Good Things I Wish You (5 page)

—Robert, in the marriage diary, 1842
^*

Clara has written a series of smaller pieces, more delicate and richly musical in their invention than she’s ever achieved before. But having children and a husband who constantly improvises does not fit together with composing. She lacks the ongoing exercise, and that often bothers me, because many a heart-felt thought thus gets lost that she does not manage to execute. Clara herself knows her primary occupation to be a mother, however, so that I believe she is happy under these circumstances, which just simply cannot be changed.

—Robert, in the marriage diary, 1843
^*

Clara is now putting her Lieder and many piano compositions in order. She always wants to make progress, but on the right Marie hangs onto her dress, Elise also makes work, and the husband sits absorbed…

—Robert, in the marriage diary, 1843
^†

9.

D
ESPITE THE URGINGS OF
Joseph Joachim, Brahms hadn’t wanted to call on the Schumanns. He’d once sent Robert a packet of compositions, but these had been returned, unopened. That was enough for him. As for Frau Schumann, there was no discussion: she was a world-class pianist, a national treasure. Robert Schumann’s wife. But a woman, nonetheless, and therefore of little interest. Certainly no different from any other female walking the streets in her long, chaste gown, as if she believed she were fooling anybody. As if she weren’t, at heart, the same filth he paid for as easily, as comfortably, as a cool draft of beer on a warm summer’s night and forgot, just as easily, afterward.

Sometimes there were those he didn’t have to pay, those who admired his beauty.

These were the ones he did not forget.

These were the ones he hated.

It was 1854. He was nineteen years old. Schumann’s house might have been the house of anybody, a clerk, a teacher, a banker. Brahms rattled the knocker, then flushed, a letter of introduction clutched in his hand.

Why should I have to come like a beggar?
he thought as a little girl opened the door.

His temper evaporated instantly beneath the flat, numb glaze of her stare. Why the plum circles beneath her eyes? Why the darkened parlor like a shroud about her narrow frame? No sign of a maid, a nurse. Something wasn’t right. He knew this without setting foot inside the house. Of course, he’d heard the rumors, like everyone else: Schumann mumbling to himself at rehearsals, Schumann catatonic at a dinner party, doctors advising rest and a change of air.

“Johannes Brahms to see Herr Schumann,” he told the child, speaking with a gentleness that surprised them both, for she blinked as if he’d only just materialized. As if, until that moment, she’d been looking at empty air.

“Papa and Mama are out walking,” she said. She had a pleasing voice—did she sing? “Come back tomorrow at ten.”

The door closed in his face without ceremony. Now he’d have to spend an extra night at the cheap guesthouse he couldn’t afford in the first place. Enough. He’d pack up his rucksack immediately. He’d take the next train to Leipzig, where, alone, he’d present his compositions to publishers recommended by Joachim, by other powerful friends.

Walking fast through the Düsseldorf streets, he turned his face from the passing glances of hollow-eyed women, from the hard, wet stares of certain men. The trick was to keep moving, to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. Suck in his teeth and narrow his eyes. Knot the pale prettiness out of his skin. At fourteen,
in the
Animierlokale
^*
—where his father first found work for him—prostitutes had tugged his hands from the piano keys, lifted him like an infant, passed him from lap to lap. The men urged them on, and there’d been those who’d press hard against him, yes, but that, somehow, had been less disturbing than the women: hags bending over him with painted faces and flickering tongues, choking on the sort of laughter which has little to do with pleasure.

Which has nothing to do with joy.

He arrived at the guesthouse in his darkest mood, and yet he did not pack up his rucksack. Perhaps he was simply too tired to continue on to Leipzig so late in the day. Or maybe he thought more of Schumann’s opinion that he’d ever admitted to anyone. He might have been thinking of the child at the door. He might have been thinking of nothing at all. Who can say why we make the choices that come to be seen as significant, ordained?

The next day, he returned to the Schumanns’ house at exactly ten
A.M
. This time it was Robert who answered the door. It was Robert who shuffled, in slippers, to his own Graf piano, which he invited the young man to play. It was Robert who interrupted the C major Piano Sonata after listening for only a minute or two. His voice trembling with excitement. His eager eyes brightening with tears.

“Excuse me,” he said, already rising, preparing to speak the words that would change everything for them both, “but I must call my wife.”

Düsseldorf, November 5th, 1853

Dear Sir!

Your son Johannes has become very dear to us; his musical genius has provided us with happy hours. To ease his first steps into the world, I have spoken what I think of him in public…. and think that this will give a father’s heart a little pleasure.

You may live with confidence towards the future of this beloved of the muses and always be assured of my deeply felt concern for his happiness.

Sincerely

yours, R. Schumann

—Robert Schumann to Johann Jacob Brahms
  (father of Johannes Brahms) in Hamburg
^*

I often have to restrain myself forcibly from just quietly putting my arm around her and even—I don’t know, it seems to me so natural that she could not misunderstand.

I think I can no longer love an unmarried girl—at least, I have quite forgotten about them. They but promise heaven while Clara shows it revealed to us.

—Brahms, in a letter to Joseph Joachim, 1854
^*

10.

F
OR THE FIRST WEEKS
of 1854, Brahms and the Schumanns fell into happy routine. Mornings, they walked out together. Lunchtime was spent with the children. Afternoons were for the piano, for guests, for preparing Brahms’s scores for publication. For listening—often with averted eyes—to Robert’s latest efforts, which had been (so Robert claimed) dictated to him by friendly spirits. Brahms watched as Clara distracted anyone present with follow-up performances of Robert’s most ambitious works, pieces to which general audiences were still intractably resistant: his fine
Carnaval,
his
Symphonic Études,
his
Kreisleriana.
He saw how, in company, she intercepted any questions directed toward her husband, answering them exactly as Robert might have done, and he began to understand why Robert looked to her, leaned on her.

He would not have believed a woman could be so capable, so strong.

Did I not believe too, before I knew you,
he would write to her in 1854,
such human beings and such a marriage could only exist in the imagination of the most beautiful minds?
^*

She was not, by any means, a pretty woman, yet he found himself drawn to her side. He looked for little ways to be of help. He thought of clever, cheering things to say. He sat at the piano when she grew tired, played every request she made. Alone in the guesthouse, he stayed up too late: composing, drinking wine, considering her sweet, weary eyes. Sometimes he imagined her in Schumann’s bed—but no. He pushed the thought away. He was not, after all, attracted to her, an older woman, a mother, as plainspoken as she was plain-faced. And her affection for him was straightforward, clear. Blunt. Like her remarks on his manuscripts. Like her pieces of good advice.

He bought a new coat to please her. He changed his fingerings.

Still, he did not suspect her full powers.

Then, one day, as they were finishing lunch, Robert began tapping the tabletop, and though Clara stood up and spoke his name, though baby Eugenie began to cry, though the cook appeared from the kitchen with anxious offers of soup, more soup,
Möchte Herr Schumann ein bisschen mehr?
he pounded away, beating hard time with the flat of his hand as Elise, Ludwig, and Ferdinand pounded, too; as Marie took Eugenie into her arms; as Julie rose coolly from her place and, with a beautiful woman’s look of disdain, slipped quietly from the room.

“Do you hear? Do you hear the heavenly choir?” Robert shouted as Clara rounded the table, catching her skirt, spilling the water that remained in the pitcher as she stilled, at last, her husband’s hand with the wide, warm weight of her own. Silence as Robert lifted that hand to his mouth, kissed it, rubbed his sweating cheek against it, all the while looking into Clara’s face as if trying to recall her name. Brahms stared, helpless, along with the children. It was like watching a drowning man pulled from the water, the precarious moment when it seems both the man and his rescuer will tumble into the waves. Then, impossibly, through the sheer force of will, the balance shifts.

She had raised him up again.

Panting, weeping, wild-eyed and wet.

It was the most beautiful thing Johannes Brahms had ever seen.

Today Schumann spoke about a peculiar phenomenon that he has noticed for several days now. It is the inner hearing of beautiful music in the form of entire works! The timbre sounds like wind music heard from afar, and is distinguished by the most glorious harmonies…. He spoke of it, saying, “This is what it must be like in another life when we have shed our corporeal selves.”

—From the diaries of Rupert Becker,
concertmaster of the Düsseldorf orchestra, 1854
^*

11.

O
NE WARM EVENING, IN
the middle of May, my mother dropped by just as I was finishing Heidi’s lesson. She’d brought the piano teacher’s obituary, something she’d been promising to show me.

“He was good to you,” she said, lifting Heidi off the bench and into her arms for a kiss. “He was a friend.”

“We have five more minutes on our lesson,” I said. “Heidi, do you want to play something for Grandma? How about Musette?”

“I don’t want to play anymore.” From the safety of my mother’s arms, Heidi shot me a look of triumph.

“He gave you that portrait of Clara Schumann. Do you still have it?”

“I don’t know. Heidi, you owe me those last five minutes.”

“Remember that time he told me I should take you shopping for clothes? He even gave me some coupons.”

“I didn’t want to use them,” I said. “I didn’t want to go.”

“Still,” my mother said, placing the obituary on top of
the piano, “he meant well. It was a nice gesture, don’t you think?”

Heidi asked, “Is that man dead?”

What I said to Heidi: “He had a good, long life.”

What I said to my mother: “He was kind of an odd person, if you want to know the truth.”

“He certainly loved his students.”

“Grandma, will you play a game with me? Will you pretend we are kittens?”

“Fine with me,” I said, giving up, and as the two of them decided on the location of a safe, warm nest, I bent over the single smudged paragraph of accomplishments, the face that might have belonged to any tremulous old man.

He wore the same dark wool sweater at each lesson.

He wore slippers with argyle socks, plaid trousers, a wide leather belt.

I wore oversize shirts, baggy jeans, tennis shoes. I kept my arms close to my sides as I slipped between the rows of chairs at the monthly open studios, at the master classes with de Larrocha, Watts, Gutierrez, squeezing myself along balcony edges during group excursions to winter symphonies, to summer festivals, to private concerts where the piano teacher guided me forward, introduced me, invited me to play. Afterward, he’d speak to me sternly about what he called
the problem of your confidence
. It was important, he’d say, to look people in the eye, to speak clearly, to accept a compliment with a smile. As a performer, I’d have to get used to interacting with strang
ers. I’d have to get used to male attention. And I’d have to learn to dress—was there someone who could help me? My mother, perhaps, or a sister? Would I be offended if he, himself, made a few suggestions?