The Piano Teacher: A Novel (22 page)

Since Klemmer diagnoses his attachment to Erika as affection, he again decides not to give up. He sits hard, assiduously digging his back legs in. She very nearly got away; or else, discouraged, he would have given up. That would have been terribly wrong. She now strikes him as physically more distinctive, more accessible than last year: picking at the keys, sending nervous side glances at the student, who won’t go, and who also won’t come and talk about the pyre blazing inside him. As for a musical analysis of the performance, he again doesn’t seem all there. But he
is
here. Is he here for her sake? She plays hard to get, but lets Klemmer know that he is the only one she’s noticed here, from the very start. Aside from Klemmer, the only thing that exists for Erika, the music tamer, is music. A connoisseur, Klemmer does not believe what he thinks he sees in Erika’s face: rejection. He alone is worthy of opening the gate to the pasture, ignoring the No Trespassing sign. Erika shakes the pearl strand of a trill out of her white blouse cuffs; she is loaded with nervous haste. Perhaps the haste is caused by the newly arrived spring, which announced itself long ago with denser bird traffic and inconsiderate drivers everywhere (in winter they spared their cars so as not to damage the piston rods; but now they shoot out, together with the first snowdrops, and, somewhat rusty at the wheel, they cause dreadful accidents). Erika plays the simple piano part mechanically.
Her thoughts drift far afield, to a study trip with student Klemmer. Just the two of them: a small hotel room and love.

Then a truck loads up all her thoughts and dumps them out again in the small room for two. Shortly before the day ends, Erika’s thoughts have to be back in the small hamper that her mother has lovingly lined with pillows and freshly covered, so that youth can snuggle in with old age.

Herr Nemeth taps his baton again. The violins weren’t mellow enough for him. Once again from the fifth measure, please. Now the nose bleeder returns, fortified, and requests her place at the piano as well as her rights as a soloist, a privilege she has arduously won against all the competition. She is a favorite pupil of Professor Kohut because she too has a mother who adopted an ambition as her own child.

The girl takes Erika’s place. Walter Klemmer winks encouragingly at the girl and checks to see what Erika thinks of his wink. Before Herr Nemeth can even pick up his baton, Erika whooshes out of the room. Klemmer, profoundly grateful to her and renowned far and wide as a fast starter in both art and love, gets into gear: he wants to sniff the trail. But the conductor’s glare pushes Klemmer, the spectator, back into his seat. The student has to decide whether he wants in or out. Once he decides, he’ll have to abide by his decision.

The string section heaves its right arms into the bows and scrapes away mightily. The piano trots proudly into the arena, twists its hips, prances loosely, performs an exquisite feat from the
haute école
—a trick that is not in the score; devised through long nights, and now illuminated in pink, it struts gracefully around the semicircular curve. Herr Klemmer has to stay seated and wait until the next time the conductor breaks off. This time, the maestro wants to make it to the end or bust, assuming that no one busts out. But not to worry: these music makers
are adults. The children’s orchestra and the singing-school groups, a variegated jigsaw of all the existing vocal schools, already rehearsed at four o’clock: a composition by the recorder teacher, with vocal solos by the singing-school teachers gathered from all the music-school branches. A bold opus, alternating between even and odd beats, that turned some of the kids into bedwetters.

The future pros are indulging themselves musically, here and now. Tomorrow’s members of the Lower Austrian Orchestra, the provincial opera houses, and the Austrian Radio Network Symphony Orchestra. Even the Philharmonic, in case a male relative of the student is already playing in it.

Klemmer sits and broods about Bach, but like a brood hen that is somewhat neglecting her egg. Will Erika come back again soon? Or is she washing her hands? He doesn’t know his way around here. But he can’t help exchanging winks with pretty students. He wants to live up to his reputation as a womanizer. Today the rehearsal had to take refuge in this surrogate space. All the large rooms in the Conservatory are needed for an urgent full-scale rehearsal of the opera class: an ambitious suicide mission, Mozart’s
Figaro.
An elementary school has lent out its gymnasium for the Bach rehearsal. The gym apparatuses have retreated up against the walls; physical culture has yielded to high culture for once. The school, located in Schubert’s old neighborhood, houses the local music school on its top floors, but this space is far too small for a rehearsal.

Today, the students of this musical subsidiary are permitted to attend the rehearsal of the famous Conservatory Orchestra. Few of the students avail themselves of the privilege. It is meant to facilitate their choice of a future career. They can see that hands can not only ride roughshod but also caress delicately. Their vocational goals—carpenter or university professor—
vanish into the distance. The students sit raptly on chairs and exercise mats, lending their ears. None of them has parents who would expect their child to study carpentry.

On the other hand, the child should not assume that a musician’s life is a piece of cake. The child has to sacrifice his or her leisure to constant practice. For quite a while now, Walter Klemmer has been depressed by the unfamiliar school surroundings; he again feels like a child in front of Erika. Their pupil/teacher relationship is solidly cemented, their lover relationship seems further away than ever. Klemmer doesn’t even dare use his elbows to jostle his way to the exit. Erika fled, closing the door without waiting for him. The ensemble fiddles, scrapes, grumbles, and bangs the keys. The performers strain hard, because one always strains hard in front of ignorant listeners—they still appreciate worshipful faces and concentrated expressions. Thus the orchestra takes its playing more seriously than normal. The wall of sound closes up in front of Klemmer; he doesn’t dare try to break through, he’s too worried about his career. He doesn’t want Herr Nemeth to reject him as soloist for the big final concert of the semester. Klemmer’s been nominated. A Mozart recital.

Walter Klemmer spends his time in this gymnasium measuring female dimensions, squaring the curves off against one another, which isn’t too difficult for a technician. Meanwhile, his piano teacher is irresolutely rummaging through the dressing room. Today, the room is crammed with instrument cases, covers, coats, caps, scarves, and gloves. The wind players keep their heads warm, the pianists and string players their hands—it all depends on which part of the body conjures up the sounds. Countless pairs of shoes are standing about, because you can enter a gymnasium only in sneakers. Some people forgot their sneakers, and so they sit around in socks or stockings, catching cold.

From far away, the thunder of a noisy Bach cataract reaches the ears of Erika the piano player. She is standing on a floor that prepares people for average athletic achievements. She doesn’t know what she’s doing or why she scooted out of the rehearsal room. Did Klemmer drive her out? It’s unbearable, the way he tossed about those young girls on the rummage counter in the gourmet-food department. If asked, he would excuse himself by saying he has a connoisseur’s appreciation of female beauty in every age and category. It is an insult to the teacher, who took the trouble to flee a feeling.

Music has often comforted Erika in times of distress. But today, the music grinds into sensitive nerve endings exposed by the man named Klemmer. Erika has landed in a dusty, unheated restaurant. She wants to rejoin the others, but she can’t leave, she’s stopped by a muscle-bound waiter, who advises the gracious lady to make up her mind, the kitchen is closing. Vegetable or liver-dumpling soup? Feelings are always ridiculous, especially when unauthorized people get their hands on them. Erika strides through the smelly room, a bizarre spindle-shanked bird in the zoo of secret needs. She forces herself to walk very slowly, hoping someone will come and stop her. Or hoping someone will keep her from carrying out the misdeed she is planning and for which she will have to endure horrible consequences: a tunnel bristling with sharp, scary apparatuses and utter darkness through which she will have to dash quickly. No shimmer of light at the other end. And where is the light switch for the niches in which the emergency personnel are concealed?

All she knows is that at the other end she’ll find the arena, lit white-hot, where further feats of dressage and demonstrations of accomplishment await her. An amphitheater of ascending stone benches, releasing a shower upon her: peanut shells, popcorn bags, soda bottles with bent straws, rolls of
toilet paper. This would be her real audience. From the gymnasium comes Herr Nemeth’s hazy shriek. He’s yelling at the students to play louder: Forte! More sound!

The sink is made of porcelain and veined with cracks. There’s a mirror above it. Under the mirror, a glass shelf rests on metal brackets. A tumbler stands on the shelf. The tumbler wasn’t placed there cautiously or caringly; the person was heedless about a lifeless object. The tumbler stands where it stands. An isolated drop of water is still dangling from the bottom of the tumbler, relaxing before it evaporates. Some student probably took a drink from the tumbler. Erika combs through the pockets of coats and jackets, looking for a handkerchief, which she soon finds. A product of the flu and head-cold season. Erika takes hold of the tumbler in the handkerchief, bedding the glass in the cloth. The glass, with innumerable fingerprints left by clumsy juvenile hands, is all wrapped up. Erika places the cloaked tumbler on the floor and smashes her heel into it. The glass, muffled, splinters. The injured tumbler is then stamped on several times more, until it is turned into a splintery but not shapeless gruel. The splinters mustn’t be too small! They should be nice and sharp! Erika picks up the handkerchief with its jagged contents and carefully lets the splinters slide into a coat pocket. The cheap, thin glass has left very sharp, nasty fragments. Its whirring whimper of pain was deadened by the cloth.

Erika clearly recognized the coat both because of the fashionably loud color and because of the newly stylish mini-shortness. At the start of the rehearsal, this girl distinguished herself by trying to come on to Walter Klemmer, who towers head and shoulders above her. Erika would like to find out how the girl can give herself airs with a slashed hand. Her face will twist into an ugly grimace in which no one will recognize her
former youth and beauty. Erika’s spirit will prevail over the assets of the flesh.

Erika had to skip miniskirt phase no. 1, at her mother’s request. Mother had packed her command for a low hem in a warning: The mini style was unbecoming for Erika. All the other girls had shortened and rehemmed their skirts, dresses, and coats. Or else they bought them short and sweet. The wheel of time, bristling with naked female legs like candles, rolled on; but Erika, at Mother’s orders, skipped ahead, leaped across time. She had to explain to everyone, whether or not they wanted to hear: It doesn’t really suit me and I don’t really like it! And she jumped across space and time. Shot from the maternal catapult. From way up high, she applied the most rigorous criteria, developed through nights of musing and mulling, to judge thighs exposed till goodness knew where and even farther! She handed out individual marks to legs revealing all levels of panty hose or summery nakedness—which was even worse. Erika would then say to whoever was there: If I were her, I just wouldn’t have the gall! Erika offered detailed descriptions of why so few girls had the figures to get away with it. Then she betook herself beyond time and its fads, sticking to “timeless knee-length,” as the fashion journals put it. And thus, more rapidly than other women, she became a victim of the relentless ring of knives on the wheel of time. She believes that one should not kowtow to fashion: instead, fashion should kowtow to what looks good on you and what doesn’t.

That flutist, made up like a clown, has heated up her Walter Klemmer with thighs that can be seen far and wide. Erika knows that the girl is a much-envied student of fashion design. As Erika Kohut slips a deliberately smashed tumbler into the girl’s coat pocket, it crosses her mind that she would not care to relive her own youth at any price. She is glad that she’s as old as she
is; she managed, just in time, to replace youth with experience.

No one has come in as yet, but the risk was great. Everyone in the gym vies with the music. Merriment, or what Bach meant by it, fills every nook and cranny and clambers up the ladders. The finale is not too far away. Hurrying and scurrying, Erika opens the door and returns self-effacingly. She rubs her hands as if she had just washed them, and she huddles silently in a corner. Needless to say, Erika, being a teacher, can open doors even though Bach is still bubbling. Herr Klemmer registers her return with a glow in his naturally gleaming eyes. Erika ignores him. He tries to greet his teacher like a child greeting the Easter bunny. Hunting for colored eggs is more fun than finding them; and that’s how Walter Klemmer feels about this woman. For a man, the hunt is a greater pleasure than the inevitable union. The only question is: When? Klemmer is still concerned about that damned age difference. However, he is a man, and that easily makes up for the ten years Erika has over him. Furthermore, female value decreases with increasing years and increasing intelligence. The technician in Klemmer computes all these data, and the bottom line of his calculations reveals that Erika still has a wee bit of time before wandering into the tomb. Walter Klemmer is less abashed when he perceives the creases in Erika’s face and body. He is more abashed when she explains something on the keyboard to him. But ultimately, the only things that count are creases, wrinkles, cellulite, gray hair, bags under the eyes, large pores, artificial teeth, glasses, and loss of the figure.

Luckily, Erika has not gone home early as she often does. She likes taking French leave. She never emits a word of warning, not even a wave of her hand. All at once, she’s gone, far and away. On days when she deliberately runs out on him, Klemmer plays
Die Winterreise
on a record player over and over, humming along softly. The next day, he tells his teacher
that only Schubert’s saddest song cycle can soothe the mood I was in yesterday, all because of you, Erika. Something in me trembled with Schubert, who, when he wrote “Loneliness,” must have trembled just as I did yesterday. We suffered in the same rhythm, so to speak, Schubert and your humble servant. I may be minor and trivial compared with Schubert. But on evenings like yesterday, I come off better than usual in comparison with him. Normally, I’m rather superficial. Do you see, I own up to it honestly, Erika.