Death and Transfiguration

by Gerald Elias

  “And?” Nathaniel prompted.

  “And now I have said enough,” said Mihaescu. “My cigarette is finished, which means it is time for me to go back to work.”

  “When’s your next break?”

  “When I need another cigarette.”

  “Would you like another pilsner to go with that?”

  “If that’s how you want to spend your night in Prague, who am I to argue?”

  For forty-five minutes, Nathaniel listened to the music with one ear while studying the clientele. Business wasn’t exactly brisk, but there were enough customers to sustain the café’s existence. Most, he gathered, were local. A few touristy-looking types seeking adventure off the beaten track stuck their heads in and, quickly sizing up the unlikelihood of a Kodak moment, retreated back to the main square.

  Nathaniel hadn’t eaten much during the day, so while Mihaescu was doing his late shift he took the opportunity to order the knedlo, zelo, and vepřo that he had seen on the menu of virtually every restaurant he passed. In a few minutes he was served a large dish of bread dumplings, sauerkraut, and roast pork. Though Nathaniel was full when he finished the meal, he was only half satisfied. The food had been appetizing in concept, but like the music, it was somewhat bland, slightly greasy, and, like many good things repeated ad infinitum, uninspired. He decided against ordering the warm apple strudel, even though it came highly recommended in the trio’s performance of “My Favorite Things.” Maybe he should have ordered the schnitzel with noodles.

  Scattered applause acknowledged Mihaescu’s group when it finished its final set with a Phantom of the Opera medley and woke Nathaniel, who had had a long two days, too much beer, and a leaden dinner. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, he quickly joined the applause.

  Mihaescu arrived at Nathaniel’s table with two half liters of pilsner in his hands.

  “Since you are buying,” he said, “I have saved you the trouble of having to order.”

  “Thanks for your thoughtfulness,” Nathaniel said. Mihaescu returned to his previous chair as if it had been reserved for him.

  “Not at all. I will tell you the story of how I got into Sinfonia Prague, and I promise every word is true.”

  “No doubt.”

  Mihaescu lit another cigarette, sat back in his chair, and took a long draft of his beer.

  “I am from Romania, you know. I was born there, grew up there, studied the trumpet there. In those days it was all government control. Everything. You couldn’t breathe without government knowing. With music, if someone heard a kid with talent, government would say, ‘Kid, you have talent, you go study with x, y, z. You will make Romania great.’ You didn’t argue because maybe in the end you could get a better job than cleaning streets. Kids who could play string instruments they sent to conservatories in cities. Kids who played trumpet like me, or horn or trombone, they send to schools out in the country. You guess why?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “Noise! Just imagine a school full of kids blowing their brains out playing lousy brass instruments eight hours a day! They figured, ‘Put them out in the countryside where only the cows can hear them.’ So I spend ten years—no family, no friends—making Romania great.”

  “Did you get a job?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Job?” Mihaescu made the gestures of laughing, but no sound emerged. “There were no jobs! There were no jobs because people couldn’t afford to buy a ticket to a concert, because they had no jobs. But, you see, you weren’t allowed to say that, because if you said that, you would be shot.”

  “Surely you’re exaggerating.”

  “Okay, I am exaggerating,” Mihaescu said. He slammed down his glass, which was empty, and stood up.

  “Sorry,” Nathaniel said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. How about another beer? Are you hungry?”

  A bowl of goulash and potato dumplings and a plate of stale rolls arrived with the pilsner. Mihaescu ate in silence, dipping the bread into the goulash and ignoring Nathaniel until he was almost finished. He dropped his spoon onto the table, splashing gravy onto its grimy surface, and downed half his beer.

  “I crossed the border—don’t ask me how because I won’t tell you—because I hear that in Prague you can find work. I play in this club, that club,” he continued. “Finally they hire me here, Café Espoire, with two other guys, one Czech, one Hungarian. The work is steady. I don’t mind it doesn’t pay so well. The food is free. The beer is free. We can talk to each other, even about politics, but not too much. Compared to Romania, this is heaven. Maybe not heaven compared to heaven, but it’s okay.”

  “But you needed something more? Is that why you joined the orchestra?”

  “No and no.” He finished his beer. “Would you be kind enough to order me another?” he asked. “It’s a long story and you see I get dry.”

  When Mihaescu had fortified himself, he continued.

  “It happened like this. One night, some tall, ugly guy comes in and asks if I want to be principal trumpet player of Sinfonia Prague.”

  “Just like that?” asked Nathaniel. His waning attention was suddenly aroused. He leaned forward.

  “Just like that,” said Mihaescu, who, as if on cue, suddenly became more animated. “I get in his car and he drives me to the conductor, Vaclav Herza. You heard of him?”

  Nathaniel nodded emphatically.

  “I go to his apartment. Herza says to play, so I play what do I know from student days, the Haydn trumpet concerto—what else am I going to play, ‘Never on a Sunday’?—and after a few measures, Herza, who is reading the newspaper the whole time, says, ‘Very well. You’ll do.’ When now I look back, I think Herza already knew he was leaving Prague.”

  “And when was that? When did he leave?” Nathaniel asked, his fatigue a thing of the past.

  “Two weeks later. It was big surprise.”

  Nathaniel felt he was on to something. “Why? Why was it a surprise? Did he give any reason?” He tried to keep the flow of conversation free and easy, and mask his greater interest in Herza.

  Suddenly Mihaescu began to fidget. He wiped his face with his hand. He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked in every direction except at Nathaniel.

  Nathaniel rephrased the question. “Do you think it had anything to do with Klaus Jürgens leaving the orchestra?”

  “I need another beer. Then I talk,” said Mihaescu.

  Nathaniel shelved his growing impatience. The beer was cheap. He had time to spare. And he was on the verge. Possibly. He just needed to get Mihaescu to open up.

  When the old trumpeter again appeared sated, Nathaniel assured him that anything he had to say would be held in strictest confidence, and to level the playing field he told Mihaescu, in general terms, why he was inquiring after Jürgens and Herza.

  Mihaescu’s probing eyes, seemingly unglazed by drink, looked directly into Nathaniel’s. “Vaclav Herza was a Soviet informer,” he said, his voice level.

  “Tell me more,” Nathaniel said, trying to remain calm.

  “You see, in 1956 the Soviets invaded Hungary. That was the time of the freedom movement, but then the tanks came to Budapest, and the hope ended. Everywhere.”

  Mihaescu paused. Nathaniel nodded, conveying sympathy and understanding, silently urging him to continue.

  “Maybe you wonder what that has to do with Prague,” Mihaescu continued, picking up Nathaniel’s unspoken cue. “You see, Soviets knew if freedom could break out in Budapest, it could break out in Prague. Then who knows where? So they form a network. A network of informants.”

  “But,” Nathaniel interrupted, “Vaclav Herza was known for just the opposite. He fought for Czech independence.”

  Mihaescu looked at his beer for a moment.

  “Exactly!” he said, slapping the table. “Who better to have as a spy? Herza mixed with the intelligentsia, the liberals, the artists. There used to be a club, called … called … Sonja’s Bar, on the other side of Charles Bridge. That’s where they all met. Not
for music, for political. That’s where Herza would go to get his information and then pass it on to his masters.”

  “Did Klaus Jürgens go to this bar also?”

  “Sure! Klaus liked to drink, like all trumpet players.”

  “So if Herza was a valuable informant, why did he flee?”

  “Because Jürgens was one of his targets. Jürgens tried to organize the musicians to form a collective. A union. So they would be paid a living wage. So they would be treated with respect and not like criminals, the way Herza treated them. Jürgens was a true Communist! Not a Soviet Fascist Communist. Herza would not tolerate Jürgens organizing the musicians of his orchestra, so he betrayed him to the KGB.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “It happened so long ago. Some parts of it are hard to remember. Ah! Now I remember. One night, at Sonja’s, Jürgens overheard Herza passing information to his contact, and he suddenly realized what Herza had been doing all along. He also realized he now had power over his boss. He threatened Herza to expose him but made him offer: I keep my mouth shut, you give better treatment for musicians. But he played his card wrong. Herza fired Jürgens instead, telling the world that Jürgens was a drunk and couldn’t play no more. But he also still worried he would be exposed, so he runs.”

  Something didn’t sound right to Nathaniel. There was certainly nothing in the file from the newspaper to suggest Herza was a traitor. Quite the contrary. He sat back and tapped his fingers on the table.

  “That’s an amazing story. Can you corroborate this?” he asked.

  “I AM NO CORROBORATOR!” roared Mihaescu.

  “No, no, no,” said Nathaniel. “Calm down. I just mean, is there someone else who can verify this information? After all, you joined the orchestra after Jürgens had already left, and Herza was gone shortly after that. Is there anyone still in Prague, still alive, who was actually in the orchestra when all this was going on?”

  Mihaescu stared blankly at the wall.

  “Would you like another beer?” asked Nathaniel.

  “That’s very kind. There’s Geitz,” said Mihaescu calmly.

  “Geitz?”

  “Victor Geitz. He’s still alive. He played clarinet. Bass clarinet and E-flat clarinet. Sometimes saxophone, for Pictures at an Exhibition or Rachmaninov ‘Symphonic Dances.’ He joined in the forties, retired in seventies.”

  “Do you have his address? Phone number?”

  “I don’t. Ask Sinfonia Prague.”

  Nathaniel didn’t relish another conversation with Jan Hus but resigned himself to its likelihood.

  “And why did you leave the orchestra?” he asked Mihaescu.

  “Because of look in eyes.”

  “Look-in eyes?”

  “A lot of orchestra musicians, they don’t want to admit when they’re finished. I was one of them. But then, after the concerts, I see the look in their eyes—my colleagues’ eyes. They were good colleagues—they never say a word. But I look at myself in mirror, and I say, ‘Petru, you are getting old. Your lip is going. Your pitch is sagging. You cannot hit the high C in Zarathustra. You’re not sounding the way you used to.’ So I tell my friends and my boss, ‘It is time.’ They give me a big party and a small pension, and now I am back in the café.”

  Nathaniel reached across the table and shook the musician’s hand.

  “Well, thank you for your time,” Nathaniel said. “I appreciate the information.”

  “Yes, we had a wonderful time fishing together,” Mihaescu said brightly.

  Nathaniel was a little confused. Perhaps Mihaescu was speaking metaphorically. Maybe it was a poorly translated Czech idiom.

  “Yes, we did,” Nathaniel said, smiling. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket to get a credit card to pay for the food and all the beer.

  “Yes, when you hooked that bass! I never saw a bass fight like that before!”

  “No?” asked Nathaniel.

  “Never. He tugged that skiff ten, fifteen minutes, at least! But you stuck with it. You landed him. How many did you catch that day? I caught some little ones, some cod, some mackerel, and a John Dory, but you got the big ones!”

  “You sure you’re not mistaking me for someone else, brother?” Nathaniel asked. Perhaps there was another overweight, overage American black man he had fished with.

  “Mistake? I don’t think so. I remember it like yesterday. The tide was going out and the sun was just coming up. You brought the coffee, and I brought the beer, as usual. We headed out. The skipper said we were going for grouper, but we didn’t have a bite for an hour, so then…”

  So that he wouldn’t have to wait any longer, Nathaniel put his credit card back in his wallet and left cash on the table. He uttered a polite good night to Mihaescu, still reminiscing with bleary eyes over the big one that got away, and left in haste.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The multicolored flashing neon lights were reflected by puddles, which Makoto Furukawa, in his polished dress shoes, judiciously circumvented. The rain had stopped, but the torpid night remained intensely humid and clammy. The back alley in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, which, like many streets of its type in this endless city, had no name, was so narrow that a single car could hardly manage its way through. “Sidewalks” demarked by a painted white line were ignored by the congestion of revelers and automobiles alike. Nevertheless, the serpentine alley was unnaturally bright with signs of hundreds of nightclubs, stacked one on top of the other in nondescript three- and four-story buildings, keeping the night at bay. Navigating his way through the multitudes, Furukawa kept on the lookout for the rice shop with an antique brass scale in the window that Shimidzu-san told him was the landmark, above which, on the third floor, was his destination. It was no small feat searching for a brass scale at night while dodging drunken businessmen careening toward him, street vendors hawking their goods, and the puddles. Furukawa felt like a character in one of the arcade games at the pachinko parlor he had just passed.

  Distracted by a small crowd surrounding a street vendor, an ancient woman selling freshly grilled seafood at a kiosk lit by a single bulb enclosed by a white paper lantern, Furukawa almost walked right past the darkened rice shop. It was only when he stopped to smell the rich aroma of the fish that he spied the brass scale in the window. He looked up and spotted the small red neon sign for Cin-Cin, Chéri among countless others. Finding the door to the club was no problem because as soon as he looked up, a hawker beckoned him to enter.

  Furukawa ascended a clean but utilitarian stairway to the third floor and knocked on an unmarked door. It was opened by an elegantly adorned geisha, whose inviting smile said We have been looking forward to your arrival for so long even though he was an unexpected stranger. He entered a small, tastefully furnished, incense-infused room with a half dozen or so small round tables, each occupied by one or two businessmen obviously enjoying themselves, catered to by at least as many solicitous kimono-clad geishas. The extravagant design and brilliant colors of the kimonos flowed in the room’s discreet lighting as smoothly and continuously as the whiskey being poured at the tables. The geishas’ physical beauty was enhanced by their complex makeup, their graceful motions, and their velvety voices.

  Furukawa had not been to a geisha parlor for many years. Kagoshima was the closest city to his village, and though they had clubs there, none were on a par with something like this. He knew that nothing overtly sexual was to be expected at a geisha parlor. It was a highly respectable, if highly sensuous, form of refined entertainment, but standing in the foyer, he felt like a fish out of water, like one of the trout he’d caught in his stream that lay flapping in his creel.

  A lovely young thing approached him, welcoming him to Cin-Cin, Chéri, and asked him if he would like a seat. The geisha touched his forearm, melting him instantly, and he followed, powerless, to the one remaining empty table.

  Within moments, Furukawa was joined by two other geishas, bearing small delicacies and a large bottle. One wore a
golden kimono with an intricate floral design and green obi. The other’s was sky blue with suggestions of clouds. They, too, welcomed him, their hero, and as they sat by his side, attentive to his every need, he shortly found himself comfortably boasting to them of his greatest accomplishments, divulging to them his most intimate secrets, as if his new partners had been his closest, lifelong confidantes. They listened on tenterhooks to his every word and asked just the right questions, and though he knew it was all a façade, he felt happy to play the role. The one on his left, in the sky-blue kimono, sat close, and from time to time suggestively made contact against his thigh with hers, as if by accident. He knew otherwise. As the one to his right, in the golden kimono, reached across the table for the bottle, she gently placed her hand on his other thigh, and as she poured whiskey into his glass, she “inadvertently” exposed the bare nape of her neck. Furukawa, who couldn’t recall the last time he was so aroused, almost forgot why he had come.

  Little by little, Furukawa told the tale he had rehearsed on his way to the Roppongi, a narrative about his relationship with Erutsa-sama that combined fact with fiction. It was, he said, upon Erutsa-sama’s recommendation that he had come to Cin-Cin, Chéri. The geishas were delighted. Did any of the young ladies know him? he asked. The geishas looked at him quizzically. Did Furukawa detect a sense they were making fun of him? They responded that they themselves could not remember him—this surprised Furukawa, because he had described Erutsa-sama’s disfiguration, and there were few enough Westerners who would know of this club, anyway—but they offered to bring their boss to talk to him.

  One of the geishas peeled herself from the group without Furukawa even being aware of it. The remaining geisha continued to entertain him. That Western notion of geishas being prostitutes, thought Furukawa, was so wrong. So … Western. These women exhibited no skin, hardly touched him, and were not there for sex. They simply made men feel wanted and admired. What more could one ask for?