Body & Soul

by Frank Conroy

"After..." He stared out over the piano. "After I hear the sound."

  Weisfeld nodded and remained silent.

  "I can't hear the chords that fast," Claude said. "If it's just notes one after another like the melody or something it's okay, but the chords, they're all so different, they sound so different it's like, it's like..."

  Again Weisfeld nodded. "Interesting. Go on, please. Try to tell me." He felt the boy's anxiety clearly, like a scent in the air, but something told him to press a bit. Weisfeld had no illusions about what he considered to be his limits as a teacher. He was simply prepping the child, getting him ready for others who would deal with higher matters—interpretation, technique, inner voices, dynamics, and all the rest—and sight-reading was a major part of that prepping. The important teachers would never take him on without it. As well, Weisfeld was truly curious.

  The boy puffed his cheeks, blew out the air, and suddenly struck a chord from the Beethoven. He let it ring for a second and then talked over it.

  "See? It's moving." His hands immobile on the keys, he twisted to look at Weisfeld. "Hear it moving?"

  "Yes."

  Claude played another, more complicated chord. "And this one." He let it ring. "It moves more. It's moving a lot. You know what I mean? Inside and outside all moving around."

  "I understand."

  "So I guess I want to hear that before I let it go."

  "This is a great help," Weisfeld said. "There are ways we can approach this."

  "What is that?" the boy asked. "Why does it do that?"

  Weisfeld got off the stool and began to pace back and forth. He looked around the crowded basement. "Well, we'll have to get a blackboard down here." He moved to the piano, cleared off the sheet music, and raised the lid. As he fixed the wooden rod to hold it up he asked, "How are you with numbers? Have you done much arithmetic at school?"

  "Sure," Claude said quickly, eager to return to the question of the chords. "I hear the sound, and then I hear stuff inside, like different notes coming and going."

  "Come over here and stand by the strings."

  The boy obeyed and Weisfeld went to the keyboard.

  "I'm going to play a chord," he said. "Stick your head in there and listen."

  The chord was played. Weisfeld kept the sustain pedal depressed. As the sound echoed Weisfeld said, "Now the soft sounds you hear, is this one of them?" Very gently he pressed a note higher on the keyboard.

  "Yes, yes!"

  "Now come over here." When the boy could see the keyboard Weisfeld replayed the chord, and then the high note.

  "It isn't in the chord," the boy said with wonder. "The high note isn't in the chord."

  "Exactly."

  "So what do I, how come it, what is it—"

  "Harmonics," Weisfeld said. "Overtones. It's quite logical, nothing weird. But we have a great deal of work to do for you to understand how it works. It may take some time."

  "You can't tell me now?" Claude played the magic high note several times, as if the tip of his finger could somehow give him the information.

  "We have to start from the ground up. You must be patient," Weisfeld said.

  She was sitting in the chair staring up at the fan-shaped window when he came home from shining shoes and eating corned beef hash at the cafeteria. The faucet in the kitchenette dripped at long, regular intervals.

  "They're taking me to Washington," she said in a flat voice.

  "Why?"

  "I'm not sure. I'm not supposed to worry. I'll be in a nice hotel. They'll give me twenty dollars a day."

  "That's good."

  She sighed and shifted her weight. "Some meetings or hearings or something. They don't tell me much. They say all I have to do is watch."

  "Watch what?"

  "I don't know. They're probably lying."

  Claude didn't know what to make of this remark. In the movies—and he went now whenever he could—the G-men were clearly good and never lied. The authorities were a benevolent force. Maybe she was drinking again, but he couldn't smell it and there weren't any bottles. He had seen Agent Burdick now several times, and he didn't think the man was a liar. He liked Burdick.

  "I'll be gone a few days," she said.

  "Okay." He went to his room.

  He lay down on the cot and stared at the ceiling. She was in some kind of trouble. For the first time he began to put things together in a vague sort of way. The newspapers talked about Communism, the Red Menace, Russia, Stalin, spies, and something called "fellow travelers" (the precise meaning of which was unknown to him, but he knew it wasn't good). There was a whole lexicon—dupes, pinkos, radicals, agitators, intellectuals, subversives, cell members, bolsheviks, and so on—used in what he understood to be a description of a great contest going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil. (He had first learned to scan for some of these words when he'd read about Eisler.) But it was the very enormity and grandeur of this struggle, like battles in some mythical context, that kept him from ever connecting it with his mother. The idea seemed ludicrous on its face. Nevertheless, he began to entertain the notion that somehow a mistake had been made. He sat up and was about to go in and talk to her, but he stopped himself, realizing that he didn't really know what to ask or how to begin. Knowing, as well, she would volunteer nothing.

  Some instinct kept him from saying anything to Mr. Weisfeld. It was the same impulse he'd felt when Weisfeld had shown up at the door—not to let him in, not to let him see—although on that occasion things had turned out well.

  She was away for a week, longer than expected, but Claude barely noticed. He could almost believe he had forgotten about her as he kept to his routines. At night he contemplated the implications of harmonics at the kitchenette counter, making diagrams and fiddling with numbers.

  It had been, at first, a distinct shock to learn that the beautiful and reassuring orderliness of the keyboard and of the harmony he had thus far learned was impure, a compromise with nature. Tempering seemed like tampering. If A was 440 vibrations per second, and an octave above was 880, wasn't that a clear sign? Weisfeld had gone to the blackboard to explicate, checking back to see if Claude had understood each model before he erased it and went on to draw another. Over a number of sessions Claude paid full but edgy attention, unconsciously resisting the whole idea.

  "So you mean even though a half tone is called a half tone, it isn't necessarily half of the whole tone?"

  "Exactly," Weisfeld said. "Not in natural tuning. The whole tones can be different too, compared to tempered."

  "So instead of letting the mistake happen all at once, you sort of spread it out over everything?" Slightly grudging acceptance.

  "Yes. That's a good way to put it." He stroked his mustache, getting chalk on it. "I don't know if I'd use the word 'mistake,' but I know what you mean."

  But then one afternoon it all came together. Weisfeld had drawn two diagrams, a circle and a spiral, corresponding to tempered and natural tuning. He filled in the sharps and flats, double sharps and double flats, checked the letters, and stepped back. For several moments there was silence as they stared at the board.

  "You see?" Weisfeld indicated the circle. "This really does make it a circle. Everything comes back. Go up the sharps in the cycle of fifths and you get back. Go the other way with the flats in the cycle of fourths and you get back. You can go around and around."

  "That's wonderful," Claude said, relishing the neat, closed beauty of it. "I get it. They had to do it."

  "Hmmm." Weisfeld was absorbed in the board. After a moment he tapped the spiral. "And this is worth thinking about, worth remembering. As you go around the sharps, the note is sharper than the starting point. Or go twelve times with the flats, and the note would sound too low to us. So in a sense the actual nature of the scales changes as you move." He stepped back from the board. "Worth remembering, philosophically speaking." He spread his arms. "An infinite number of scales in nature." He brought his hands in, palms facing each other as if he were ho
lding an invisible loaf of bread. "And we work in this little area. This part of the spectrum."

  When she came home she started drinking again, flushed and angry in her chair, rambling on until all hours. She was incapable of staying on a single subject for more than a few minutes, veering off into the past or into a discourse on some public figure, or on the working class, but eventually he put together what had happened in Washington, D.C.

  At first they had put her in the waiting room of a small office. She had only to sit on the couch and read magazines. Day after day, people were brought through the door, past the couch, and into the interior office. She could hear voices droning. Some of the people looked at her when they emerged. She recognized only a few, but gave no sign to them or anyone else.

  Then she was moved to a large public room where hearings were going on. Microphones, photographers, spectators, seated and lining the walls. She was placed in the front row of a special side section in such a way as to be visible to anyone at the witness table. Once again, all she was asked to do was to sit and remain silent. Then one night she'd had a few beers, and without telling anyone, went to the station and caught the train to New York.

  "They can all go fuck themselves," she said from the chair, raising bourbon in an ironic toast. "The feds, the finks, and the noble assholes with their precious honor—they can all go fuck themselves."

  The next day she received a letter by certified mail telling her that her hack license had been suspended for sixty days, effective immediately. She made Claude come with her to the Hack Bureau. They took the subway downtown, rocking on the straw seats in the silent roar. Claude watched the strap loops swinging back and forth and counted the stations flashing by.

  The Hack Bureau was set in the corner of a huge municipal building. Under tall, narrow, grimy windows, people moved along the perimeter, stopping or lining up at grilled windows and doors leading to the interior and a maze of offices and cubicles. The high, angling light in the smoky air created a sepulchral mood. Claude's mother approached the appropriate grill and handed over the certified letter.

  "Who do I see about this?"

  The clerk, an elderly bird-like woman with pronounced wattles and thick glasses, examined the paper.

  "It's a suspension." She looked up. "This is you? You're a driver?"

  "Yes, it's me. Now who do I see?"

  "Goodness." She looked at Claude and then back at Emma. "Well, you better wait. Over there." She turned and summoned another clerk, handed her the paper, and muttered something.

  Claude and his mother found places on a long wooden bench. A constant flow of people moving in both directions passed before them, many of them clutching papers or forms of one kind or another. Some stopped to read with puzzled faces before they turned around to retrace their steps. Every now and then a cop would go by. Two old women sat beside them on the bench. After an hour Emma went up to the window again, and then returned. One of the old women ate an apple. Claude was both fascinated and repulsed by the stray white hairs on her chin.

  It was another hour before the clerk beckoned them forward from behind the grill with an index finger. She disappeared for a moment and then opened a door and beckoned them again. Claude and his mother entered the enormous interior in which it seemed a hundred telephones were ringing at once in a continuous unsynchronized sheet of sound punctuated by typewriters clacking, voices shouting, and doors slamming. The bird-like woman led them this way and that, past a low gate to a cubicle and a pudgy, red-cheeked young man in a white shirt and checked necktie.

  "Mr. Simpson," said the clerk, and withdrew.

  Simpson shuffled through the papers on his desk and found the certified letter. Emma sat down in front of him while Claude stayed to the rear by the low gate. Simpson studied the document on both sides, reached for a file which he perused for several minutes, and finally looked up.

  "I can't go sixty days," Emma said. "I've got a kid to feed." She swept an arm to indicate the boy.

  Once again Claude felt a stir of admiration at the brazenness of her lies. He had been feeding himself for quite some time. He had bought the sneakers on his feet at Thorn McAn with his own money.

  "A hardship," said Simpson. "I can certainly appreciate that." He spoke in a precise, fluty voice.

  "I never heard of anybody getting sixty days," she said.

  He took a small pamphlet from his drawer and slipped it forward across the surface of the desk with two fingers. She looked down at it but didn't pick it up.

  "It's quite within the powers of the—"

  "I didn't do anything," she said.

  Simpson's face betrayed a hint of irritation—a minuscule tightening at the corners of his mouth. He turned the letter over and tapped the back. "Code G is checked. Transporting a passenger with the flag up."

  "I never do that. Not ever. Not once in all these years."

  He consulted the file, holding it in such a way that she could not see what he was reading. He flipped several pages. "It is surprising. You have a spotless record heretofore. Not even a moving violation. Remarkable." He sighed. "Nevertheless, an inspector saw you on the Seventy-ninth Street transverse with the flag up and a passenger in the rear on the second of July at four-fifteen in the afternoon."

  She leaned forward. "Let me see that. What inspector? It's a flat lie, goddamn it."

  He tilted the file to his chest. "The identity of the inspector is privileged information."

  "I want him to say that to my face!"

  "My hands are tied, Mrs. Rawlings, I'm sorry. And as you may have noticed, there are additional boxes checked. Box A, for shortchanging in an amount in excess of five dollars. Box K, inappropriate attire. Box M, disrespectful attitude towards the customer with the use of foul language. These are from members of the general public."

  "This is horseshit," she whispered. "This is all made up, cooked up."

  "There are procedures for appeal," he offered, raising his head and holding her eye.

  "How? What?"

  "Fill out form 1219-WS, submit it to the bureau, and a hearing will be held. You are entitled to counsel, and you may present witnesses on your behalf."

  "And how long will that take?"

  He adjusted his tie. "Well, of course, I don't know how long it will take you to prepare your—"

  "No, no," she interrupted. "I mean, how long before the Hack Bureau holds the hearing?"

  He reached into his desk again, withdrew a small book, leafed through it, ran his finger down a page, and said, "Ninety days." Was that an infinitesimal smile on his bland face? "They have up to ninety days. Of course, it might actually take less."

  "Ninety days to act on a sixty-day suspension?"

  "Yes, I know. The rules sometimes seem—"

  "You call that fair?" she cried, her voice rising.

  "I don't call it anything, Mrs. Rawlings."

  "Anonymous accusers? You call that fair? How am I supposed to defend myself?" She slapped her thick hand on the desk.

  He looked at her hand and then went back to the file, slowly leafing through.

  "Why?" she asked. "Why would I leave the flag up? It's my cab. I own the medallion. Am I supposed to be stealing from myself?"

  "Perhaps you simply forgot. But the rules are the rules."

  She made a little hissing sound through her teeth. Claude edged a bit closer to the gate. After several moments of silence she got up. She was approaching Claude when Mr. Simpson spoke.

  "There is something here in your file..."

  She froze, looking directly at Claude.

  "A memo," he went on. "In the event of trouble you are to call a Mr. Burdick?"

  And now she seemed to be looking through Claude. He watched a red flush climb up her neck to her face. Her upper lip pulled away from her teeth. She whirled.

  Simpson was momentarily paralyzed as she rushed forward. By the time he raised his hands it was too late. She had bent over the desk to grab the top of his trousers with one hand and the kno
t of his checked necktie with the other. She lifted him in the air and, with his head firmly grasped in her armpit, swept the desk with the lower part of his body, sending files, papers, pencils, paper clips, trays, telephone, and a coffee cup scattering in all directions.

  Simpson began to scream, his arms first flopping around her big body, then trying to hang on.

  One after another, two policemen came through the gate, just in time to see her throw Simpson through the air against the wall of the cubicle. There was a snapping sound and the wall, as Simpson slid downward, began to fall back to a forty-five-degree angle. The startled faces of two women in the next cubicle were revealed as they backed away.

  The cops came at her from two sides, one tackling her and the other trying for a headlock. She tottered but managed to grab the second cop by the shoulder and twist him around so that he landed on the desk. He stood up and jumped down on her, his full weight on her shoulders. They fell to the floor with a heavy thump. A third cop appeared, pulling out a set of handcuffs as the cop who had jumped pressed his knees into Emma's neck. Simpson began to crawl toward the gate. Except for grunting and thumping, the scene was played out in silence.

  When Claude saw the first handcuff snapped into place he edged sideways, backed through the gate as the observers gathered there, and ran away, zipping through the maze until he found a door to the outside corridor and, eventually, the street.

  ***

  Mr. Burdick brought her home a couple of days later. It was mid-morning and he passed Claude a donut from a paper bag. He gave Emma a container of coffee. "Well, I'm glad this all worked out," he said. "Sorry you had to spend two nights in there."

  "In where?" Claude asked.

  His mother looked at him. "In jail is where he means."

  "The thing is, Mrs. Rawlings, the clerk had a separated shoulder." Burdick sipped his coffee. Suddenly he laughed. "He was unprepared for the perils of civil service, I would say. Definitely caught by surprise. But he finally listened to reason. Charges dropped."