The Piano Teacher: A Novel (17 page)

At that very second, a deathly pale student (piano or something of the sort) comes dashing in, straight from his examination. Plunging into one of the stalls, he throws up into the commode. It is like a natural disaster. An earthquake seems to be raging inside his body; many things seem to have collapsed inside him, including any hope of getting his degree all that soon. This examinee had to hold back his agitation because the head of the school was present at the exam. Now the agitation forcefully demands its rights—right into the toilet bowl. The
student messed up the chromatic étude. He began in double time, which no human being can endure, including Chopin. Klemmer scorns the closed stall door, behind which his fellow musician is now struggling with the runs. Any pianist who is so powerfully dominated by his body cannot possibly add anything crucial to his performance. He probably sees music only as a handicraft, and he takes it unnecessarily hard whenever one of his ten tools fails him. Klemmer has already progressed beyond this stage; he heeds only the inner truth of a piece. For instance, he feels there is nothing more to say about the sforzandos in Beethoven’s piano sonatas; one has to feel them, one has to suggest them to the listeners rather than play them. Klemmer could spend hours lecturing on the spiritual profit to be gained from a musical piece, whose surplus value is within reach, but can be grasped only by the most courageous. The important thing is what the composer says, what he feels, and not the mere structure of the piece.

Klemmer lifts his music case high and, emphasizing his thesis, smashes it down on the porcelain sink several times, in order to squeeze out his last few drops of energy—on the off chance that he’s got any left. Yet, as Klemmer notices, he is already drained. He has lavished all his strength on that woman, he says, quoting a famous novel. He’s done everything he could, as far as she’s concerned. I pass, says Klemmer. He offered her his very best part, all of him. He even repeatedly interpreted himself. Now all he wants is to spend a weekend of white-water canoeing in order to find himself again. Perhaps Erika Kohut is far too withered to understand him. She understands only parts of him, not the grand total.

The student who failed because of the chromatic etude trudges out of his stall and to the mirror. Somewhat comforted by his shimmering reflection, he gives his hair an artistic sweep, the finishing touch, to make up for the failure of his hands.
Walter Klemmer is comforted by the thought that his teacher never made it as a concert artist. Then, audible for miles around, he spits on the floor, getting rid of the last inner foam that his temper has produced. His fellow pianist glares reproachfully at the spit, because he is accustomed to order. Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate. Klemmer passionately grabs dozens of paper towels from their dispenser, crushes them up into a ball, and tosses them at the wastebasket, missing it by a gnat’s eyelash. The flunker looks askance at this action. He is dismayed once again, this time by the waste of property belonging to the City of Vienna. His mother and father own a mom-and-pop store, and he will have to return to his petty-bourgeois family if he can’t pass the exam next time around. His parents will then stop supporting him. He will have to switch from art to business, which will, no doubt, be mentioned when he goes a-courting. And his wife and children will have to suffer the consequences of that truth. Thus business and pleasure will remain intact. At the mere thought of this, his frost-red sausage fingers, which have to help out in the store, convulse into raptorial claws.

Walter Klemmer sensibly places his heart in his head and mentally reviews the women he has already possessed and remaindered. He gave them detailed explanations for dispensing with them. He didn’t hold back; he wanted to make sure they understood (no pain, no gain). If a man feels like it, he can walk out without a word. The woman’s antennae flicker nervously in the air; after all, a woman is an emotional creature. She is not dominated by reason, as you can tell from the way she plays the piano. A woman usually won’t do more than hint at her ability; she’s quite content to go no further. Klemmer, on the other hand, always likes to go all the way.

Walter Klemmer is well aware that he wants to take on his teacher. He resolutely wishes to conquer her. Klemmer, like
an elephant, tramples two white tiles underfoot at the mere thought that his love might go unrequited. A few seconds from now, he will zoom, like the Arlberg Express from the tunnel of the same name, into an icy winter landscape dominated by reason. And this landscape is so cold partly because Erika Kohut has not lit a light in it. Klemmer advises that woman to give some serious thought to her meager possibilities. A young man is simply bursting at the seams for her. At the moment, they share a mental foundation. But if that foundation is suddenly pulled out from under their feet, Klemmer will have to paddle his own canoe.

His footfalls echo through the deserted corridor of the conservatory. He bounces emphatically down the stairs, like a rubber ball, from step to step, slowly finding his good mood, which was patiently waiting for him. No sound comes from behind Kohut’s door. Sometimes, when her teaching day is over, she plays a little, because her piano at home is a lot worse. He’s already found that out. He briefly gropes for the doorknob in order to feel something that the teacher touches day after day; but the door remains cold and mute. It doesn’t budge even one millimeter, because it’s locked. The lessons are over. She’s already halfway home to her senile mother, with whom she huddles in their nest, forever exchanging punches. Yet they can’t part company, not even on vacation, which they spend at a Styrian resort, squabbling and bickering. And it’s been like that for decades already! It’s a pathological situation for a sensitive woman, who, if viewed mathematically from all sides, isn’t all that old. Such are Walter Klemmer’s positive thoughts about his beloved in his wait-and-see position, as he starts off to his parents, with whom he lives.

He asked them to prepare an extra-hearty dinner. For one thing, he has to refill the energy tanks that he drained because of his teacher; for another, he wants to work out tomorrow,
set off at the crack of dawn. The sport doesn’t matter, but he’ll probably go to his canoeing club. He has a very personal urge to work out until he drops, inhaling completely unused air, rather than air that thousands of other people have already breathed in and out. An air in which Klemmer doesn’t have to suck in the vapors of engines and the cheap food of average people. He’d like to take in something freshly produced by Alpine trees with the help of chlorophyll. He’ll go to the darkest and most deserted part of Styria. There he’ll lower his boat into the water, near an old weir. A harsh orange splotch because of his helmet, life jacket, and spray cover, he’ll shoot along between two forests, careening now here, now there, but always in the same direction: forward, following the course of the torrent. You have to do your best to avoid rocks. Don’t turn turtle! And keep speeding! Some buddy, another paddler, will be in hot pursuit behind him, but he won’t catch up, much less shoot ahead of Klemmer. Friendship in sports ends where the other guy threatens to surpass you. A buddy is someone who measures his own strength against his buddy’s lesser strength and increases his own lead. Toward this end, Walter Klemmer carefully picks out a less experienced paddler far in advance. When it comes to working out or playing out, Klemmer is not a good loser. That’s why he’s so annoyed about Erika Kohut. When he gets knocked down in a drag-out discussion, he doesn’t throw in the towel. He angrily throws something in the opponent’s face: a heap of pellets, the kind regurgitated by carnivorous birds—a pack of bones, indigestible hair, pebbles, raw grass. Then he gazes absently, mentally reviewing all the things he could have said, but, alas, didn’t; and finally, he leaves the ring in a foul temper.

Now, out in the street, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his love for Fräulein Kohut. Since he happens to be alone and has no one to beat at sports, he climbs up this love
(an invisible rope ladder), reaching a height that is both physical and spiritual.

Taking resilient broad jumps, he races up Johannesgasse, then hangs a left at Kärntnerstrasse and dashes over to the Ring. Trolley cars winding along like dinosaurs in front of the Opera form a natural barrier that is difficult to surmount. So Klemmer, albeit a daredevil, has to take the escalator into the bowels of the Opera underpass.

A short while ago, the figure of Erika Kohut slipped out of a building entrance. She sees the young man racing by, and, like a lioness, she hits the trail and follows his track. Her foray is unseen, unheard, and therefore nonexistent. She couldn’t know that he would spend so much time in the bathroom, but she waited. Waited. He has to pass here today. That is, unless he headed in the other direction, which, however, is not his direction. Erika is always waiting somewhere, patiently. She observes from a place where no one would suspect her presence. She neatly trims the frazzled edges of nearby objects that explode, detonate, or simply lie still, and she takes them home. Then, alone or with Mother, she turns them over and over, combing their seams, looking for crumbs, dirt, or torn-off bits to analyze. The refuse of other people’s lives or deaths, if possible before their lives are taken to the cleaners. There’s so much to seek and to find. For Erika, these chips and snips are the true gist. The K. ladies, alone or together, eagerly bend over their home operating table and hold candle flames to material leftovers in order to determine whether these fibers are pure vegetable or pure animal, mixed bags or pure art. The smell and consistency of the charred remains identify them unerringly, and the bewildered investigator can then decide what use to make of them.

Mother and child put their heads together. They are inseparable, virtually one person. And those alien remains, unmoored
from their original anchorage, probably lie before them, not touching them, not threatening them, yet gravid with the misdeeds of other people, which is why they must be scrutinized. These remains cannot get away; nor can the students normally get away from the jurisdiction of their piano teacher, who catches them everywhere, whenever they leave the seething waters of piano practice.

Klemmer lopes along in front of Erika. He charges forward single-mindedly, avoiding detours. Erika eludes everyone and everything, but if a nimble person eludes her, she sets off after him, dogging his heels: her savior, to whom she is drawn as if to a giant magnet.

Erika Kohut hurries through the streets after him. Klemmer, burning with, rage over things unfulfilled and anger about things undesired, doesn’t suspect that love, no less, is dashing after him, and at the same speed, to boot. Erika distrusts young girls; she tries to gauge their clothing and physical dimensions, hoping to ridicule them. What fun she and Mother will have, laughing at these creatures! Those girls harmlessly cross the harmless student’s path; and yet they could seep into Klemmer like the singing of sirens, dazzling him, making him follow them. She checks to see how long he looks at a woman, and she then neatly erases that look. A young man who plays the piano can have high standards, which no woman will fulfill. He had better not choose any woman, although many women would choose him.

The two of them wind and weave through the streets of Vienna, the man trying to cool off, the woman heating up with jealousy.

Erika snugly pulls in her flesh, that impenetrable cloak; any touch would be unendurable. She is locked into herself. Yet she is drawn to her student. He is the head of the comet, she the tail. Today, she forgets about adding to her wardrobe. But
she will remember to wear something different at her next lesson; she will dress so elegantly now that it’s spring. Mother, at home, doesn’t want to wait any longer, and the sausages she is cooking don’t like to wait either. A roast would be too chewy by now, inedible. Once Erika does show up, Mother will be so offended that she will use a housewife’s trick to make the sausages burst and maliciously soak up water, so they’ll taste bland and dull. That will be warning enough. But Erika suspects nothing.

She runs after Klemmer, and Klemmer runs along in front of her. They virtually dovetail. Smoothly and smartly. Erika follows in Klemmer’s footsteps. Naturally, Erika isn’t quite capable of punishing the boutique windows by ignoring them altogether. She checks them out from the corner of her eye. She has never investigated the clothing in this district, even though she is always searching for new and splendid attire. She desperately needs a new concert dress, but she doesn’t glimpse any here. She’d be better off buying one downtown. Merry carnival coils and confetti have descended upon the first spring models and the last winter specials. And there are glitzy things that would look like elegant evening wear only at night. A feather boa, pointedly casual, is draped over two cunningly arranged champagne glasses filled with artificial fluid. A pair of high-heeled genuine Italian sandals are likewise strewn with glittering confetti. A middle-aged woman stands at the boutique window, totally absorbed. Her feet wouldn’t even fit into size-twelve camel’s-hair slippers; they’re too swollen, she’s been standing in front of stale, stagnant things all her life. Erika glances at a diabolically crimson chiffon frock with ruffles on the sleeves and neckline. Learning is better than looking. She likes this, she doesn’t like that (after all, she’s not that old yet).

Erika Kohut follows Walter Klemmer, who, without looking back, enters the doorway of a middle-class town house. His
parents are waiting for him in their second-floor apartment. Erika Kohut doesn’t go in after him. She doesn’t live that far away; her home is in the same area. She knows from the school records that Klemmer lives in her neighborhood. Perhaps one of them is made for the other, and the other will realize it after a great deal of storm and strife.

The sausages won’t have to wait much longer. Erika is already coming to them. She knows that Walter Klemmer has stopped nowhere, he has gone straight home. So she can give up her supervisory task for today. But something has happened to her, and she takes along the result, takes it home to lock it up in a cabinet, so Mother won’t find it.