Death and Transfiguration

by Gerald Elias

  He went back into the office and with some trepidation roused Hus again, he hoped for the last time.

  “What do you want now?” Hus asked.

  “Do you know this Klaus Jürgens,” Nathaniel asked, pointing to the name on the program, “or this Petru Mihaescu?”

  “I am not a historian. I am the orchestra—”

  “I know, you’re very busy,” said Nathaniel, holding out a ten-dollar bill that was expeditiously, if not graciously, pocketed by Hus. “But do you recognize either of the names?”

  “Jürgens, no.”

  “But Mihaescu?”

  “Old Petru. He still plays.”

  “In the orchestra? After forty years?”

  “No, he is retired from orchestra. He plays in a café. Café Espoire.”

  “Do you know the address of the café?”

  “I am not a secretary.”

  “Could you show me on my map?” Nathaniel pulled out his tourist map and a pen before Hus could say no. Hus scrawled an x on one of the side streets on the other side of the square.

  “There. That is all I know.”

  “Thank you,” said Nathaniel on his way out. He wondered how an orchestra with this kind of management could continue to exist. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I didn’t expect a Negro,” said Hus.

  “And I didn’t expect an…” Nathaniel left the rest unsaid. “Good-bye.”

  * * *

  Nathaniel took a bus to the next stop on his agenda, the office of the newspaper Pravo. One of the main daily papers in the country, it had grown out of the earlier newspaper Rude Pravo, at one time a propaganda arm of the Communist regime that dominated Czechoslovakia from the end of the Second World War until the Velvet Revolution. After his meeting with Jan Hus, he had no illusions about making earthshaking progress.

  He entered a no-frills, nondescript building that bore the company’s name and found himself in a no-frills, nondescript newsroom. A lot of people appeared to be engaged with one thing or another, and possibly as a result of their preoccupation Nathaniel’s presence went unheeded.

  He was about to leave when a diminutive, ramrod-backed elderly woman approached him with tiny, piercing eyes, her bun of hair tightly bound and so white it was almost iridescent. Nathaniel would have described her as petite but she radiated too much of an aura of strength. The woman eyed him with what Nathaniel presumed was suspicion.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “do you speak English?”

  “Of course,” said the woman.

  Here we go again, thought Nathaniel.

  “My name is Nathaniel Williams.”

  “American.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Elena Garnisova,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “I’m doing research on Vaclav Herza,” he said. “I’m particularly interested in the period of time right before he left the country.”

  “In 1956?”

  “Yes.”

  “Politics or music?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “I imagine you don’t read Czech.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “Oh?” asked Nathaniel, already resigned to this prospect. This assignment, this country, had been nothing but problems.

  “I wouldn’t be able to have translations for what you’re looking for until five o’clock. Can you wait that long?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Since retiring, Makoto Furukawa had alternated three outfits: there was the breezy comfort of his lightweight cotton yukata robe, perfect for the semitropical climate of Kyushu; the gardening outfit that somehow managed to remain spotlessly clean while he cultivated his plot and pruned his fruit trees; and his multipocketed khaki garb that, accompanied by his state-of-the-art equipment, he wore for fly-fishing on the stream that ran along the perimeter of his property.

  He had not worn his blue suit, however, since his final day of teaching, when he had it cleaned and pressed before hanging it in his closet. Though he never planned to wear his suit again, a sense of loyalty prevented him from disposing of it. As soon as Cato Hashimoto had called him at the behest of Daniel Jacobus with his assignment, he knew there was a reason he had kept it. There was no question that he would honor his old friend’s request, though the reasons for the task puzzled him. So he took the suit off the hanger and had it cleaned and pressed again. He was gratified that it still fit him, though now a little snugly. Walking down the dark side alley, puddled and dirty, in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, he took special care that it remained immaculate.

  * * *

  Furukawa had taken the overnight, high-speed Shinkansen train from Nishi-Kagoshima Station to Tokyo, changing in Fukuoka when it arrived on the main Japanese island of Honshu. He slept well and comfortably, and had a leisurely, traditional breakfast of rice, nori, raw egg, grilled salmon, nattō—a fermented soybean mush—and green tea, before the train arrived at Tokyo Station.

  His older brother, Daizaburo, met him at the station. The last time Furukawa had been in Tokyo was six years earlier, on the occasion of Daizaburo’s retirement from his position as a cello professor at the Toho Music School. Upon seeing each other now, they bowed many times in sincere pleasure of their reunion, Makoto bowing slightly more deeply in deference to the elder brother.

  They went to their favorite soba shop, Yamazen, that was older than both of them combined and where the noodles were still made by hand and the broth from scratch. In between their slurping and personal reminiscences, Makoto asked his brother about the object of Jacobus’s inquiry, the maestro, Erutsa-sama, who had conducted many memorable concerts at the music school. Good manners prevented Daizaburo from inquiring about the reasons for his younger brother’s curiosity. Makoto knew this would be the case and was grateful for it, because he did not want to involve his brother in a troubling enterprise in which important people could lose face.

  Makoto learned little out of the ordinary. Erutsa-sama had been stern with the student orchestra, directing it with a firm hand, and produced remarkable results. The public always filled Suntory Hall and NHK Hall to hear him conduct the young musicians, a rare accomplishment in a city that boasted eight professional orchestras. When the maestro was in Japan conducting Harmonium, Toho students were given preferential treatment for tickets. There was nothing Daizaburo had to offer that suggested ill treatment by Erutsa-sama. No affairs, no rumors, and, thankfully, no suicides. Perhaps, he suggested, it was that the Japanese were more accustomed to authoritarian treatment and viewed harsh criticism more as an honor than a shame. Makoto shrugged. He didn’t agree with Daizaburo on severe methods—even with a student as willful as Yumi Shinagawa had occasionally been, he recalled with a smile—but his brother might not be far off base in the characterization of the Japanese persona.

  There was only one thing Daizaburo had to offer that was surprising. Erutsa-sama was enthralled with sumo wrestling. Makoto paused from his enjoyment of the cold sake that had been refreshing him on this hot, humid day and shook his head slowly, considering the possible ramifications of this revelation. He wondered aloud at the dichotomy between the diminutive musician, shorter even than the students he had conducted, and the huge Goliaths who wrestled.

  Maybe that’s the very reason, Daizaburo had replied. Maybe Erutsa-sama sees himself as a sumo in spirit. Makoto found this interesting—his brother had always been the perceptive one—but not helpful in any direct way. He asked if there was anything more he could find out about this.

  “He always went to the tournaments with one of the pianists on the faculty.”

  “Maybe he can help me, then,” Makoto said. “What’s his name?”

  “It’s a she. Nagako Shimidzu,” said Daizaburo, and, removing from the inner pocket of his suit jacket an electronic address book in the form of a smiling pink kitten that he had just purchased at the high-tech market in Asakusa, gave his younger brother Shimidzu-san’s phone number.

&
nbsp; And so Makoto had called Nagako Shimidzu, explained who he was, and invited her to tea. She thanked him profusely, the more so because she had to decline; she was busy with students all day until 9 P.M. She would be happy, though, to talk to him now, at least until her next student arrived.

  Shimidzu-san had been a sumo fan since her childhood. She couldn’t really explain why. She just found it an exciting change from the humdrum of teaching sixty students a week. But although she, too, was at first surprised at Erutsa-sama’s interest in the sport, she was proud that a Westerner, and so famous a Westerner, would actually want to go to a tournament, so she was always more than happy to escort him to Kokugikan, Tokyo’s national sumo stadium. Though she always offered, he never allowed her to pay for tickets, and that was good, too, considering the meager salary she received compared to the astronomical rent she had to pay for her fifteen-by-twenty-foot apartment that she shared with her piano and two cats in a suburb of Tokyo an hour away by train on the Ikebukuro Line.

  Furukawa asked if there was anything in particular that Erutsa-sama found intriguing about the sport. She replied with one word, a name, actually: Chiyonofuji. Erutsa-sama was a fan, in the true meaning—a fanatic follower—of Chiyonofuji.

  Furukawa understood the connection immediately. Chiyonofuji, the Babe Ruth of sumo, was also one of the shortest and lightest among all the wrestlers—only about two hundred forty pounds—but built of sheer muscle. Before a match started, it appeared inconceivable that he would be able to triumph against giants almost twice his size. But Chiyonofuji used quickness, amazing strength, and astounding guile to push his opponents out of the ring, or even throw them to the ground. Most of all, he conveyed a sense of assurance and confidence that appeared to intimidate even other yokozunas.

  Now Furukawa had some new insight into Erutsa-sama’s personality, but to him it seemed that this trait would be a strength, not the thing that his friend Jacobus wanted to hear about.

  Furukawa knew it would be impossible to meet Chiyonofuji himself but asked Shimidzu-san if there was a tournament going on in Tokyo. Unfortunately not, she replied. The last tournament had recently finished, and that one was in Kyoto. She then excused herself. Her break was over and her next student was arriving. Furukawa asked one final question. Sumo matches were all-day affairs. Did she and Erutsa-sama ever dine or seek any other entertainment together after the matches?

  Erutsa-sama always went to the same club, she answered. On a side alley in the Roppongi. A high-class geisha house called Cin-Cin, Chéri. Of course, she had never gone there. It was for men only.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jacobus lowered his violin from his shoulder. He had become listless being a puppet master, manipulating his friends to do the nasty work while he sat alone in the dark, waiting. Though he knew it was too soon, he hadn’t heard a word from them and was becoming impatient. Repeated calls to the Berkshire Medical Center were deflected. On one occasion he was able to wrest from the bureaucracy the tantalizing but amorphous statement that O’Brien had shown signs of consciousness. What signs? he asked. Does that mean she’ll recover? Whether he asked politely or abrasively, as was his inclination, they told him, “It’s still too soon to tell.” He asked whether she had spoken, but then they went back to their deflection. “Jacobus,” she had said. Why?

  To soothe his unsettled mind, he had turned to his most trusted antidote to a lifetime of anxiety, the violin. On this occasion, though, even the Adagio from Bach’s G-Minor Sonata failed him. It was immaterial that Jacobus’s technique was no longer what it used to be; the music usually poured straight from his soul. Was it his very vexation that led him unwittingly back to G Minor? Could even Bach fail to wrest his troubled mind from its preoccupations?

  Before placing his violin back in its case, he cradled it to his ear. Though this eighteenth-century, rosin-encrusted violin made by Joseph Gagliano of Naples had borne witness to more than two hundred years of tears and torment, without Jacobus pulling his bow along its strings it remained mute, wholly incapable of communicating its wisdom and soul. Holding the violin, he felt its accumulated imperfections, like the wrinkles on his brow, and wondered at their cause. Was this jagged scratch on its back the result of simple carelessness, or was its owner an opera musician hurriedly finding his place in the pit before the curtain went up? The premiere of Don Giovanni, perhaps, in Prague? It would have been a brand-new fiddle then, and its owner might have cursed his coachman for getting stuck in traffic in front of the opera house and, in his distraction, ruined the glossy perfection of his new prize.

  And what about that curious wear and tear that smoothed the edges along the right side of the scroll? That was not a one-shot deal. That would have taken years of placing the violin back in the same, slightly-too-small and off-center wooden case, maybe made by the violinist himself. That meant its owner was both dedicated and poor. Dedicated because he took the violin out, day after day, for years on end; poor because he knew it was a good instrument but couldn’t afford a better case. How did this guy provide for his family? Was he a professional violinist back in the day? The village musician who played at weddings and harvest festivals? That would account for the poverty, at least. Or was he an amateur? A tailor who relieved the tedium of his life by playing Bach in the middle of the night? Was he Italian? German? Was he a he?

  Too many questions. The violin knew all the answers but was not talking. At this moment, Jacobus felt a great kinship with the Gagliano, and for that reason, hated it. He needed revelations, not more mysteries. He deposited the instrument back in its prison and roughly latched the case shut.

  Jacobus shuffled off to his bookshelf. With his cane in his left hand he used his right foot to clear a path among the piles of old music and records in his way. Though it had been years since he had thought about the book, he had a general idea of its location. It was one of the smallest and thinnest, and with age had also acquired the comforting odor of moldy leather. It wouldn’t be difficult to distinguish it from the others.

  He felt along the top shelf, just a little above his head. Yes, here it was, Nathaniel’s gift to him. He removed it from its perch and inhaled to corroborate, erasing any doubt: The Life and Death of Matteo Cherubino, “Il Piccolino,” by Luca Pallottelli (ca. 1785), translated by Jonathan Gardner (1846), if he recalled the pretentious title correctly. It was the rare tome Nathaniel had unearthed that helped them solve the mystery of the cursed and stolen “Piccolino” Stradivarius back in 1983. Whether the legendary dwarf violinist, Matteo Cherubino, ever actually existed was still the subject of ongoing musicological debate, but there was no question that the book itself was a one-of-a-kind collector’s item. Hell, Jacobus thought, I’m not being sentimental. This book’s not doing me any good. Why keep the damn thing?

  Jacobus blew some of the dust off the cover and wiped more of it away with his sleeve. He traced his newly blazed trail into the kitchen and recovered the piece of discarded butcher paper from the pastrami that Yumi had brought him. Luckily, it still had an edge of freezer tape on it. Jacobus wrapped the precious book in the paper and sealed it as best he could. Then he rummaged through a drawer containing a lifetime of assorted implements whose functions he could not recall, until he found a pencil, not a pen because he was not able to determine if a pen still wrote. He pondered what to inscribe on the package, then decided even if he could think of something appropriate it would most likely be illegible anyway, so he jammed the pencil back in the drawer and called a cab to take him to the Berkshire Medical Center.

  * * *

  Jacobus arrived at the front desk holding his small treasure in one hand and his cane in his other, and asked to see Scheherazade O’Brien in Room 421L. He knew how to get there, he told the receptionist, hoping that would tip the scales in his favor.

  “Are we family?” she asked.

  “Nah,” he grunted. Then, “Yes!” he almost shouted. “Yes. We are family.”

  “We’re not sure, though?”

  “
Extended family,” Jacobus said. “We’re the mother’s father-in-law.”

  “In other words, we’re the grandfather.”

  “Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Okay. In a manner of speaking I’ll find out if we’re permitting her visitors, family or otherwise. Go have a seat against the wall to your left and we’ll let you know. Do we require assistance?”

  “No, we don’t. How long will we take?” asked Jacobus, already impatient.

  “A few minutes. Now go sit down, please.”

  Jacobus made his way to a bank of connected plastic chairs, and could discern which ones were occupied from the mutters he received. He came to one that sounded empty and with his hand felt that it was cushioned. When he sat down, however, the cushion began to jiggle. The laughter of the obese woman, on whose lap Jacobus quickly but not quickly enough realized he was sitting, was joined by the other patients sitting along the row.

  Jacobus jumped up, cursing, and as he made his retreat, the woman’s jocular voice bellowed after him, “Haven’t had a man that close since my Milton kicked the bucket!”