Death and Transfiguration

by Gerald Elias

  Vickers left the ladies’ room and shimmied parrotlike along the marble wall, toward the side exit, now well within her sights. Suddenly, someone took hold of her left arm from behind. She tried to break free and run.

  “Adrianne!” said Robert Vogelman. “I certainly didn’t expect to see—”

  “I can’t talk now.” She tried to pull her arm away, but Vogelman held on.

  Vickers yanked her arm free. Trembling, her hand went into her purse.

  Vogelman took a step back, following her hand with his eyes. He looked at her as if she were a wounded bird, first with sympathy, then with concern, and ultimately with the irritation of unwanted responsibility.

  “Adrianne, do you need help?” he asked, willing to assist but hoping the invitation would be declined.

  “Just let me go.”

  “Certainly, Adrianne. And good luck to you,” he added, but she was already too far away to hear him.

  * * *

  At the other end of the building, Lubomir and Herza, caked with Hudson River mud, wordlessly ascend the elevator to the artists’ level where the dressing rooms are situated. They are now almost a half hour behind schedule, and there is barely enough time to dress before the concert starts.

  Lubomir unlocks the maestro’s dressing room door, removes Herza’s filthy suit, and runs to the bathroom for towels to dry him. He sits Herza in the chair at the new cherrywood desk made especially for him and hastens to brew a pot of Darjeeling tea.

  He places the tea in front of Herza with an unsteady hand. The cup shakes in its saucer and the tea makes dark little waves—the Hudson River in miniature.

  “Coumadin. Where’s the Coumadin?” Herza asks.

  “What?” asks Lubomir, distracted.

  “My Coumadin,” repeats Herza.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Lubomir absently. “Let me get your concert dress.”

  Lubomir returns a moment later. “It’s not here.”

  “What? My Coumadin?”

  “No. Your tails.”

  “What do you propose I wear, then? My birthday suit?”

  Lubomir remains silent.

  “Don’t just stand there, idiot. Get my tails.”

  Lubomir calls the dry cleaner. There is no answer.

  “It’s too late,” says Lubomir to Herza. “There must have been some mix-up.”

  “Then put my suit back on.”

  “You can’t go on like that.”

  “Can’t? There’s no such thing as can’t. I will.”

  “Maestro,” says Lubomir, rearranging the tea closer to Herza.

  “What now?”

  “The musicians.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “The musicians. They’re not going to play.”

  “Of course they are going to play. It’s their job.”

  “Nowitsky told me. They’re not going to play. They will sit there and refuse to play. They will keep Scheherazade O’Brien’s seat—”

  “It is not her seat. It is the concertmaster’s seat.”

  “They will keep the concertmaster’s seat vacant, and they will not lift their instruments for you. They intend to humiliate you.”

  “Remember one thing, Lubomir,” says Herza. “Musicians are cowards. They talk big when they are together, but they fear me and they fear losing their paychecks. I have no fear. They will play.”

  “I can’t let you be humiliated,” says Lubomir. “I can’t let them destroy you. Now drink your tea, please.”

  Herza looks at his tea and then at Lubomir. Lubomir looks away.

  “You drink the tea, Lubomir.”

  “No,” Lubomir stammers. “No. It’s for you, Maestro. I’ll go find your Coumadin.”

  “Drink the tea, Lubomir. Take it into the bathroom. Close the door. And drink it. Now.”

  Without another word, Lubomir obeys.

  Herza hears the choking gasps slowly dissipate, then dresses himself in his soiled suit and hobbles off to the stage, scores in hand, shaking his head in wonder that Lubomir would not even consider pouring the tea down the toilet. But where will I find someone to shave me now? Herza thinks, tsking wistfully. Such a virtuoso with a razor.

  * * *

  Vaclav Herza proceeds to the wings of the stage. He is late, the orchestra has already tuned, and the lights have gone to half. The librarian is nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s Brimley?” he asks a stagehand.

  “You weren’t here. He left,” replies the stagehand, who turns his back on Herza and walks away.

  Herza limps onto the stage. At first, the impatient audience, seeing their beloved maestro, breaks into tumultuous applause. Almost immediately, however, in recognition of his haggard condition, the applause breaks off and is replaced by gasps. Herza takes no heed of their vexation or even of their presence. Without bowing, he proceeds directly to the podium.

  There is no baton awaiting him diagonally across his music because there is no stand at all. Neither is there a seat for him to sit in, and his fall on the dock has exacerbated his chronic back pain so that he can hardly stand. Unable to bend, he drops his beloved scores, his bibles, onto the floor.

  Herza ponders the empty concertmaster seat. One by one, he looks each musician in the eye, taking his time. Some look down, some look away, some stare at their music. None return the gaze of his hideous visage. His focus returns to Lawrence Nowitsky, and what might be construed as a smile illuminates Herza’s countenance, but if Lizzie Borden had smiled before she chopped Mommy and Daddy into pieces it would have been no more laden with cruelty. Like a whipped cur, Nowitsky inconspicuously slouches into the concertmaster seat.

  Herza raises his hands in preparation of the downbeat to Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni. One, then another and another, then all the musicians raise their instruments. Herza flings his arms wide apart, ecstasy etched on his scarred face as he raises his eyes to the heavens and casts open the gates of D-minor hell, inviting the musicians to enter. The musicians, all the musicians, follow him in.

  The audience perceives something volatile in the air. The intensity generated by the orchestra is incendiary. What chemistry! What unity of purpose! the audience thinks. What more appropriate name for this greatest of orchestras than Harmonium? The response to the performance is explosive.

  Because the hall is already overflowing, no patrons are seated after the overture, but in order to perform The Moldau, additional musicians are required, and they enter the stage. The orchestra performs flawlessly, even over the unbridled St. John Rapids, and at the culmination of the work, as the majestic river passes through Prague, the audience feels Czech blood coursing through its veins.

  The last work on the first half of the concert is Death and Transfiguration, the tone poem for which Herza, as interpreter, has no peer.

  Herza extends his arms forward. He closes his eyes and his fingers move imperceptibly. The orchestra begins to breathe with almost inaudible sound, perfectly together. The timpani’s heartbeat labors, the shadow of death looming. Then, suddenly, Herza’s eyes open wide, his fingers splay as if in spasm, and the orchestra whirls into a paroxysm.

  What the orchestra does not know is that Vaclav Herza’s pain is not only gestural, it is real. And it is not in his back. It is in his chest. He fights against it. He refuses to submit to it. He continues to conduct.

  When it is time for the concertmaster solo, a brief moment of repose within the anguished throes of the protagonist, Herza gives Nowitsky a nod for his cue and all but stops conducting. Nowitsky plays it with earnest pathos but knows he does not, and never could, sound as beautiful as the violinist he is replacing. The orchestra follows Nowitsky in perfect synchronicity, believing this is merely Herza at his best, whose simple presence can invest the musicians with inspiration. Herza recuperates sufficiently during this temporary respite, and with an economy of motion continues without a recurrence of pain.

  Near the end of the piece, the music reaches heavenward at the moment
of the protagonist’s death and fades in an afterglow of orchestral radiance. Herza keeps his arms out, immobile, like Jesus on the cross. The orchestra doesn’t move. The audience doesn’t move. Herza puts his hands down and the audience erupts into convulsions of purgative applause. More than applause. Screaming bravos and inarticulate shouting. People jumping up and down with tears in their eyes.

  Vaclav Herza ignores them and manages to hobble off the stage. It is intermission.

  * * *

  His dressing room is roped off. J. Comstock Brundage is there and informs Herza that Lubomir Butkus is dead.

  “Poor Lubomir,” says Herza. “He thought he needed to try to save me from myself. He didn’t realize how unnecessary that was.”

  Brundage says, “Of course, knowing how close he was to you for all these years, we will cancel the rest of the concert.”

  “Don’t be absurd. People die every day. What is one more? Herza will only cancel if someone does not make my tea within five minutes! And my pills! Bring me my pills!”

  FORTY

  The concert has ended. In his spacious dressing room, Herza sits comfortably behind his desk, wearing his green silk smoking jacket, having enjoyed the novel task of dressing himself for the first time in decades, and having taken his time—let them wait—to find his favorite meerschaum pipe and tobacco, which he is now smoking.

  “Enter,” he commands.

  The first to congratulate the maestro, an elderly woman approximately Herza’s age, enters the room. Herza catches a quick glimpse of the long line before the door closes behind her. He sighs. One must do what one must do, he thinks charitably. The woman is standing. Herza remains seated.

  “Maestro,” says the woman, extending her hand. Herza makes no effort to reciprocate. Instead, he raises his palm to silence her. “No one speaks to Herza until Herza speaks first. You have something to say to me. Now, say it.”

  “I just wanted to say—”

  “How much you loved the Dvořák. Next.”

  Twenty minutes and twice as many well-wishers later, Herza is tired and impatient to leave. Only one remains, a disheveled blind man. After dispensing with him, Herza will stroll along his bridge and truly savor the moment, alone with himself, the way he wants it.

  “Maestro,” says Jacobus.

  “Silence! No one speaks to Herza until Herza speaks first.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “Really! And why is that?”

  “Because no one speaks to Jacobus until Jacobus speaks first.”

  They both wait in silence. Jacobus contents himself with inhaling the wonderfully aromatic smoke emanating from Herza’s pipe—Dunhill De Luxe Navy Rolls, if he’s not mistaken—and taking note of the increasing rapidity of Herza’s puffs.

  “I recognize you,” Herza finally says. “You’re the blind man in the front row at the rehearsal and at that sorry excuse for a restaurant.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And you despise me, don’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, Jacobus, I have been conducting orchestras for a half century and the look you are giving me now—yes, even the blind have that look—I have seen on the faces of three generations of musicians. The tightening of the jaw, the thinning of the lips, the lowering of the head. Yes, I know that look very well. Yes, they despise me. And they fear me. All of them. But they also respect me because they know I can make them make the best music.”

  “Yes, I despise you,” says Jacobus calmly, “but not for your music.”

  “And you’re here because you wish to do something about it? So then do something! I am but small, shrunken almost, and old, and have little physical strength. The scars have made my face into something vile, and the stroke makes me drool on one side of my mouth and I cannot even walk so well. This is the sad truth. So, go ahead, Mr. Jacobus, I am helpless. I am at your mercy. Do something if you despise me. Who is stopping you?”

  Jacobus stands rigid, his left hand clenching, and with the cane in his right, taps the end of it repeatedly on the floor, like a nervous twitch.

  “Bah! You waste my time,” Herza says. “Get out of my sight, or does such a comment hurt a blind man’s feelings?”

  Jacobus remains silent.

  “I repeat, you are wasting my time.” Herza gets up to leave, whether or not the blind man, who also seems now to be deaf, remains. Herza couldn’t care less.

  “Klaus Jürgens,” says Jacobus. “Lotus Bud.”

  “Who?” asks Herza, but nevertheless he sits back down.

  “Jürgens, your first-trumpet player in Prague, way back when. Lotus Bud, your boy-toy in Tokyo who mysteriously disappeared after he burst your Chiyonofuji bubble. You haven’t been back to Japan since.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. This Lotus … is it some kind of joke? And I have had many first-trumpet players over the years. I barely recall the name,” he says.

  “Let me refresh your memory, then,” says Jacobus. “Jürgens tried to organize the other musicians in the orchestra, to get them a little more job security, a little more respect. A little more dignity. In return, you tried to drum him out of the orchestra. You browbeat him, turned him into a depressive alcoholic, criticized his—”

  “You astound me, Jacobus! You have been spying on me! Is that it? Collecting intelligence?”

  “Let’s say researching your illustrious past.”

  Herza taps his pipe on the desk, debating how to proceed.

  “Jürgens was a depressive alcoholic long before I encountered him,” he says. “Don’t forget, I was young and he was old. You know these buglers. It is very sad. They can’t stand up to the pressure of their calling, so they drink, complain, organize, drink, complain … It’s a vicious cycle. And you know what happens, Mr. Jacobus? After ten, twenty years, they can’t take it anymore. Their lip is dead and they can’t perform anymore and refuse to admit it. They are used-up, over-the-hill deadbeats, and it is no one’s doing but their own. You say Jürgens tried to organize. You make me laugh. He was an empty shell trying to get protection for his own pitiful career.”

  “Yet you never fired him. Why was that, if he was so bad? And after his family, friends, and even his doctor pleaded with you to back off, you laid it on even thicker.”

  “He could have resigned. No one was stopping him.”

  “But he was too proud, and there being no pension in those days he couldn’t afford to quit. Not with a family to support. Even his friends in the orchestra begged him to retire, but he wouldn’t and couldn’t. So he was trapped, and you relished it. You enjoyed destroying him.”

  “My only concern is for the music. That is all I have to say. And now I must be going.”

  Jacobus hears Herza rise, perhaps too quickly, as the chair in which he has been seated skids noisily on the floor.

  “Tell me about his suicide,” says Jacobus.

  “What do you know about his suicide?” asks Herza with alarm.

  “There are some gaps. I thought you could fill me in.”

  “What is your interest here, Jacobus? Why do you persecute me so?”

  “Persecute? Hey, I’m just a fan. When I was young I loved Joe DiMaggio. I’d collect a baseball card here, an autographed ball there. So think of me as an acolyte, trying to figure out how you became such a great conductor. I want to know all about you! Like when you fled Prague right after Jürgens died.”

  “Mere coincidence. It was 1956, after all! The Soviets had invaded Hungary and were converging on Prague. I had been working behind the scenes to free our country. I would have been arrested.”

  “They said he jumped off the Charles Bridge.”

  “Yes, yes,” Herza says impatiently. “He couldn’t accept that he couldn’t play anymore, and he was probably drunk, as usual, so he jumped.”

  “How do you know? Were you there?”

  “In Prague?”

  “On the bridge.”

  “Of course
not. Don’t be absurd.”

  “By the way, where’s your lackey?”

  “Lackey?” asks Herza. Then he chuckles. “Ah, Lubomir. He’s indisposed at the moment. He drank something that didn’t agree with him. How do you know Lubomir?”

  “Because I tried, and failed, to get an interview with you when your boy intercepted the phone.”

  “Interview? For what reason an interview?”

  “To quiz you about Scheherazade O’Brien. Where you were on the night her wrists were slashed.”

  Jacobus hears Herza tap his desk repeatedly with his fingers. He speaks rapidly.

  “So this is what it is all about! This interrogation! This … third degree! The poor young lady with terminal carpal tunnel syndrome! You think I’m a tyrant, that I am responsible for driving musicians to their deaths? Musicians who contest my authority, when the real issue is that they’re no good? Is that it? And now, because I have no sympathy for sniveling suicides, you are going to be the hero, the defender of the meek, and exact retribution. Is that so?”

  “Not suicides. Murders. The murder of Tadamichi Inoue. The murder of Klaus Jürgens. The murder of Scheherazade O’Brien.”

  “You make me laugh, Mr. Jacobus. You make me laugh, not from joy but from pity. You are pitiful, so pitiful you make up fairy tales.”

  “You were on the bridge that night with Jürgens. You pushed him into the Moldau.”

  “And how would you know this?”

  “From the police report,” Jacobus prevaricates, embellishing the theories that Nathaniel had derived from his inquiries. “Jürgens’s wife filed a complaint. She convinced the police that Jürgens would never have committed suicide. An investigation was opened. That’s why you fled the country. It had nothing to do with politics. You just used that as a cover.”