Madame Sousatzka (6 page)

He was practising just before going to his lesson. ‘Sounds to me like an angel he plays,' Mrs Crominski said. Marcus knew how she enjoyed listening to his playing and he didn't mind her sitting in on his practice. Every week-end he spent at Madame Sousatzka's, he was aware of her nonparticipation. Although he was glad for it, it was yet another rejection he had to compensate her for. He stopped playing.

‘I've learnt so much with her, Momma,' he said. ‘D'you know, I never understood the piano before I went to her.'

‘How much is it to understand before you give a concert? Nine months it is already. So many pieces. So much practising. What for, I'm asking.'

‘You're impatient, Momma. She says I can give a concert when I am ready.'

‘When he's ready, when he's ready.' Mrs Crominski was exasperated. ‘For me, you're ready. That's enough. Marcus,' she said solemnly, ‘I'm thinking you should leave her.'

‘No!' Marcus shouted. It wasn't only Madame Sousatzka he would have to leave. It was Uncle, Jenny and Cordle. It was a whole way of life he would have to surrender. ‘No, I'm not leaving her,' he said defiantly. ‘She's the best teacher in London, Momma,' he begged, ‘I don't want to leave her.'

‘So all your life you'll stay with Madame Sousatzka. A beard you'll grow there and still you're not ready. Is no
good, Marcus. Money I'm not wasting. That I know. But time. Time. Next week I'll go and tell her. Is time you're wasting and a hump you're growing. Yes, a hump. I don't care what she calls it. Is still there. Have you ever heard such a thing! A boy should go for piano lessons and a hump he gets. Next Friday, I'll tell her, and this time, believe me, I'm not listening to any nonsense.'

‘I'll tell her,' said Marcus. ‘I'll tell her today. There you are. I'll tell her at today's lesson. Then you don't have to come and see her.'

‘Today in any case you can tell her. Next Friday, I go. Tell her I come. Next Friday, tell her, you should be ready for a concert.'

Mrs Crominski put on her hat and coat and prepared to leave. At the door, Marcus looked helplessly at her brown hat. ‘Momma,' he said, ‘you look better without that hat.'

‘All of a sudden,' she smiled, ‘he takes notice of his mother.' She took off her hat and patted her hair. ‘Is better?'

‘It's all right,' Marcus said.

‘All right, he says. Is better or not better?'

‘It doesn't make any difference,' Marcus said. Mrs Crominski put her hat firmly on her head again.

‘Everything you do is wrong,' she said to the mirror. ‘You wear a hat. Is wrong. You don't wear a hat. Is also wrong.' She scrutinized her face in the glass. ‘Is not a nice hat,' she decided. ‘All right, so when you give a concert, I buy a new hat. If by then I'm still alive,' she muttered. She picked up her empty shopping bag.

‘Why d'you always have to take that bag with you?' Marcus said.

‘Some vegetables I buy on the way home,' she sulked. ‘Suddenly he's ashamed of his mother with her hat and her bag. If the great Madame Sousatzka goes out with brown hat and shopping bag, is all right, I suppose. Will I thank God when he leaves her,' she threatened.

‘It's got nothing to do with Madame Sousatzka,' Marcus shouted at her.

‘Deaf yet I'm not,' Mrs Crominski said. ‘I should live to hear my son shout at me. Thank God your father, bless
him, can't hear you. And all because of this woman. Suddenly his mother's not good enough for him. Well,' she suddenly shouted at him, ‘you want to go to your lesson or not?'

Marcus followed her out of the door. What was it if it wasn't the hat, he thought. He wanted to put his arm round her and protect her until they got to Vauxhall Mansions. But he couldn't. And he hated himself because he couldn't touch her. Tomorrow, he said to himself, tomorrow, I'll … He saw a small stone on the pavement and he kicked it violently. Mrs Crominski watched it race past her, barely missing her foot. Marcus shuddered at the interpretation his mother would put on his act. He rushed to her side and took her hand, praying that she would make no comment on his gesture.

‘All of a sudden he loves his mother,' she said.

Marcus wondered whether with other boys of his age, it all came naturally.

‘Please, how many times, my darrlink, pianissimo. Not like the …'

‘An elephant?' From long experience, Marcus knew the analogy for his unsuccessful pianissimos.

‘You are right, my darrlink,' she said, stroking his hair, ‘an elephant.'

Madame Sousatzka bent over the music, her bosom resting on the keys in a distinctly minor chord. She underlined the offended passage with a red pencil. Marcus took this opportunity of looking at her watch which she wore round her neck and which swung like an inquisitive plumbline in the area of her cleavage. Ten past four. Another twenty minutes. Then up to Mr Cordle on the first floor. That would last until five. Then he'd go up to the attic and see Jenny. He decided he would do nothing else but think of Jenny until five. He would execute all his pianissimos gently in her name.

Madame Sousatzka raised herself from the keys in an ascending arpeggio.

‘Lower the shoulder,' she said, putting her hands around
him. ‘You are not free, my darrlink. How can the message come to the fingers if you do not open the body to let it through? Look at the bump,' she said. ‘Is that Mr Lawrence again and all his letters.'

But Madame Sousatzka knew that the slight curve in Marcus's spine was not due to Mr Lawrence at all, but the continual lowering of the shoulder to give the ‘Message' a freer passage. Week after week, Cordle tried to put it right. What Madame Sousatzka bent, Mr Cordle would straighten, and the battle for poor Marcus's back was waged every Friday night with the same amount of give and take on each side.

‘It's all in a good cause,' Madame Sousatzka would tell Cordle whenever he questioned her method. ‘You go for walk,' she would tell him, ‘you stick on the straight main road, and what do you see? Cars, factories, smells – no more. But if you go through the lanes,' she whispered, ‘the twisted narrow streets, what do you see? Life, Meaning, Beauty. The true message cannot travel on the main road.'

Mr Cordle did not try to disprove her vague logic; partly because he was very fond of her, but mainly because it would have cost him most of his clientele which consisted of all those in the Sousatzka Conservatoire who had taken the ‘method' to heart.

‘Try it again, my darrlink,' Madame went on. ‘This time, I know you will make it.'

Marcus thought of Jenny, of the crumpets she would have ready for him when he got upstairs; how he would tip-toe into her room and she would be sitting with her back to the door, painting her nails. And he'd creep up behind her and put his hands over her eyes, and she'd pretend she was frightened and she would scream, ‘Who is it?' and Marcus would know that she knew very well who it was because it had happened every Friday for the last nine months.

‘That's much better,' said Madame Sousatzka. ‘No more elephants. Now we will make an end with the study.'

The study always rounded off the lesson. Most brassplate piano teachers would have started the lesson with the study; studies, scales and arpeggios, the drudge work that
was written to be got over with, as quickly as possible, as a conscience-saver for both teacher and pupil. With Madame Sousatzka, it was the other way round, rather like a footballer who practises his passes after the game is over and won.

Once more, she bent over the piano to make a readjustment of fingering on the music. Twenty past four. Forty minutes to Jenny.

‘Now,' she said, leaning back in her chair and shutting her eyes. ‘We will both of us listen to it from the beginning to the end. I will listen, you will listen, and it will play. When you're ready, darrlink, tell it to begin.'

She took a deep audible breath. Marcus watched her large nostrils dilating, revealing two small clusters of black hair. When she breathed out, it would be the signal to start. Marcus laid his hands on the piano and waited for Madame Sousatzka's exhalation. She took in an inordinate amount of air, much more, Marcus thought, than was necessary for any practical purpose, and when it was all up there, up in her head, her eyelids closed and her nostrils fluttering, she kept it there, simmering, on an even keel. Marcus waited. He bent backwards and looked at her watch. Thirty-three minutes to Jenny. Madame was certainly record-breaking this lesson. Then it came, suddenly, in a great gush. Marcus pressed the first chord of the study into the piano keys, drowning its release. Now they were off. About half way through, she murmured to him, ‘Listen, my darrlink, how well it plays.' There was a time, when Marcus first started taking lessons from Madame Sousatzka, that he resented the ‘it' routine. ‘It's me playing,' he used to argue with her. He didn't see why anything else should be given credit. One day when she had whispered through a scale passage how lucidly it was playing, he left the leading note high and dry, and went off to the corner of the room. ‘Listen how beautifully it's playing now,' he had said to her, while the leading note hung irritatingly unresolved on the air. ‘But you've taken it with you,' she said pleadingly. ‘Send it back,' she insisted, ‘and let us listen to the last pages.' Marcus had given up. Even though he didn't understand the ‘it' fully, he sensed that it was the
basis of Madame Sousatzka's teaching, and probably her whole way of life.

Marcus was absorbed in the study. He was no longer thinking about Jenny. He was conscious only of his own participation in the sounds that filled the room. He was happy while playing, though unaware of how well he played. But Madame Sousatzka grew more and more aware, and once again, as so often during the last few weeks, she realized that there was nothing more about the piano that she could teach Marcus, and the fear that one day he would discover it made her shudder. The study came to an end. There was no doubt in Madame Sousatzka's mind about the brilliance of playing. ‘It has done well,' was all she could bring herself to tell him, but this time the ‘it' did not refer to her method. A slight pang of jealousy prevented her from ascribing the virtuosity of the performance to Marcus. He was still too innocent to detect anything but the most genuine motives in Madame Sousatzka's comments. And even if he had been aware of her envy, he would have forgiven her. He loved Madame Sousatzka for so many things that had nothing to do with the piano. For her house that she let Jenny live in, for the room upstairs that she rented to old Mr Cordle, and for the dirty Countess in the basement; for a whole world of oddities and eccentrics that Marcus was too young to recognize as a world of failures.

When the study came to an end he suddenly remembered his promise to his mother. ‘Sousatzka,' he ventured, ‘when will I give a concert, d'you think?'

‘When you're ready, my darrlink,' Madame Sousatzka tried to be cheerful. ‘The concert is the last thing you should think. So much time you have yet. So much Sousatzka has to teach you.' Marcus bent down to tie his shoelace. ‘That's what you always say,' he mumbled.

Madame Sousatzka pretended not to hear him. ‘Hurry now,' she said, ruffling his hair and pushing him gently from her, ‘Cordle will be waiting for you.' There was another half hour before Sally would come for her lesson. Normally Madame Sousatzka spent the intervals between lessons playing herself, or in preparation. But now, she
couldn't settle to either. Marcus's questioning had upset her. She didn't want to let him go. He had become part of her. Even during the week, when he stayed with his mother, she felt she was with him. She knew when he was biting his nails, and as he did so, she followed the contours of the birthmark on his right hand, and the flattened domes of his thumbs, smooth as mushrooms. She wondered whether he was talking to Cordle about the concert and the thought of Cordle's gentle hands on Marcus's back sickened her. She went over to the piano and started to play the study that Marcus had just finished. And as she played she heard how clearly he had outgrown her. She stopped playing suddenly, and gathered up Marcus's music; his study book, his scales and his book of sonatas. She wound her arms round the pile and pressed it to her body, clinging to it frantically as if she had already lost him.

‘Oh, it's you,' said Mr Cordle in surprise, as Marcus entered the room. Marcus had been coming to Mr Cordle's consulting room every Friday for the last three months, but Mr Cordle always greeted him as if he was entirely unexpected. ‘Now, what can we do for you?' he said.

Both Marcus and Mr Cordle knew very well what they could do for him, but the question was a formal opening to each session. The ‘we' added a professional touch to Mr Cordle's lay activities. The other part of ‘we' was related in Marcus's mind to Madame Sousatzka's ‘it'. It was as if the house was haunted by two disembodied operators.

Cordle moved over to the couch and laid his hands on Marcus's bony frame, massaging deeply into his shoulders, working his way gently into the slight curve of the spine. ‘She's been at it again,' he grumbled to himself. ‘We can't go on like this. In half an hour she destroys what I take weeks to repair. I shall have to talk to her again.' He pressed his hands up and down the curve, muttering, ‘Sousatzka, Sousatzka' to give his movements a certain waltzing rhythm. Sometimes he would change his beat, and thunder, ‘Forte, forte' instead, and with the new time-signature Marcus would feel the massage take on a marching measure up and down his spine. ‘Now let's take a plunge into the Arctic Ocean,' Mr Cordle said. He took a cold wet flannel and pressed it around Marcus's neck to give a semblance of reality to his fantasies. Marcus shivered. ‘We'll be warm in no time,' Mr Cordle said, protecting himself in the plural, and he rubbed Marcus's neck until a tingling warmth filtered through the boy's body.