Murder Duet: A Musical Case

by Batya Gur

  “Why exactly were you thinking of him? Do you miss him?” He answered with a faint “Yes.” But it wasn’t his longings that were bothering him at that moment, but the sharp memory suddenly gnawing at his chest. First the memory of Maya flashed, then it faded. How little he had thought of her during the past year! Then he thought of this scene: With absolute clarity he saw Yuval, aged fourteen, sitting on the edge of his narrow bed, his face buried in his hands, and himself standing in the half-open doorway. Alarmed, he had asked: “What happened?” and hurried to sit down beside him, repeating his question, putting his arms around him, listening horrified to the adolescent boy’s sobs and his suddenly squeaky voice. He had listened to the broken sentences, the gist of which was that his girlfriend, Ronit, didn’t want to be with him anymore, not even to talk to him. He didn’t know what to say to his son. He could only hold him and hug him in silence. He never saw him cry again.

  Nita was right. Where Rossini’s music wasn’t funny, it was profoundly sad. Of the four parts of the overture, she had explained to him, the first had to suggest an idyllic landscape in the Swiss Alps. But there was also the unavoidable tension between the idyll and the tragic threat hanging over it. The thunder of the timpani now interrupted the sweet melancholy of the cellos. It should have been only a faint echo, but here, under Theo van Gelden’s direction, the echo of the timpani was too loud and conspicuous. He was waving the small silver baton that, Nita had told him proudly, her brother had received as a token of esteem from Leonard Bernstein himself after Theo had conducted the New York Philharmonic for the first time, more than twenty years ago. The echo threw the restrained elegy of the cello into all the greater relief. Only now, when Michael’s breathing quieted, did he realize how tense he had been. Only now, when he felt the familiar pain in his lower jaw caused by the clenching of his teeth, did he admit to himself how much he had identified with her stage fright.

  Nita argued that the cello had to sound both elegiac and pastoral. Again and again she would listen to herself playing. At such moments he was awed by her concentration. Her whole body seemed transformed into one big, stern, critical ear. There were two vertical lines between her eyebrows, and an expression of pain twisted her mouth. She would shake her head angrily and in disgust at herself shout: “Kitsch!” To him the sounds were wonderful. They pierced his heart, touching him to the quick. Sometimes he was ashamed of how much her playing moved him. Especially when he saw her body bend over the cello, the cool power in the arm moving with such confidence, a fleeting expression of pleasure or determination crossing her face, with its closed eyes.

  He had loved, these days just past, being in the room when she played. At such moments she seemed to him strong and withdrawn into herself, inaccessible and beautiful. He had a great wish to be near her, to feel again and again the childlike softness that was so evident when she looked at her son or at the baby girl. All the weakness she had exposed on the evening of their first meeting, the vulnerability she sometimes signaled when going about her daily tasks, disappeared when she was playing. When she played he had the feeling that great strength was pouring out of her, like a torrent of underground water. That this strength swept everything else aside, and that everything else seemed to be an obstacle that tested her.

  It was remarkable how quickly this intimacy had grown up between them. It allowed her to talk to herself in his presence while she practiced, and prevented him from knowing whether what was melting him now, was penetrating him so strongly, was her actual playing, or a whole world of expectations and wishes he had come to know. Again her words rang in his ears: “What you feel is the truth.” But how could he really tell? How was it possible to isolate the impact of the music from every other feeling? And what if he was hearing in her playing now the intentions that were known to him, rather than the pure expression of the music itself? Was there such a thing at all as the pure expression of the music? Did it have any meaning when there was no one listening? And what, in general, was the meaning of talk about music and feelings when you thought about the physical process that caused a tone to reach the brain? You had to remember that the reception of a sound was the result of a physical apparatus, and it was only in the brain that sound waves were interpreted as music. He glanced sideways at the bearded man sitting on his right. As Nita’s guest, Michael had been seated with the elite. He had never before sat so close to the stage. He could see the rectangular block of wood with the little hole into which a double-bass player stuck the metal spike of his instrument to steady it, and the shiny black stripe down his trouser leg. And even the scuffed heels of a viola player, who crossed her feet under her chair as she put her instrument to her shoulder, inclined her left ear toward it, and leaned forward. The man on his right wrote something rapidly on the margin of his program. What, for instance, were the thoughts of this important man, no doubt a music critic, whose legs were stretched out in front of him, whose lips were turned down at the corners now in an expression of “Let’s see if they can still surprise me.” Did he, too, hear the sorrow produced by the cello strings? Was he capable at all of being so moved?

  The seat on Michael’s left was empty. Nita’s father should have been sitting there. Before the concert Nita had introduced Michael to her older brother. Theo van Gelden gave him a swift, curious glance, buttoned his tuxedo jacket, and firmly shook Michael’s hand. It was strange to see the dark masculine echo of Nita’s features in his face. Theo’s face too was long and narrow, and his eyes were light and very deep-set behind the narrow-rimmed eyeglasses. Thirteen years older than Nita, he had short deep lines on either side of his lips, which were full and pouting like hers, and his pointed chin stuck out. Gabriel, ten years older than she, had a round, plump face, with a short beard that touched his short, thick neck. His pink-white skin was scattered with freckles that climbed from his cheeks to his high forehead, and on his neck there was a dark mark, like a love bite. Curls of his chestnut brown hair, which was strewn with gray, stuck out at his temples, and he kept on smoothing them down. His eyes, too, although small and brown, were set deep in their sockets. They blinked several times as he put his hands together and smiled a kind of crooked smile with one side of his mouth, as Nita said: “And this is my little big brother, who agreed to take part tonight so that we could all play together, even though he doesn’t agree with Theo about anything, and even though he’ll soon have an important ensemble of his own.” She laughed and pinched Gabriel’s arm, and he gently patted her hand, showing for a moment a glittering gold ring with a green stone. Only a little taller than she, he had glanced over her shoulder and asked: “But where’s Father? Wasn’t he coming with you? Didn’t we agree that you were going to pick him up on your way?”

  “No,” said Nita, brushing his shoulder with her hand. “He phoned this morning. He’d forgotten he’d made a dental appointment, and he said he’d take a taxi directly from there. You’ve got plaster all over your back again. I’ve told you a thousand times not to lean against this pillar.” She pulled him lightly away from the narrow concrete pillar, stepped around him, and patted his back vigorously. “He’ll be here soon. Stop being so nervous. It’s enough that I’m in a panic, after nearly a year—”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Gabriel absent-mindedly. He glanced at his brother, who was talking enthusiastically to a woman in black, blowing into the mouthpiece of her oboe while holding the body of the instrument in her free hand. Gabriel again turned his head toward the artists’ entrance.

  “Stop worrying,” Nita reproved him. “You know how he hates hanging around backstage. He’ll go straight into the hall. We still have fifteen minutes to go.”

  Now Gabriel van Gelden was stroking his rounded little beard and gazing from the front of the stage at the empty seat, the only red patch in a hall where all the other seats were occupied. He turned his head a couple of times toward the side entrance, and with narrowed eyes also scanned the stairs, which were full of people sitting and standing. When the cellos finish
ed playing the first theme, he cocked his head at Nita, and it seemed to Michael that he could see her dark eyebrows rising and her face turning pale as she leaned forward in her place at the center, very close to the conductor’s podium, among the violins and violas, and strained her eyes to see the empty seat. Then the violins began to play anew, and one after the other the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon entered and answered them. Now a storm broke out, the dramatic second part of the overture. Not only chaos reigned here but also a suspenseful darkness, a hint of the tragedy about to take place. A rapid crescendo mounted and mounted until all the instruments of the orchestra had joined in while Theo van Gelden waved his arms and tried to embrace in the air the echoes of the terrible storm, which continued to swell and then almost subsided, and swelled again with the flute prominent.

  When the third part of the overture began with the flute now singing the beautiful familiar tune, which the English horn took over, and the low string instruments joined in the dialogue, Michael listened to it all as if to a story. At a certain moment he even sensed that his mouth was open and, embarrassed, he quickly closed it again. The triangle and the oboe debated with the strings the mysterious nature of the world, but they also depicted sun and meadows, forests and groves. Then the trumpet fanfare announced the entrance of the rebels. Bells and string instruments depicted the galloping horses, and in the hall there arose a world of revolt, heroism, and catastrophe. But you could also hear echoes of another Rossini in it, the much more cheerful one who made Michael laugh.

  And yet the trumpet fanfare now overwhelmed hunting horn and bird song. This was the hackneyed tune that was a staple of the police band’s repertoire at official functions and festive occasions. Michael now lost his concentration, and looked around the hall. He saw a broad smile on the face of the old man sitting in front of him and drumming with his fingers on the arm of his seat. The young woman next to him rested her head on his shoulder. Her very long dark hair fell over the back of her seat and touched the music critic’s knee. Michael had no doubt now that was what he was: he nodded his head and never stopped taking notes. Behind Michael, close to his ear, someone was slowly and steadily unwrapping candies. The rustle of the wrappers got on his nerves, and when he turned his head to glare at two elderly women to make them stop, he encountered a familiar pair of small eyes. Where the woman’s chin joined her big bosom, green beads glittered. They were the very beads that had rested on the bosom of the nurse sent by the Child Welfare Bureau to pay him a house call the day before yesterday. She smiled at him knowingly from the seat behind him, popped a yellow piece of candy into her mouth, and then leaned over and whispered into her neighbor’s ear.

  He turned his head to look at the stage. But he couldn’t rid himself of the image of the woman’s earlobes lengthening toward her non-neck as if pulled down by the weight of the copper earrings set with blue stones. Nurse Nehama, who had been sent to assess his suitability as a temporary foster family, was now sitting right behind him, and seeing with her own eyes that he wasn’t suitable. Here he was, and who was with the baby? He almost turned around to tell her about the babysitter, to explain that he had to be at the concert because of Nita. Instead he stared at Theo van Gelden’s back as he stamped his foot on the conductor’s podium. Then Michael leaned his elbows against the arms of the seat and buried his burning face in his cold hands. He admonished himself to be logical, forced himself to breathe quietly. He reminded himself that this nurse, like the director of the Child Welfare Bureau herself and the social workers there, were all certain that he and Nita were living together, and bringing up their child together. That they could have no objections to his accompanying her to a concert of hers, as long as they didn’t leave the babies alone. But he was not reassured. He exhorted himself to return to the music. Just then the overture came to an end, the audience applauded enthusiastically. He heard cries of “Bravo!” The bearded man on his right sat motionless.

  A shudder ran through him because of the little eyes fixed, he knew, on his back, and also because he saw that Nita was standing up on the stage in order to get a better view of the seat next to him, which had remained empty. He noticed that Gabriel van Gelden, who had stood up to shake the conductor’s hand, had turned his head to the side entrance of the hall. And Theo van Gelden, too, who then took a deep bow, and motioned to the solo cellist—Nita bowed clumsily—and toward the orchestra, froze for a moment as he looked at the row where Michael was sitting. He turned his head right and left to glance at the side entrances, wiping his brow, in a gesture characteristic of conductors, with a handkerchief he took from his jacket pocket. Then he motioned again to the orchestra. The audience clapped rhythmically. Michael pulled at his white cuffs so they would stick out of the gray sleeves of his suit jacket, and he smiled at the care with which he still dressed and shaved when he went to a concert. It was something that had not changed since the first concerts he had attended thirty years ago. (Thirty? he wondered, shocked. Was it already thirty years? What had happened in the course of those years? Where had they gone to?) When Becky Pomeranz, the mother of his close school friend Uzi Rimon, had taken him with her to the subscription concerts, and dexterously woven Michael’s musical education together with their sexual passion. It was strange that his relation to music, the emotions that it gave rise to in him, the compositions that agitated his soul, were connected to women he was drawn to. It was Becky Pomeranz who had infected him with her excitement, who had caused his heart to beat violently on mornings when a concert awaited him in the evening. It was because of Becky Pomeranz that he had embarked on the rituals of shaving and dressing up—in those days it was a long-sleeved white shirt and a dark-blue sweater with pale-blue squares knitted by his mother. The affair had only lasted one winter and spring, until the day Uzi opened a door and stood there looking at them. Because of her his breath still came in gasps before he entered a concert hall. Even now he could hear her whispering into his ear: “Remember this moment, remember that you were here this evening, that you heard Oistrakh himself playing Sibelius live.” Her breath was so sweet, and she had been dead over a year now.

  Theo van Gelden was an impressive-looking man, and he certainly wasn’t the man Michael had seen on the stairs of his apartment building. From the auditorium he looked taller than he really was. His surprisingly dark skin and his silver hair, his tuxedo, which gave him an air of dignity, his rapid steps as he left the stage for the second time, the vigor and authority he radiated—all these went some way to explain his success with women. Or his failure, depending on how you looked at the three divorces and the children all over the place. “Mille e tre,” Nita had said of him with a forgiving smile. It was some time before he realized that she was quoting from Leporello’s Catalogue Aria in Don Giovanni.

  The stage began to empty. The drums and cymbals were pushed back. The wind and brass players disappeared, and a number of string players left the stage. Then music began again. A Korean flutist in a blue sequined dress was playing Vivaldi’s La notte, the “Night” concerto. The seat on his left was still empty. Again Michael contemplated Nita. She looked attractive in her black evening gown, with her shining red-brown hair and very white shoulders. He was as proud of her as if she were his sister or daughter. The dark semicircles under her light eyes, which stained the pale olive of her face, were invisible at this distance. Michael had talked her into putting makeup on them on their way here, after she had kept talking about how everyone would be there—everyone meaning her brothers and her father. With great clarity he saw that he longed to be part of her “everyone.” What had started out as a practical measure, an act for the benefit of the Child Welfare Bureau, had become for him the beginning of seeing Nita as a person with whom he could share his daily life. It was a combination, he said to himself now, of her childishly desperate need for love and the absolute conviction with which she applied herself to everything she did, of the different voices that spoke from within her, and also, even though there was no explanat
ion for it, of the way in which she played, the sternness with which she sometimes held her body upright, as opposed to the softness with which she bent over the instrument, the way she would pick Ido up from the carpet to swing him while lecturing her baby on music. There was one moment when she held the baby girl in her arms and rocked her, humming, and at that moment—he had observed them from the kitchen—everything looked so perfect and right that he had to stop himself from hugging them both. Sometimes he doubted himself and thought he only wanted to give the baby a proper upbringing. He wanted to give her everything that was needed, and for that a wife was necessary. But he also wanted the baby to be his alone. As Nita herself had said about her baby.

  How much joy there could have been for him in the clean trills of the flute the slender girl held so easily. Her body arched forward at the beginning of every phrase, and straightened like a flower stem when it ended. How much joy there could have been in listening to what you know for certain is beautiful, but for the distress that withered everything and set a barrier between Michael’s consciousness of beauty and his ability to feel it in his heart. He saw the sweet face of the baby before his eyes. He still thought of her as “the baby,” even though he had grown used to the name he had hastily given her. He thought of the long nights when she awoke every two hours as if she had still not overcome her bottomless hunger, and of the serenity with which he woke up immediately and fed her, pacing the apartment with her on his shoulder after the feeding, alone and yet not in the least alone. How much sweetness, the promise of something for which he yearned, there was in the small face of a human creature whose needs and desires he could truly satisfy, could make happy.

  But behind all this arose the suspicious expression on the face of the nurse they had sent from the Social Services Department. She had come two days before Yom Kippur, toward the end of her day’s work. He had been waiting for her since morning. At first he had thought of going to work. Nita had even taken her cello to the bedroom, so that the nurse wouldn’t see her busy with anything but the babies. He had rehearsed Nita in what to say, preparing her for the eventuality that he wouldn’t be at home when the nurse arrived. Of course it would be preferable to be there, so that they could act the couple living together.