by Sally Mandel
“No,” I said.
He did something with his mouth where I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or pissed. Then he put his arm around my shoulder and led me back out onto the stage. The racket died in a nanosecond. Instant silence. I went straight for the piano and didn’t even look at David. Somebody had retrieved Chesnikov’s baton. He tapped it on the stand.
“Mademoiselle Stallone and I have come to an understanding.” He made it sound like I’d agreed to be his slave for the remainder of his life. But hey, I wasn’t about to quibble. “Now, if we are all ready to work,” he went on, “we begin again the same famous measure, a little bit soft but squadoosh the rallentando. It’s not a funeral.” Which meant we were still going to play the damn thing like it was the finish of the New York Marathon, but at least it would be a soft marathon.
When we got to the end of our final run-through, the orchestra applauded for ages—which means the strings tapped their bows against their stands and everybody else shuffled their feet. I know it’s a strange tradition, but it sure warmed my heart even if I wasn’t exactly sure which performance they were so enthused about, David and me at the keyboard or me mouthing off to Chesnikov. I was kind of expecting David to give me a hard time later, but instead he yanked me into a dressing room, locked the door, and kissed me until I thought my mouth would fall off. That is, when he wasn’t laughing too hard for kissing. David said the orchestra wanted to award me the Croix de Guerre, which I guess is the French version of the Purple Heart.
That night we got a standing ovation. Chesnikov made a big deal out of kissing my hand and acting like I was his own personal discovery while David was sort of stuck off on his own. Come to think of it, this was probably the beginning of that Bess-worship stuff that started maybe from the time we appeared on The Charlie Rose Show. It turns out a lot more mainstream people watch him than I thought, and they seemed to identify with the fact that I sounded more like the guy who fixed their transmission than some fancy piano player. Right after that, People magazine did a little piece. Mr. Balaboo said it would promote sales of our first CD. The magazine acted like the article would be about David and me, but it turned out to be eighty-five percent me. Most of the photos were of me, with David kind of hanging out behind like maybe he was my hairdresser. They even took one of me in the kitchen, making it look like I was cooking when I was actually throwing coffee grinds in the garbage, coffee that David had made, obviously. Anyhow, people had started turning me into this folk hero, like I was a classical-piano version of Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. So the night of the Chesnikov concert, a lot of ticket holders from the cheap seats had brought flowers and came down during the ovation to toss them on the stage. It was embarrassing, especially since it was obvious they were mostly for me and not for David. I did this thing I’d seen a ballerina do with her partner, which was take the prettiest rose and give it to him, but the whole business was kind of upsetting. The way I saw it, David was responsible for his own success and for mine, too.
Afterward, Pauline and Jake came backstage. It was frustrating because the place was wall-to-wall bodies and all I wanted to do was get them into a corner and find out what was going on. I tried whispering in Pauline’s ear when she hugged me, but Mrs. Edelmeyer had brought her bridge partner and wanted to discuss ways to mix legato and staccato in the Bach Partita she was working on. She practically dragged me away from Pauls and started right in explaining to her friend that “Bess and I don’t believe in playing Bach metronomically.” I gave Pauline and Jake a helpless look and that was the last I saw of them. Vernon showed up, of course, except all I got to see were his eyes over somebody else’s shoulder. It was completely nuts in there.
David and I got into this habit after our concerts of driving around in the limo to discuss the performance. We sure couldn’t do it backstage in the conductor’s suite, and there was usually a party or a jam session afterward. So we’d escape with Phillip for half an hour or so and drive around the park or even just sit in traffic until we’d picked our performance apart note by note. That night, I was more worried about David’s feelings being hurt than anything else.
“I’m uncomfortable with all those groupies from the balcony and Chesnikov making such a big deal,” I said.
David busted open a bottle of champagne, which he could do without so much as a dribble onto the leather upholstery. He handed me a glass. “Why uncomfortable?”
“Because I’m just a little snot from Rocky Beach. You’re the star.”
“You have to understand, Bess. The public has a very short attention span. You’re a novelty now, but over time, they’ll get used to you and it’ll be your work that counts.”
I didn’t want to say anything about the media madness that had been humming around David for at least ten years.
“They all should be excited,” he went on. “You’re the most inspiring performer to show up in a long time.” He raised his glass. “To the little snot from Rocky Beach.” Then he laughed. “My God, you really made Chesnikov go ballistics.”
We clinked glasses, and we were off on our nitpicky routine with me complaining how we were too rigid about making a diminuendo on every single falling cadence and him arguing that otherwise we would have overwhelmed the orchestra in those spots and me answering back that there’s no way we could ever overpower that orchestra, and on and on. It was fun and constructive and put all the bullshit in perspective because wasn’t this really supposed to be all about the music?
After that we went to a Park Avenue party that would have been painful except a bunch of people from the orchestra were there and we got a little jam session going—David and me on piano doing a funky duet kind of thing (you should hear my walking bass line), a viola, an oboe, and a trombone. We played Sondheim and Brubeck and McCartney, and we all got drunk. Then David and I went home and made love a few times, still riding the adrenaline.
I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a cement mixer. Happy enough from all that music and sex, but wrung out. I staggered out of bed to look for David. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of newspapers. When he raised his eyes, I thought somebody had died.
“What happened?”
“The reviews.”
“We got panned?”
He shook his head. “Smith gave us a rave. So did Barstable and Larson and Newburger.”
“That just leaves …” I went over and picked up The Listener.
“Nardigger.”
I read it in silence, except for some snorts, sniffs, and curses. I’ve repressed most of it, but unfortunately I still haven’t been able to forget the part where he said: David Montagnier continues his sad decline, making a career out of pandering to the public in a way we haven’t seen since the late lamented Liberace.
I pictured August Nardigger at his laptop with his white hat covering up his giant carbuncle, chuckling away as he did his best to ruin our careers. David was looking so mournful it seemed like a good idea to make physical contact. I drew up a chair so that our thighs would touch. “So what’s the deal with this asshole anyhow?” I asked. “Why’s he got it in for you?”
“Maybe he’s got a point,” David said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Look at this. Here.” I read to him from the other reviews, winding up with Smith, for thirty-five years the most respected critic of the Times.
David Montagnier, always a first-rate technician, shows not only renewed energy but a depth of interpretive sensitivity that surfaces in only our finest musicians. As a soloist or as a duo pianist, Montagnier has always pleased the ear. Now he is simply sublime.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“Nardigger may be cruel but he’s not stupid.” David got up and went to stare out the window. “I feel sometimes that I’m not the artist I was,” he said. “It happens to so many musicians, taking the easy route. And now we’re about to go off to London to play the Carnival again, and the Scaramouche, for God’s sake.�
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“And the Blemberg, don’t forget, which you sure as hell can’t say is pandering to public taste unless the public likes listening to a bunch of alley cats screeching on the back fence. Not that I have anything against alley cats.” David and I had fought over that one. There are other contemporary composers who write interesting stuff that doesn’t make you feel like somebody’s splitting your brain with a hacksaw. He’d won, but only in exchange for a beautiful Sonata for Two Pianos by Yang Su. I thought it was like water flowing over rocks but David maintained it was more like water flowing through the dishwasher. The point was, we played plenty of controversial music, so it was clear that Nardigger was either misinformed or full of shit and it was hard to understand why David would let the guy get to him like this. I had never seen him so disturbed. Not just pissed or upset or aggravated, all of which he’d been at one time or another. But so shaken. I put my arms around him from behind and pressed my cheek against his back. I thought so much love would have to sink into him from my body to his. I didn’t realize then that Nardigger’s words had seeped into a dark place in David’s mind where they were festering like evil little worms.
David spun around so fast he almost knocked me over.
“We’re getting out of here.” And off he went half running into the bedroom with me loping after him.
“Where? What?” Last I knew, we were only supposed to be thinking about what to pack for London. The U.K. makes you go through all kinds of complicated paperwork to perform there and nothing was for sure yet.
“Put some things together for the weekend. We’re going to my place upstate.”
“Upstate? What place? David?” I felt like I’d wandered into the wrong apartment. Who was this guy and what the hell was he talking about? He looked like my David. He was gorgeous all right, but he was tossing stuff around like we only had ten minutes to get out before Godzilla consumed Manhattan.
“Bess, if I’m not mistaken, you have an important date coming up.” He shot me a little grin that went a long way toward reassuring me.
I thought a minute. “Oh, yeah. My birthday.” Big deal. We’d just played at Carnegie Hall and he was talking about birthdays. “How did you know?”
“I have my sources,” he said. He was slinging jeans and flannel shirts into his bag.
“Where is this place and how come I never knew about it?”
“It’s in the Berkshires about twenty miles from Tanglewood.”
“Okay, that’s part one. And?”
“Aren’t you going to pack? You’ll need warm clothes. The nights can be cool even in July.”
I went and sat down in his suitcase. Not on it, in it. It was the only way I could get his attention. “Talk to me,” I said.
“I have that house and two more apartments—one in Paris and one in the Virgin Islands. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. The subject just never came up.”
“Hey, look, David, I shared one bathroom with three other people for most of my life. You’re talking a lot of real estate here. Plus, I don’t know, it seems important where you choose to hang your hat. What do you do about music in these places?”
“Oh, they all have pianos. Now are you going to come with me or not?”
I climbed out of his suitcase. “What the hell,” I said.
“Okay. Be ready in ten minutes.”
At the time, I swallowed David’s explanation that Phillip had a family obligation and couldn’t drive us. Instead, David had rented a four-wheeler and drove it himself. I got a huge kick out of David’s driving. I don’t know why I expected him to be somewhat lame behind the wheel. In fact, he was really good at it but fast. I hadn’t been on the Autobahn yet so I didn’t understand that in Europe, if you’re going seventy, it’s like you’re barely out of first gear. We got a ticket from a trooper on the Taconic, which David seemed to think was par for the course. God knows how many points he had on his license.
Anyhow, it only took us about three hours even with the ticket to get to the mountain house. I called it that because to me, a Long Island person, where standing on a road bump gives you altitude sickness, the Berkshires seemed positively Alpine. To get there, we had to drive into the woods along a dirt road. When you got to a lake, the road ran alongside it for a while and then stopped at David’s. He not only owned the house but also the woods for miles around, even the lake. I didn’t know you could own a lake.
“You see why we didn’t bring the limo?” David asked, slinging our bags out onto the porch.
“Yeah, but I still want to know what’s up with Phillip.” I’d thought the guy told me everything important that happened in his life. Like a couple months ago his bedroom wallpaper slid off. I kid you not. Phillip woke up in the morning and it was lying in these sad piles on the floor. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t tell me something was up with his favorite niece, which was the bullshit David was handing me.
But David took me inside and I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. He had a caretaker who’d aired it out so it wasn’t musty like a place that’s been empty for too long. There was a light piney kind of scent in the air, maybe from the thick wood planks on the floor and the paneled walls. Huge windows made you feel like you were living in a tree house. And the lake glistened out back like a silver platter. Where the house sat, the water made a kind of protected cove. You could sit on the back porch and watch the deer who came to drink on the opposite shore.
“How can you stay away from here?” I asked him. He stood behind me with his chin resting on my head.
“I knew you’d like it,” he said. Something in his voice made me think other people hadn’t, like maybe Terese, but I didn’t want to spoil the mood by asking. I swiveled around in his arms.
“You’re full of surprises. You got any other little secrets that just haven’t come up?”
There was just the weeniest hesitation in his face, enough to get my antennae buzzing. “David?”
But he led me over to the piano, a rare Model C Steinway that they don’t even make anymore. “I got it at an estate sale,” he said. “You want to give it a try?”
I sat down and ran through some Brahms intermezzi while David went to mess around in the kitchen. As far as I was concerned, we could stay in this place for the duration, like a thousand years or so.
The caretaker had stocked the fridge, so we ate a cold picnic out on the back porch and watched the light die over the lake. I was never happier than when I was near the water—the ocean, a lake, a river, it didn’t matter. I felt clean and peaceful just looking at it. I guess that’s why I was drawn to music that reminded me of water. In fact, David got so sick of me nagging him about how we should play with a more “liquid tone” that he threatened to submerge me and my piano in a big tank and make me perform in scuba gear.
But that night I didn’t think about rehearsing or performing or the new demands that I knew would be exhausting. We drank wine and watched the deer across the little cove, dipping their heads to drink and sending ripples to us like it was their side of the conversation. We sat for a long time in the dark. Silence is something you forget when you’re surrounded by the city symphony. Even in the middle of Central Park, you’re aware of the beat—the sirens, a boom box, a helicopter overhead. I had forgotten about silence. I inhaled it with deep breaths like the sweet clean air.
By nine o’clock, my eyes wouldn’t stay open. David, on the other hand, seemed wired, which at the time I assumed was his response to the place, that it energized him.
“I’ve gotta hit the sack,” I said. “Point me in the right direction.”
I remember David throwing a quilt over me and I was out. I don’t think I dreamed. I don’t think I moved a muscle until the next thing I knew, David was stroking my cheek and whispering in my ear.
“Bess … Bess.” The way he said my name was full of excitement. “Bess. Wake up.”
“Is it morning?” I asked.
“Yes. Two o’clock.�
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“Two?” Boy, was I confused.
“Come with me.”
I let him pull me to the edge of the bed. While I sat there nodding off, he put my socks and shoes on and wrapped me in a warm jacket.
“Are we leaving? Are there bears?” I was so groggy I hardly knew if I was awake or dreaming.
He led me out onto the porch, holding me tight beside him. We stood there for a moment, looking out over the water. Lights floated across the surface as far as the eye could see.
“Did the stars fall in the lake?” I asked, still more than half asleep. I felt like I was gazing down into the sky.
“Come,” David said. He led me to the water. There was a raft waiting there and on it was a piano and a chaise longue piled with blankets. We stepped across and David settled me in the chair, tucking the blankets all around me. Then he pushed us away from the shore with a pole and we were floating with all those stars. When we drifted close I could see that each star was a tiny boat with a candle on it. I turned to David, who was watching my face in the shimmering light.
“Happy birthday, darling,” he said. He kissed me on both cheeks and went to the piano. He played the things he knew I loved, starting with the Bach Prelude in C major that I’d told him the night we got locked in Weill Hall reminded me of light and water. The man truly paid attention. Then the sweetest of Chopin’s Nocturnes, the Berceuse and the Third Sonata in B minor, Debussey’s Claire de Lune and Sunken Cathedral, the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight, Scriabin’s Étude in C-sharp minor, and on and on as I lay there drifting in light and music, floating in the summer sky. I cried. Of course I cried. I still cry when I think of it. I’ll never forget it. Never my whole life long.
Chapter Thirteen
You would think, knowing me, that I would have tortured David with questions about the logistics. But the funny thing was, I didn’t. I remember he pulled us back to shore by a rope that must have been attached to a tree. Then we went to bed and made love, and there was this feeling it was for the last time and that maybe the world was going to end. I remember hearing vehicular sounds in the night, like something heavier than cars, and I’m sure that Phillip had a hand in it. I slept very late, and when I woke up, the lake was naked, no float, no candles, only little wrinkles from the breeze. But I didn’t want to know the details. It was magic, that’s all, and I wanted it to stay that way.
