The schumann proof, p.9
The Schumann Proof, page 9
One of my childhood guardian’s most frequently enunciated proscriptions dealt with talking about myself. “Thy modesty’s a candle to thy merit,” he’d remind me, quoting Fielding, but Laura had posed her question with such humour that for once I didn’t feel self-conscious. “I ride sometimes,” I said, “and build kites. I also dabble in watercolours, and occasionally spend hours making insects out of little squares of paper. Oh, and I try to keep my jeep running, which is nearly a full-time occupation.”
“That’s all?” she laughed. “You know what Elly says, don’t you?”
“Do I want to hear this?”
“She says that you’re a dilettante. Your true talent lies in music, and you hide from it with all the other stuff you do. She maintains it’s Berényi’s fault.”
“Elly says all that?”
Laura shrugged. “She’s very fond of you.”
“So people keep telling me.”
“Is it true? What she says about Berényi?”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant. Berényi’s reputation preceded him. Still, I thought carefully before answering. “Yes and no. My years with him weren’t easy. Sometimes I wonder how different I’d be if I’d studied with someone else. You know he used to boast that not one of his students hadn’t broken down and cried during at least one lesson? His favourite pedagogical tool was abuse. His rages were unpredictable. It didn’t matter how much practising you put in, you never knew from week to week if it would be enough to satisfy him. Sometimes it was, which only made it worse when it wasn’t. I remember once he threw a mug of coffee at me from across the room just because I’d played a Chopin Ballade perfectly. He was livid. If I could play like that, why didn’t I do it all the time?”
“Sounds like a psycho.”
“His favourite line was: ‘I have no patience!’ He’d say it over and over with this weird Hungarian accent. Scared the hell out of me, because the more he said it, the angrier he’d get. Sooner or later, he’d start screaming and throwing music around. Then he’d shove me out the door. The worst of that was when someone else was in the hallway. He’d keep on yelling even when I was outside.”
Laura’s eyes crinkled in a funny way, as if she didn’t want to believe me. “And you put up with it? For how long?”
“Nearly ten years. From the time I was eleven.”
“But why?”
“It sounds incredible now, but would you believe I just didn’t know any better? He was supposed to be the best. It was an honour to study with him. I didn’t want to tell my uncle about it because I assumed a man of Berényi’s reputation had to be right: I just wasn’t working hard enough. I didn’t want my uncle to think that the money he spent on lessons wasn’t justified. I owed him a lot. He’d never planned on raising a child. I wanted to excel at everything by way of gratitude.”
She nodded slowly, understanding, making me wonder how much of love and a desire to please had fueled her own studies.
“Funny thing is, I still can’t say for sure whether Berényi’s methods were wrong. I did learn to play the piano, and I can’t help wondering if I’d have learned so thoroughly if he’d been different. I read somewhere that humiliation is the best teacher.”
“But when you finished with him, you went on to study music at the Faculty?” She shook her head. “It sounds sick.”
“Lots of Berényi’s students stayed in music. Mind you, a fair number had nervous breakdowns, too. And none went on to become super-successful. Maybe we were all just suckers for punishment, although in my case, I think it was more a question of the path of greatest resistance. I hate admitting defeat.”
Robert arrived just then with our plats principaux. I disliked talking about Berényi. My time with him sounded like a catalogue of horrors, and any analysis of it made me sound like a weak-willed masochist. I suspected the real dynamic between us had been like the intimacy that’s supposed to spring up between interrogator and interrogee, captor and hostage.
The restaurant was filling up. Muted voices and the clinking of cutlery filled the lull in our conversation. Laura sampled her fish, then attacked it with gusto. The way she dug in, I wondered if I shouldn’t have had the chef whip up something more substantial.
I went at my asparagus first: emerald green spears glistening with sesame oil. Next, the rice and chive flowers. Last of all, the orange roughy. An ultra thin coating—chestnut flour? arrowroot?—crisped into shards in my mouth, forming a kind of tactile staccato to the buttery flesh inside. The radicchio salad afterward added a pleasantly bitter counterpoint.
“Su-perb,” Laura announced, laying down her fork. “Definitely better than stuffed chicken at the Budapest.”
She sat back and watched me polish off my salad. I popped a last pink leaf into my mouth with my fingers and pushed the plate away. When I looked up, she had an odd expression on her face.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m just wondering who he is.”
“Who who is?”
“The man in the photograph on your piano. I couldn’t help noticing when I was there. He looks a lot like you. Your brother?”
“No. His name is Christian.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And who is he?”
“Not is—was. A lover. For four years.”
Laura’s eyes widened a fraction. I realized with a start that she didn’t know I was gay. The subject hadn’t come up in the months we’d been working together. The easy rapport I had with her from the piano had tricked me into thinking she knew.
“Handsome,” she said, with only the barest flicker of hesitation. “Looks like you pick boyfriends as well as you do everything else. Do you still see each other?”
God, Elly, with all the talking you do, why couldn’t you have told Laura this?
“He’s dead,” I said simply, nearly adding: “I’m sorry.” News of death, no matter how much time has passed, puts the onus on the teller to absolve the asker of any pain accruing from the question. Laura, for her part—and to her credit—neither apologized nor retreated with hasty, futile sympathy.
“Coffee?” I suggested, not very subtly.
“Good idea.”
I flagged Robert and tried to think up another subject of conversation. Laura beat me to it. “Tell me about that book you’re working on. The slides were beautiful.”
“The folio? Léo’s wife—Evelyn, in case you’re interested—owns a shop in Montreal that specializes in rare books. First editions, author printings, that sort of thing. She came up with this idea of creating a ‘botanical’ for Léo’s property in Caledon. You know, like those old-time natural history books: a picture of the plant on one page with a description and commentary on the other.”
“Sounds like a big undertaking.”
“You have no idea. Léo owns a hundred hectares on the Credit River. Lots of different ecosystems. There’s an incredible variety of flowers.”
“Sounds beautiful. Must be nice to be rich.”
“Very rich. His family’s been in mining and lumber in Quebec since Wolfe and Montcalm had their tiff on the Plains of Abraham.”
“Are you going to publish it?”
“No. That’s the whole point. It’s a one-of-a-kind. Léo is paying for it. A friend of Evelyn’s will do the binding.”
Robert returned with our coffee, and I asked Laura if she minded if I smoked.
“Not if you let me light up for you.” She meant it literally, holding out her hand for the du Maurier I was about to put in my mouth. “I used to smoke,” she explained, extracting a wooden match from the little gold-embossed box supplied by the restaurant, “but I had to give it up. One of the hells of being a singer. I deal with it by lighting other people’s cigarettes if they’ll let me.”
“Clever.”
She struck the match and touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette. After one long slow puff, she passed it back to me.
“How did you land the job here?” she asked. “Elly says getting you to play in public is like pulling teeth.”
“It was Léo’s idea, when I moved back to Toronto last year. He thought I needed the routine of work. Anyway, I like it. It’s not like being the centre of attention the way you are on stage. More like playing in the comfort of your living room.”
“The apartment where you live, that belongs to Léo, too?”
“That’s right. He lets me stay there for free. Well, not quite. He rents out the main house. There are two flats. I keep an eye on it and do maintenance.”
“He seems to do a lot for you.” She tilted her head to one side. “Is there something going on between you?”
“Léo and me?” My surprise must have gone over the top, because Laura asked “What?” in that wounded tone people use when what they mean is: Did I say something wrong?
“Sorry,” I said. “Of course you wouldn’t know. Léo is Christian’s father.”
Out of nowhere, Robert appeared at her elbow with a pot of coffee. One could almost suspect he’d been following the conversation and sensed the need for intervention. Laura looked up at him and shook her head, flustered. I asked for the bill. Neither of us spoke until he returned.
“My treat,” I said.
“No way.”
We both reached for the leather bound présentoire, hoping for a pre-emptive strike in the battle over payment. I got to it first, but Laura snatched the bill from inside. She studied it, then handed it back with a smile. “You’ve got friends,” she said.
I took a look. The total had been scratched out. In its place were Rosemary’s signature and a smiley-face with the word “Gratis” in tiny letters on the curve of its silly grin.
Mann was holding his class at the Heliconian Hall, a couple of blocks east of Evelyn on Hazelton Avenue. We decided to walk over instead of taking the Rover. The sun had already dipped behind the city’s west end high-rises, but stored-up heat in the streets and sidewalks warmed the evening air. The sky in front of us had deepened to a rich cerulean blue. Street lamps were coming on, making globes of melon-coloured light against the dusk.
Laura took my arm, a gesture that, while it had no precedent between us, felt unaffected and comfortable. I reflected on the irony of sexual orientation, that part of human nature that decrees the gender of our mates. For most people, myself included, it is an unshakable constant. Had Laura been a man, her gesture might have signalled something more than the acknowledgment of a growing friendship.
“What’s your story with Elly?” she asked as we neared Avenue Road. “Did you used to study with her?”
“No. We didn’t actually meet until I was at the Faculty. One of her former students was singing something I’d written. I was playing, and Elly came to the recital. We got introduced afterward. She didn’t like the songs—she never likes anything I write—but she wanted to know if I’d be available to accompany some of her students. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d probably have said no. For the next three years, she just expected me to be free every time she called. Somehow, I always was. You know Elly.
“I left the city for a couple of years after that, which pissed her off, even though she’ll never admit it, but I guess she’s forgiven me now, because we’re right back where we left off. She calls; I jump.”
“Why did you leave Toronto?”
“Long story. And aren’t you inquisitive tonight?”
“Striking while the iron’s hot.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you don’t usually talk much about yourself.”
“Must be the Scotch I had before you showed up for dinner.”
She poked me in the ribs, then let go of my arm so we could cross Avenue Road during a break in the traffic.
Heliconian Hall, home of a women’s cultural club, sits in the heart of Toronto’s trendy Yorkville district. Across the road, an upscale promenade presents its thoroughbred backside to the modest former church. From outside, the building’s vertical wooden siding and countrified gingerbread trim make it look like a frump at a chi-chi ball. Only inside does its breeding show: wood-only acoustics make it one of the best recital venues in the city.
Mann was already on stage, sitting at one of the two Steinways that crowded the platform. The class hadn’t started yet. A young woman stood beside him, watching him pencil something in her music. Fingerings, most likely. Ninety percent of playing the piano involves little more than getting your fingers in the right place at the right time.
I didn’t see Elly right away. I did, however, catch sight of Spiers—minus the Dean—and Nils Janssen. I recognized almost no one else. Mann’s predilection for staying away from music schools had the reciprocal effect of discouraging their staffs from attending his classes.
Laura spotted Elly near the middle of the hall. She’d saved two places on the aisle—thoughtful, since Laura and I would have to get out later on—but her location left something to be desired. Waves of musk billowed back from the mauve poncho and fulgently hennaed hair in the row in front.
“What do you suppose she’s doing here?” I whispered to Elly. “When I ran into her yesterday and mentioned Mann’s name, the air turned a marked shade of azure.”
Elly clucked. “I have no idea,” she said, “but I wish she’d sit somewhere else. I can hardly breathe.”
Because the audience was made up in part of students who would also be performing in the class, a nervous hum buzzed through the hall. Mann’s classes put considerable strain on those who took the stage. First came a performance of their chosen piece; afterward, criticism and instruction from Mann. For those not participating, it was an edifying look into the art of interpretation. For those who had to do the work, it could be nerve-wracking.
Mann, alone now, signalled the start of his class by playing a ferocious scale in double thirds from bottom to top of the piano, one hand only. It was more impressive, and more effective, than any fanfare.
“We have an interesting class tonight,” he said into the startled silence. “Some Debussy, some Bach. A singer doing Schumann. And the Berg Opus 1. It should prove most challenging. We’ll begin with the Debussy.”
He gestured to a teenager in the front row, East Indian or Pakistani, with wide, dark eyes and a tawny complexion that looked as if it had yet to know a razor. He mounted the stage and handed his music to Mann, then sat down to play without ceremony. Mann leaned over and whispered in his ear. Doe-brown eyes turned from the keyboard. “ ‘Reflets dans l’eau’ from Debussy’s Images,” he said, his voice cracking mid-sentence. “Book One.”
Mann settled back and held a finger to his lips, admonishing the audience to special silence. His student waited until the quiet was complete, then dropped his opening notes into the stillness like pebbles in a pond. Sonic ripples coursed through the piano, building to a quasi cadenza that sent a fountain of notes skittering out into the hall.
Debussy’s synaesthesia of light, colour and sound demanded utter concentration from the player, whose brow furrowed as the piece progressed. Halfway through, it became apparent that while he’d mastered the technical difficulties, he had a way to go before his interpretation lost a certain hard-edged quality. It was too precise, like an inked page awaiting the softening touch of watercolours.
Just the same, Mann beamed with pleasure when he finished. “Most impressive,” he said, prompting the student to take a well-earned bow. “Debussy is never easy on the performer. So many traps. But I couldn’t help noticing—you never once used the left pedal. So much of the piece is marked pianissimo.” He leaned over and stage-whispered, “Did you take a pledge or something?”
Laughter swept the room, a good indication of how many in the crowd were pianists. The left pedal—the una corda—softens a piano’s loudness by half, but precisely because of its ease in creating pianissimo effects, some players think it’s cheating.
“The difficulty with this piece,” Mann continued, touching the boy’s arm to reassure him, “is that the reflections it conjures up do not come from water that is merely still. Every once in a while, a light breeze blows up, clouding the surface. At other times, a current moves underneath, creating waves and ripples. And while it’s true that there is an overall wash of colour, there is also brilliance. This is not just a placid millpond painted by Maxfield Parrish, but neither is it Monet’s little stream at Giverny.”
In front of us, Morris-Jones snorted and muttered something that sounded like “friggin’ hart ’istory lesson.”
Mann grew specific. “Use the left pedal throughout, even in the forte passages...firm fingers here, so it sounds like a skipping stone...and here, just the opposite; stroke the keys so the chords have no beginning...put in an eighth rest, even though it’s not marked...events need silence to give them meaning, you know...playing all the notes too loud is a worse mistake than missing a few...this is pianissimo; one is not supposed to hear everything...even with the sustaining pedal, this won’t sound over four bars...repeat it, I’m sure Debussy wouldn’t mind.”
Hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence, the young pianist experimented with Mann’s suggestions. Diffidence turned to confidence and finally delight when an iridescent waterscape began to emerge where before there’d been only notes.
My enjoyment of the lesson was somewhat dampened by audible and churlish grumblings coming from Morris-Jones. Every one of Mann’s textual revisions brought on a fit of armand leg-crossing. Beside me, Laura sat rapt and undisturbed, but Elly tsk-ed several times. People in seats next to Morris-Jones shifted uneasily.
Mann summed up. “Interpreting, you see, is not about obeying orders. Written music is a shorthand. The composer can only convey what he wants with the symbols he has. I have found, for example, that the more dynamic markings in a score, the more likely it is the composer is trying to suggest what he wants, not specify it.”
Morris-Jones sat with her arms folded defiantly during the warm applause that followed.
Next up was a long-haired blond in his twenties. Unlike the previous performer, he exuded confidence—too much of it.
“The Prelude and Fugue in D-major from Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. Also Book One,” he added, mocking the student who’d gone before.
