by Gerald Elias
‘Excuse me, young lady,’ Jacobus said. ‘Where can I find the janitor?’
She told him to stay right there. She would find him and be back ‘in a jiffy.’
A few steps away, she stopped.
‘How did you know I wasn’t a guy?’ she asked.
‘Footsteps. Scent. Swishy-swishy skirt. Even without those it’s fifty-fifty, right?’
Three jiffies later, she returned.
Jacobus sniffed pine-scented cleanser.
‘Mr Clean?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Sam Consiglio. At your service,’ the janitor said.
‘You wax these floors over spring break?’
‘Yeah, that was me. I like to keep ’em nice and shiny.’
‘You ain’t kidding. Know where can I get a pair of ice skates?’
‘Not in my job description. You need help walking?’
‘I need help finding my hat,’ Jacobus said. ‘Seems I’ve lost it. I was wondering if anyone’s turned it in.’
‘What’s it look like?’
‘How would I know?’ Jacobus guffawed, as if it were a punchline to an old joke. ‘But there can’t have been too many.’
‘Nope. No one’s turned anything in.’
‘Maybe you could help me find it, then. I might’ve dropped it downstairs.’
Jacobus went back down to the basement with Consiglio.
‘Many of these practice rooms?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Yep. Thirty.’
‘Only thirty? With all these students? How does that work out?’
‘They sign up for time slots on a sheet taped to each door. They’re allowed up to three hours a day. Any more practicing they need, they’ve gotta go do it somewhere else. They’re thinking of putting up a new building with more practice rooms, but that’ll be at least another five or ten million the way things cost these days. Could you have left your hat inside a practice room?’
‘Possible. I did go inside a piano room. Just wanted to play a few notes.’
‘You a pianist?’
‘Not really. I’d just heard there were some good pianos here.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘No? You mean someone waxed poetic as slippery as you waxed the floors?’
‘That’s a good one. You could say that. The pianos down here aren’t so bad, but the students – they hammer them pretty hard. The Steinways are in the teachers’ studios. They’re the good ones. And of course, you’ve got the concert pianos over at the auditorium.’
‘I heard that one of the profs died here last week.’
‘Yeah. Aaron Schlossberg. We were on national news.’
Jacobus noted use of the word ‘we.’
‘What’d he teach?’ Jacobus asked.
‘He was a composer. Famous. I found him in Nineteen. Not a pretty sight. Something I’d like to forget about.’
‘Must’ve been tough. Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to.’
Jacobus knew that was a sure way to get Consiglio to talk. Who wouldn’t want to talk about finding a famous man dead?
‘Nah, it’s OK,’ Consiglio said. ‘The counselor told me it would be better for me if I do. They have free grief counseling here. Go figure. Me, getting grief counseling.’
‘They say it can be helpful.’
‘Hey, don’t get me wrong. If it’s free, I’ll take it. But, between you and me and the wall, I’m not grieving. It’s just that when you come across a dead body that’s been sitting in an unventilated room for a few days …’
‘Say no more.’ Which of course meant, ‘say more.’
When Consiglio didn’t take the bait, Jacobus prompted, ‘Heard he was composing his opera.’
‘Decomposing, more like it. Sorry. That was just a joke.’
The punchline sounded rehearsed, as if he had been reciting it to anyone he could collar. He would probably never get any closer to fame.
Jacobus laughed.
‘It’s a good joke,’ Jacobus said. So good that he had heard it every time a composer died in the last fifty years.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Jacobus continued, ‘how come it took you a few days before you found him? Took that long for him to pass the smell test?’
‘That’s a good one, too. Nah. It being spring break, me and the wife went up to Mohonk resort for a little R & R. Up by New Paltz? You know where I’m talking? It’s only an hour from here.’
‘I think I’ve heard of it.’
‘It’s all we can afford on our salaries. No Bahamas for us. But it’s close and it’s really nice, you know?’
‘So what brought you back? During spring break, I mean.’
‘Overtime. I make time-and-a-quarter if I work over vacations. Anyway, the kids usually leave this building a mess and I figured I’d get a head start cleaning it up before they came back and junked it up again. I got more than I bargained for.’
‘I’d say so,’ Jacobus replied. ‘So this Aaron Schlossberg was just sitting at the piano.’
Consiglio must have thought Jacobus, who was thinking out loud, was simply reaffirming the prevailing theory that Schlossberg had been composing when he died.
‘Right,’ Consiglio said.
‘Can you show me Nineteen?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Maybe that’s where I left my hat.’
‘Sure. Why not? It’s been all cleaned up. You can’t smell nothing anymore.’
Consiglio escorted Jacobus into Nineteen. Jacobus sat at the piano, felt the keyboard, and plunked out a Bach Two-Part Invention to satisfy any lingering doubt Consiglio might have had about his honest intentions.
‘Any sign of my hat here?’ he asked.
Consiglio said no.
‘Damn,’ Jacobus said, with great conviction. ‘So this is where it happened? Where Aaron Schlossberg died?’ Jacobus asked, as if it was Abraham Lincoln’s seat at the Ford Theater.
‘Yep. Right where you’re sitting.’
‘Whoa!’ Jacobus said and lifted his posterior off the bench. He continued to play, correcting the wrong notes, which were unintentional and frequent.
‘And other than the shock of seeing a dead man, was there anything else out of the ordinary?’
‘Can’t say there was. The light was off so it was dark.’
‘The fan, too?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Yeah. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t spend more than about one second in the room. It gave me the creeps.’
‘No kidding. So you went and called the cops?’
‘Campus security. And they came and took care of everything else. Next time I saw the room he was gone. And the room was clean. Thank the Lord.’
‘Amen,’ Jacobus said. ‘And what happened to the music?’
‘What music?’
‘The music on the piano. The music he was composing.’
‘There wasn’t no music.’
TWELVE
‘There you are!’ said a woman’s voice, imperiously. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘And to whom do I owe the displeasure?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Connie Jean Hawkins. I am Dean Hedge’s assistant. May I ask you a question?’
‘By all means.’
‘Just what do you think you are you doing here, Mr Jacobus?’
Jacobus remained silent.
‘I repeat—’
‘I heard you the first time.’
‘And?’
‘I said, you could ask a question. I didn’t say I would answer it.’
‘Dean Hedge wants to see you in his office. Now.’
Jacobus considered the response he would like to have delivered but balanced that against the likely detrimental effect it would have on Yumi’s position on the faculty.
‘Lead the way, Madame Defarge.’ And to Consiglio, ‘Thanks, Sam. If you find my hat, just ask Connie Jean to deliver it to me.’
The administration building was farther than Jacobus expected. As it was another pleasant day, and as he was not looking forward to what he
anticipated would be a confrontation with Hedge, he dawdled, much to Connie Jean’s growing irritation. Perhaps it was the afternoon warmth seeping into his old bones, or perhaps it was the scent of blossoming cherry trees, because contrary to Jacobus’s natural inclination to use blunt force when seeking information, he decided a sunnier, more conciliatory tack might bear riper fruit.
‘Sun feels good, doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Must be nice to work here. Beautiful campus and all.’
‘I’ve grown very attached to the conservatory.’
‘I understand you’re Hedge’s main gatekeeper,’ he said.
‘If by that you mean I’m in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the conservatory, that would be correct.’
‘I heard you do all the scheduling. Concerts, rehearsals. The works.’
‘“Do” is not accurate. Coordinate would be accurate.’
‘You get time to relax over spring break? Like the students and faculty? Great time of year.’
‘Not on your life. I’ve had to finalize planning for all juries and senior recitals at the end of the semester. We’ve got our “Going Baroque” festival. And then there’s summer session.’
‘Juries?’ Jacobus backtracked.
‘The graduating students have end-of-year recitals. The non-graduating students have to perform the repertoire they’ve studied during the semester at faculty juries in their division to be allowed to continue in the program. It’s a nightmare to schedule. Rounding up the faculty is like herding cats, let alone getting hundreds of students signed up for fifteen minute slots without them trampling over each other.’
‘So there was a lot going on during spring break?’
‘Thankfully not. It’s full speed ahead from the first week of January until then, so we don’t book anything during breaks. It gives everyone, except me, a chance to decompress before the final sprint.’
‘So campus was deserted last week?’
‘Except for maintenance, yes. I had to coordinate that also. The physical plant gets worse every year. With our careful stewardship, we’ve extended life spans of some of these buildings beyond their expected obsolescence, but we’re reaching a breaking point. Hopefully, we’ll be getting the Feldstein money for the new construction we desperately need. In some of these old buildings we had leaks to patch up, and I had to call the—’
‘So you’re saying the buildings were locked up?’
‘Essentially. Yes.’
‘So what do you suppose Schlossberg was doing in a student practice room in a locked building?’
The ice returned.
‘I have no idea.’
So much for the spring thaw.
There was no more conversation, except for ‘This way, Mr Jacobus,’ from time to time. Connie Jean made his name sound like an accusation.
They entered the Lievenstock Administration Building, originally Theodesia Lievenstock’s family mansion. Connie Jean led Jacobus to the grand staircase centered in the marble foyer. Jacobus grasped a heavily varnished oak bannister, which splayed outward in a curve, and ascended. The tap of his cane echoed on polished stone steps. He imagined the portraits of three centuries of the Dutch Lievenstocks casting their dowdy and smug gaze down upon him. Connie Jean escorted him along a carpeted hallway and knocked on a solid oak door. Without waiting for a response, she opened it and the two of them entered.
‘Please sit down, Mr Jacobus,’ Charles Hedge said. It was a command rather than an invitation. Clearly, he was no longer the pat-’em-on-the-back happy camper.
Connie Jean led him to a chair and moved off to his left. The room was redolent of polished wood and fresh spring air entering through an open window. To Jacobus’s right were a barely audible creak of a chair and the scent of an aftershave he recognized.
‘Mr Jacobus,’ Hedge said, ‘I won’t beat around the bush. This spring break has been a bad week. A disastrous week. First we had half our faculty taken ill. Then we had the tragedy of Aaron Schlossberg’s death. And now this.’
‘What “this” are you talking about?’
‘When we invited you here to present a masterclass, we did so with high expectations. And, may I add, the invitation was offered at the strong urging of your protégé, Yumi Shinagawa, who I’m sure you’re aware has been one of our most esteemed adjunct faculty.’ Hedge ominously elongated the ‘has been.’
Hedge paused as if waiting for Jacobus to respond. But not having been asked a question, Jacobus remained silent. He wasn’t going to snap at such obvious bait.
‘What you may not know,’ Hedge continued, ‘is that the invitation was made over the objections of some others on the faculty who know your reputation of tearing down, rather than building up, students’ self-esteem. Do you understand what I’m talking about?’
‘Get to the point, Charlie. I’ve got a pedicure appointment and my toenails are starting to curl.’
‘As you wish, Mr Jacobus. At your masterclass last week, you undermined the authority of Elwood Dunster, one of our most valued and senior violin professors, who, I clearly note, is a tenured faculty member, not merely an adjunct. You did so by contradicting his teachings in a condescending and destructive way. You—’
‘Bullshit! How the hell could I know who the students’ teachers were if I didn’t even know the students’ names? They could’ve—’
‘Please, Mr Jacobus. Your protestations of innocence don’t do your reputation justice. From what Ms Shinagawa has told us of your skills, you’re able to tell the color of a violinist’s shoelaces from the way they play vibrato. Do you really expect us to believe you had no idea who was playing?’
‘All right. So what? I made the students aware of their shortcomings. That is something I would imagine Dunster does as well. At least he should. That’s part of teaching. Not all of it, but part of it. Sure, you want to tell them when they do something well. But if all you do is tell them how wonderful they are, they’re not going to get better, are they? They won’t know how.’
Jacobus sat back but decided there was more to be said.
‘I’ve had some pretty decent students over the years, and I’ve had some pretty lousy ones, too. I tell all of them what the challenges are. How hard they’re going to have to work to get to their goal, whatever that goal is. Sometimes the struggle is almost insurmountable, but the choice is theirs. If they’re determined, I help however I can. But it’s up to them. Yes, sometimes they get pissed off when I don’t paint the rosy picture they want to see, but in the end I’ve gotten more “thank-yous” than “fuck-yous.”’
‘I haven’t invited you here to listen to your offensive language or your defense of the pluses and minuses of your teaching philosophy, Mr Jacobus,’ Hedge continued, though in Jacobus’s mind that was exactly the conversation Hedge had prompted. ‘Because in this case, the minuses have clearly prevailed.’
‘If some egos have been bruised now,’ Jacobus said, ‘maybe they’ll end up better musicians later.’
‘No. Not maybe. Not at all is more like it. I told you last week that I had hoped your masterclass would set a precedent. Well, it has, but not in the way I had anticipated. You see, Mr Jacobus, for the first time in the history of the Kinderhoek Conservatory a student has withdrawn from the program in midstream. Audrey Rollins, who was to graduate in two months’ time, has dropped out. Because of you, Mr Jacobus, and you alone. I thought you’d want to know. Do you know what this means?’
Since Jacobus didn’t know what it meant, at least yet, he remained silent. Yumi had said Dean the Bean was always smiling. Jacobus had a feeling she was not entirely accurate.
Hedge went on. ‘It means that a masterclass series is out the window for a very long time because the funding for it has been scared away. It means that we can no longer honestly state in our literature that Kinderhoek has a one-hundred-percent graduation rate. As it is, we might have to destroy and rewrite all of our brochures. That is not without its costs. Beyond
that, though, think of what this has done to our fund-raising efforts! We were hoping to commence a capital campaign next year, and our perfect graduation record was going to be one of our main bullet points. It’s something we’ve been proud of and which no other program can claim. And our major gift from the Feldstein family is now in jeopardy. You probably don’t know about capital campaigns, but until you have at least a third of your resources already in hand, you’re courting disaster.
‘You’ve potentially cost us many millions of dollars, Mr Jacobus. Dollars that would have flowed into building a new practice facility, a state-of-the-art recording studio, purchasing new critical editions for the orchestras. I could go on.’
‘No doubt,’ Jacobus said.
‘Ms Hawkins has a check for you for your participation last week. She will give it to you on your way out. Thank you for coming.’
Jacobus had no more to say. Actually, he did. As he left the room, he turned his head toward where he had heard the chair creak, and whispered, ‘Atta boy, Dunster.’
As they approached the stairway, Connie Jean pressed the envelope containing the check into Jacobus’s right hand, requiring him to shift his cane to his left. Holding on to the bannister was a bit precarious with the envelope in his hand.
Two things had surprised him. It was not unexpected that Hedge would be annoyed at the result of the masterclass, but the level of his ire seemed disproportionate to Jacobus’s alleged transgressions. Then again, Yumi had been as livid as he’d ever heard her after the class. Maybe his skin was getting thicker than he thought. Or maybe everyone else’s was getting thinner.
The second thing was how cursorily Hedge had mentioned Schlossberg’s death. Almost as if it were of little consequence. Maybe Hedge didn’t think it was any of his business. But still.
And, yes, Jacobus thought, there was a third thing. Audrey Rollins’s behavior. First, the enthusiasm. Then the recalcitrance. And then the sudden withdrawal from the school. There was something artificial about that.
He considered trying to find her to get an explanation. Surely the conservatory would have her address. But what were the chances that Connie Jean or Dunster would give him that information now?