to be wax effigies of local criminals who had been put to death by the museum's founder, who was also Barcelona's executioner. Without a girl on my shoulder, feigning distress, I wasn't terribly interested, even though other people—first Ramón, later Alberto—seemed to think I should be.
Instead of buying a ticket, I wandered away and down the curb, where vendors offered eclectic wares. A postcard vendor displayed lurid images in a velvet-lined trunk: belly dancers whose bare breasts were plainly visible beneath sheer scarves, acrobats whose pear-shaped bottoms rested on trapeze bars. They were of a different caliber than the images sold higher up the Ramblas, better matched to the wax museum clientele, eager for lurid mementos.
"Look through here," the vendor said, holding up a black box, and when I peeked inside, I was confronted with the tableau of a naked woman recoiling dramatically as an ax fell toward her neck. I shrank back, then looked again.
"I have more, but it costs," he said. "Already you see two times for free." I shook my head and started to walk away.
My mother wouldn't want me to be here, I thought. But then I remembered Alberto's words: "Waste some money. Waste some time. Act your age."
"You like oddities?" the vendor tried, and pulled out an entire box stuffed with postcards, photos, pamphlets, and books. I glanced at the spines: Slaves to Love. Oriental Secrets. The Marquis de Sade. A sixteen-year-old boy should have been drawn to those books. But it was a thin gray volume with silver type that caught my eye, instead—Tortured Genius: Two Centuries of Musical Prodigy.
"You don't want that one," the vendor said. "Not many pictures. Only little girls and boys." Then his eyes lit up. "Unless you like little girls and boys. In that case, I have better—no words, all pictures. Wait and see, I will get. Separate box."
But I was already digging in my pocket. He shrugged and took what I had. As he passed the book to me, the loose title page shifted and fell free from its broken binding. Our eyes locked; he could see I still wanted the volume, but he conceded the damage and left one coin in my palm, pitying my lack of perversity. He pointed me back toward the Ramblas. "You have enough left for an ice cream. Go."
And so it was that I read about the misery of genius, and other truths that had been withheld from me. I read about Franz Joséph Haydn being torn from his home, neglected, and caned after misbehaving at school; about Mozart being exhibited relentlessly by his domineering father; about the violinist Paganini being starved and locked in his room for endless practice sessions.
These names I knew. Others were unfamiliar, and they bothered me even more, because they made musical suffering and sadism seem banal and—here, the possibility that bothered me—perhaps essential. The father of a motherless German girl named Gertrude Mara tied her to a chair whenever he left for his work; yet she went on to become a skilled violinist, and later, singer. Crippled, yes, but skilled.
Across Europe, children were beaten, pushed off piano benches, deprived of food, stripped of their playthings, even the dolls or marbles brought to them by musical admirers. And the torture seemed to work. Children—at least the ones who were the focus of this slim gray volume—excelled and became famous. The bruises faded. The music lasted.
An entire chapter in the prodigy book was devoted to Justo Al-Cerraz and the many ways his father goaded him into early performance, following abandonment by his unnamed gypsy mother. When an early patron presented him with a large stuffed hobbyhorse, Al-Cerraz's father sawed off the horse's head and scooted its body closer to the piano, so the boy prodigy could keep playing as he rode. The text claimed the young pianist had burst into tears at seeing the patron's gift mutilated, but in the accompanying photograph he looked radiant atop the oddly beheaded horse. Perhaps that inner light came from the music itself. Or perhaps—my envy soared here at the thought—it came from the absolute knowledge of one's future path, and the sense that a parent, kind or cruel, wise or misguided, believed without a doubt that one was destined for artistic greatness.
Punishment aside, the book highlighted all the subjects these brilliant young musicians were learning before they outgrew their sailor suits and banana curls: music theory, composition, solfège. I'd assumed that learning to play an instrument was enough. What if it wasn't? And what was this French thing, solfège?
I had bought myself an ice cream, as the vendor had advised, and ate half of it in the brightly lit parlor, the book in my lap, the ice cream thick in my throat. Finally, I gave up, leaving a melted puddle of cream in the bowl.
"Not good enough for you?" the barman said as he watched me ease myself off the high stool, face pinched with nausea. And then, under his breath: "Spoiled kids."
It was true. I was spoiled. But was it my fault? I'd wanted to play the cello for years, but my mother had held me back. I would rather she had tied me to a practice chair than lured me back into bed on a Sunday afternoon with promises of Don Quixote and an extra chocolate square, if I lay particularly still. Most recently, my mother had brought me a manual for the repair of pho
nographs. Alberto's wasn't broken, but Mamá seemed intent on interpreting my love of the phonograph as a boyish fascination with machines, rather than a young man's dedication to serious art. She'd even hinted I might find a future career in a repair shop, if I took up mechanical tinkering. (And yet, she did not push this idea, either. Even her discouragement of my dreams had a passive, ambivalent quality.) As for Alberto, just when I wanted to study more and harder he slept half the day, unwashed shirts again collecting on armchairs and the sink filling with towers of dirty dishes—proof indeed of my spoiling, since no one demanded I wash them; proof of Mamá's overworked distractedness, since she did not even see them; and proof of Alberto's low expectations, since he seemed to think it normal for an apartment to reek of old rice and beans.
I craved rigor and order, and instead I spent the day surrounded by entropy, while the streets outside offered more of the same: graffiti, peeling posters, slogans and mottoes protesting the government, denouncing the King, defying military conscription. How could someone learn amidst such chaos? Only by turning further inward, learning to block out everything but the clean and orderly perfection of music itself.
***
I hid the book in a drawer under my socks, like a pornographic postcard, and I didn't mention it. But I continued to look for every indication that Mamá and Alberto had never taken me seriously or, worse yet, that I was truly soft inside. I received a letter from Enrique describing a three-day field exercise he'd suffered through, during which several men had fainted from heat exhaustion. Enrique had soldiered on, of course. Even the skinny-legged Matchstick had made it, Enrique troubled himself to write. I did not appreciate being constantly compared to that friendless waif. Was it Enrique's way of saying that if I were a real man, I would have joined the military, too?
That week, I began practicing harder and longer. Instead of resting after lunch, I repeated my entire five-hour morning drill. For days, Alberto said nothing. Finally, on Friday evening, when he saw me struggling to stand up from my cello chair, he said, "There's no need to injure yourself."
I lashed out, cheeks flushed: "Paganini practiced ten hours a day!"
Alberto shrank back, pantomiming shock at my outburst. "Until he was twenty years old—then he never practiced again. Besides, he was sick all the time."
"You haven't taught me solfège," I grumbled through gritted teeth.
Alberto made a quizzical sound, then nodded with understanding. He began to sing an ascending scale: "Do re mi fa so..." He paused. "You know that, don't you? It's just sight-reading those tones. I've heard you do it on your own."
"That's solfège?"
"That's solfège."
I rubbed the small of my back with one hand, reached forward to set my bow on the music stand, but a sudden pain shooting down my left leg made me drop it. I swore under my breath and bent to pick up the bow, hot tears pooling. Rising, I kicked over the music stand.
"You don't seem happy, Feliu." There was no humor in his voice now.
I shouted back, "I'm not supposed to be happy! If you knew anything about teaching, you would know that."
"I see," he tried to say lightly, but there was a catch in his voice. "It's cruelty you want."
I didn't have the words to explain the frustration in the pit of my stomach. I sputtered and looked around. The music stand that I'd knocked down belonged to Alberto. It was one of the few musical objects he displayed with pride, fashioned from thick mahogany, shaped like a lyre with scrolled edges. I kicked it again and heard the wood splinter. Before I had time to exhale, Alberto was pulling me by the wrist into the kitchen, around the table, and toward the pantry closet. He nudged me inside and slammed the door. Suddenly, I was immersed in darkness, surrounded by the musty smell of mold and mouse droppings.
I waited a minute, unsure if Alberto was still on the other side.
"You're supposed to lock me in here with my cello!" I called out.
I heard the groan of wood—Alberto leaning against the door. His muffled voice answered, "That closet's too small. If you wanted to be locked away with an instrument, you should have stuck with the violin."
Silence again.
"I'm not afraid of you," I shouted.
"Of course not. You want a tyrant for a teacher. I refuse to be a tyrant. And I'm not starving you properly, either. If you feel around, you'll find plenty to eat."
"Then why I am in here?" I yelled, my eyes bulging, trying to see past the darkness.
I barely made out his soft reply: "You tell me."
The darkness made five minutes feel like fifty. Groping above my head, I managed to knock over a bag of something soft. I felt a film of powder settle on my face, smeared a finger against my cheek, and tasted it. Flour. Reaching around, I knocked over another bag. Something grainy spilled out. I plunged a finger and then brought it to my lips. Sugar.
The door opened. Alberto was silent, but his shoulders were heaving. For a second, I thought he was sobbing. Then I saw he was laughing silently, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"You're white as a ghost," he said when he'd caught his breath. "You look more like Paganini already."
I didn't laugh.
"The other day, when I asked you to go to the wax museum, did you go?"
I wondered if he 'd found my book. "I walked there, but I didn't go inside."
"I gave you the money. You should have gone inside. Do you see? Even when I try to guide you, you don't listen."
When I didn't respond, he added, in a lower voice, "I never asked you to come to me. If your mother hadn't been so desperate—and so kind—I would have turned you both away. I did try to turn you away. You should know more about the people you trust to teach you."
He ran his hand through his short gray hair and nodded three times, like a railroad worker practice-swinging his mallet before raising it high, for the heavy blow. "If you'd gone to the wax museum, you'd understand something important about me. But never mind that. Today I learned something about you. For the time being, I am resigning as your teacher. If it's cruelty you want, you'll find it in the streets."
Then Alberto told me the new rules: I was expected to contribute to room and board, which my mother had fallen behind in paying. I was expected to vacate the apartment every day after lunch and not return until dinner, honoring his new need for privacy. He didn't want to hear the phonograph anymore. He didn't want to hear my incessant cello playing. He didn't even want to see the cello—I was to take it with me each day when I left.
"We don't need to tell your mother," he added. "It would only upset her."
The small spark of fury I had been fanning leaped suddenly into a roaring flame. Heat smoldered in my chest; my tongue felt dry. I couldn't speak. He was kicking me out—like Haydn! He was expecting me to earn my own money—like Mozart!
I'd never felt such righteous anger in my life.
I'd never felt so grateful.
CHAPTER 6
My mother hadn't wanted me to perform publicly. Perhaps she was worried that I would fail. Or perhaps she was worried that some small taste of success would give me false hope and lead to some larger failure in the future. If she feared only that a busking or café career might inflate my vanity, it was a needless concern. Curious stares aside, I received little attention over the winter months that followed, regardless of how and where I played.
Barcelona itself was a spectacle. The young Picasso had shown his work at the Quatre Gats and then sailed off toward Paris on the winds of his rising fame. Gaudí, the architect, had designed an entire fairy-tale suburb of abstract pavilions and serpentine, mosaic-covered benches. Even the local fish market was a splashy affair, its main gate decorated with green, amber and deep blue circles of glass cut from bottle bottoms, no two of them identical. The thickness of the glass, the presence of waves or bubbles or cracks, the direction of the sunlight all added variety and texture, an infinite number of hues.
Whenever I walked past the gate, I thought of the way Alberto had exp
lained the cello's tone colors to me, the individuality and interpretive possibility inherent in a single note. The cellist's left hand was a technician—to find a quarter note of B on the A string, it headed to the first fingering, in first position. The right hand, on the other hand, was an artist, whose palette included the weight of the bow, the speed of the bow, the proximity of the bow to the bridge, all of which colored and shaded that note an infinite number of ways. From the simplest materials, so much was possible in Barcelona—or felt possible, anyway, which was the first step toward innovation, as well as the first step toward disillusionment and rebellion.
Visitors came to see Barcelona's color and strangeness. Residents took pride in its booming modernity. Street revelers shot off guns when they were joyful and dynamite when they were not. A distant explosion might be a religious festival; every third day, some saint was being heralded in some corner of the sprawling city. Or it might be a revolution. At the center of such a visual and auditory kaleidoscope, it was easy to go unseen and unheard.
While there was little glory or attention for a young unknown musician, there was ample opportunity. On my first attempt, I procured a job at the back of a café, replacing a violinist who had been jailed for punching a tax collector. The violinist returned after one week. But the next job came just as easily, when I wandered into a movie house. Barcelona had eighty of them at least, most of them small and shoddy and subject to frequent changes in ownership. Noticing my cello case, the theater owner pulled me aside and immediately offered me a position. His daytime pianist had disappeared, and the first round of replacements hadn't been quick enough to master the scores that accompanied each new film. Meanwhile, the audience was getting restless. They had come to see silent films, but they didn't expect silence. Nothing was more awkward than a "flicker" absent the musical cues that told the viewer when to laugh, cry, or close his eyes in fright.
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