Unwitting Street

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

  At length the lady announcer in the dress the color of piano keys reappeared by the footlights and said in a frightened voice:

  “We shall now hear Dying Graveyard. A programmatic composition: economic conditions demand that graveyards be dug up so as to free up plots for new corpses.” (Here the lady announcer glanced at her notes.) “‘You died, now let others die.’ And so . . . Forgive me, I’ve lost the second page. But it’s clear.”

  The mute-keyboard laureate came out this time with a downcast look. He advanced as though picking his way around pits of some sort. He sat down at the piano case and paused for several seconds. In the hall a complete hush reigned.

  His first chord pressed deep into the keys. Then his right hand fell away, while his left raced over the black keys like a light noiseless wind. Then the pianist pumped the right pedal and, bending low, stared at the yellow lozenges of parquet as though a tremolo* were emanating from them that only he could hear. Large drops of sweat beaded the virtuoso’s brow. Suddenly, seizing the keyboard’s black lid in both hands, he clicked it shut with such force that in the hall two or three hysterical female cries rang out. A young music critic whispered to the man next to him: “Remarkable!”

  So ended the first part of the concert.

  During the second part, the puzzled audience, by now quite numerous, heard three pieces: Thoughts Not Aloud about Beethoven—A Man Sleeps and Has No Dreams—Deaf-and-Dumb March for the Legless.

  The audience dispersed. Everyone was thinking less about the concert than about the rain, through whose cold drops they would now have to walk.

  •

  The young critic who had thrown out the word “remarkable” pulled his fedora down over his brow, turned up his coat collar and, on reaching the yellow lamps of the first restaurant, ducked in its glass door.

  The tables inside were all taken. Off to the left, by the wall, the critic saw the man whose image had pursued him through the rain and mist: the pianist of the mute keyboard. Tall and narrow-shouldered, he was sitting before an empty place setting by an open bottle of champagne and swallowing the white foam from his glass. Wedged between the second and third fingers of his left hand was a brown cigar. The critic approached the table. “Your listener,” said he. The pianist, bent over his empty place setting, raised his head and motioned the critic to sit down. His face expressed nothing: neither joy, nor disappointment. He was silent for three or four minutes. Now and then he pulled on the end of his cigar with his thin lips or drummed his fingers on the edge of the table, listening intently to the motif. Then suddenly he looked up and said:

  “What do you want from me?”

  The critic was not so stupid. He replied:

  “You.”

  Again they were silent for a minute. Then the critic, mixing up words in his agitation, began to describe his impressions of the mute keyboard. Toward the end of his brief, but emotional speech, he said: “True, I don’t know what to make of you. Who are you—an adventurer or a talent?”

  Just then a waiter brought the pianist’s dinner and turned with a questioning look to the critic. The critic asked for a bottle of Asti Spumante, and the conversation continued.

  “You see,” said the pianist, knocking an ash into the ashtray, “at first, in my youth, I played on talking keyboards. I tried to tell people Beethoven, Scriabin, and Mozart. But very soon I became convinced that I was dealing with the deaf and dumb. They did not hear the music, and when they wrote about it, the lines in all their articles and books were silent, silent with thousands of black symbols.”

  “So that’s how . . .”

  “To tell you my whole story would be too sad and too silly. There are hundreds and hundreds of pianists like me with long bony fingers like these. We knock on people’s souls, and they respond only with silence. Well, I decided to talk to the deaf and dumb with a deaf-and-dumb keyboard. A risky stunt, but I pulled it off. If only you knew! When I play on those silent black and white keys, you see, I hear my thoughts; with the tips of these fingers I press my love and thundering hatred into those ivory levers.”

  “But even so,” said the young critic, pushing away the glass the pianist had filled for him, “even so, there’s an element of mockery. Your march for the legless insults people. You can’t do that. And besides, are you sure that you have both your legs?”

  “A very astute observation.”

  The narrow-shouldered man tapped the sharp triangle of the little finger of his right hand against his half-empty glass, listening with a large cartilaginous ear bent toward the faint sound.

  “Six years ago I was concertizing in a city in southern France. On the banks of the Garonne, which has its own astonishing song, all splashes and murmurs of the water chafing those banks. Certain fishermen hear it. From the chiming of the water’s drops their songs were born. I remember I was playing Beethoven’s First Sonata. I love that sonata because it’s a bridge from Mozart to our times. As I was playing the last measures, presaging the birth of new sonatas, this accursed ring finger of mine accidentally hooked a black key instead of a white one, instead of F, F sharp. The next day the local paper ran an ironic article on the pianist “without semitones.”And, do you know, I was traumatized. I canceled my second concert. Whenever I went to the piano, I could only glide my fingers over the surface of the keys, mentally checking the correctness of my touch, but I began to fear sound. It was running away from me. Or I from it—I don’t know. It was during those dark days that I came up with the idea of . . . the idea of . . . You understand: the idea of what you heard today. Or rather: of what you did not hear. Waiter! Another bottle of demi-sec.”

  A minute later by the table a cork popped—and on the surface of the yellow drink that now filled the pianist’s glass, tiny white bubbles were soundlessly bursting. The two men did not immediately resume their conversation.

  “I don’t remember exactly, but I think there’s a short story by a Russian writer about the elderly Beethoven . . .”

  “You’re very attached to that name.”

  “Yes, to the name of a deaf musician listening to the world. ‘My kingdom is in the air’*—isn’t that so? Well, in that story the ancient master, without hearing his own footsteps, climbs a creaky staircase to a small attic room where he spends his last days seated at a stringless harpsichord, dinning into the dead keys his thoughts. He hears them but we, we, deaf bats . . .”

  The pianist of the mute keyboard pushed his glass aside and half-turned away from the critic:

  “I’ve forgotten the name of that Russian author. Od . . . Odo . . .”

  “Odoevsky.* You’re referring to a story in Russian Nights.”

  “But how did you know?”

  “I’m Russian. I’m here just for a short time. I’ll tell my Moscow friends about your more than strange concert. It has its own dialectical meaning, so to speak. There, where life is under the soles of dampers, your mute music already sounds, I would say, deafening.”

  “Well, and if I were to go to Russia? That has long been my dream.”

  “Really? Then you would have to return to your first Beethoven sonata. Your black and white keys, F and F sharp, would have to come to an agreement. And your technique would have to be impeccable. In my country, your fingers will encounter many dangerous rivals. They will speak to you with resonant stringed voices, and you won’t manage to keep silent. However, I advise you to stay put. We don’t need you. You of all people should understand this. Without unnecessary words. You, a master of silent keys.

  •

  The two men shook hands and parted.

  They are not likely ever to meet again.

  1939

  DEATH OF AN ELF

  IT HAS not been established whether this elf lived with Mustardseed and Peaseblossom,* who had the honor of William Shakespeare’s acquaintance, or whether he simply elfed about the world—without meetings or partings—until he found himself in the tricky and difficult situation of which this story tells.

 
If, as science claims, bodies have antibodies and aerobes* have anaerobes, then all readers will easily agree that elves had anti-elves. Sometimes the elf triumphed, other times the anti-elf. In this case, the elf—whose life, or rather the last chapter of whose life, the present truthful story recounts—found himself in a perilous way while battling anti-elves, emigrated from his realm of gossamer-winged creatures and went in search of refuge from his enemies.

  Friedrich Flüchten lugged his music around under his left elbow. The music was hidden inside a brown cover, and whenever Flüchten squeezed onto a tram jammed with people it would let out a plaintive four-string moan.

  Flüchten devoted long hours to diligent practice. He wielded his bow as a seamstress does her needle, yet he had not sewn for himself the least scrap of fame. Fritzchen, as his mother (dead some four years now) called him, had long ago reconciled himself to his modest job of cellist in a respectable café in a big city. Now and then they let him perform—before an audience that listened to composers while banging spoons or forks to summon waiters—variations on a long forgotten theme appreciated by no one or a rondo capriccioso by whomever or . . .

  It so happened that on this day the elf of our story, in flight from anti-elves, was seeking sanctuary. It was nearly evening. The time of year—I don’t recall exactly—was either late June, or early July. The window of the musician’s room on the sixth floor had been left open when he locked the door so as to go and have his supper in the little restaurant across the street.

  It was at just that moment that the frightened elf flew into the musician’s empty room. He flitted from wall to wall, looking for a place to hide. The cello’s chestnut neck was unbuttoned. The elf dove inside, grazed his right wing against the whiny fourth string and slipped into one of the instrument’s f-shaped grooves, into the saving warm silent darkness.

  Having finished his modest repast, Flüchten returned to his instrument, fastened the buttons on its long neck and—as always—set off for his usual café where he was expected by the usual faces of diners, waiters, and composers, whose works he mechanically sketched with his bow.

  Two or three handshakes. The nod of a painted female head (fourth table on the right by the wall). The conducting right elbow of the violinist, the sharp tip of whose bow, like a needle without thread, jerked up and down. At first, because of the rackety jazz, clatter of plates, and tramp of entering and exiting footsteps, no one heard that new timbre, that chorus of overtones now emanating, to the cellist’s mystification, from under his string-chafing bow. Flüchten heard, but was afraid of being overheard. He tried to hide the new, unaccountable sound, and only after a commanding wave of the conductor’s bow, calling for a forte, did he allow that sound to grow louder. Two or three heads at tables turned toward the orchestra. But the clink of glasses, dreary clatter of plates, and shuffle of waiters’ shoes drowned out the auditory phenomenon. Seconds later the musical number ended.

  The performer himself only dimly apprehended the new sound that had settled in the strings of his instrument. He was very tired: black, long-tailed note-spots swam before his eyes, his fingers slid mechanically down the fingerboard, meanwhile he was thinking that tomorrow his rent was due and that if he . . .

  After midnight, when the city lights had begun to go out, he walked home, saving the twenty-farthing tram fare, with his coat collar turned up to keep the small drops of tearful rain from slithering down his neck.

  The cello took its usual place by the sheet-music shelf. Flüchten made up his bed, sat down at his desk where a blank sheet of music paper waited, yawned, tossed his pencil aside, removed the round black-rimmed spectacles from his nose, undressed, doused the light, and stretched out under the coverlet. Gazing in at the window—from the millionth floor—was the moon. Flüchten pulled a corner of the coverlet up over his head against the light and fell asleep. Time turned its back on him. Suddenly something jogged his heart, and he raised himself on one elbow. Through the wall a clock struck quietly, but distinctly, five times. The moon had passed out of the window frame—and only its reflected light fell across the desk and the sheet of ruled music paper lying on top of the felt. From a corner of the room where the cello stood on its spindly wooden leg came a soft rustling of strings. It sounded like that cautious pressure of the soloist’s fingers when, profiting from a pause while the accompanying orchestra thunders around him, he tests the pitch of his instrument. But there was a difference: the invisible fingers were not tightening the pegs; instead they were climbing a delicate ladder of sounds—higher and higher, creating a melody strange and unusual to the human ear.

  Flüchten, not knowing if he were awake or dreaming, sat up in bed and reached for his music paper. His pencil raced along the staves. The sounds coming from the dark corner suddenly broke off. As if something had frightened them. Feeling his hands grow stiff, the musician again nestled under the coverlet over which now drifted a black dreamless sleep.

  The din of morning horns, bells, and rumbling wheels woke the cellist. Everything went in order: first, feet into socks; then socks into tan shoes; then shoes into a coat of tan polish. Flüchten went to his desk intending to whisk away the blank sheet of music paper. But the sheet—strangely—turned out to be populated with gray symbols skipping along the staves. Flüchten read the symbols and looked up in amazement. Then it wasn’t a dream. Then . . .

  He walked over to the cello, unfastened the buttons on the canvas collar enveloping its long neck and, having freed the instrument from its garb, played on it the melody which, like an unexpected and unbidden guest, had visited him in the night. At first the penciled notation struck Flüchten as confused and obscure; then his attention was caught by one of its cadences; after that the whole piece made his bow press more firmly against the strings. At the same time, the cellist noticed that the strings, too, very much liked the piece, if only because they were singing with new voices, pure as the purling of forest streams.

  That day the cellist arrived a quarter of an hour late to his music stand in the café. The manager, eyes hidden under knitted brows, gave him a stern reprimand. Smiling absently, Flüchten took his seat and wiped the cello’s four strings with a handkerchief. They were about to perform a popular song where in just two places the cello would run on ahead for four measures, after which the other instruments and crashing cymbals would catch up and drown out its solo.

  Ordinarily this number excited no particular interest. But now the singing of the cello, as it danced ahead of the ensemble for some ten seconds, suddenly forced the people stumping around between tables to stop, the waiters with steaming platters to freeze, and several dozen chairs with their backs to the stage to edge their front legs toward it. They called for an encore. A few diners got up and approached the stage. The song was played a third time. One of the regulars asked the manager for the name of that man—over there—the cellist.

  Two days later Flüchten was given a solo number. He played the mysterious piece that had visited him on that moonlit night. From the first measures the room was completely quiet. Even the categorical rejecters of music, who equated it with the noise of an electric fan or the clatter of crockery, who spent the whole evening leafing through the papers, suddenly lost their places, confusing Berlin with London and Rome with Athens. The waiters went about on tiptoe, pressing napkin to ribs with their left elbow. The alcohol in crystal glasses did not move a drop. When the artist lifted his bow from the strings, all palms were pounding palms. Half-standing, he bowed self-consciously then made to sit down, but a fresh cataract of applause forced him to rise.

  When the program finished, the restaurant’s owner called Flüchten into his office. They entered the small room—cellist and cello—and stood by the door, three feet planted on the yellow bristles of a mat. They were kindly motioned to a leather armchair. The boss explained to Flüchten that starting today his wages would be doubled. The eyes under arched brows first surveyed the shiny jacket and worn gray trousers of the maestro, as the boss now refer
red to the cellist in his restaurant ensemble, then looked down at a notepad lying on the directorial desk beside a black telephonic ear. A minute later a page from the notepad, finding itself in Flüchten’s hands, promised him a modest, yet substantial advance toward a new set of clothes, the sort required by an artist performing before an audience in a, if not fashionable, then, at any rate, well, let’s say . . .

  By the time Flüchten left the restaurant, hugging the wooden companion of his musical life to his left hip, the streets were deserted. The misty sky was hung with a hazy half-moon. It was on the wane, whereas Flüchten’s fame, so he distinctly felt, trying to stifle an inner voice of bewilderment, was just beginning its triumphal progress up and up.

  The cellist did not understand. He was lost in conjecture. But to the elf it was clear as day. Having received asylum inside the cello, he did not want to seem ungrateful. Like all honest elves—or better yet, like all conscientious tenants, he always tried to pay his rent on time. But with what can an elf pay? With nothing, except fairy tales, melodies, and dreams. The elf did what he could. At night, while the cellist slept, he would spread his tiny gossamer wings, fly out of the instrument’s f-shaped door, and, alighting on the sleeper’s ear, tell him dreams. The musician heard songs light as the fragrance of grasses and flowers; his eyes, roused by tears, opened. Hurrying to his desk, he would jot down the dreamed sounds and return once more to his pillow.

  On nights when Flüchten, excited by his performances and by the ovations with which audiences now invariably greeted him, could not fall asleep, the elf, without leaving the instrument’s dark cubature, would flutter from string to string, from fret to fret, bringing forth more and more melodies. At first the cellist took these barely discernible sounds for auditory hallucinations. From a psychiatrist to whom he turned, he learned of the existence of so-called pseudo-hallucinations. A little later he decided that this phenomenon—his inner hearing, his enormously vivid musical thinking—was characteristic of a gift or . . . Music critics were quick to help him resolve the question. Flüchten’s name no longer appeared at the bottom of a restaurant menu which said that evening dishes and drinks were accompanied by the music of an ensemble of first-class (as first-class as the cooking) artists. No, Friedrich Flüchten’s name—in red and black letters on a white ground—now arrested the steps and eyes of passersby on the city’s main streets and squares. The first critics wrote: “A singular display, although . . .”—but “although” was soon banished from reviews; then they wrote: “An exceptional display,” and within weeks: “A talent,” and three days after that: “A tremendous talent of a kind not . . .”