The Gravedigger's Daughter
Page 44
At such times, entering the store, Gallagher was smiling and exuberant and very much in control. He wore an expensive, rumpled camel’s hair coat, his high forehead gleamed and his hair straggled over his shirt collar. Often he hadn’t shaved for a day or two, his jaws glinted like metal filings. Hazel felt the glamor of her friend’s sudden presence, the flurry of drama that accompanied his every gesture. In the tastefully decorated interior of Zimmerman Brothers Pianos & Music Supplies, on the polished parquet floor, Gallagher seemed somehow larger than life, like a figure that has stepped down off a movie screen. He made much of Edgar Zimmerman, zestfully shaking the man’s small hand. He seemed even to enjoy the attention of Madge Dorsey and Evelyn Steadman who fluttered about him, calling him “Mr. Gallagher” and imploring him to play the piano.
“Just for a few minutes, Mr. Gallagher. Please!”
It was a lively scene. If business at Zimmermans had been slow, Chet Gallagher’s appearance would end the day on a bright note. For it seemed that the jazz pianist was something of a local figure, and well liked.
Glancing at Hazel with a sardonic smile You see? Chet Gallagher is a big deal in some quarters.
Hazel removed herself to the side, not entirely comfortable. When Gallagher made one of his appearances she was obliged to show pleasure as well as surprise. Her face must light up. She must hurry to him in her high-heeled shoes, allow him to squeeze her hand. She could not hold back. She could not wound him. This was the man who had paid for her move to Watertown, who’d loaned her money for numerous items including the deposit on her apartment. (“Loaned” at no interest. And no need to repay him for a long time.) Gallagher insisted there were “no strings attached” to his friendship with them yet Hazel felt the awkwardness of her situation. Gallagher was becoming ever more unpredictable: driving from Malin Head Bay to Watertown on an impulse, to see her, and driving back to Malin Head Bay that night; capable of not turning up in Watertown when he’d made arrangements to see her, with no explanation. Though he expected explanations from Hazel, he refused to explain himself to her.
In the music store, Hazel saw Gallagher staring at her with an expression of confused tenderness and sexual arrogance and she was filled with anxiety, resentment. He wants them to think I’m his mistress. He owns Hazel Jones!
It was a masquerade. Yet she could not abandon it.
“Come play for us, Chester! You must.”
“Must I? Nah.”
Gallagher had been a pupil of Hans Zimmerman’s as a boy. There was an air of the renegade boy about him, amid these admiring elders. Implored to sit at a Steinway grand, Gallagher eventually gave in. Stretched and flexed his long fingers, lunged forward suddenly and began to play piano music of unexpected subtlety, beauty. Hazel had been expecting jazz and was surprised to hear music of an entirely different sort.
The adoring women identified Liszt: “Liebesraum.”
Gallagher was playing from memory. His playing was uneven, in sudden rushes and runs of showy dexterity, then again elegantly understated, dreamy. And then again showy, so that you were watching the man’s hands, arms, the sway of his shoulders and head, as well as listening to the sounds the piano produced. Yet Hazel was impressed, enthralled. If she and Zack lived with Chet Gallagher, he would play piano for them in this way…
You must love this man. You have no choice.
She felt the subtle coercion. If Anna Schwart could stand beside her now!
But Gallagher was striking wrong notes, too. Some of these he managed to disguise but others were blatant. Amid a virtuoso run of treble notes he broke off with “Damn!” He was embarrassed, making so many mistakes. Though the others praised him and urged him to continue, Gallagher turned obstinately on the piano stool like a schoolboy, his back to the keyboard, and fumbled to light a cigarette. His face was flushed, his prominent, pointed ears were flushed red. Hazel could see that Gallagher was furious with himself, and impatient with Edgar Zimmerman explaining fussily to the three women, “You see, it is the style of Liszt himself, how Chester plays the ‘Liebesraum.’ How his arms roll with the notes, the strength in his arms, flowing from his back and shoulders. It is the revolutionary manly style Liszt made so famous, that the pianist could be equal to the composer’s art.”
To Gallagher, Zimmerman said with paternal reproach, “You should never have abandoned your serious music, Chester. You would have made your father so proud.”
“Would I.”
Gallagher spoke flatly. He was lighting a cigarette carelessly, Hazel dreaded sparks falling onto the piano.
Now Gallagher lapsed into teasing Edgar Zimmerman, as he teased Hazel asking how “my girl was doin’” and so Hazel eased away with an embarrassed laugh. She knew, it was through Gallagher’s connection with Hans Zimmerman that she owed her job here, she must be grateful to Gallagher as to the Zimmermans and such gratitude was best expressed by not standing about idly like everyone else. Hazel had been shutting up the cash register when Gallagher had appeared and she returned to the task now. She would spend minutes deftly stacking nickels and dimes into rolls for the bank.
Such a tedious, exacting ritual! Neither Madge nor Evelyn could bear it but Hazel executed it flawlessly and without complaint.
“Hazel, my dear. Time to call it a day.”
There was Gallagher in his rumpled coat, advancing upon Hazel with her own coat opened to her, like a net.
Sorry for barging in on you like that, Hazel. You weren’t expecting me tonight I guess.
No.
But why’s it matter? You haven’t anything you’re hiding from me have you?
Not likely that he would follow them into this new life.
For this was keeping-going in their new way. She smiled to think how astonished he would be, if he could know!
Zimmerman Brothers Pianos & Music Supplies. In a row of brownstones on South Main Street, Watertown. The bay window, visible up and down the street, and the Steinway grand piano illuminated in the bay window. And a vase of tall white lilies on the piano waxy in perfection.
And the brownstone at 1722 Washington Street where H. Jones and her son lived in #26. Where in the vestibule beside the aluminum mailbox for #26 the name h. jones was neatly handprinted on a small white card as a concession to the U.S. Postal Service.
(Hazel protested to the mailman: “But I don’t get any mail except bills�gas, electric, telephone! Can’t bills be delivered just to ‘occupant, #26’? Is it a law?” It was.)
She did remember: the Watertown Plaza Hotel.
Where as Mrs. Niles Tignor she had signed her name in the registration book. As Mrs. Niles Tignor she had been known. Only vaguely did she remember the rooms in which she and Niles Tignor had stayed and she could not remember at all his face, his manner or his words to her for a mist obscured her vision as, when she was tired, the faint high-pitched ringing was discernible in her (right) ear. Mostly Hazel avoided the regal old Watertown Plaza Hotel. Except, Gallagher liked the Plaza Steak House. Naturally, Gallagher liked the Plaza Steak House where he was known, his hand warmly shaken. Gallagher was a steak man: plank steak, onion rings, very dry martinis. When he visited Watertown he insisted upon taking Hazel and Zack to the Steak House. Hazel was conscious of the danger. Though instructing herself Don’t be ridiculous, Tignor isn’t a brewery agent any longer. All that is finished. He has forgotten you. He never knew Hazel Jones. For those evenings at the Steak House, Hazel dressed somewhat conspicuously. Gallagher was in the habit of surprising her with attractive “outfits” for such occasions. Ever vigilant of the roaming eyes of other men, Gallagher yet took a perverse pride in Hazel’s appearance at his side. In the lobby of the Watertown Plaza, holding Zack’s hand and walking close beside Chet Gallagher, Hazel felt the sickish sliding glissando of male eyes moving upon her yet surely there was no one here who knew her, who knew Niles Tignor and would report her to him.
She was certain.
A woman opens her body to a man, a man will possess it as his own.
Once a man loves you in that way, he will come to hate you. In time.
Never will a man forgive you for his weakness in loving you.
15
“Repeat, child.”
A Czerny study that was twenty-seven bars of allegretto sixteenth-notes in four flats. Zack had played it once, slightly rushed, in small anxious surges as his piano teacher beat out the time with a pencil exact as the antiquated metronome on the piano. Zack had not missed or struck any wrong notes at least. Now at Hans Zimmerman’s request, he played the study again.
“And another time, child.”
Again, Zack played the Czerny study. Half-shutting his eyes as his fingers flew rapidly up, up into the treble, up, up into the treble in repetitive gliding motions. It was a time, it would be months, years of such studies: Czerny, Bertini, Heller, Kabalevsky. Acquiring and refining piano technique. When Zack finished, he did not remove his slightly trembling hands from the keyboard.
“You have memorized it, yes?”
Mr. Zimmerman closed the exercise book.
“Again, child.”
Zack, half-shutting his eyes as before, replayed the study, twenty-seven bars of allegretto sixteenth-notes in four flats. The four/four time of the composition never varied. No compositions in the Royal Conservatory of Music Pianoforte Studies ever varied. When he finished, the elderly Hans Zimmerman murmured in approval. He’d removed his smudged eyeglasses, he was smiling at his youngest pupil.
“Very good, child. You have played it four times, it can be no mistake you have hit only right notes.”
In Watertown, New York, where Mr. Gallagher had brought them. Where days-of-the-week were crucial as they had not been crucial in Malin Head Bay. Where Saturday was so crucial that Friday, which was the day-before-Saturday, soon became for Zack a day of almost unbearable excitement and apprehension: he was distracted in school, at home feverishly practiced piano for hours not wanting to take time to eat supper and refusing to go to bed until late: midnight. For Saturday morning at 10 A.M. was his weekly lesson with Hans Zimmerman.
Saturday was Zack’s favorite day! All of the week built up to Saturday morning when his mother brought him with her to Zimmerman Brothers arriving at 8:45 A.M. and they would not leave until the store closed early Saturday afternoon at 3:30 P.M.
How old is he, Hazel?
Six and a half.
Only six and a half! His eyes…
There was the excitement of Zack’s lesson with the elder Mr. Zimmerman which sometimes ran over ten, fifteen minutes while the next pupil waited patiently in a corner of the music instruction room at the rear of the brownstone. But there was the excitement, too, of being allowed to remain behind to observe certain of Mr. Zimmerman’s advanced students at the keyboard for this, too, was a way of acquiring technique.
“So long as you promise to sit very still in the corner, child. Still as a little Maus.”
Zack thought A mouse is not still but nervous.
Zack found the other pupils’ lessons of great interest. For he understood that these more advanced lessons would be his one day. He did not doubt that this was so, Mr. Gallagher had set into motion a sequence of actions and his trust in Mr. Gallagher was absolute.
He’s allowing Zack to observe other pupils, Chet. Isn’t that wonderful!
If it isn’t too much for the kid.
Too much, how can it be too much?
Children turn against music if they’re pushed too hard.
Strange he felt no envy of the other piano pupils except envy of their larger hands, their greater strength. But these too would be his one day.
What relief, Hans Zimmerman never made personal or hurtful remarks to his students, as Sarrantini had done! He cared only for the execution of music. He seemed to make little distinction between older and younger pupils. He was a kindly teacher who praised when praise was due but did not wish to deceive, for always there was more work: “Schnabel took it as his ideal, he wished to play only those piano works that cannot be fully mastered. Only those pieces ‘greater than they can be played.’ For what can be played, is not the transcendental. What can be played easily and well, is Schund.”
The disdainful expression on Hans Zimmerman’s face allowed his pupils to know what the German word must mean.
Zimmerman had himself studied with the great Artur Schnabel, Gallagher informed them. In Vienna, in the early 1930s. He was now retired from the Portman Academy of Music in Syracuse where he’d taught for decades. He was long retired from the concert stage. Gallagher surprised Hazel and Zack bringing several records Zimmerman had made in the late 1940s with a small prestigious classical record label in New York City.
The records were piano pieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. Hazel would have spoken to Hans Zimmerman about them except Gallagher cautioned her: “I don’t think Zimmerman wants to be reminded.”
“But why not?”
“Some of us feel that way about our pasts.”
At Zimmerman Brothers, Hans Zimmerman kept to the rear quarters of the brownstone while Edgar Zimmerman ran the business. The two were co-partners, it was believed, yet Hans had virtually nothing to do with the selling of merchandise, employees, finances; Edgar ran everything. Hans was known to be only four or five years older than his brother, but he appeared of another generation entirely: courtly in manner, rather detached and deliberate in his speech, with smudged bifocals that were often drooping out of his vest pocket, untrimmed steely whiskers, a habit of breathing noisily through his teeth when he was concentrating on a pupil’s playing. Hans who was tall, gaunt, noble in his bearing wore mismatched coats, sweaters, unpressed trousers. His favored footware was a pair of very old penny loafers. You could see that he’d been a handsome man once, now his face was in ruins. He was reticent, elliptical in criticism as in praise. From out of his corner Zack witnessed entire lessons when Mr. Zimmerman murmured no words except “Good. Move on” or “Repeat, please.” Several times Zack had heard the terrible words: “Repeat the lesson for next week. Thank you.”
It was common for Mr. Zimmerman to have Zack repeat pieces, but he had never yet asked Zack to repeat an entire lesson. He called him “child”�he didn’t seem to remember his name. For why should he remember a name? Why a face? His interest in his pupils was in their hands; not their hands exactly but their fingers; not their fingers exactly but their “fingering.” You could assess a young pianist by his or her “fingering” but you could make nothing of significance out of a name or a face.
The whole of the magnificent Hammerklavier Hans Zimmerman had memorized more than fifty years before remained in his memory intact, each note, each pause, each tonal variant yet Hans could not be troubled to remember the names of people he saw frequently.
And here was the gifted child, a rarity in Hans Zimmerman’s life now: out of nowhere he’d seemed to have come with his eager, somehow old-European eyes, not at all an American boy, to Zimmerman’s way of thinking. He would ask no personal questions of the boy’s mother, he did not want to know about the boy’s background, he did not want to feel anything for the boy. All that was extinguished in him now. And yet in weak moments the piano teacher found himself staring at the boy as he played his exercise pieces, one of the tricky little Czernys perhaps. Presto in six/eight time, three sharps. Left and right hands mirroring each other rapidly ascending, descending. In the concluding bars, left and right hands were nearly a keyboard apart, the little boy stretched his arms as in an antic crucifixion.
Hans Zimmerman surprised himself, laughing aloud.
“Bravo, child. If you play Czerny like Mozart, how will you play Mozart?”
16
Makes me happy. What makes me happy. O Christ what!
No idea in hell what to play. No one had ever made such a request of the jazz pianist before. His fingers fumbled at the keyboard. So much of his adult life had become mechanical, his will suspended and indifferent. The emptiness of his soul opened before him like a deep
well, he dared not peer into it.
His fingers would not fail him, though. Chet Gallagher at the keyboard. That old classic “Savin’ All My Love For You.”
And that turned out to be so.
17
A love ballad, a bluesy number.
Driving this snowswept landscape.
Gallagher drifting in a dream, at the wheel of his car. All his life he has been hearing music in his head. Sometimes the music of others, and sometimes his own.
Driving to Grindstone Island
in the St. Lawrence River floating
in reflected sky
Lovesick Gallagher redeemed
on Grindstone Island
in the St. Lawrence River floating
in reflected sky
“Anybody want to turn back? I don’t.”
They were driving to Grindstone Island. They were planning to spend Easter weekend at the Gallagher lodge. The three of them: Gallagher’s little family. For he loved them, out of desperation that the woman did not love him. The child he loved, who seemed at times to love him. But in the rearview mirror since they’d left Watertown, the child’s face was averted, Gallagher could not catch the child’s eye to smile and wink in complicity repeating his brash challenge, “Anybody want to turn back? I sure as hell don’t.”
What could the Joneses say. Captive in Gallagher’s car being driven at less than forty miles an hour on icy-slick Route 180.
Then Hazel murmured what sounded like No in her maddening way that managed to be both enthusiastic and vague, doubtful.