Madame Sousatzka (21 page)

Mrs Crominski knocked at the door and it was
Manders's authoritative voice that asked her to come in. She was angry with herself that she had knocked and given someone the right to grant her entry. She walked boldly into the room.

Even Mrs Crominski was surprised at the way Marcus received her. He practically leapt forward, and kissed her affectionately. ‘Momma,' he said. ‘Momma, did you like it? What was it like out there? Were you nervous? D'you feel better?' He was hugging her all the time. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Madame Sousatzka looking at them. He immediately withdrew from his mother, holding her at arm's length. He noticed that his embrace had dislodged her hat. The veil was largely concentrated around her ear and it looked browner than ever.

‘I don't think I have the pleasure,' Mrs Crominski said, nodding at Manders. For Mrs Crominski, everything and everybody was a pleasure to be proved otherwise.

‘This is my mother,' Marcus said tonelessly. He remembered the pride with which he intended to make this introduction, and he was saddened by his inability to show it.

‘Mrs Crominski,' Manders said expansively, turning his back on Madame Sousatzka. ‘It is indeed a great pleasure. How surprising it is that we have not met before. I fully expected you at our little salon, when Marcus played so delightfully. We had a grand party,' he rubbed it in, ‘you would have been so proud of him. My wife was most disappointed you couldn't come.' He turned to nod at Madame Sousatzka, assuming she was keeping the score.

Mrs Crominski glanced at Madame Sousatzka, too. ‘I was thinking I wasn't invited,' she said triumphantly.

‘Oh nonsense,' Manders said. ‘We're not formal about this sort of thing. We don't send out invitations. And after all, you are the boy's mother. What you reap,' he said parsimoniously, ‘you are entitled to sow. And much more will you sow from our seed here.' He rather liked the metaphor and was prepared to flog it to death. He put his arm round Marcus's shoulder. ‘A great harvest,'
he went on mercilessly, ‘but he must play, play, and play again.'

‘You mean more concerts he should give?' Mrs Crominski said.

‘Many more. Thirty a year at least.'

Madame Sousatzka stood up. She took Marcus's hand and pulled him towards her. ‘You cannot play so much,' she said. ‘At least, if you play so much, you cannot play well. With thirty concerts a year, there is time only for worry, for rehearsal. No time for the lesson. And you must always have the lessons. You play well, my darrlink, but I know you will play better. Sousatzka knows. At the moment, perhaps I let you play two concerts in the year.'

Mrs Crominski gasped.
‘I
let,
I
let, d'you hear?' she marvelled.

‘Every week I am giving the boy music,' Madame Sousatzka insisted. ‘You learn something with Sousatzka, Marcus, yes?' She held him close to her. ‘Sousatzka gives you the life, no?' she pleaded with him to confirm it. But he was silent. He couldn't imagine ever living without Madame Sousatzka, but he wanted concerts, too. Why couldn't he have them both, and his mother and Jenny and Cordle and Uncle and Manders?

‘If I don't go to school,' he said, ‘and I do nothing else but practise and have lessons, I'll still have time for concerts.'

‘He's left school already,' Mrs Crominski marvelled again.

‘Madame Sousatzka,' Manders interrupted. ‘I don't want to use this time to discuss these matters. But one thing is certain. If you don't allow Marcus to give concerts, many concerts, I can't handle him.'

‘Who's to allow? Who's to allow?' Mrs Crominski stepped in, begging her rights. ‘For Madame Sousatzka, Marcus is not ready even for this concert.'

‘I know, I know,' Manders warmed to her, ‘but when the crop is ripe, it must be reaped.' Old Manders was back on the farm again. ‘Not ready,' he laughed, ‘you heard the applause out there. They'll want to hear him
again. They know what they like. The public always knows.'

‘They know what you know,' Sousatzka shouted at him. ‘Nothing.'

Marcus sat between them, trembling.

‘You agree he played well?' Manders refused to be brow-beaten.

‘Of course he played well. My Marcus cannot play bad. But those people out there, they clap anyway. Even if he play like … er … like the other boy on your books last week, I don't say the name. You know who it is. Believe me, Manders, that boy has money. That's all. No talent he has. He pays you to give the concert, he pays the orchestra to play with him. He is a prostitute. You know that word, Manders?' she threatened him.

Manders lost his temper. ‘You're jealous, that's what you are. You're jealous. You're afraid to let him go.'

‘I want to play,' said Marcus simply.

Through the door, they heard the familiar victory opening of the Beethoven Fifth.

After the concert, a queue formed outside the artist's room. The door opened and Manders came out, letting in the queue like a cinema commissionaire. Mrs Crominski and Sousatzka stood behind Marcus as the first people congratulated him. Jenny, Cordle and Uncle were in the first batch. They approached Marcus together, kissing him and Sousatzka and whispering excitedly in a huddle, excluding all those waiting in the queue. When they had finished, they stepped aside and sat on the long couch alongside the wall, thus establishing themselves as close friends of the artist's. They looked on benevolently, as the men and women came to offer their congratulations. A little man went up to Marcus shyly, and whispered something in his hair. Then he stepped back and brought forward a mountain of a woman, holding her away from him with an outstretched arm, as if exhibiting her, eyeing her with pride and with satisfaction as if he'd made her himself. She looked at Marcus and smiled. And then she
plunged forward and kissed him on both cheeks, panting loudly and breaking out into an endless stream of pure Russian. Marcus nodded occasionally and smiled. The voice flowed on over a series of sudden equidistant waterfalls, and there was no indication that she was ever going to stop talking. Suddenly, her little owner stretched out his hand, and marched her away in the middle of a sentence, as if she were a musical box which he had overwound and which had begun to repeat itself. She was followed by a man in parenthesis who stepped forward, took Marcus's hand, let it go, and disappeared without saying a word. Suddenly Manders reappeared with his wife, and they took up their positions next to Marcus. Young boys and girls were coming forward with their programmes to be autographed, and Marcus moved over to the table to sign his name. His mother followed him. The Manders and Madame Sousatzka now remained together in a little group.

‘It's a wonderful turn-out,' said Mrs Manders as if she were opening a church bazaar.

‘He's been a great success, and he deserves it,' Manders said. ‘If I have my way, he'll go far.'

‘Why shouldn't you have your way?' his wife asked with feigned innocence. She was itching for an argument, expecially one in which she was personally not involved. She had enough contempt for her husband to enjoy seeing him bested in a quarrel, and not enough respect for Madame Sousatzka to think that she could do it. ‘You're his manager, aren't you?' she baited. ‘His future's in your hands.'

‘It's not as simple as that, my dear. It seems I have some opposition.'

‘But surely not Madame Sousatzka,' Mrs Manders said, turning to her. ‘Surely you're not going to stand in the boy's way?'

‘In his way, I shall not stand. In his way as a pianist, I shall not stand. That is why he must learn and practise and have the lesson. The concert is not everything,' she said.

‘But a few concerts,' Mrs Manders said. ‘Surely one or
two a year will not harm the boy's playing?'

Madame Sousatzka smiled. ‘Oh no, one or two concerts. Very good. But thirty? No. He is not the machine, my Marcus.'

‘Who said anything about thirty?' said Mrs Manders, turning automatically to her husband.

‘I said,' he said defiantly. ‘If the public are to keep him in mind, he must appear. Continuously. He mustn't be forgotten.' Manders was getting angry now. He felt that he was outnumbered. ‘Don't forget,' he said, ‘he need never have been discovered in the first place. It is only because of me he's here tonight.' This thought had been in his mind all day, accompanied by the determination never to voice it. He regretted it immediately he had spoken. Nothing he could have said could have infuriated Madame Sousatzka more.

‘Because of you?' Madame Sousatzka whispered. She had decided to play her trump, and she was going to play it slowly and quietly. ‘Because of you?' she repeated, ‘or because of Jenny?'

Manders's mouth dropped open. Madame Sousatzka prolonged the pause. Give it time to sink in, she thought. Mrs Manders stepped backwards out of line, in order to watch them both. ‘Jenny?' she breathed. ‘What's it got to do with Jenny?'

‘Ask him,' said Sousatzka. ‘He knows so much about everybody on his books. Also Jenny is on the books, Mrs Manders. The private books. The diary,' she added, in case she didn't make herself clear. ‘Marcus owes it to you, does he?' she said to Manders. ‘You have taught him the music. You have given him the soul. Yes, Manders?' She was almost crying now, sensing that she had lost everything. ‘You gave everything to him, yes? The career, the life, the gifts. He owes it all to you, of course.'

‘You know I didn't mean it like that,' he said. Mrs Manders was staring at him. ‘Jenny?' she asked again.

‘Yes, Jenny,' Sousatzka answered for him. ‘She plays the piano like your husband plays the piano. She knows about the music like your husband knows. She lives in
my house. But she is not my pupil. She has herself the pupils. Your husband is one of them. In fact, he is her favourite. And she does not teach them the arithmetic, Mrs Manders.' She was at pains to make herself clear. As she looked at Mrs Manders she could not bear to see the quiet pain creasing her face. She herself could no longer hold back her tears, some of which flowed for Mrs Manders too. She started for the door. She stood for a moment behind Marcus, listening to the woman in the queue whose turn had at last come, and who was making the most of it.

‘I was moved to tears, to tears, to tears,' she was saying. ‘You are a pianist to the finger-tips, to the finger-tips, to the finger-tips.' She obviously carried round her own built-in echo chamber.

Madame Sousatzka managed somehow to reach the door. The corridor outside was empty, except for one violinist who was dusting the belly of his violin with a yellow duster. She walked down the corridor and found herself again in the empty auditorium. She climbed the steps to the stage, walked slowly across, and sat down at the piano. She stared at the empty hall, then at the seat she had occupied. She shuddered to find it empty. The emptiness of all the seats appalled her. The vast hall was like a desert, politely littered with a few programmes, tickets and sweet wrappers. The boxes along the sides looked like empty drawers that thieves had ransacked and left open. She had often imagined herself sitting at this piano, especially lately in her day-dreams. She had never seen herself in the process of playing. Her dreams always began with the last chord of a concerto. Then she would sit for a moment listening to the applause. Then the bowing, and the shaking of hands, and the clapping that never stopped. The dream was always the same, and the only variation was in the dress she wore. She never saw the audience, or even the orchestra. She saw only herself at the piano and heard the chord and the clapping.

She closed her eyes. She was not completely sure
whether she was in the hall at the piano or day-dreaming at home. The sense of isolation she felt was common to her dream and her present reality. She listened for the clapping, and waited in the silence for it to start. When she opened her eyes and heard the silence she realized that her day-dream, her most frequent and most satisfying, had been destroyed. She had tested it against reality and it had failed. She wondered desperately how she could fill in her time at home. Suddenly she remembered Manders and the pain on Mrs Manders's face when she told her about Jenny. He'll punish me, she thought. He'll take Marcus away from me for ever. She heard a movement behind her, and she was frightened in case it was Manders. She turned around and found the little green man, who was collecting the stands. He recognized her from the rehearsal.

‘You must be very proud of your son, lady,' he said smiling.

‘I am,' she said. ‘No mother could be prouder.'

‘Must be a worry, though,' the green man said. ‘All that talent. Still, I wouldn't say no to a boy like that. I expect we'll be seeing you here quite often after tonight's performance,' he said.

Madame Sousatzka suddenly felt cold towards him. ‘I must go,' she said. ‘Otherwise they lock me in.'

When she reached the artist's room, she heard a whisper of voices inside. She opened the door quickly, and noticed immediately that Jenny wasn't in the room. The visitors had gone and Marcus was putting on his overcoat. Manders was standing by the dumb piano, red in the face and sweating. Mrs Manders lounged calmly at the table. She was obviously waiting until they got home. Uncle and Cordle stood almost soldered together for safety. When Madame Sousatzka came in, they both stepped towards her.

‘I've come to a decision,' Manders said, looking at Sousatzka. ‘The boy has to choose. I can't handle him as long as he is having lessons with you. Either you give him up completely and let me handle him as I think he
should be handled, or I wipe my hands of him. And I doubt very much,' he added, ‘if any other agent in town will take him on.'

Mrs Crominski had not overheard the revelation about Jenny, and she wondered why Manders had come to such a decided judgment. ‘I can persuade, I think,' she said. ‘Is not necessary, Madame Sousatzka shouldn't teach my boy. And also he will have the concerts. After all, if not for Madame Sousatzka, Marcus isn't here tonight.'