Devil's Trill

by Gerald Elias

  After becoming relatively clean, Yumi scrubbed the tub as well as she could, using powdered cleanser and a brush she found behind the toilet. She couldn’t totally remove the rust-and-green bruise of a stain around the drain, but when the tub looked decent enough she turned on the tap as hot as possible. The faucet acquiesced only spittingly, so she wrapped herself in Nathaniel’s robin’s-egg blue terry cloth robe that was hanging on a hook and walked down the hallway with the hem of the huge robe trailing behind her like the train on a wedding gown. The corridor’s old runner was almost threadbare in the middle and hadn’t been vacuumed for a long time. She could hardly distinguish the edges of the wooden molding on the walls for all the coats of paint that covered them.

  The kitchen was small but well equipped, designed by someone who knew how to cook: lots of gadgets, marble counters, and very neat and clean. Yumi opened the refrigerator. It was filled to capacity with glass jars and bottles, food in plastic containers or wrap. Food from every country in the world, it seemed: tandoori paste, Spanish capers, tofu, Vietnamese fish sauce, Tabasco sauce, a wedge of Camembert, a chunk of Gorgonzola, her congealing pastrami sandwich, kiwi fruit.

  She removed the tofu from the culinary United Nations. Finding an appropriate knife among a large selection neatly arrayed in a wooden rack, she cut the tofu into small cubes on the butcher block table, and then, pleasantly surprised to find a wok among the assortment of pans hanging on the wall, quickly sautéed the tofu in a little peanut oil, which she found among many other varieties in a cupboard. While it cooked, a more thorough investigation of the refrigerator revealed soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a scallion. She added those ingredients in familiar proportions to the tofu, which was by this time turning an appealing golden brown.

  Her breakfast satisfied not only what little hunger she had—her stomach still hadn’t forgotten its meal at the deli—but also her growing need to feel reconnected to her home, her family in Japan, herself. Her sense of uneasiness began to dissipate.

  Yumi returned to the bath, finding the tub still not yet full but full enough. The room was dense with steam, fogging the mirror opposite the tub. She took off the robe, hung it back on the hook, and stepped into the tub, immersing herself into the steaming water slowly but without hesitation. Slender though she was, water nonetheless lapped over the sides onto the floor, at which point she remembered that Western bathrooms don’t have a floor drain. She would mop up later but decided not to worry about it for the moment.

  She would not allow herself to be overwhelmed by anxiety. She must not. If she were to succeed for her family she had to be the master of her feelings. She needed to arrange her thoughts and prepare for challenges. Thankfully, Grandmother has taught me how to live with gaijin, she thought, though to understand Westerners seemed impossible. She slid down farther into the tub so that the water came all the way up to her chin, cranking her neck to avoid the obtrusive faucet. Other than her head, only the very top of her knees broke the surface. She would not think about the past or the future. She would concentrate only on the moment.

  She massaged her arms and legs, pressing her fingers and thumbs deeply into taut muscles to loosen the tension. Grandmother had always encouraged her athleticism. Grandmother herself had been deprived of games as a little girl long ago in order to practice the violin.

  Yumi was pleased that her body was both feminine and athletic. She was a little less than average height for Americans but was taller than the few friends she had at home in Japan, and her breasts, cupping them in her hands, were somewhat larger than the other girls’. Grandmother’s genes, she thought. As Grandmother had said to her when she had begun to develop, “Never be embarrassed about your body. After all, it would be difficult to play the violin without one.”

  Yumi closed her eyes and allowed her thoughts to float as randomly as her long black hair, which spread in intricate patterns on the surface of the water. As her skin reddened from the heat, tension and anxiety slipped away from her body, permitting her mind to wander freely. She thought about the simple pleasures of her home in Nishiyama—a real bath, the quietness, the sounds of birds and rain, the music.

  The music. From the day she was born she was part of the music. It had always been so natural. First her studies with Grandmother and Mother. Then, Furukawa-sensei. Now Mr. Jacobus. But, she wondered, was it truly a natural progression? Had her training always and only been part of a larger purpose?

  The stress of the past week had been enormous. Jacobus loomed in her thoughts. He frightened her with his erratic, almost violent behavior. More so with his perception. She sensed that he knew her with the absolute thoroughness he knew music.

  She recalled the moment she had lost her balance and fell on him in the elevator. Though embarrassed at her own clumsiness, her physical contact with him seemed to loosen a barrier that she had considered impenetrable. Only hours before she had touched him for the first time outside the Vanders’ apartment building. That touch had been tentative. Except for the wild swing he took at her, mistaking her for the doorman, which had come disconcertingly close to her nose, he had seemed so vulnerable.

  The story Nathaniel had told her about their trio certainly moved her, but what affected her most was how Jacobus had made Kamryn Vander smile. The smile, she had seen, was not just Kamryn’s reaction to Jacobus being funny—a revelation in itself—but of Kamryn having learned something about playing the violin in a few short moments that until then had been unattainable. Jacobus had made Yumi smile too, and it made her ponder what suffering he had endured to have buried his joy so deeply.

  Were his outbursts intended to disguise the vulnerability she had fleetingly glimpsed? Yumi wondered what might have been the cause. What was Jacobus like when he was young? When he was nineteen, like her? She closed her eyes to imagine it. His unkempt hair once black and curly. His skin, white. Muscular? No, probably skinny, but eager, enthusiastic. She smiled. She never thought about Furukawa-sensei this way. He had always been old, and though he thought he knew her, he could not see into her like Jacobus. Other students had told her they had “secret thoughts” about their teachers, but she couldn’t imagine such a thing with Furukawa-sensei. She had related this to Grandmother—she would never have discussed such a thing with Mother. Grandmother had smiled and told her she was free to think however she wanted but to understand there was a difference between thoughts and behavior. Yumi turned her thoughts back to her new teacher.

  And what about his eyes? She couldn’t see them through his dark glasses. Brown? Gray? Blue? No. They would be green. Unusual, penetrating. She was sure that his eyes were green, like hers. In Japan, they had teased her because of the green eyes she had inherited from Grandmother. They would imitate the whine of a cat and run away, laughing—but she felt power in her green eyes.

  Yumi arched her head and back so that she was almost floating in the hot water. Young Daniel Jacobus. Yes—curly hair, white skin, skinny. Green eyes. The young Daniel Jacobus could see her with his green eyes. For a moment his eyes smiled. Then they changed. Vulnerable. Penetrating.

  As the image began to coalesce—to become whole with nose, mouth, arms, legs—Yumi slid her hand from her breast, placing it gently between her thighs, indulging herself in her fantasy. The image began to have its own energy, responding to her. She gazed through half-open eyelids through the fog at the mirror, dripping with condensation. She could barely make out the blurred reflection of her own form; the second one, the imagined one, seemed almost as real.

  She heard a delicate click in the water next to her cheek. Turning her head, she saw it was a cockroach that had fallen from the ceiling. Its legs flailed futilely as it struggled to swim on its back.

  Yumi watched with fascination, not moving. Would her new bath partner survive this hot water? Would it sink and die?

  Sitting up to get a better view created turbulence in the water, enabling the cockroach to right itself. Now it swam with a coordinated effort toward the side of the tub, neg
otiating the streams of water cascading from Yumi’s torso. She observed the cockroach’s unsuccessful attempts to climb the two inches from the water level to the top of the tub, not interfering as it slid back down, over and over.

  Finally the cockroach stopped moving. Yumi cupped her hand under it and lifted it out of the tub, placing it in a small puddle on the bathroom floor, leaving it to its own fate.

  She took a black washcloth off the chrome towel rack, soaked it in the hot water, and covered her face with it. Its warmth comforted her as she pressed it against her closed eyes, leaning back again in the tub.

  What a mystery Jacobus was, Yumi thought. On the surface so hard, so dominating. But underneath, something so giving. Obviously Furukawa and Nathaniel sensed that as well. And Goldbloom. And even the waitress last night, whose words to Jacobus were so harsh, had eyes filled with affection for him.

  Yumi tried unsuccessfully to coax her fantasy to return.

  The bath wasn’t relaxing her anymore and the now tepid water was reclaiming its heat from her body. Yumi stood up, slowly, to avoid dizziness. Even after having washed the tub, the water hadn’t been clean enough. So she pulled the rubber plug on the rusty chain, let the water choke its way down the drain, and took another shower, this time scrubbing her entire body so vigorously with the washcloth that her skin was streaked with red. She rinsed herself one last time.

  Trying to dry herself in the steamy bathroom, compounded by the city’s humid summer heat, proved to be uncomfortable and futile, so she took a fresh towel and returned, naked, to the airy bedroom. On the way out she noticed that the cockroach had disappeared from its puddle.

  Yumi dressed, ready to explore the rest of the apartment now, opening doors as she wandered. The first room she entered took her by surprise. It was literally a library of recordings, floor to ceiling, all four walls covered, highly organized. On one wall were records—LPs, 45s, 78s, even ancient wax cylinders. On another wall were tapes—cassettes, reel-to-reels of all sizes, even, as she examined them, something called eight-track cartridges, which she had never seen before. A third wall, the neatest for its uniformity, had shelves of CDs, the most recent technological breakthrough. She slid her finger along the CDs, alphabetically labeled with every imaginable category of music—Australian Aboriginal, Blues, Broadway, Classical, Folk, Gamelan, Gospel, Jazz, Medieval, Renaissance, on and on.

  Arranged on the fourth wall was the listening equipment—receivers, amplifiers, speakers, disc changers, tape recorders, equipment she couldn’t identify, all looking very highly advanced. In one corner, as if ostracized, on a mahogany cabinet stood an ancient acoustic RCA turntable with a crank and huge horn.

  The next room Yumi entered was equally surprising. Obviously Nathaniel’s bedroom, as the huge unmade bed unmistakably advertised, this room was as messy as the others were neat. Magazines and books lay opened and unopened on the bed, the floor, the dresser, all intermingled with assorted items of clothing.

  A large bowl of what appeared to be the remains of strawberry ice cream sat on the night table, along with an empty bag of cheese puffs and a remote control device. At the foot of the bed was a television with a screen as big as some of those she had seen at the Akihabara electronics shops in Tokyo.

  But the striking feature of the room was the photographs of famous musicians from every point on the compass of the world of music, signed, framed, and lining the walls. As she wandered around the room, trying to avoid tripping on the scattered landscape, Yumi recognized some of the faces and names immediately: Isaac Stern, Leonard Bernstein, Jascha Heifetz, Slava Rostropo vich, Vladimir Horowitz, Aaron Copland. There were many faces, and names too, that she didn’t recognize—Aretha Franklin, Oscar Peterson, Joe Venuti, Richard Rodgers, Gheorghe Zamfir. One photo said: Hey, Nate. Stay cool. The Velvet Fog, Mel Tormé.

  What was a velvet fog? Yumi wondered. A line from haiku, perhaps.

  One more room to go. Yumi tentatively turned the knob. This room was similar to the record library, except instead of recordings there were books. Music theory and composition, music history, biography, reference books, music dictionaries, music textbooks, a complete Grove’s Dictionary. New books, ancient books, leather-bound and paperback, in English, German, French, Italian.

  In the middle of the room was a pine desk, actually a plain table like the one in her bedroom. On the table was a clear glass paperweight on a stack of papers.

  Yumi went to the table to inspect further. On top of the pile was another note from Nathaniel.

  Dear Yumi,

  Thought you might find this. You know how you were asking

  me yesterday about Jake? This book isn’t just about violin

  playing. Hope you find it interesting.

  Nathaniel

  Yumi picked up the typed manuscript. The cover page read “Violin Lessons: A Practical Guide to Violin Playing” by Daniel Jacobus, as told to Nathaniel Williams. It was dated 1966. Yumi sat down at the table, turned over the stapled page, and began to read. It was only a few handwritten pages long.

  Music, of all the arts, has the greatest power to elevate the soul and the mind. This may sound like a rash statement, but consider this: One may stand before a great painting, a Rembrandt or Picasso, and admire the skill of the artist, the inspiration and beauty of the work itself.

  But when was the last time you stood before a painting and were moved to tears, anger, excitement, depression, sadness, or exaltation beyond reasonable expectation? When has a painting received a standing ovation?

  Music has this power, greater, I believe, than do the visual arts. Why? I don’t know. Why, or how, certain combinations of frequencies, made audible at certain volume, with certain tone quality, resonate within the human psyche to create such a moving effect is a mystery. That they have this effect, however, is undeniable and is one reason why armies, kings, and churches have used music for their formidable purposes for thousands of years.

  Perhaps the power of music is greatest because it is temporal rather than spatial, meaning that once it is heard it is gone forever. The sense of gain from the experience of having heard the music is accompanied by a sense of loss. It is over, never to return. Perhaps that reminds us of our own mortality. Perhaps not.

  Nevertheless, when I listen to a late Beethoven string quartet or Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring I am struck to the core of my being where resides something more elemental than I myself can comprehend. When I listen to the Bach B-Minor Mass I am moved to contemplate the Infinite not because of the religious text but simply because the combination of frequencies, which Bach indicated as a series of dots on lined paper two hundred fifty years ago in a country thousands of miles away, compels me to do so. It finds something in me I cannot find myself. Obviously, I have not been alone in this experience.

  The manuscript went on to ask basic questions about interpretation and offer a fundamental approach to violin playing: “. . . there are nevertheless common traits that all great violinists seem to share, which might be summarized with the statement: Ultimate technical control leads to ultimate musical freedom.”

  It ended with the following statement: “Expressive communication is the goal of playing the violin. It is something that must be learned but cannot really be taught. It must be learned using the same tool, though utilized in an infinitely more trained and sophisticated way, with which the listener is able to assimilate these unique vibrations: one’s ears. If a musician listens carefully enough, the fingers will find a way.”

  Yumi turned to the next page. It was headed “Lesson One” but was otherwise blank, as were the remaining pages.

  Closing the manuscript, Yumi contemplated with eyes shut, hands folded on her lap, in the peaceful silence of the room. Mr. Jacobus was not, after all, what Americans harshly referred to as a bum. That was his façade, she could see now. His short tome was inspirational. After some minutes, she inspected Nathaniel’s biographies wall. Scanning for B,she selected the thickest biography of Johann Sebastian Ba
ch, returned to the table, and began to search for sarabanda, with an a. After that, she went back to her bedroom and her violin, and began to practice.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “We should’ve walked. We could’ve spit from the hotel to Strella’s office,” Jacobus muttered to Yumi. Nathaniel had dropped Yumi off at Jacobus’s hotel a half hour earlier. Now he and Yumi nudged through a hot, becalmed sea of traffic, cars honking like a herd of rutting walruses.

  “Shit! This cab isn’t even air-conditioned! It’s stifling in here!” Jacobus ranted. “At least roll down the windows!” he yelled through the Plexiglas barrier to the driver.

  “Hey, buddy, they are rolled down,” hollered the cabbie. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you and your fucking Oriental Seeing Eye dog get out and fucking walk?”

  Yumi put her hand on Jacobus’s arm. “It’s all right,” she said. “Perhaps if you’re too hot I can help you take off your jacket.”

  “No! Jesus, why did I agree to do this?” said Jacobus.

  Yumi looked out the window, away from Jacobus.

  “Shit,” he finally said in a more reasonable tone.

  “Perhaps you can tell me about Anthony Strella,” said Yumi. She needed to get him out of his funk, wherever it had originated.

  “I was only introduced to him once,” Jacobus said, “very briefly, at some crap wine and cheese reception. Years ago. We shook hands, or I should say I shook his hand. No strength in his handshake—none—and he pulled his hand away very quickly, too quickly, so either he was repulsed by the fact that I’m blind—oh, yes, that does happen—or he was afraid his hand would get bruised. Either way, definite weakness of character. Expensive cologne, far too much, trying too hard to impress people, maybe, probably got some real insecurities somewhere. Pretty tall—self-conscious about it.”