Appassionata (2 page)
I must work hard. They come soon, the youths of this summer.
She wakes up the next morning knowing only that she has a task ahead of her. She puts on her khaki slacks and a loose shirt for practicing, and walks out into a crisp fall day and the sharp clarity of Paris. The enchanting round garden, with its precise iron grisaille framing the flowering trees, themselves pruned to a precision; the spiff and polish of chrome and glass windows in the overpriced shops; the amusingly neat movements of waiters rushing about at the outdoor cafés; a lucid city music. She sits down for a quick croissant and her morning dose of coffee. Focus. A gathering of forces. She sees pleasure and expectation in people’s faces. Strange, she thinks, this returning of vision, this alteration of mood on which so much depends.
She walks over to the Champs-Elysées, responds to the nod of recognition from the doorman at the artists’ entrance and makes her way through the familiar maze of corridors and cubicles, into Rougement’s office. He comes out from behind his desk to give her a peck on both cheeks and a careful squeeze of her elbow. Mustn’t damage the pianist’s hand. He is dressed as always in an impeccable gray suit which sets off his salt-and-pepper hair, every one of his gestures courteous and calm.
“We have a new piano,” he says, as he takes her by the arm
to lead her toward the stage. “Did you know? The most mellow bass I’ve ever heard. Bosendorfer still can’t be beat for the bass, don’t you think? Even Rothman couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and we know how he loves to complain, like all prima donnas. Let me know what you think of it, OK? We’re all so excited about this evening.”
Left alone with the big, beautifully curved beast of the piano, she wonders if there was even a quaver of excitement in Rougement’s voice, if he’s still capable of feeling anticipation before a concert, after all that music pouring out over him evening after evening, after he’s been witness to such quantities of proficiency, and excellence, and sometimes peerless perfection. What can she do that has not been done before … Like so many things in the world, music is old, she thinks, and there is too much of it. No longer conceivably a scandal, as when
The Rite of Spring
was first performed here; no longer a shock.
But as soon as she touches the piano, doubts evaporate. She adjusts the leather stool to the right height, plays some warm-up arpeggios in C and C-sharp major. Instantly, she feels a jolt of satisfaction. The piano has responded like some sensitive living creature. The sound produced by her fingers is startlingly good: full, round, clear, but without the hard edge of less refined instruments. She begins the Schubert slowly, luxuriating in the tone, the piano’s even temper, the way the keys react to the slightest nuance of her intention, movement of wrist, pressure of fingertip.
She plays through the Sonata, testing the tonal range while keeping it a measure reined in. She mustn’t let herself go just yet, must preserve her energies for later. The full glory of the music lies within, waiting to be uncoiled. The Chopin Ballade, without the full fortes, sotto voce. Then the Ravel. Passages in the “Jeux d’eau” still require an effort and she goes over them
several times, gearing up the tempo, till they begin to slide off her fingers like butter, like water.
On the way out, she stops in Rougement’s office to go over the evening’s arrangements. The piano will be tuned later in the afternoon; the car will be sent to the hotel at seven. He holds her hand for a moment, as if to say thank you. “I overheard parts of the Schubert,” he tells her. “You understand him so well. I mean, how much his lovely melodies tell us. How it isn’t all smooth and easy.” She smiles gratefully. On the way back to the hotel, she thinks, yes, perhaps there is something she understands. It is the winding of human longing as it reaches and extends itself into heavenly lengths, as it submits gradually to perfect symmetries. When she is playing Schubert, she understands something of that.
Time to get ready. Her hair has to be washed. Snippets of the “Jeux d’eau” float through her mind, pianissimo, and she goes over them mentally, finger by finger, note by note. Room service: soup and salad, a chocolate dessert for extra energy. She takes out the book she brought as a relaxant, a comic novel about academia. Characters make clever remarks, flirt, converse. Then a funny joke, some twist of rhythm, or of paradox. She laughs, taken by surprise. Good sign, that. If she can laugh, the nerves are not too bad. Get dressed. Deodorant, talcum powder, a very light bra. She moves her arms upward, to make sure nothing inhibits her movements. Brief moment of resentment: Rothman doesn’t have to worry about this. But then, he has his tuxedo, although, these days, maybe he has given up on that. Passages from a Bach Partita peregrinate through her mind, steady and ceremonious. She steps into her dress, brushes her hair. Long mirror, in which she contemplates herself impartially. It works well, the glistening green of the silk flowing down along her body, the sharp diagonal of the low V-neck echoing the slant of her cheekbones. She wonders briefly what she looks
like to them, from out there, under the lights, then flicks the question away superstitiously. If she for a moment considers herself as an object up there onstage, all is lost. If for a moment she tries to court the audience’s attention or admiration, all is lost. Still, she allows herself a moment of satisfaction. There is a kind of elegance in her, a distinctness and flow to her gestures. She senses briefly but clearly that the element which impels her movements is made of the same stuff, same sap, as the thing that moves Schubert’s phrases. Or anyone’s movements, if they know anything of grace. The principle of beauty is within us. Then the intuition vanishes. She puts on her coat, makes sure that the scores are in her briefcase, even though she won’t use them, and takes the lift down to wait for Rougement’s car.
Rougement leads her to the Green Room, where she’ll spend the next half-hour. His manner is perfectly calibrated for such occasions: attentive, but not so solicitous as to suggest that she might be feeling unsure or nervous. He keeps up a gentle stream of remarks, which fortunately demand no response. Did she know that the new Opéra was an acoustic disaster, though that popinjay of a culture minister has claimed it as a triumph for the government, but then what can you expect from politicians, especially from
soi-disant
socialists who insist on behaving as if they were de Gaulle? In the Green Room, he surveys the surroundings calmly. He is one of those Frenchmen about whom there is an unflagging expectation of order, built into his very bones. He makes sure that the bottle of Perrier and the blanket with which she likes to wrap herself at intermission are in place, and takes her hands in his. “Warm and dry,” he comments approvingly. “As I remember, you like some time on your own?”
“If you don’t mind,” Isabel says, half apologetically.
“Of course,” he says, and closes the door carefully behind him.
A half-hour of focused blankness, then he’s back, nodding
that it is time. She follows him through the backstage messiness, over some wooden plank. Her stomach lurches, horribly, practically turning over. She wants desperately to turn back; she would give anything to be able to turn back. Then the threshold between dark and light, and she’s out there, in the flood of light. She calms instantly, as if shot through by a powerful chemical, or a starry bolt from the spotlights. Her body straightens as if in response to a summons, her step slows. She should know by now about this effect, but it’s always a surprise. Her consciousness has hid somewhere, folded away, with its jangling questions; in its place, another alertness unfolds, wide and bright. Applause, from out there, from the dark. She lets it come at her impersonally, like a shaman’s touch. She and they are participating in the same ritual, a rite of preparation, the preparation of an instrument.
At the piano, she lowers her head briefly to listen to the rhythm of the Mazurka she has chosen as the opening piece. Her hands place themselves on the right keys. With the first bar, the delicate, definite mood imposes itself. The wistful dance motif, with its syncopations, carrying in itself sadness and stubborn defiance; then the release of the middle part, the stomping, proud peasant chords; and back to the beginning, more accepting the second time, infused with everything which had gone before. A microcosm in three minutes.
Two more Mazurkas. The applause comes at her with believable warmth, stoking her for the next, larger effort. The fingers are looser by now, the instrument has been oiled. She lowers her hands again on the dreamy, distant opening line of the First Ballade. Somewhere in the dark, she senses the audience, falling into quietness, altering its collective breath with her, with the long breath of the music.
… ah, listen, thinks Louis McElvoy, Row N, Seat 5, the beauty
of that line, honestly she’s good, the technique, fantastic the same woman, strange / she was crumpled on the airplane sort of withdrawn / but listen, the distinctness of the notes, the lift of the arm, the way she comes down on the keys, those chords must be difficult / power like a commander, a general, where does it come from / ah, that melody quiet distant magic why does it move me like that / a sort of charisma / glad I came not disappointed, glad I came // … ah, thinks Fernand Mercier, the melody, weaving meandering, lyrical, ah, the sheer beauty / Chopin, incomparable / it’s in me, weaving through me, she’s poured it into me / directly, into the veins, the soul / what is it we exchange / the Exchange early morning, must read the figures damn it bloody figures, must catch up / ah, that modulation, where are we, C-sharp minor, the snag on the soul / the economics of the soul // … just listen, thinks Sister Jeanne, the turbulence the passion, passion of Christ, no, no, sacrilege / beautiful but not like Bach, so serene, rest in God / Chopin, was he doing it for God / no, there was that woman / and yet, the music / he was very ill, here in Paris, far away from his country / consumption, consumed by the flame / divine flame, divine spark / human passion but divine / is it sacrilege // … ah, listen, thinks Ricardo Lopez, chromatic delicate like powder / all senses at once / Alicia / yes, I wanted her in that room, the powder, the gesture of her hand coming up to her face, the musk of her body and then / how could they do it, her wrist, broken, shattered / how could they / cold metal the pain how much pain did she feel / ah, listen, that phrase, the elegance, grandeur, the grand arc / the bend of her neck, the curve of her arm Alicia / her wrist, broken, the cruelty, where is the music for that! / the torment of it always // … oh, thinks Marie Briand, how graceful, her hands, her confidence / I stayed hidden, hidden beauty what’s the point, but yet I knew / he knew / that quiet afternoon oh it is there, here, that afternoon, forever, he is bringing his
body down toward me, he saw the beauty, hidden beauty / those grace notes, light, like a soufflé … I will die. Stage Four. Incurable. No. Impossible. I do not accept. / ah, but it hurts, the sadness the beauty, it will still be there when I / no cannot be / but it will still be there //… who is she, thinks Anzor Islikhanov, Row N, Seat 6, those chords, the harmonies / sublime, yes, the fire, the passion / head thrown back / why does she speak as if to me, it enters, the music, the melancholy / who is she, beautiful woman, no, not for you / she would disdain me, they all do, I see it, their condescension, their tight-lipped smiles / let me not forget! / mad Chechen mad country, I see it in their eyes / ah, but look, her hair over her face, the quickening the rush, from her fingers, like wild mountain streams oh God yes the cold streams, my country / it pierces she pierces / my country, destroyed, the bastards the thugs / I hate them it grows in me it will burn me, let it burn! / Chopin knew, hated the Russians the tyrants the thugs / ah, listen, that line chromatic into the distance, from a distance, transporting, she transports me / must meet her, MUST, McElvoy will introduce me / he won’t want to mad Chechen, primitive, savage, don’t contaminate her / I will make him, he must / ah, those chords, rising, swelling, the fierceness yes like Chechnya, my longing, Chopin’s longing, beauty and violence all combined …
The applause comes with a shock, separating her from the audience, whose silent breath she has felt almost as part of the music, moving through the Ballade with her. During intermission, she wraps herself up in the blanket left there by Rougement, and sits curled on the sofa, garnering warmth, gathering her forces. By the time Rougement knocks on the door to take her back out, she feels energy flowing again.
The “Jeux d’eau,” frisky and watery; then the Schubert. The first, extended movement of the sonata is nearly unbearable to
play; she fears, at times, that she cannot contain its modulated intensities, its melodic beauty. Her breath draws in almost painfully; then finds some deeper runnel. The music emerging from under her hands has an eloquence of a child’s song, but one proceeding from an angelic source. Her head bends back, her mouth opens slightly to receive it. Someone, something, is speaking to her and through her. By the end of the great sonata, an enormous and gentle panorama has been traversed; a complex geometry of silent thought has been outlined and has come to its completion. Something in her locks into place. She feels, as her hands come off the keyboard of their own accord, a spacious joy.
She takes her bows with a more than perfunctory gratitude. She has been given something; something impalpable and essential has been exchanged. The sonata would not be complete without the anonymous listeners out there, receiving it, moving through it with her. The bravos are insistent enough to demand an encore; and, with a little pleased nod of encouragement from Rougement, she goes out again and plays an amusing Satie piece, to finish things off on a lighter note. Then she is backstage again and Rougement takes her arm to lead her back to the Green Room. He is murmuring something she can’t quite make out; the music hasn’t subsided yet, it’s hard to hear him through it. She tries to adjust her breath back to its ordinary pace, as people begin to trickle in. Well-dressed French people, some of whom she vaguely recognizes, probably from previous Parisian concerts. A music producer whom she does recognize gives her a thumbs up from a distance and then backs out the door, with an apologetic must-go, can’t-help-it gesture. Nice of him to come, though. Then the man from the plane is there. His corpulent body has a certain grace in his good suit, and his face is flushed with excitement. “Wonderful,” he says. “Unforgettable. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” He
introduces a man standing next to him, saying, “Another fan.” Isabel doesn’t catch his name, but it sounds vaguely Slavic, or Balkan. He looks somehow Slavic too, with his longish face and dark eyes. He gives a quick, rather formal bow, then looks at her with a curious intentness. She looks back, baffled; she isn’t sure what he’s trying to convey. “The Ballade,” he brings out. “I cannot tell you what it meant to me. Or perhaps you do know.” He speaks with a surprisingly British accent. “It is a wonderful piece,” she says, perplexed still. “Yes, but that’s not what I mean …” he begins. She waits for him to continue, but he gives a small shrug, as if conscious he is not going to be given more time. “I hope sometime I will be able to tell you,” he says, sounding almost offended. “Perhaps my friend here”—he indicates McElvoy—“will be kind enough to bring us together.” “Thank you,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say. He gives a small bow again and turns abruptly to leave. The man from the plane raises his eyebrows in ironic apology, and indicates that he must follow, saying in an undertone, “I hope we’ll meet again.”
