The Piano Teacher: A Novel (29 page)

Klemmer explains that it often takes courage to reject a challenge and opt for the norm. Klemmer is the norm. Klemmer reads and wonders who this woman thinks she is. He racks his brain: Is she serious?
He
is very serious; he has learned to be serious in wild waters, where one often faces grave dangers and overcomes them.

Erika asks Herr Klemmer to come closer while she will be dressed only in a black nylon slip and stockings! She’d like that. Her most haunting wish—the adored Herr Klemmer reads—is for you to punish me. She would like Klemmer as a punishment. And in such a way that he ties her up with the ropes I’ve collected, and also the leather straps and even the chains! Hogtie her, bind her up as thoroughly as he can—solidly, intensely, artfully, cruelly, tormentingly, cunningly. He should bore his knees into her abdomen, if you’ll be so kind.

Klemmer has a good, hard laugh. What a joke—she wants him to smash his fists in her stomach and sit down so hard on her that she’ll lie there like a plank, unable to stir in his cruel, sweet bonds. Klemmer snorts because she can’t be serious, it’s all make-believe. Erika is showing a different side of herself, thereby chaining the man to her all the more securely. She’s looking for entertainment, anything goes. For example, her letter says, I will writhe like a worm in your cruel bonds, in which you will have me lie for hours on end, and you’ll keep
me in all sorts of different positions, hitting or kicking me, even whipping me! Erika’s letter says she wants to be dimmed out under him, snuffed out. Her well-rooted displays of obedience require greater degrees of intensity! And a mother is not everything, even though you usually have only one. She is and remains primarily a mother, but a man wants even greater achievements. Klemmer asks her just what she means, anyway. He wants to know who she is. He has the impression that she’s not even ashamed of herself.

Klemmer would like to get out of this apartment, which has become a trap. He didn’t realize what he was letting himself in for. He was hoping for something better. The paddler is investigating unsafe waters. He won’t quite admit to himself what he’s maneuvered himself into. And he’ll never admit it to others. He’s afraid: What does this woman want from me? Did he get it right: By becoming her master, he can never become her master? So long as she dictates what he should do to her, some final remnant of Erika will remain unfathomable. How easily a lover imagines he has advanced into the deepest regions, where no secret is left to reveal. Erika believes she’s still got a choice at her age, whereas he is so much younger and therefore has first choice and is the first to be chosen. Erika demands in writing that he take her on as his slave and assign her things to do. He thinks to himself: If that’s all it is . . . But he will never punish her, the generous young man, it would be too hard for him. There’s a certain point that he never exceeds in his cherished habits. You have to know your limits, and the limits begin where pain is felt. Not that he wouldn’t have the nerve. He just doesn’t want to. Her letter says she will always apply to him in writing or by telephone, never personally. She doesn’t even have the nerve to say it out loud! Not when peering into his blue eyes.

Klemmer finds it all so funny that he slaps his thighs: She
wants to give
him
orders! And he’s supposed to obey her on the spot. She goes on to say that you should describe what you’re going to do to me. And threaten me loudly in case I refuse. Let me know what I’ll be in for if I don’t obey. Everything has to be depicted in loving detail. Levels of intensity should also be described very precisely. Klemmer again mocks the silent woman: Who does she think she is! His mockery tacitly implies that she is nothing or not much. He talks about a farther limit, which he alone knows, because he drove in the boundary marker: This border starts at the very place where I’m supposed to do something against my will. Herr Klemmer jokes about the seriousness of the situation. He reads, but only for fun. He reads aloud, but only for his own amusement: No one could endure the things she desires, without dying sooner or later. This inventory of pain. I’m supposed to treat you as a mere object. During our piano lessons, I’m not to let anyone notice anything. Klemmer asks her whether she’s gone absolutely crazy. If she believes no one’s going to notice anything, then she’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Erika doesn’t speak; she writes that her dull-minded herd of piano students may ask for explanations, but they won’t receive any. Klemmer objects that Erika is grossly underestimating her students. He doesn’t want to make a total fool of himself in front of people who are a lot less intelligent than he. That is not what I expected of our relationship, Erika. In the letter, which he cannot take seriously no matter how hard he tries, he reads that he is to ignore any request coming from her. If I ask you to loosen the rope, darling, then I may be able to free myself should you go along with my request. That’s why you must pay no attention to my pleading, that’s very important! On the contrary: If I plead, act as if you’re going to go along with it. But actually, you have to tighten the ropes, pull them in, draw the belt in at least two or three notches—the
tighter the better. There’ll be old nylons lying around. Just stuff them into my mouth as deep as you can and gag me so cunningly that I can’t emit the slightest peep.

Klemmer says no, the whole business should stop. He asks Erika whether she wants a slap in the face. Erika does not give herself permission to speak. Klemmer threatens that if he keeps reading, it’ll only be because he’s interested in her as a clinical case. He says: A woman like you doesn’t need this stuff. After all, she’s not ugly. She has no visible bodily defects, aside from age. Her teeth are real.

This paragraph says: Use a rubber hose—I’ll show you how—to stuff the gag so tightly into my mouth that I can’t stick out my tongue. The hose is ready! Please use a blouse to increase my pleasure: tie up my face so skillfully and thoroughly that I can’t get it off. And let me waste away in this torturous position for hours on end, so I can’t do anything. I’ll be stuck with myself and in myself. And what about my reward? Klemmer jokes. He asks because he doesn’t enjoy other people’s torments. The athletic torment he takes upon himself is a different matter: He’s the only one who suffers it. A session in the sauna after the coldest mountain waters. I can do that to myself, and I should explain to you what I mean by an extreme condition.

Mock me and call me a “stupid slave” and even worse names, Erika asks in the letter. Please tell me loudly what you’re about to do to me, and describe the degrees of intensification—without, however, getting any crueler. Talk about things, but don’t do more than hint at them. Threaten me, but don’t go any further. Klemmer thinks about how far he has gone on his mountain streams, but he has never come across such a woman! He won’t seek new shores with her: smelly old sewer, he calls her joylessly, albeit mentally. He mocks and maligns her, albeit to himself. He stares at this woman, who wants to be swept
away by bliss, and he asks himself: Who can understand the female sex anyway? All she thinks about is herself. The man discovers that she’s going to kiss my feet in gratitude. The letter pulls no punches. It proposes secret things between them, things that will not be noticed by the outside world. Lessons offer a fertile soil for stealth and secrecy, as well as for shining in public. Klemmer realizes that the letter drools on in this tone ad infinitum. He can only regard it as a curiosity. I’d really like to get out of here: That’s his ultimate destination. He’s held back by curiosity; he wonders how far a person can go if he’s ready to grab at the stars! Klemmer, the fixed star, has been illuminating her for some time now. The universe of music is vast, the woman only has to grab something; but she resigns herself to less! Klemmer has an itch to kick her.

Erika looks at the man. She was once a child, she will never be a child again.

Klemmer jokes about the injustice of undeserved strokes. The woman wants to earn these strokes purely by her presence; that’s not much. Erika thinks about the old escalators in the department stores of her childhood. Klemmer quips that my hand might take a swipe at you now and then, I won’t dispute it, but too much never does much good. Let’s not take intimacy too far. No overexuberance. She’s probing him about love—even a blind man could see that. It’s only a test of how far he would go with her in regard to love. She’s fathoming him about Everlasting Fidelity, she wants assurances right away before we even get started. Just like a woman. She seems to be sounding him out, trying to determine how solidly she can build on his devotion and how solidly he can knock on the wall of her submission. Absolute, if anything: her ability to submit. Abilities become knowledge.

Klemmer is of the opinion that in this stage of the game a man can promise a woman everything, but doesn’t have to keep
anything. If the white-hot iron of passion is forged too timidly, it quickly cools off. Strike while it’s hot. The man rationalizes a decline of interest in an exemplar of female architecture. Overwork wipes a man out. He is devoured by the need to be alone.

Reading the letter, Klemmer infers that this woman wants to be devoured by him. Thanks but no thanks; Klemmer isn’t very hungry. He rationalizes his rejection: I do unto others as I would have them do unto me. He wouldn’t want to be tied and gagged. I love you so much, says Klemmer, I could never hurt you, not even if you wanted me to hurt you. After all, a person wants to do only what he himself wants. Klemmer is not going to follow the letter; that much is certain.

From beyond the door, the muffled thunder of the TV, in which a male is threatening a female. Today’s soap installment cuts painfully into Erika’s mind, which is open and receptive to it. Inside its own four walls, her mind unfolds splendidly, because it is not threatened by anything that smacks of competition. Maternal presence is inflicted on this mind only in regard to unsurpassable keyboard abilities. Mother says: Erika is the best. That is the lasso she uses to rope her daughter.

Klemmer reads a written sentence that allows him to establish punishments for Erika as he sees fit. He asks, Why didn’t you write the punishment down? And his question bounces off the battleship Erika. Klemmer is told it was only a suggestion. She offers to buy a chain with two locks that I definitely can’t unlock. Please don’t worry about my mother. Mother, however, is worried about Erika and bangs on the door. They scarcely notice because of the bureau, which patiently holds out its hump. Mother barks, the TV buzzes. The screen locks in tiny figures that one controls by arbitrarily switching them on and off. Big real life is pitted against tiny TV life, and real
life wins because it has full control over the image. Life adjusts to television, and television is copied from life.

Figures with venomously swollen hair-dryer coiffures gape fearfully at one another’s faces. But only the figures outside the screen can see anything. The others peer out of the screen, assuming nothing and perceiving nothing.

Erika expands her suggestions: We have to get a lock or some kind of device for this door! You can leave that to me, darling. I’d like you to turn me into a package that is completely at your mercy.

Klemmer nervously licks his lips in the face of control and power. Miniature worlds, like those on TV, open up to him. There’s barely room to put your foot down. This tiny figure stamps about in his brain. The woman before him shrinks down to a miniature. You can throw her like a ball without catching her. You can squeeze the air out of her. She deliberately belittles herself even though she doesn’t have to. For he does acknowledge her talents. She does not want to be superior because she won’t find anyone who can feel superior to her. Erika wants to buy accessories until we have an entire torture kit. We can then play à
deux
on this private organ. But no organ sound is to reach the outside world. Erika is concerned that the other students might notice something. Outside the door, Mother sobs softly and furiously. And in the TV set, an unobserved woman sobs almost voicelessly because the volume was lowered. Mother is able, and also quite willing, to make this woman from the TV family sob so loudly that the apartment will quake. If she, Erika’s own mother, can’t interfere, then the permanent-wave intimacy of that female Texan will do a fine job of disrupting. All you have to do is manipulate the remote control.

Erika is presumptuous: She wants to be naughty so she can
be punished on the spot. She will fail to do something. Mother will not find out, but Erika will screw up. Please don’t worry about my mother at all. Walter Klemmer could certainly manage not to worry about Mother, but Mother can’t help trumpeting out her worries by means of the TV din. Your mother’s awfully annoying, the man whines. Erika suggests he get Erika a kind of apron made of solid black plastic or nylon and cut holes in it so One Can Glimpse the Sexual Organs. Klemmer asks where one can find such an apron without stealing it or making it. So she’s only offering the man peepshow peeps, he jeers, that’s how sophisticated she is. Did she learn that from TV? You never see everything, only peeks and glimpses, each one a world unto itself. The director supplies the peek, and your head supplies the rest. Erika hates people who watch TV without thinking. You can profit from everything as long as you open your mind. The TV set supplies ready-made data, your mind manufactures the external coverings. The TV set arbitrarily changes facts and spins out plots. It rips apart lovers and binds together things that the writer keeps separate. The mind twists and turns as it sees fit.

Erika wants Walter Klemmer to perform some torture on her. Klemmer does not wish to perform any torture on Erika. He says that’s not what we worked out, Erika. Erika asks him to please tie all the cords and ropes so tight that you yourself could barely unravel them. Don’t spare me in any way. On the contrary, give it your all! And do it everywhere. What do you know about my strength, Walter Klemmer rhetorically asks this woman, who has never seen him paddle. She underestimates the limits of his strength. She hasn’t the foggiest notion what he could do to her. That was why she wrote him: Do you know you can intensify the effect by first soaking the ropes in water for a very long time? Please do it whenever I
feel like it, and please enjoy it thoroughly. Someday—I’ll indicate the day in a letter—surprise me with ropes that have been thoroughly soaked; they shrink as they dry. Punish offenses!