by Noel Hynd
“I never argue with this lady,” Geiger announced. “Particularly this one. If she says it’s time to go, then it’s time to go.” He allowed Diana to pull him away. The crowd applauded him as he departed.
Geiger greeted several members of the orchestra. The conductor, Robert DaSilva, greeted Geiger with enthusiasm. DaSilva was a stocky, affable man whose accent still echoed Provincia di Caserta in Italy, where he was born, and Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised.
Rolf and his conductor made final preparations for the evening. Geiger inspected the stage and examined the Bosendorfer piano that he would be playing. In negotiations, the Kimmel Center had promised this fine instrument and they had made good. A piano tuner stood by. The instrument was in excellent order. With everything set, Rolf then took Diana around the corner to a small pub for a late but light lunch. At six, he returned to the hotel to dress.
Some performers would have taken their limousine across the street. Instead, Geiger came out as a beautiful summer evening descended on Philadelphia. Dressed in black tie and tails to play, he took Diana by the hand and crossed Broad Street. They made a beautiful couple. Traffic stopped. A few horns honked. Geiger smiled and waved. He felt once again as if he were on top of the entire world. Geiger still had the appeal of a rock star. People stepped out of cars to wave to him.
Before the concert, he sat with the musicians in the lounge. He watched the clock with a twinge of anxiety. It was seven o’clock, then seven-twenty. At seven-thirty, the concert hall’s doors opened. He waited patiently, making small talk with anyone who would approach him.
At a quarter hour before he would play his first work, Rolf went to the curtain at stage left and peered out into the audience. The building was almost full, and crackling with excitement.
“Counting the house?” Maestro DaSilva asked as he walked by.
“Just seeing if I know anyone,” Geiger replied in jest.
“You don’t,” DaSilva countered, “and none of them know you either. They just came to see me conduct.”
“Why should they watch you, Maestro? The orchestra doesn’t even watch you.”
“You got a point there,” he said, and disappeared to flirt with a pretty red-haired woman who was the second violinist.
“Tiger, you almost look nervous.” He turned and saw the most beautiful face in the world.
“Hey,” he said. He put his arms around Diana.
“Want to sit on the bench with me while I play?” he asked. “I’d like that better than going out there alone.”
“I don’t think that would be considered serious musicianship.”
“Who gives a rat’s ass about serious musicianship,” he said in a low voice. She laughed.
“One minute, Mr. Geiger,” the stage manager, Bernard Vickers, announced in passing. Vickers was a tall thin man, upon whom clothes hung loosely. Rabinowitz had once described him as “a grapevine with a suit on it.”
“I want a kiss before I go out there,” Geiger said to Diana. She gave him one. Then a second. Abruptly, she realized,
“You are a little jittery, aren’t you?” He shrugged.
“A little.” Then he added, “This is something new. In the past I always could improvise, take the pulse of the audience, and take it in any direction.”
“You still can.”
“No,” he said. “Tonight I have to take it in the right direction.”
The houselights went down.
“See you later,” he said.
She had a seat in a private box with one of the directors of the Academy.
Rolf drew in a deep breath.
Yes, he had hacked around in San Remo before an audience of two hundred giddy European admirers. Tonight, however, this was music—serious Goddamn music!—before critics and a large sophisticated audience in a major eastern city.
Then, his time had arrived. Rolf took two strides forward and felt the thrill of live concerts return in a surge. He stepped into a spotlight that brought him on to the stage.
The applause was huge. It came at him in a swell, much like a wave, and for a moment something caught in his throat. But he went to the Bosendorfer, placed a hand on it and gave the audience a smile and a slight bow. It had been a long time since he had stood this way before a comparable American audience. And he felt all the better for it.
He sat and readied his hands. They were more moist than usual. Then he began to play. Geiger came in with a perfect touch, hitting the opening allegro with vigor and spirit. He was off to a fine start. As he played, he was pleased. The music was flowing brilliantly. He hardly knew which pleased him more, the flow and continuity of the thoughts or the brilliant counterpoint that seemed to flow effortlessly from his fingers.
There was also the passion. The execution. The extraordinary expression.
The opening work passed brilliantly and the audience erupted with fabulous applause when Rolf finished.
He left the stage amid accolades. When he returned, he hushed the audience and dedicated the second.
“As you know, this is my first public performance in the U.S. in three years,” he proclaimed boldly. “It is also my first appearance since the passing of one of history’s great pianists. Isador Rabinowitz.”
There was some applause, interrupting Geiger.
“I would like to dedicate this next work in particular and this evening in general to the late Maestro Rabinowitz.”
There was applause again, though in this same building Rabinowitz had once thrown a Stradivarius - followed by a torrent of obscenities, and then by a cellist - down the steps into the dressing room when the violin’s owner had displeased him.
The Chopin polonaise went seamlessly. The audience responded and the evening was in fine form.
A Beethoven piano sonata was third on the program. Here, too, Geiger triumphed. When he stood at the conclusion, bowed and walked off stage, the entire audience was on its feet.
Geiger was smashing and the offstage activity at the intermission reflected that, also. Diana grabbed Rolf and embraced him. The orchestra congratulated him, and DaSilva—sipping a suspiciously large gin and tonic—gave him a sharp thumbs up.
Everything was cooking. The mood at the intermission was triumphant. The break passed quickly. Then, twenty-five minutes later, the orchestra filed onto the stage. The first violinist and concert master, the last orchestra member to appear, was met by a warm ovation. Conductor DaSilva, a local favorite, followed to considerable applause, taking the position on the podium so many times previously occupied by Stokowski, Ormandy, Muti and Dutoit in this city.
Then Rolf Geiger drew a standing ovation when he walked back onstage. He sat down to play. This was, without question, one of his great nights of musical victory. Perhaps this was a turning point in his career, he told himself, the moment when he could put his improvisations and variations behind him and play the piano better than any man or woman had ever played.
He felt every bit of the excitement. This significant triumph in Philadelphia would be a prelude to fifty others around the glove, he now sense. He knew he was better than any other man alive. Within another eight months, everyone in the world would know it too.
He took his place at the keyboard of the gorgeous Bosendorfer. Then something strange happened. The mood onstage seemed to shift for an instant. The atmosphere darkened as if something were passing through.
Rolf could have sworn he felt something icy—like hands or strong fingers—flirting along the line of his shoulders, toward his neck. He cringed and shivered. It was powerful, this touch! Immensely big and powerful! He looked to DaSilva, who looked back at him and waited.
Geiger gave the conductor a nervous nod. He shook himself. He attempted to drive away that eerie touch that came from behind him.
“Go away,” he muttered quietly.
DaSilva looked back, having heard the whisper. The conductor frowned slightly, not understanding. Geiger shook him off and indicated that he should begin.
The conductor authoritatively raised his baton, held it for a beat, and brought it sharply downward. Geiger’s fingers found the keys and instantly brought the concert hall back to the Russia of 1875, when this piano concerto was composed.
Geiger had a sense of hyperrealism as he was playing. He knew immediately something was wrong! His fingers knew where to go without him directing them. His touch was free, spirited, amazingly pure and accurate. His fingers rippled passionately over the keyboard.
Geiger swelled with enthusiasm. It was brilliant! His performance could not possibly have been going better. And this brilliance would only serve as a fantastic springboard to—
To what? The feeling that was within him was now something more than excitement. He listened again to the music, the music that his hands were creating. He felt the rhythm in his hands and measured the flow of his fingers.
And he realized! The music he made was not his. The interpretation was not his.
“No, no, no,” he told himself. “This cannot be! A dead man cannot be in my body. Rabinowitz cannot be playing. I am Rolf Geiger and I am alive and Isador Rabinowitz is dead and this cannot be happening!” But it was!
He heard the unmistakable touch of Rabinowitz upon the keys. In every note, in every bar and syllable. Even the touch of Geiger’s foot on the pedal reflected the execution and the interpretation of the dead man.
The legato. The cantabile. It wasn’t Geiger’s. It was Rabinowitz’s.
Who in God’s name was playing? What the living hell was going on?
Geiger tried to compensate with his fingering and he discovered he could not. His own touch on the keyboard, the brilliant touch that had been with him all his life had deserted him.
The old man’s vicious spirit was moving his hands.
Rolf’s hands barely felt like his own. Some other soul was moving them. His gaze rose to find Diana in the audience. The fear on his face told her that something terrible was happening. But she didn’t know what. But then, he was the only one who really knew who was playing.
Rolf’s eyes returned to the stage. He glanced to DaSilva. The conductor sensed something was wrong, but couldn’t tell what. Rolf gave him a slight shake of the head.
Geiger felt the audience hanging upon his performance. Brilliance poured from his fingers, but not his brilliance. He proceeded, barely missing a breath. Yet now, instead of pleasure and excitement welling within him it was fear.
Where was his own execution? Where was his own standard of playing?
Where was his own spirit? Where were his own hands?
First Rabinowitz had gotten into his head. Now is body. Next the soul?
The sheer horror of the thought made him glance down. The hands playing before him were the hands of a very old man! A dead man. Or more accurately, they were the hands of a man so excruciatingly bitter that he refused to remain dead.
They were Rabinowitz’s hands playing this Tchaikovsky. Lined, wrinkled, gnarled, and even bearing the famous green emerald ring! Rabinowitz had taken over the concert!
Geiger nearly screamed. He tried to pull his hands away, but the hands continued to play.
Tchaikovsky soared.
It soared the way Rabinowitz had always wanted it to soar. Geiger could hear the brilliance, but also recognized the lack of spontaneity and constraint.
Rabinowitz’s dark trademarks. The old bastard’s fingerprints. His death grip on music.
Geiger looked down again. The aging hands played for the aged misanthropic spirit. The emerald in the ring sparkled in the lights and winked like the eye of a demon. Geiger’s hands and body responded to a command that was not his, a possession that belonged to Rabinowitz.
Geiger fought the impulse to stand and run from the piano. Then, when he gave in to that impulse and wanted to flee, his body would not obey.
The possession was complete. In utter terror, Geiger watched for the final few seconds as the hands at the keyboard, bedecked with the emerald ring, continued to play.
Grandly! Magnificently! And now in the inspired style of the young Rabinowitz.
The delicate nuances of the work, the fingers at the keyboard, seemed like feathers. In the passages that required more strength, there was a forcible grasp and a tenacious élan that evoked gasps from the audience. Each note stood out like a cut, multifaceted emerald. The entire concerto swept and sparkled like a freshly fallen Moscow snow.
The music boomed. Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky!
One of the many composers that Rabinowitz had “owned.”
Geiger approached the final measures, a cascade of octaves and chords. The hands played across the keyboard. Geiger made no effort to play. He watched in terror as his hands moved without his control. The hands embraced the final notes and swept upward in triumph.
The emerald ring vanished as did the lines on the flesh of Geiger’s hands. He felt something unspeakable leave him. He was finished.
There was silence in the hall. Then the house erupted. Applause was instant and thunderous. It rose from downstairs and swelled upward into the general admission area just beneath the ceiling. And beneath the ovation, Rolf could hear Rabinowitz.
“Ten dollars a seat, Rolf. Your white-trash old man couldn’t even have bought one on the day he died!”
Geiger’s lips moved, trembling first, then giving rise to a curse under his breath
“Shot in the neck, wasn’t he? Maybe you should try the same.”
Geiger mouthed the profanity again.
DaSilva saw it, and, not understanding, thought it was an oath of exhilaration. Patrons in the front rows were either amused or shocked. Some, both.
Geiger pulled back his hands. He felt a tug on them, as if they were being held by something unseen. He yanked them down. The spirit of Rabinowitz released them. Geiger had control of them again.
He stood. He staggered. He looked blankly at the audience and the avalanche of flowers hurled toward him. An armada of beautiful young women rushed the stage and were held back by security people. Rolf nodded. He was bathed in sweat and emotion. He couldn’t find a smile.
The onetime prodigy stepped away from the bench upon which he had played. He gave a nod to DaSilva. He reached out, his hands trembling, to both the conductor and the first violinist. He held the violinist’s hand for a moment and thanked her.
Then Rolf turned back to the audience.
Everywhere before him were twenty-five hundred spectators standing in approval, hands upraised in tumultuous applause. The echo of “Bravo, bravo,” carried downward from the family circle. It rebounded across the parterre audience and embraced him. The applause was wildly enthusiastic and relentless. No one made a move to the exit.
Geiger stood in the midst of all this, a disbelieving figure who suddenly felt very small. The orchestra saluted him and withdrew. But he motioned to the orchestra with a sweeping gesture and demanded that they come back onstage to share the moment with him.
With trembling hands, he again thanked conductor DaSilva. DaSilva again saw something strange in the young pianist’s eyes but did not understand it.
Then Geiger fled. He exited the stage and proceeded quickly downstairs to the dressing room, catching no one’s eye as he ran.
He went into the dressing room and closed the door behind him. Above him, the applause thundered longer and steadier. He could hear the shouts for an encore and he trembled at the thought of those hands, “Rabinowitz’s hands,” returning.
He couldn’t play an encore. He couldn’t. Not tonight.
For that matter, he wondered, how could he ever play again? Was he so possessed by the spirit, even the body, of Rabinowitz, that any note he could ever plunk out at the piano would only be another man’s music? Suicide was suddenly a comforting thought. At least it would put him on an even plane with Rabinowitz—angry and dead.
Geiger collapsed into a heavy club chair. He felt his heart race. He felt the sweat all through his shirt and formal attire.
Slowly, riddl
ed with fear, he held up his hands before his eyes. The hands that contained his genius. They were his own again. They were back. For the moment, at least.
The roar continued above him. The audience stomped its feet for more. If the tumult was changing at all, it was only getting louder.
Bad form, he thought to himself. Very bad. The audience was demanding his return for an encore and he was nowhere to be seen.
Oh, but what could he play? How could he play anything?
Moonlight Sonata? Fur Elise? And whose hands, whose spirit, would play?
Deep within him, there was a fear unlike any that he had ever known before. Then he felt something sweep past him, much like a draft from a door that had suddenly opened.
Oh, God. The spirit! It was back!
It was almost as if there was something cold playing at the nape of his neck. Something icy. Like fingers that had been dipped in snow.
He drew a long breath. It was the moment of a great triumph, yet he knew that he hadn’t even played that evening. Rabinowitz had played and Geiger had been robbed of his triumph.
What the future held, he could only conjecture.
And still the audience above him roared.
He thought of a target pistol that he kept in New York. It crossed his mind, for the first time in his life, to use it on himself.
“Why don’t you?” asked a voice. “In the neck, if you please, just like your racist Jew-baiting old man!”
“Shoot myself?”
“Why don’t you? You’ll never be as great as I. I would never permit it.”
“Where are you?” Geiger asked the empty room.
Upstairs, the audience was still stomping. Pounding. Insistent. They didn’t just want him back. They demanded him back. Or, more accurately, they wanted back whoever had mesmerized them with Tchaikovsky.
It was painfully clear to him now. Any greatness he attained would only be the legacy of Rabinowitz. He could never play again on his own. The world tour would be an exercise in humiliation, nothing more.
