The schumann proof, p.4
The Schumann Proof, page 4
“I realize,” I said, “but I have a small emergency.”
“Well, wot is it?”
“What is what?”
“Your emergency. Wot’s so bloody important you can just waltz in ’ere like you own the place?”
I had half a mind to say it was none of her business. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. Provocation and diplomacy had approximately the same effect on Bernice Morris-Jones.
“Dieter Mann’s in Toronto,” I explained, “and I’ll be doing some accompanying. I need copies of the music.”
“Mann? Bloody pig.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ’eard me. Fuckin’ reactionary pig.” Her voice went up a notch. “It’s no wonder the Faculty and the Con won’t have anything to do with ’im.”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” I said, speaking softly, hoping to remind her we were in a library. “As I understand it, Herr Mann prefers to remain independent of any school, no matter what city he’s teaching in.”
“Roight, so nobody’ll notice ’e’s got muck for brains. Think’s ’e can set ’imself up like a little demi-god because ’is father was Karl-almighty-Mann. Makes ’is students play Bach like Chopin, and Scarlatti like Debussy. If you ask me, ’is father wasn’t all that hot shit anyway. And you know what that prick did last year?” She took a step forward, planting a platform heel dangerously close to my foot. Musk emanated from her like a force field. “’E criticized my paper on Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Took me seven bloody years to research that, and ’e goes and trashes it in Piano Quarterly. ‘What’s important is not that Fanny Mendelssohn published music under her brother’s name, but that Felix’s fondness and generosity toward his sister ensured that these remarkable works survived,’ ” she quoted in a travesty of uppercrust English. “Bleedin’ Kraut wanker defending a patriarchal Jewish bastard.” She glared at me as if I were personally responsible.
Without knowing the whole story, I suspected Mann had merely offered a pianist’s perspective on her work, but I knew better than to argue. Accent and vocabulary notwithstanding—it’s difficult to take seriously someone who swallows the t’s in Scarlatti—Morris-Jones could be a formidable adversary. Her academic reputation rested largely on research into misattributions of music composed by women. We’d butted heads once, in a third-year course on Late Romantic Cadential Ambiguity. The subject had been Mahler, and I’d committed heresy by suggesting we focus on his symphonies themselves, not the putative role his wife played in their inspiration. My marks had plummeted, leading to a nasty dispute before the Faculty arbiter. The final decision, unpardonably rendered by a woman, had come down in my favour.
She kept up her defiant stare, daring me to defend Mann, or Mendelssohn, or maybe the entire male sex. I held my peace. Antagonism seethed beneath her hennaed bangs, then slaked to a frustrated simmer. She turned abruptly and stormed the desk, barking out demands for course materials to be kept on hold. I waited till she’d clomped out of the library before buying my Xerox card. The library assistant took my money with the ghost of another wink. She looked familiar. Violin—no, viola. We’d taken keyboard harmony together. Her hair had been shorter then.
I intended to go directly to the Con when I finished. Elly needed to know that all had gone well at the airport, and the niceties of assuring her I’d delivered Mann safely promised some relief from Morris-Jones. A palliative not forthcoming, as it turned out. Like the aural analog to acid reflux, glottalized invective echoed down the hallway to the left of the elevator when I got off on the main floor.
“...and you know fuckin’ well what I mean. That money will not be used for your ruddy opera school. You’ve already kiss-arsed more from the dean than you deserve.”
I rounded a corner and found my way blocked by a quivering Morris-Jones and the target of her rant, the Faculty’s Head of Performance and almighty starmaker, Russell Spiers. A few feet behind, to my surprise, stood Laura Erskine. She wiggled her fingers at me in greeting.
Spiers folded his arms. “Bernice, dear, really,” he egged her on. “There’ll be oodles to go around. I was merely pointing out that something more obviously prestigious like the Opera School stood a better chance than your Centre For Women’s Studies In Music. It just sounds so drea—” The flow of words halted mid-taunt. “Well, well, if it isn’t the lovely Vikkan Lantry. Quelle surprise. Don’t see much of you around here these days. Still tickling the ivories?” He fluttered his fingers over an imaginary keyboard.
“I keep my hand in,” I said evenly.
He eyed me up and down, pausing at the region below my belt. “Pity. You never did know where your real talents lie.”
“And you never got a chance to find out.”
Laura glanced at me, then Spiers. “Vikkan will be accompanying me in Dieter Mann’s class on Wednesday,” she put in.
“Really?” His eyebrows shot up. “You’re filling in for someone, of course.” He turned to Laura. “You know, dear, it’s not doing your career any good wasting time with hacks. You should find someone whose talents lie in music, not ingratitude. Mind you, a class with Mann will look good on your résumé.”
Laura opened her mouth, but Morris-Jones harumphed loudly before she could say anything.
“Now, now, Bernice,” Spiers said. “I agree Mann’s a bit unorthodox, but you can’t deny lessons with him give artists a leg up in the profession. He’s quite useful.”
“Useful? Roight—like pimples on an ’emorrhoid.”
“Bernice, dear, really—”
“Don’t you ‘Bernice, dear’ me, Spiers,” she snarled. “And don’t give me that muck about ‘the Great Mann’. You’d suck up to Genghis Khan if you thought ’e’d make one of your students look good.”
Spiers lifted his hand to his mouth. “My, such language. And from a lady.” He aimed the comment like oil at an open flame, then dodged the conflagration by returning his attention to Laura. “Now where were we? Oh, yes—Howard Snelling. I spoke to him about representing you. He was very impressed by the tape you made last year. It would be quite the little coup if his agency took you on so soon after graduation.”
“Should I call him?” Laura asked.
“No, let me handle it.”
“Why?” Morris-Jones shrilled. “So you can claim ’er as your own? If I remember rightly, you didn’t even want ’er in the voice program in the first place.”
There must have been some truth in what she said. Spiers blanched. “Laura,” I broke in, “I was just on my way to the Con. You’re not headed over there by any chance?”
She looked relieved. “As a matter of fact, yes. I’ll go with you.”
I braved crossfire between Spiers and Morris-Jones and followed her down the hall. “Thanks,” she said when we were out of earshot. “I’m not really going to the Con.”
“I didn’t figure you were.”
“But I was going to have lunch. Care to join me? We could eat outside.”
I looked at my watch. One-thirty. Elly could wait.
“Sounds good. I’m starving.”
We picked up subs and coffee from vending machines in the Faculty common room and took them outside. “Where do you want to sit?” I asked.
Laura scanned Philosopher’s Walk. “Over there?” She pointed to a stretch of grass behind the ROM, the Royal Ontario Museum, facing the Conservatory.
“Fine by me.”
We strolled over. Laura knelt and tested the ground with splayed fingers. “Dry,” she announced, settling down tailor-style, brushing off her jeans.
“Hardly surprising. We haven’t had much rain this year.”
She squinted up. “Ya reckon it’s gonna be a hard summer for the crops?”
“Huh?”
“You sounded like a farmer.” Out of nowhere, she began to sing: “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille / Six hungry kids and a crop in the field... ” The sound was throaty and glorious.
“With a voice like that, you could make millions,” I said.
“I intend to.”
I hunkered down to join her. The sweet smell of sun-warmed grass hovered near the ground. Over by the Conservatory, hedges of forsythia had already lost their canary-yellow flowers. Spring in Toronto is a fickle season, in some years lenient and precocious, in others, reluctant to let loose of winter’s grip.
“What was that all about?” I asked, unravelling my sub from yards of plastic.
“You mean back there? Rawlings’ Riches. You must have heard about it.”
“Elly told me. Last night, after the concert.”
“How was that?”
“Okay. A lot of mortgage-free types patting themselves on the back for having two hundred dollars to blow on something they didn’t give a damn about.”
“Talk is Janssen set the whole thing up to impress Rawlings.” Laura tore a bite from her sub.
“Elly said as much.”
She chewed hard, swallowed and took a gulp of coffee. “I won’t be surprised if the Con gets the money. Janssen’s going after it aggressively, and when he wants something, there’s not much stands in his way.”
“Tell me about it. We practically goose-stepped our way through the concert rehearsal.”
“The feeling over at the Faculty is that Dean Simmons isn’t trying hard enough. The departments have all started approaching Rawlings separately.”
“And that’s what Spiers and Morris-Jones were going on about?”
“Everybody’s got their pet project: education, composition, history, the works. The dean called a meeting this morning—I got this from Spiers—and told them to lay off. Let him go after the cash cow. Nobody listened. It ended up being a free-for-all.”
“Morris-Jones wants the Hildegaard of Bingen Centre for Music’s Mislaid Maids, and Spiers wants fancy fencing foils for the opera school?” The alliterations came out garbled through a mouthful of tuna sub.
“You got it.”
We finished eating in silence, washing down the doughy buns with weak coffee. I lit a cigarette. Laura stretched out on the grass. Our outfits made us look like twins: jeans, thick white cotton shirts, canvas running shoes. Her sneakers were worn where her little toes pushed up against the fabric.
“Why was Spiers so nasty to you?” she asked, her eyes closed.
“Ancient history now. He wanted me to be one of his golden boys. Darling of the Performance Department and all that. He courted me all through first year, but when it came time to choose a major, I went for composition. I couldn’t see myself as one of those trained monkeys who spend their whole lives playing the same concerto. He turned vicious when he found out. You’d think I’d jilted him. In a way, I suppose I did.”
“He had the hots for you?”
“I could be wrong.”
“I doubt it. The man’s a slimeball. What Professor Morris-Jones said is true. When I went to him at the end of second year about switching from Education to Performance, he flat out refused. But then I won the du Maurier competition, and all of a sudden, it had been his idea to have me in the vocal program all along.”
“So how come you’re still hanging around with him? You graduated—what?—two years ago?”
“He keeps setting things up—contacts, auditions, stuff like that. I think he’s still hoping for reflected glory. It really pissed him off when I started working with Elly.”
“Because she’s Con?”
“Exactly.”
“Who were you with before that?”
“Ulrike Vogel.”
“You’re kidding. Elly never told me that.”
“You probably never asked.”
“Ulrike’s Con, too, though.”
“Not entirely. She accepts a few Faculty students every year, so technically she’s in Spiers’ department.”
“What was she like as a teacher?”
“Brilliant. Demanding. And neurotic. I made the right decision leaving her when I did.”
Lunch and the balmy weather were beginning to take their toll. I felt drowsiness settling on my eyelids and in the back of my neck. A westerly breeze sprang up, soft on the skin, but overlaid with an out-of-place, throat-catching smell of heating tar.
Laura made a moue of distaste and opened her eyes. “Yuck. That’s even less appetizing than lunch.” She sat up and brushed herself off. “I’ve got to get going. Are we still on for tonight?”
“Come by around seven. With any luck, I’ll know your music by then.”
“As if. Elly says you could sight-read a symphony if you had to.”
“Elly is a meddlesome little teller of tales.”
“And you love her.” She stood up, flipping grass from her long dark hair. “Ciao. Thanks for having lunch.”
“See you later.”
I watched her head up to Bloor Street, then crushed out my cigarette and leaned back on my elbows. I didn’t know Laura well, but the more time I spent with her, the more I enjoyed her company. It had been Elly’s suggestion, several months earlier, that we work together. I’d been hesitant at first. During the barren period after my return from Caledon, I’d holed up in my apartment-to-be and sunk myself into repairs and renovation. When a last coat of sticky latex covered the raw spruce of loft, kitchen and postage-stamp bathroom, I’d hoped to find another project—something, anything—to keep me from getting out, meeting people, making friends. I didn’t want to fill the crater left by Christian’s death. Elly’s informal sessions with Laura “just to look at repertoire” sounded like she wanted them to do just that. For once, I was glad Elly is so hard to refuse.
I lit another cigarette and fought down the urge to nap. Since coming back to Toronto, I’d turned into a creature of the night. Getting up that morning to meet Mann had disrupted my schedule, but if I slept now, I’d end up feeling logy the rest of the day. I finished my cigarette, then reluctantly stood and crossed over to the Conservatory.
Elly’s second-floor studio was dark. Mrs. Wigrell, a motherly woman who teaches preliminary piano across the hall, was hugging one of her little charges goodbye. Her cotton print dress and cap of curly white hair made her look as if she would smell of apple pie and fresh-baked rolls. “Are you looking for Miss Gardiner?” she asked, waving to her departing pupil.
“Yes. Is she on lunch?”
“No. She has an ear-training class till three-thirty. I can give her a message if you like.”
I said no thanks and walked to the end of the hall, feeling her eyes on me as I went through the door. Elly had told me some studios had been vandalized recently. Perhaps Mrs. Wigrell was being properly cautious. Then again, maybe she was just being nosey.
I took the northeast staircase down and exited at a shady corner of the building. Sunlight bounced off the back of the ROM, momentarily blinding me. I waited for my eyes to adjust, then set off back toward Hoskin Avenue.
Just south of the Conservatory, Philosopher’s Walk splits in two. A small spur curves up to join the parking lot shared by the Con and Varsity Arena. A few metres past the fork, a tow-headed cyclist swept by, taking the slope at breakneck speed, all muscles and focus in thigh-hugging Spandex. I spun around to watch him, and in so doing, discovered the source of the tar smell I’d noticed earlier. On the flat roof that covers a section of the Conservatory basement where it rises eccentrically one-half storey at the back of the building, two men were doing repairs. One of them was bent over, his back to me, but in the split second before I turned away, he straightened up and turned.
A jolt like fire and ice kicked me in the sternum. Christian—the man looked just like Christian. Heart pounding, I felt myself being pulled back.
It wasn’t him. I knew that. The corded arms straining to lift a bucket, the damp curls spilling over tilde-shaped eyebrows, these belonged to a man who still lived and breathed and sweated. Christian was gone. His body had been lifted from the ground, scrutinized, adjudged “suicide”, and rendered to a handful of gritty ash. But the physical memory of him still held sway, its absurd concomitant of hope provoking a conditioned response no less real for its stimulus having been imagined.
I willed myself away, feeling weak as the adrenaline subsided. The aftermath would endure, but not for long days, not like it had before. The unbearable had become something I could live with. On ne guérit jamais—on s’habitue. Jacques Brel: you never heal, you just get used to it.
A ticket was flapping on the windscreen when I reached the Rover. I tore the flimsy paper from the wipers and jammed it in my pocket. The engine wouldn’t start but finally kicked over when I gave the key a punishing twist and held it in place. The stream of cars feeding in off Queen’s Park Crescent thinned, and I eased into traffic, heading west. A half hour later, my tires crunched to a halt on the gravel drive beside the old stone carriage house, over near High Park, that I call home.
I waited until three-thirty before calling Elly. She sounded miffed I hadn’t phoned immediately once Mann was safely downtown. Her irritation evaporated when I confirmed I’d be taking the Friday lesson with him.
“What will you be playing?”
I told her the same thing I’d told Mann, the Haydn F-minor Variations. “I suppose I ought to thank you,” I added. “And I don’t just mean for the lesson. You’ve been doing a lot lately.”
“Well, don’t get it in your head I’ve only been trying to keep you busy.”
“It feels that way sometimes.” All those exams and sparsely attended student recitals.
“Consider it paying your dues. You can’t go on forever playing only for yourself.”
“I’m not.”
“Surely you don’t mean working at that bar?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what it’s called.” Evelyn—gallantly named after his wife by the owner, Léo St-Onge.
“It’s hardly what I’d call living up to your potential. You have obligations to your talent.”
“The way I see it, I’m meeting them, and some others, too. Léo’s helped a lot, you know.” He owned the carriage house and let me have it rent-free. “He pays well, I have a job, and it’s in music. You should be pleased.”
How many times had we been through this—Elly going on about obligations and responsibilities, me defending my choices? We sounded like an old married couple. For once, she decided to drop it. “Ulrike Vogel called this morning,” she said.
