by Gerald Elias
‘Finished already?’ Schlossberg asked.
‘Love that wild sage,’ Jacobus said.
‘Me, too. Well, let me formally introduce you to another sage, my young colleague, Bronislaw Tawroszewicz. You ducked out of the reception so fast last night you didn’t have a chance to chat. Call him Mr T. Everyone does. This is his fourth year at Kinderhoek and he’s up for tenure at the end of the semester.’
‘How do you do, Mr Jacobus?’ said Tawroszewicz. ‘I saw you again at the rehearsal this afternoon. What did you think?’
Why was everyone always asking for an opinion he didn’t want to give?
‘Great music.’
‘Yes, I agree. And orchestra?’
‘Coming along.’
‘Yes. I know how you mean. You try different things. But sometimes intimidation is the only way to get it out of those kids. I’m young, but I’m old school, like you. That’s how I learned. European style.’
‘Well, Mr T,’ Jacobus said. ‘Being tough is only half the story.’
‘And what is the other half?’
‘Having something intelligent to say.’
A pause, seemingly uncomfortable for Tawroszewicz, perfectly fine for Jacobus for whom sound was an uninvited interruption between silences.
‘Well, Bronislaw must be saying a lot of intelligent things,’ Schlossberg broke in, ‘because he’s doing wonders with the group, and the kids love him. He’s just a big teddy bear.’
Teddy bear? What did that mean? Stocky? Hairy? In need of a shave? Jacobus sometimes gained insight into appearances even when he would rather not.
‘They give me the highest evaluations,’ Tawroszewicz added, as if students’ opinions provided irrefutable empirical evidence.
‘So your tenure’s in the bag,’ Jacobus said, disinclined to argue whether Tawroszewicz was qualified or not.
‘There’re always some naysayers,’ Schlossberg said. ‘As you well know. You’ve been around academia. I’d bet there were even some who would second-guess your qualifications.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Aaron.’ It was the unmistakable voice of Aaron’s better half, Sybil Baker-Hulme, with paint-peeling disdain. ‘To put Bronislaw’s name in the same sentence as Mr Jacobus’s is akin to your curious tendency to insert yours in the same sentence as Beethoven. Why don’t you partners-in-crime go off on an opossum hunt while Mr Jacobus and I have a scholarly chat?’
‘I couldn’t think of a better idea myself, dear,’ Schlossberg said. ‘In fact, dear, there’s deer in the dining room. While we feast on venison, I’m sure Jacobus would like nothing better than to hear your opinions on whether Rameau began his trills on the top note upon attaining puberty.’
Sybil Baker-Hulme placed a cautionary hand on Jacobus’s thigh as if to prevent him from saying something untoward. Since he had nothing to say, untoward or otherwise, the gesture was superfluous. Maybe, on the other hand, she was indicating to him, ‘I told you so.’
As soon as the two men disappeared into the dining room, Sybil piped up.
‘I’ll never understand what Aaron sees in that cretin,’ she said. ‘Aaron has more than his share of faults, but complete absence of musical intelligence isn’t one of them.’
‘The kids love Mr T. He told me so himself.’
‘You wouldn’t know that from the scowls on their faces.’
‘Professionals-in-training?’
‘Perhaps so,’ Sybil laughed. ‘But his music-making, especially the Baroque, is so, so …’
‘Crude?’
‘Precisely.’
‘There’s more than one way to play Baroque music.’
‘No doubt, Mr Jacobus. There are in fact several historically appropriate ways. But there are an infinite number of ways to play it wrong, and Mr T has a patent on all of them.’
It was Jacobus’s turn to laugh.
‘By any chance,’ she continued, ‘did he tell you the two of us will be collaborating – and I use that word in the broadest sense – on the performance of “Spring” on the Vivaldi by Twilight concert?’ Sybil Baker-Hulme obviously assumed Jacobus’s answer was ‘no’ since she didn’t bother to wait for his response.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am going to narrate Vivaldi’s sonnet as a prelude to each movement and then will hold my nose while they play. But here’s my surprise: One would guess that I would recite in the Italian—’
‘But you’re doing it in English?’ Jacobus asked. He was indeed surprised. English would be the sensible thing to do. He had told Audrey Rollins that the sonnet was in Italian, but Audrey was the performer, not the audience. The audience would benefit from understanding the text and how it related to the music. Having heard Baker-Hulme at the symposium, however, he had gathered audience comprehension would take a back seat to authenticity.
‘Heavens, no, Mr Jacobus!’ she replied. ‘English! How proletarian. I shall narrate in eighteenth-century Venetian dialect, the language of the great playwrights Carlo Gozzi and Carlo Goldoni; the language in which it would have been spoken in Vivaldi’s day and place.’
So not even modern day Italians would understand it, Jacobus thought.
‘You said you had something interesting you wanted to talk to me about?’ he asked.
‘This is presumptuous of me, I know,’ Sybil said. ‘But have you read my new book by any chance?’
‘Which book is that?’
‘The Emergence of Mezzo Piano in the Late Baroque and Its Implications for European Society. It received a glowing review in Early Music Journal: “Dr Baker-Hulme’s voluminous tome offers heretofore unknown insights into how growing artistic freedom” – the first inclusion of mezzo piano in mid-eighteenth-century scores – “rocked the very foundations of the aristocratic power structure of central France and Germany.”’
Jacobus, desperately not wanting to betray his promise to Yumi to behave himself, grasped hastily for a polite reply.
‘I couldn’t find the Braille edition,’ he replied. That should put him on safe ground. ‘Might it be coming out in Braille by any chance?’ he asked.
‘Sadly not.’
‘Damn!’
‘But I would be happy to read to you some of its more salient points.’ Maybe he had been too convincing. ‘Sometime soon, perhaps?’
‘Let us say sometime,’ Jacobus replied.
‘How long will you be with us? Will you be staying over spring break?’
‘Just until after the masterclass tomorrow.’
‘Well, bugger that!’ Sybil said, to Jacobus’s surprise.
‘But Hedge said they might want me back sometime in the future,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’
‘I would also love to show you an original manuscript I have by Domenico Scarlatti of a harpsichord sonata in F major. It might quite possibly be the first written mezzo piano in all of music history! But of course you wouldn’t be able to see it, would you? I would be happy to let you touch it, however. You can literally feel the history! It’s in the library.’
Jacobus gulped the remainder of the wine in his glass.
‘I would love that,’ he said. ‘Could you please get me some more wine?’
He extended the empty glass.
‘Delighted.’
As soon as she was gone, Jacobus grabbed his cane. With his hand on the railing, he shuffled his way to the steps that descended into the woods with the alacrity of a sighted man half his age.
The air had cooled considerably, indicating to him that the sun had set, so he hoped that with only a few steps he would be hidden from Sybil’s view. Jacobus tapped his cane both forward and sideways. The forward taps enabled him to determine safe passage along the spongy forest floor – first grassy and then leaf- and moss-covered – without walking into a tree or boulder, or tripping on a root, or falling into a furrow. The sideways taps first made contact with annoying, thorny brambles that grabbed at his cane. Then came a grove of birches, but their trunks were of insufficient width to provide protection from anoth
er stifling lecture on eighteenth-century performance practice. Jacobus probed deeper into the woods, tapping trees with the virtuosity of a jazz drummer. He finally encountered several potential candidates, ringing his cane around their trunks to determine their circumference. From the bark’s rough texture, he guessed they were maples and hid behind the broadest of them. The sudden exertion, combined with the wine and rich food, had winded him, but gradually his breathing slowed and he found himself relishing the respite from humanity and his anonymity in the forest.
Above the muffled conversation emanating from Schlossberg’s house, a single thrush called. Though he could not see it, Jacobus knew it as a harbinger of the descending darkness of night. Yes, he would be well hidden. A bee buzzed by, behind schedule as it looped its way back to its hive. Then it was gone and the thrush, too, after a time, fell silent. Jacobus inhaled the moist evening air, redolent of pine and humus. He waited, hoping Sybil had given up on him and had corralled another victim. The longer he waited, the more he would like to have remained in that spot, lulled by its tranquility. He dozed for a time, he didn’t know for how long – it could have been a half hour or more, as it was getting chilly – suddenly realizing Yumi might be trying to find him. He was about to hurry back to the veranda when he heard a new sound. Off in the woods, leaves were slowly, quietly being tramped upon. A squirrel? Too big. Four legs? A deer, perhaps, returning to its shelter before nocturnal predators commenced their night job. Jacobus listened with growing interest. No, it wasn’t a deer. That was for sure. Deer can’t talk.
FIVE
Friday, March 20
The phone rang and rang, waking Jacobus. Where am I? Jacobus asked himself. Not Nathaniel’s. Ah, yes. Motel room. Campus Inn. He had drunk too much at the party. He had wandered back from the woods. Yumi had driven him back to the inn and tucked him into bed. That much he could recall. He felt for the phone on the bedside table.
‘Yeah?’
‘Hello, Mr Jacobus?’
‘Speaking.’
‘This is Sybil. Sybil Baker-Hulme?’
Jacobus didn’t respond. He started to remember. He was in no mood to hear about how mezzo piano had overturned the world order.
‘Mr Jacobus?’
‘What time is it?’
‘About ten a.m.’
Jesus, he thought. Yes, too much wine.
‘I just wanted to find out if you were all right.’
‘Of course I am. I just overslept.’
‘I’m so relieved. It was pretty nasty. Dante Millefiori was just released from hospital.’
‘Who’s Dante Millie Flory and what are you talking about?’
‘He’s our orchestra conductor.’
‘So you want me to send him a get well card? “Can’t wait to see you back on the podium real soon?”’
‘Mr Jacobus, I’m talking about the food poisoning.’
‘What food poisoning?’
‘You haven’t heard? Some of our party guests contracted severe stomach poisoning. Tanner Evans – he’s a theory professor – and Dante actually spent the night in the infirmary. Even Aaron has been laid low with symptoms. He feels terribly about the whole fiasco, in more ways than one, as you can imagine.’
Jacobus imagined which of Schlossberg’s epicurean delights had caused it. Poetic justice, he thought. That’s what you deserve when you compare yourself to Beethoven. The only thing the two composers had in common was suffering from acute digestive ailments.
‘Everyone is expected to make a full recovery, but I just wanted to find out if you had caught it like the others.’
‘I guess not. The squirrel wasn’t FDA approved?’
‘No, it wasn’t the squirrel. That was my guess, too. It was the mushrooms. Did you eat them?’
Jacobus recalled tossing them over the side of the veranda.
‘I passed.’
‘Lucky for you. Aaron said they were chanterelles, but they turned out to be poisonous lookalikes called jack-o’-lanterns. They only cause gastric problems for a couple of days, but obviously those can be rather severe. I’ve also been wearing a path to the loo and am only now finally feeling myself.’
‘I thought your better half was supposed to be an expert in these things.’
‘He is, and he insists that there were no jack-o’-lanterns in the mix.’
‘How can he be so sure?’
‘He said there are plenty of telltale signs that any mycologist would know, including that jack-o’-lanterns glow in the dark, of all things!’
‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously?’
‘Why else call them jack-o’-lanterns?’
‘You’re very astute.’
‘Thank you. You’d think only a blind person would have missed that,’ Jacobus groused. ‘But how did everyone else?’
‘It’s because you have to take them quickly from the light into the dark, where they exhibit a ghastly, pale green glow. Aaron insisted he took all the chanterelles into the cellar and turned out the lights just to make doubly sure. But you’ve met him. Do you think he’d ever admit to a mistake?’
‘If he’s so sure, how does he figure the mushrooms got onto the menu?’
‘We don’t know! It’s a complete mystery. But all’s well that ends well, I suppose.’
‘That assumes one very basic thing.’
‘What’s that, Mr Jacobus?’
‘That it’s ended.’
After Jacobus checked out of the motel, Yumi picked him up and drove him to the Feldstein Auditorium for his masterclass. When it was over he would return with her to New York. Mission accomplished.
‘Please try to be nice to the students,’ Yumi whispered to him as she escorted him onstage. She guided him to the lone chair near the edge of the stage. In the middle was a music stand for the students, and next to the stand was the piano for the accompanist.
‘Nice?’ he replied. ‘What does nice have to do with anything?’
‘Please, Jake. Just do it for me.’
‘OK. But don’t forget, there’s no “i” in nice.’
‘Yes there is.’
‘Shit. Never was good at spelling. You think that’s why “nice” isn’t in my vocabulary?’
Jacobus had told them in advance, no names. He didn’t want to know if the students were boys or girls, fat or skinny, tall or short, American or Asian or Martian. He just wanted to hear them play. But of course after a few minutes of listening he could tell all of those things. He couldn’t help it. If their bow strokes didn’t give them away, then their fingerings did, or their tone production, or their interpretation (or lack thereof). Or just the way they walked onto the stage. He wasn’t always right. But almost always.
He could tell right off the bat the first student was Yumi’s. No surprise. She – it was a she, he guessed correctly – played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, one of the first things he’d taught Yumi when she had studied with him. Jesus! How many years was it already? Even so, this new kid was using some of the same fingerings and bowings he had hashed out with Yumi. Jacobus was not one to be dogmatic about such things. Everyone had different hands, different body types, and different temperaments. If a student’s independent choices were well-considered and fit the music, so much the better. The one thing he was dogmatic about was that the student must think. His teacher, Dr Krovney, used to say, ‘You can train a monkey to play a musical instrument, but a monkey cannot play music!’
What he liked about this student was that she had some ideas of her own, and some of those actually made sense. But even when they didn’t, as was the case with her overly aggressive octaves at the bottom of the first page, she played with conviction. Jacobus almost smiled.
Not only did Jacobus know the student was one of Yumi’s, he also could determine exactly which one it must be. Weeks ago, Yumi had told him about her. She was a special case. Mia Cheng was her name. She had a father who was a successful businessman and a mother whose sole goal in life had been to bear a chi
ld and see to the realization of their dream that the child would become a musical genius. Mrs Cheng dutifully gave birth to a daughter, perfectly healthy except for a deformity in her left hand, rendering a future as a performer impossible. They gave the baby to a distant overseas cousin who was unable to conceive and proceeded to forget about her. Then came Mia, who, with two fully functional hands, was groomed from birth to satisfy their dreams. The irony was that Mia, upon making two discoveries – that she had an abandoned sister and that there might be a life outside playing the violin – legally disowned her parents. From the very first note Jacobus could hear it all. This young lady played with talent fueled by anger, engaged in combat.
The audience of students and faculty applauded Mia when she dashed off the prestissimo coda of the first movement. The positive response seemed refreshingly sincere, enthusiastic rather than merely polite. That was good. It was possible there were a handful of students present who were more capable, but not many. Though most of them probably admired the performance, there were always a few who might have been envious, even – inappropriately – dismissive, jealous they hadn’t had the opportunity to perform. They’d talk afterwards with great self-assurance about how they would have done it better, how Mia had no idea what she was doing, and that so-and-so’s recording was so much better. Typical student behavior. And, as Jacobus reminded himself, professionals were simply grown-up students who got paid.
He didn’t have much to say to Mia Cheng. Mendelssohn had written allegro molto appassionato at the beginning of the concerto, but she had gone beyond passion and had attacked the music with venom, as if she wanted to conquer it rather than form a healthy alliance with it. Nevertheless, he had faith in Yumi’s ability to ‘make the rough places plain,’ to quote Handel’s Messiah. He quizzed Mia on all the groundbreaking aspects of the concerto that had made it the crowning achievement of the nineteenth-century violin concerto, as much to enlighten the students in the gallery as to gauge her level of preparation. She knew all the answers. Clearly, Yumi had made similar demands upon her student as Jacobus had made of Yumi. He experienced a moment of pride, not for the two young and younger ladies in his thoughts but for himself, and for that lapse he immediately chastised himself.