He was one of the rare pianists to spurn the bandwagon of bebop; from the very start he found what was “cool” tedious and chuckled to himself when the public tired of its overrated, languorous moods; he listened in when hard bop took off with its eruptions and calculated insolence, only to chortle away when music lovers began to find it not radical enough; he knit his brows before the “free” jazz cacophony, conceding that the idea of total rhythmic and melodic liberty was seductive on paper, but, bloodseed, a deadly bore in its application; he laughed up his sleeve when almost all the jazz community began to find those pieces gratuitous, even lazy; he was all ears when jazz fusion made its appearance, he even equipped himself with several synthesizers that he lovingly set up in his recently installed basement studio, but he never, never deigned to give a so-called electric show, since in his head it was clear that these toys were there to distract him from time to time, preferably in private, and not to show the way to an ordained future for jazz, as was asserted by the pretentious Miles D., convert to the religion of electronic music and the mind-numbing beat of rock, the laughable éminence grise who sought the attention of the rock audience, not seeing that this trend was going to render jazz trivial, wrenching it off its foundations of lived experience and authenticity; and when the young Turks started to claim that from now on you had to return to acoustic instruments, Oscar couldn’t help but complain to those near to him: All that for this? Ah, bloodseed, if only they’d listened to him, he could have spared so many people so many dead ends and such a huge waste of time. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got no swing, he insisted, to clinch his argument.
When he ran into other jazzmen, in a colleague’s living room or during a birthday celebration, it’s said that he pricked up his ears: contrary to popular belief, they didn’t chat about music but cash, about the ever increasing hold of money on the music “industry,” since now no one recoiled when you used that word. They complained about the fierce competition of rock’n’roll, and then in later years of just plain rock, while he retorted: But what did you expect, boys? To have a blank cheque for the rest of your days? The truth is that we’ve had it easy up to now, and I don’t know if you’re like me, but for me, to put up a good fight—he said, making as if to spit into his palms and roll up the sleeves of his suit—I don’t mind that at all. He then repeated one of his mother’s favourite sayings—he who knows the other and knows himself can wage a hundred battles without ever being in danger—before people started whispering behind his back that success had really gone to his head. Easy for him to talk like that, they went on, when they were off to the side, he was one of the elite, whose members you could count on the fingers of one hand, who, year in year out, on any continent, filled the most prestigious concert halls in the world, going from ovation to ovation, like the Napoleons of jazz.
Meanwhile, it seemed that Marguerite had overcome her timidity, and her tongue was loosened more and more so that she was arguing over anything at all. He asked her to be quiet, and she in turn reminded him that she had the right to express herself, and he wasn’t nine years old any more, playing horseshoes with his friends in the park. From that point on, Oscar lamented to his sisters, this woman used the secrets he’d shared with her to back him against the wall and sap his confidence. She insisted that his hard childhood had made him violent, verbally at least. And it was this woman, whom he’d idealised as a child, whose image had been a beacon for him for so many years, who was unable to appreciate him at his full value? For proof, he cited her disparaging judgments in his regard. They exchanged hurtful remarks that, one by one, dissolved their bonds and made them forget all they had in common, and in the end she retreated to wall herself off in a silence that, for Oscar, confirmed that she’d run out of arguments and was in the wrong.
Many years passed without his setting foot in Montreal, since he’d taken to paying his mother’s train ticket so she could come and visit him. He accepted with pleasure the invitation to open a new concert hall, but was shocked to discover that cranes, with a voracious appetite, were gobbling up whole sections of the neighbourhood and that thousands of families had been uprooted on short notice. As his childhood street was situated on the axis leading to the centre of town, it had been selected by the authorities to have built over its head a huge concrete autoroute, along which flowed a constant stream of cars, motorcycles, buses, and trucks. When you had a coffee in the morning, the cups shook as if they were shivering from cold, and when you wanted to talk, no matter the time of day, you had to yell to make yourself heard. In the evening, when you turned on the television set, you would have thought that all the channels had reached a common accord to broadcast only silent films, since you couldn’t hear a thing. At night, as the traffic rumbled on without stopping, the whole family dreamed of endless automobile trips. But why didn’t you say anything? he asked his mother. If you want to move, you only have to tell me, all right? Davina, whose face was now as wrinkled as an elephant’s behind, just murmured: But where on earth do you want me to go? I’m at home here, and no highway is going to drive me out!
When journalists asked him about the winds of change that continued to bear down on Montreal, he claimed to like them, but in conversations with his friends, he showed himself to be heartbroken. It seemed as if someone were amusing himself reshaping his childhood neighbourhood with an eraser in hand, since several families in the West Indian community had finally pulled up stakes after repeated cuts to their water, gas, and electricity on the part of the authorities, and a number of street names had been become French. What’s more, monuments to francophone personalities had been erected, and everywhere French was heard, in the businesses as well as in the parks. Bloodseed, he was conflicted: on the one hand, he was staggered by the speed with which the francophones had taken themselves in hand; on the other, he envied their progress, especially when he compared their situation to that of his community, still saddled with the worst jobs and the day-to-day racism whose existence everyone tried to deny. Is that when he began to cultivate his love for Canada at the expense of his attachment to his native province? The truth is that most of the time he avoided speaking out on political matters, at least in public. Still, it was during this period that he decided to write an ode to Canada, an entire disc where he praised the beauty of each region, the values that unified this great nation populated by diverse communities, some there for thousands of years, others for centuries, and still others recently arrived from the four corners of the world. When the Canadiana Suite was released his admirers called it a masterpiece, so much did his talents as a composer, deployed too rarely up to then, burst forth in broad daylight, as impressive in the ballad as in swing and gospel. The naysayers, unsurprisingly, poked fun at those pieces, which they described as simplistic and full of good intentions that ought not to deceive any music lover worth his salt. When old Jackson was asked about it all, she always replied, between two puffs on her cigar: Leave O.P. alone, okay? He composes for his pleasure, and if his music pleases people, so much the better, and if not, let those who don’t like it just change the station, rawtid.
During this time, Norman G. lengthened his tours without consulting him, while demanding more and more recordings. Oscar turned out so many records in a year that he sometimes asked himself out loud in an interview if he’d recorded such and such a piece, yes or no, invariably drawing chuckles from his detractors. What is more, his impresario often attributed his success not to the talent of his protégé, but to his own business savvy, after which Oscar, it’s said, swore to God that he’d break with Norman, but the next day—a night’s sleep counselling, no doubt, some sober second thought,—you saw him having breakfast head to head with his impresario as if nothing had occurred. Wealth lends mediocrity a certain aura, the denigrators said. Why put an end to a collaboration that, though it had its low points, produced good results overall? replied his admirers. Still, as time went on, Oscar often had to choke back his irritation when he didn’t
choose to make himself scarce if he saw Norman coming. As for that, as if to prove to him that he was dealing with a superior being, Norman would turn up wherever Oscar was hunkering down, whether in the toilets of a quiet café, on a New York square, or on the roof terrace of a hotel.
Meanwhile, Oscar had dissolved his trio with Ray and Herb, despite all it had done to make his name. On the one hand, he’d seemed to have exhausted the trio’s possibilities, and on the other, he could no longer go on struggling to make Herb stop drinking, keep an eye on him before every show, wake him in his hotel room in desperation to push him under the shower, or go looking for him on the other side of town where he lay hurt at the bottom of a brothel staircase or, even worse, in the repellent jail of a small-town police station in the American South.
One morning Oscar received a call from Hans Georg B., a sound engineer who had perfected the ultrasensitive microphones used for recording classical music and who had just launched a jazz recording company, whose first offerings featured German musicians. The multimillionaire, whom Oscar knew by name, invited him to his home for an extremely lucrative private concert, an invitation that O.P. accepted with alacrity, perhaps hoping that such an adventure would offer him a needed change. As it turned out, Hans Georg, a short man with a cheerful smile always on his lips, knowledgeable about his work, was able to describe in great detail his favourites among Oscar’s recordings, whose slightest nuances inspired, under his scrutiny, reflections on love, life, and death, as if he were analysing a philosophical treatise.
Hans Georg lived in a castle tucked away in the Black Forest, which, with its vast flower garden, its tall towers, and its lush private forest, seemed to have come right out of a fairy tale for children. Oscar and Hans Georg communicated through the latter’s eldest daughter, who translated their conversations on the fly. Hans Georg showed him, not without pride, the piano he’d bought especially for the concert, knowing full well that it was his favourite model. With a hand-picked audience of forty, including industrialists, neighbours, and famous artists, the show was a great success, or at least that’s what Oscar later claimed, considering it one of his best performances. What is more, spending a weekend with Hans Georg and his wife, who got along so well together, was a great comfort to him, even as it brought home to him the failure of his marriage with Marguerite.
Shortly after completing a recording under Hans Georg’s direction, Oscar declared in several interviews that it was the disc of a lifetime, with its bass notes like cannon shots and its trebles like the lapping of a crystalline stream. He took every opportunity to assert that his playing, on that record, had matured, and that his touch had achieved a fine balance between an assured approach and an ironic restraint whose expressive power led him into virgin territory. His music, he concluded, half in jest, had caught fire in the log-fire warmth, in the congenial atmosphere of Hans Georg’s castle. Was this a deliberate barb aimed at Norman G. via the media? Was he not afraid of incurring his rancour? Certainly, when asked questions about his impresario, he just answered with his usual smile, glanced at his watch, and claimed to be late for an appointment. It seems that, without any open disagreement, he and Norman had stopped communicating, and from then on, when one learned of the other’s presence in a particular place, whether it was a restaurant, a bar, or a festival tent, he quietly left, in full view of people nearby, who only days later realized why he had disappeared so suddenly.
After the Second World War, there began a conflict called the “Cold War,” in theory involving no combat on the ground, but only verbal attacks. The United States seemed to have found a good match in the USSR, just as greedy and taken to boasting and to converting the rest of the world to its cause. And so the two showboats transformed the entire world into a chessboard divided between them. The other countries had to follow, from the sidelines, the volleys of abuse they exchanged over the red telephone or risk a dizzying devaluation of their currencies, or even worse, a military occupation—a friendly one, that goes without saying. Fed up with so much vanity and the unquenchable desire for expansion, there were many, like Davina, who talked about two spoiled children who, as soon as they spotted the other child with a toy in his hand, went after him to take it away. As the conflict dragged on, the USSR made Oscar an offer for a series of concerts that was so tempting that he accepted instantly, flattered, it’s said, to be honoured with an invitation made only to the greats, delighted with this new project that seemed to come just at the right time, and persuaded that he could achieve two goals at once: realizing a youthful dream of contributing to the reconciliation of the two great powers and coming to terms with his marriage, as Marguerite would be along on the trip.
At the airport, as Oscar later told the story, he and Marguerite were met by a glum, cadaverous bureaucrat who confused him with another famous jazz pianist. They were put up in a hotel where there was an agricultural fair, and whose lobby was being used as a warehouse for crates of chickens who eyed them fearfully and shed feathers faster than the speed of light. Wherever they went, a young man, his skull shaved bare and his skin so flushed that he seemed to be in a perpetual state of dread, followed them. Moreover, was it his imagination, or did the people who’d shaken his hand really wipe their own palms immediately afterwards? Bloodseed, was he going crazy, or were these things really happening? He’d spent two hours in this country, as frigid as his own, when already he regretted having come, embarrassed by his own naiveté which had had him believe that his music would nourish a friendship between those two giants. Did he then hear Davina’s voice echoing inside his head, asking him if, yes or no, he had the brain of an anteater?
He preferred the countryside to the cities, where the audiences were more spontaneous and friendly. Back in the capital, after concerts that took place at unusual hours such as early afternoon or early morning, he and Marguerite took long walks. He was passionate about photography, and so he carried his camera and lenses with him wherever he went, but the man with the pale complexion who followed him around everywhere forbade him to photograph just about anything that piqued his curiosity: a countrywoman in a headscarf who was stirring a pot on the sidewalk, a church square where there was a crowd gathered, young people dressed in T-shirts featuring the image of a popular American singer. Not wanting to provide any ammunition for their mysterious hosts, he and Marguerite kept their composure, at least in public.
It’s said that one night, in their room, Oscar suggested that they stop ignoring the obvious: He no longer recognized himself in the image she reflected back to him. She seemed to see him as an angry man, obsessed with his own fame. He wasn’t blind, their marriage had been an empty shell for a long time. Marguerite lowered her eyes with a solemn look, but soon raised her head to meet his gaze. When he moved towards her to take her in his arms and head off another argument, she pulled back angrily, and when he persevered, Marguerite’s brow and her eyes went black as quick as a city being darkened by clouds. She exclaimed that she’d had enough of being forced to put up with his whims and the temper tantrums of a “great artist,” of playing the role of this young girl he idealized above all else, and who paradoxically she could never equal, she was fed up with having to pretend to share all his absurd memories from the hospital. Norman G. had warned her that their rupture was inevitable. When Oscar heard those words, his face went red, but she defied his gaze. What’s so sad in all this is you, you don’t believe in anything except your music. You don’t even believe in God anymore, she snapped. How can you live like that? Oscar stared at her, furious, raised his hand, saw that she was dry-eyed, then turned away and slammed the door behind him.
Back home, she moved to the other side of Toronto so as never to see him again. It’s said that for months, after his shows, he led a life that he’d always spurned up to then, going to bars, drinking heavily, and surrounding himself with women who sat on his knees the first chance they got. It seemed that he took to the life of a bohemian jazzman with no trouble a
t all, surprised to discover that he enjoyed it, so much so that he dated in turn a singer, a waitress, and a nurse, and even fell madly in love with a flight attendant, whom he married and with whom he had a child, only to divorce her a few months later, seeing the huge mistake he’d made. Rawtid, that hussy, that no account, made her living by bleeding the rich dry! His blunders soon drove him back to his more orderly way of life.
Meanwhile, he kept wondering how it was that Marguerite had managed to associate with Norman G. for all those years without his knowing anything about it. What did that mean? Was his relationship with Marguerite all the doing of his impresario? Had he engineered their reunion, only to have her break up their marriage to get even for the insult he’d made him swallow with Hans Georg B.? Or was he becoming ever more paranoid? He began to think so, he said to his friends, but most of the time he was persuaded that that’s how it all happened. Where and when would Norman G. strike next? Had his sadistic instincts not yet been satisfied, bloodseed? During his sleepless nights, he thought of phoning him to excuse himself, just to put his mind at rest—as his mother had advised him, who felt that he should never leave the devil’s side—but he always changed his mind, sometimes with the receiver already at his ear.
One night, coming back from a trip to Nova Scotia, where he’d given a solo performance, the train passed through his old neighbourhood. It’s said that he was staring at the reflection of his double in the window, already dimmed by time, when he saw, through spirals of blue smoke, children improvising a game of baseball in the middle of the road, while others were hoisting a kite into the night’s vastness. He then heard a hoarse voice struggling for breath with each syllable, and instantly recognized the distinctive timbre that had marked his childhood: One last thing, because don’t think I can’t hear you getting yourself in a state. The voice made a long pause as if to gather its strength, and as if it were going to break off for good, it pronounced, in a tone as wan as the Grim Reaper’s face itself: The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Oscar Page 11
