The Last Samurai

by Helen Dewitt

  Buddy said: That’s right, if anybody asks me I simply explain that you were threatening to kill yourself when you suddenly remembered you needed a sweater. I think I’ll come along for the ride.

  Linda said actually maybe he should come with her to New York, she needed him to carry the cello.

  Buddy said: Why would you want to take the cello?

  Linda said: For my audition.

  Buddy said: If they don’t take you on piano they sure as heck aren’t going to take you on the cello.

  Linda said: Don’t you tell me what to do

  & they got into a heated argument while my father stood idly by. My mother was convinced that the Juilliard would despise her if all she could play was the piano, whereas if she brought a selection of instruments they would see she was a real musician.

  The Konigsbergs all despised the piano, there it was all the notes conveniently divided up into a keyboard you went away and when you came back there it was the notes all still attached to the keys just where you left them, how boring, a child of four could play it (they all had). They also hated sight reading, & it is a tiresome feature of piano music that (since 10 or more notes may be played simultaneously) it involves anything up to 10 times the amount of sight reading of any other instrument. It was an instrument no Konigsberg would play if someone smaller could be made to play it instead, & since my mother was the youngest she never got the chance to hand it over to someone else. It may seem odd that the youngest got the part with the most sight reading, but as four brothers & sisters a father and a mother pointed out if she got in trouble she could always play it by ear. It wasn’t, anyway, that she couldn’t play the violin, viola and cello (not to mention flute, guitar, mandolin and ukulele)—it was just that she never got the chance.

  Buddy argued that he didn’t think her technique on any of the stringed instruments was up to the Juilliard, & Linda said how would you know when was the last time you heard me.

  At first she wanted to take everything to show what she could do, but at last she agreed to take just a violin because she could play some hard pieces, a viola because she got a better tone on it for some reason, a mandolin because it was quite an unusual instrument to be able to play and a flute because it never hurts to let people know you can play the flute.

  Buddy: And you will tell them you want to audition on the piano.

  Linda: Don’t you tell me what to do.

  My father: Do you mean to say you’re not planning to play the piano? You’ve got this fantastic talent and you’re not going to play it? What about that piece you were just playing, you’re not going to play it for them?

  Linda: Do you know anything about music?

  My father: Not really.

  Linda: Then mind your own business.

  My father said: Well we’d better go if you’re going to catch that train.

  Buddy said again that he would come along for the ride & Linda said he could explain she had gone to look for a sweater why did he always make such a production out of everything & Buddy said yes she had gone to look for a sweater & had taken along a violin a viola a flute & a mandolin just in case he thought he would come along for the ride.

  My father said as a matter of fact he needed to talk to him, so they all three drove down to the station.

  Linda got on the train. She had the violin case & the viola case in one hand, the mandolin case and her purse in the other, and the flute under one arm.

  The train pulled out & my father commented to Buddy: You guys are amazing. I always thought a musician would take some music or something along to an audition.

  Buddy said: Oh. My. God.

  It was too late to do anything about it, though, and anyway she could always buy some music in New York, so they went to a nearby bar, and my father said: Let’s buy that motel.

  Buddy said: What if that guy was wrong?

  My father said: If he was wrong we’ll have a worthless piece of real estate. On the other hand, old Mrs. Randolph will be reunited with her widowed daughter and spend her declining years under the sunny skies of Florida, so at least someone will be happy.

  To the sunny skies of Florida, said Buddy.

  To the sunny skies of Florida, said my father.

  My father and Buddy decided to drive down immediately to clinch the deal. They left in my father’s car, Buddy driving, my father asleep on the back seat.

  My mother meanwhile reached the Juilliard. She found her way to the general office and demanded an audition. This was not a simple matter to arrange, and she was told many times that it was necessary to apply and fill in forms and be given an appointment; but she insisted. She said that she had come all the way from Philadelphia. She was very nervous, but she had an inner confidence that if she could only start to play for someone she would be safe at last.

  At last a homely man wearing a bow tie came out of an office and introduced himself and said he would find a room. The Juilliard had its forms and applications and procedures, but people there were no different from people anywhere: they loved a story, they loved the idea of a brilliant young musician getting on the train in Philadelphia and going to New York and walking in off the street. So my mother (carrying violin viola mandolin handbag & flute) followed him to a room with a grand piano, and the homely man sat in a chair down the room, one leg crossed over the other, and waited.

  It was only now that she realized that she had overlooked something.

  Under my father’s urging she had walked straight out the door. In her excitement at the idea of just walking out the door she had walked out the door without stopping to practice and without even her sheet music, and now she had nothing to play from and nothing prepared.

  Some people might have been daunted by this setback. The Konigsbergs faced musical catastrophe on a daily basis, & their motto was: Never say die.

  What are you going to play for me? asked the homely man.

  Linda took the violin out of its case. She explained that she had left her music on the train, but that she was going to play a Bach partita.

  She played a Bach partita, and the homely man looked without comment at his knee, and then she got through a Beethoven sonata with only a couple of hairy moments, and the man looked calmly at his knee.

  And now what are you going to play? said the homely man without comment.

  Linda asked: Would you like to hear me play the viola?

  Man: If you would like to play it for me I will be happy to hear you play it.

  Linda put the violin back in the case, and she took out the viola. She played an obscure sonata for viola solo which she had learned a couple of years ago. Even at the time it had seemed completely unmemorable, the type of composition which composers do for some reason foist off on the viola. For a moment she wondered whether she would be able to remember it, but it came back once she got going. She couldn’t remember how to go on after the first repeat & so had to do it twice to stall for time, & she had to make up a new andante having temporarily forgotten the old one (but luckily the piece was so obscure he probably wouldn’t notice), but apart from that she thought she scraped through pretty well.

  The homely man continued to look at his knee.

  She said: That’s just to give you the general idea. Would you like me to play another piece?

  He said: I think I’ve got the general idea.

  She said: Would you like me to play the mandolin?

  He said: If you would like to play it.

  She played a few short pieces by Beethoven and Hummel just to give him the general idea, and then she played a few pieces on the flute so he would see she could play the flute.

  He listened without comment, and then he looked at his watch and said: Is there anything else you’d like to play for me?

  She said: I can also play the cello, the guitar and the ukulele, but I left them at home.

  He said: Would you say that one of those was your best instrument?

  She said: I wouldn’t say best instrument. My cello
teacher said I showed promise, and of course any idiot can play the guitar, and if you can play the guitar you don’t have to be a genius to play the ukulele, but I don’t know that I would say best instrument.

  A musician can develop a kind of sixth sense for the mood of his audience. My mother sensed that the audition was not going well.

  The man in the bow tie looked at his watch again, and he stood up and paced up and down and said: I’m afraid I have an appointment so—

  I can play the piano, she said reluctantly, & she said vivaciously: Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!

  I’m a little pressed for time, said the man, but he sat down again & crossed one leg over the other & looked at his knee.

  My mother went to the piano and sat down. She had not practiced, but in the last week she had played Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor 217 times. She began to play Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor for the 218th time that week, and for the first time the homely man looked up from his knee.

  He said: I’d like to hear something else.

  He said: Do you want me to find you some music? If there’s something you need we can get it from the library.

  She shook her head. She must play something. She began to play the Moonlight Sonata. There was something odd about this; it was odd not to be playing Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor for the 219th time.

  And what are you going to play for me now? asked the man.

  She began to play a Brahms intermezzo. This time she did not wait for him to ask but launched into another piece and another and another, filling in more and more as she went along, her hands skittering up and down the keyboard.

  In the middle of the piece the man stood up and said That’s enough.

  He walked quickly over the creaking boards toward her; he was saying No, no, no, no, no. She thought at first he was complaining because she was improvising where she couldn’t remember the piece.

  No no no no, he said stopping beside her.

  You can’t play the piano like that.

  He said: There’s no weight in your hands.

  Linda took her hands off the keys. She did not understand what he meant. And he said: Can’t you FEEL how tense your wrists are? You’ve got to play with the whole arm. Don’t play from the wrist. You’ve got to relax or you’ll never be in control.

  He asked her to play a C major scale and before she had played 3 notes he said No. He told her to play with the whole weight of her arm on each note. He told her not to worry about mistakes.

  Someone knocked on the door and looked in & he said Not now.

  He stood by for an hour while her clever hand moved stupidly over the white keys.

  At last he said that was enough. He gave her a simple exercise & he said: I want you to play this four hours a day for two months the way I showed you. After that you can go back to one of your pieces, but you must play with a relaxed wrist. If you can’t play with a relaxed wrist don’t play it. And you should play the exercise for two hours before you practice anything.

  He said: Go back to the beginning and in a year you may have something to show me. I don’t promise we’ll take you, but I promise we’ll hear you play.

  He said: You may think that promise isn’t worth a year of your life.

  And he said: You may be right, but it’s the best I can do.

  My mother shook his hand and said thank you politely.

  She said: What about the violin? Is there anything you’d like me to do on the violin?

  The homely man started to laugh & said No I don’t think so. He said he also had no advice to offer on the viola, the mandolin or the flute.

  He said: Still, Rubinstein never played the flute and it doesn’t seem to have hurt him.

  He said: I don’t know who’s been teaching you, but—Where is it you’re from, Philadelphia? Give this man a call, you can mention my name. Don’t call him if you’re not going to work, he’ll never speak to me again, but if you’re serious—Actually don’t call him for a couple of months, try it and see if you really want to put in the time, and if you’re serious give him a call.

  He wrote a name & a phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to her and she put it in her bag. She asked if it was all right to play the exercise in B major instead, and he laughed and said she could play it 50% of the time in B major as long as she played it with a relaxed wrist. So she thanked him again, and she picked up the violin viola mandolin handbag and flute and left the room.

  Another minute and she was outside in the street, staring up at the buildings. It was early afternoon.

  If she had been accepted by the Juilliard she would have gone to the top of the Empire State Building and looked down on the city she had conquered; New York would have lain at her feet.

  She did not want to go to the Empire State Building, so she walked to the Plaza Hotel to see the fountain where Fitzgerald and Zelda had danced in the nude. She said later that she stood by the fountain crying and shaking & yet thinking that it was the happiest day of her life, because if you were the youngest of five no one ever took you seriously, & now someone had taken her so seriously as a musician that he had told her to spend four hours a day on a single exercise. If the Juilliard said something like that even her father would have to take her seriously, & by some miracle she out of the whole family would be a real musician.

  It was true that she actually wanted to be a singer but at least it was a start.

  It began to drizzle, so she went to Saks Fifth Avenue to look at sweaters, and then she went back to the station and caught a train back to Philadelphia.

  She got home and explained and nobody seemed to understand that somebody had taken her seriously.

  What does he know? said my grandfather. Who ever heard of him? If he’s such a genius how come we never heard of him, eh?

  I have to practice, said my mother, and she went to the piano. The memory of her heavy arm, with the weighted hand stumbling over the keys, was still new. She put her hands on the keys and for an hour a terrible, jerking noise came from the front room. All of the children had played the piano attractively from the age of three; no Konigsberg had ever played a scale in living memory; my grandparents had never heard anything so horrible in all their lives.

  My grandparents had previously thought that nothing could be worse than to hear Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor 30 times a day. They now thought they should have known when they were lucky. My grandmother went so far as to say Why don’t you play that lovely piece you were playing the other day, Linda?

  My mother said she could not play anything but the exercise for two months.

  Meanwhile everybody was wondering what had happened to Buddy, who had just driven off with his friend without a word to anybody.

  My mother said maybe he went downtown to look for a sweater.

  My mother practiced hours every day, hours as painful to hear as to play. At first everybody thought she would give in. Day followed day, and the terrible stumbling sounds went on for hours on end.

  She did not know what else to do.

  In retrospect almost every aspect of the audition was much more hideously embarrassing than it had been at the time, the viola sonata in particular with the three repeats and the new andante kept coming back to haunt her. The only good thing about it was that at least she hadn’t opened her mouth to sing. But even after just three weeks of the exercise she thought that she would never again be able to walk innocently into a room to show what she could do.

  Uncle Buddy and my mother had wanted to be singers because they loved opera, but they did not really know what you had to do to become one.

  The way they saw it was, obviously a music school couldn’t let in every Tom Dick and Harry, it would assess people on the basis of their instruments, once you got in you could start singing. But after the audition my mother thought it might work some other way. If there was this desert of technical work to be crossed before you could play the piano, maybe every other instrument and maybe th
e voice was also surrounded by a desert.

  My mother kept playing the exercise. She did not belong to the school choir because it spent most of its time preparing for the Christian highlights of the year. Who knew what you had to do to be a singer?

  My mother kept playing the exercise because the Juilliard had said the piano was her instrument.

  One day my grandmother came into the room. She said You know your father only wants what’s best for you. She said You’re driving him crazy, what do you think it’s like for a man like that to hear this day after day? She said Look. Don’t decide today. You’ve done two hours already, enough for one day, come downtown with me and help me pick out a blouse for your sister.

  They went shopping and her mother bought her a dress for $200 and another dress for $250 and a hat and another hat that looked better and a pair of shoes to go with one of the hats. They went home and her father offered her a trip to Florida which she declined. They went shopping and her mother bought her six cashmere sweaters in pastel shades.

  My grandmother kept coming in whenever my mother tried to practice and my mother got angrier and angrier. What had happened was this:

  My grandfather had left Vienna in 1922 and he had settled in Philadelphia and done pretty well. The quality of the music available was not really comparable to what he was used to, but otherwise it was not too bad. He married and got through the Depression all right and from a business point of view the War was a good thing because sales of wedding rings shot up. From another point of view the War changed his views.

  Most of his family was still in Austria. If you are a jeweler people think you are made of money and sooner or later a letter would come, probably from someone he had never liked, he would have to come up with several thousand dollars for a surety and then he would get involved in a protracted correspondence. Say you have a man who has an advanced degree in engineering and a year of teaching at university level, say he has had to resign his position at the end of the year because students of Aryan stock should not be defiled by instruction from a person of impure blood, say he has spent some time in industry though not at the level you would expect for his qualifications, say he has an actual offer of a teaching position at an American college, you write to the State Department and the State Department explains that unfortunately a minimum of two years’ teaching experience is required for the application to be approved. You get into a protracted correspondence and one day you write to the applicant to explain what is happening and get no reply.