The Piano Teacher: A Novel (4 page)

Ugly masses of people throng about HER uninterruptedly. People are always pushing their way into HER field of perception. The mob not only grabs hold of art without being entitled to do so, but it also enters the artist. It takes up residence inside the artist and smashes a few holes in the wall, windows to the outer world: The mob wants to see and be seen. With sweaty fingers, that cloddish mob is tapping out something that rightfully belongs to HER alone. Unasked, unbidden, they sing along with the cantilenas. Moistening their forefingers, they pursue
a theme, looking for the secondary theme, but failing to find it. And so, nodding their heads, they are content to rediscover and repeat the main theme. Recognizing it, they wag their tails. For most of them, the principal charm of art is to recognize something that they think they recognize. A wealth of sensations overwhelms a butcher. He can’t help it, even though he is used to his bloody profession. He is paralyzed with astonishment. He sows not, he reaps not, he doesn’t hear so well. But if he goes to a public concert, people can see him. Next to him, his better half; she wanted to come along.

SHE kicks the right heel of an old woman. SHE is able to assign every phrase its preordained location. SHE alone can take every sound and insert it in the right place, in its proper niche. SHE packs the ignorance of these bleating lambs into her own scorn, using it to punish them. Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored.

HER instinct for cleanliness is astonishingly sensitive. Dirty bodies form a resinous forest all around her. Not only the dirt of bodies, but the grossest kinds of filth struggling out of armpits and groins, the subtle urine stench of the old woman, the nicotine gushing from the network of the old man’s veins and pores, those innumerable piles of lowest-quality food stewing in the stomachs. Not only the faint wax stench of scurf and scab, not only the stink of shit microtomes under the fingernails—a very, very faint odor, but the expert can sniff them so easily, those residues left from burning colorless food, gray, leathery delights (if they can be called delights). They torment HER sense of smell, HER tastebuds. What upsets HER most of all is the way these people dwell in one another, the way they shamelessly take possession of one another. Each pushes his way into other minds, into their innermost attention.

They have to be punished. By HER. And yet she can never get rid of them. She shakes them, shreds them, like a dog
mauling its prey. And yet, unbidden, they rummage around in her, they observe HER innermost thoughts, and then they dare to say that they can’t do anything with these thoughts, that they don’t even like them. Why, they actually go so far as to say they don’t like Webern or Schönberg.

Mother, without prior notice, unscrews the top of HER head, sticks her hand inside, self-assured, and then grubs and rummages about. Mother messes everything up and puts nothing back where it belongs. Making a quick choice, she plucks out a few things, scrutinizes them closely, and tosses them away. Then she rearranges a few others and scrubs them thoroughly with a brush, a sponge, and a dustrag. Next, she vigorously dries them off and screws them in again. The way you twist a knife into a meatgrinder.

An old woman has just gotten into the trolley, but she doesn’t notify the conductor. She thinks she can keep her presence a secret. Actually, she got out of everything long ago, and she knows she did. Paying is too much trouble. She’s already got her ticket to eternity in her handbag. The ticket must be valid in a streetcar, too.

Now some woman asks HER for directions, but SHE doesn’t answer. SHE doesn’t reply although SHE does know the way. The woman won’t give up, she pokes her way through the entire car, pushing people aside so she can peer under seats and find her stop. She is a grim wanderer along forest paths, and she has a habit of using her skinny cane to tickle ant hills and arouse the ants from their contemplative lives. She makes the disturbed creatures spray acid. She is one of those people who leave no stone unturned, lest they find a snake underneath. Every clearing, no matter how small, is conscientiously combed for mushrooms or berries. That’s the kind of people they are. They squeeze every last drop from every single artwork and explain it vociferously to everyone else. In parks, they use their
handkerchiefs to dust a bench before sitting down. In restaurants, they polish the silverware with a napkin. They go through a relative’s suit with a fine-tooth comb, hunting for hair, letters, grease spots.

And now this lady vociferously complains that no one can give her the information she needs. She says that no one
wants
to give it to her. This lady represents the ignorant majority, which does however possess one thing in abundance: It is raring for a fight. She’ll challenge anyone if she has to.

She gets off at the very street the woman asked about, and as she steps out, she sneers at her.

The buffalo understands, and she is so angry that her pistons grind to a halt. A short time from now, she will describe these moments of her life to a friend while devouring sauerbraten with beans. She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.

SHE peers back several times at the completely disoriented woman before setting off on the familiar road to her familiar home. SHE smirks at the woman, forgetting that a few minutes from now, SHE will feel the hot flame of her mother’s blowtorch and SHE will be burned to a pile of ashes because SHE is late in getting home. No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.

Erika, the meadow flower. That’s how she got her name:
erica.
Her pregnant mother had visions of something timid and tender. Then, upon seeing the lump of clay that shot out of her body, she promptly began to mold it relentlessly in order to keep it pure and fine. Remove a bit here, a bit there. Every
child instinctively heads toward dirt and filth unless you pull it back. Mother chose a career for Erika when her daughter was still young. It had to be an artistic profession, so she could squeeze money out of the arduously achieved perfection, while average types would stand around the artist, admiring her, applauding her. Now, Erika has at last been patted into perfection. Such a girl was not meant to do crude things, heavy manual labor, housework. She was destined, congenitally, for the subtleties of classical dance, song, music. A world-famous pianist—that is Mother’s ideal. And to make sure the child finds her way through every entanglement, Mother sets up guideposts along the way, smacking Erika if she refuses to practice. Mother warns Erika about the envious horde that always tries to destroy other people’s achievements—a horde made up almost entirely of men. Don’t get distracted! Erika is never allowed to rest at any level she reaches, never allowed to catch her breath and lean on her icepick. For she has to keep climbing. To the next level. Forest animals come too close for comfort; they want to turn Erika into an animal. Competitors try to lure Erika to a cliff, pretending they’d like to show her the view. But how easily one can plunge down! Mother graphically describes the chasm, so her child will watch out. The peak offers international fame, which is never reached by most climbers. A cold wind blows up there, the artist is lonesome and admits his solitude. So long as Mother lives and continues planning Erika’s future, there is only one possibility for the child: the top of the world.

Mama pushes from below, for she has both feet planted solidly on the ground. And soon Erika no longer stands on the inherited motherland, she is on someone else’s back, someone she has ousted with her back-stabbing. What shaky ground! Erika stands on tiptoe, on her mother’s shoulders. Her trained fingers clutch the peak, which, alas, soon turns out to be merely
a crag; it only looks like the peak. Straining the muscles of her upper arm, Erika hoists and heaves herself up. Now, her nose is already over the edge, but all she sees is a new rock, steeper than the first. However, an ice factory of fame has a branch here, which keeps huge blocks in storage, thereby holding down its overhead. Erika, an adolescent, licks at one of the blocks and believes that a recital she gives is already the Chopin Competition. She believes that the peak is only a few inches away!

Mother taunts Erika for being too modest. You’re always the last! Noble restraint is useless. One should always be at least in third place; anything less is garbage. That’s what Mother says. She knows best; she wants only the best for her child. She won’t let her stay out in the street: After all, she shouldn’t get involved in athletic competitions and neglect practicing.

Erika doesn’t like being conspicuous. She elegantly holds back (the offended mother-animal laments) and waits for others to achieve something for her. Mother, bitterly complaining that she has to do everything for the child herself, jubilantly plunges into the thick of the fray. Erika nobly puts herself last, and her efforts don’t even bring her a couple of pennies for stockings or panties.

Mother nags away at friends and relatives (of whom there are very few, for she broke with them long ago; she wanted to keep Erika safe from their influence). Mother tells all these people that Erika is a genius. She says she keeps realizing it more and more clearly. Erika is truly a keyboard genius, but she has not been properly discovered as yet. Otherwise, she would have long since soared over the mountains, like a comet. Compared with that, the birth of Jesus was chickenshit.

The neighbors agree. They enjoy listening when the girl practices. It’s like the radio, only you don’t need to have a set. All you have to do is open the windows and perhaps the doors,
the music comes in, spreading like poison gas into every nook and cranny. People indignant about the noise stop Erika whenever they run into her, and they ask her for peace and quiet. Mother tells Erika how enthusiastic the neighbors are about her outstanding mastery of the keyboard. Erika is carried along like a dribble of spit on a thin stream of maternal enthusiasm. Later on, she is surprised when a neighbor complains. Her mother never said anything about complaints!

Eventually, Erika outdoes her mother when it comes to sniffing at people. Who cares about those laymen, Mama. Their powers of judgment are crude, their sensibilities are unrefined; only the professionals count. Mother retorts: Do not make fun of praises from simple people. They listen to music with their hearts and enjoy it more than those who are spoiled, jaded, blasé. Mother knows nothing about music, but she forces her child into its yoke. A fair if vindictive rivalry develops between mother and daughter, for the child soon realizes that she has outgrown her mother with regard to music. The daughter is the mother’s idol, and Mother demands only a tiny tribute: Erika’s life. Mother wants to utilize the child’s life herself.

Erika is not allowed to associate with ordinary people, but she is permitted to listen to their praises. Unfortunately, the experts do not praise Erika. A dilettantish, unmusical Fate has exalted other people. But it has passed Erika by, averting its face. After all, Fate wants to remain disinterested and not be taken in by an attractive mask. Erika is not pretty. Had she wanted to be pretty, her mother would have promptly ordered her to forget it. Erika stretches her arms out to Fate. But it’s no use; Fate will not turn her into a pianist. Erika is hurled to the ground as sawdust. Erika does not understand what is happening to her, for she has been as good as the masters for a long time now.

Then, one day, at an important concert at the Academy of
Music, Erika fails totally. She fails in front of the friends and relatives of her competitors and in front of her mother, who sits there alone. Mother spent her last penny on the dress Erika wears for this recital. Afterward, Mother slaps Erika’s face, for even musical laymen could read Erika’s failure in her face if not her hands. Furthermore, Erika did not choose a piece for the broadly rolling masses. She decided on a Messiaen, against her mother’s urgent warning. This is no way for the child to smuggle herself into the hearts of the masses, whom mother and child have always despised: the mother because she has always been merely a small, plain part of the masses; and the child because she would never want to become a small, plain part of the masses.

Erika reels from the podium, shamefaced. She is received shamefully by her sole audience: Mother. Erika’s teacher, who used to be a famous pianist, vehemently scolds her for her lack of concentration. A wonderful opportunity has been wasted, and it knocks but once. Someday soon, Erika will be envied by no one, idolized by no one.

What else can she do but become a teacher? A difficult step for a master pianist, who is suddenly confronted with stammering freshmen and soulless seniors. Conservatories and academies, as well as private teachers, patiently accept a lot of students who really belong on a garbage dump or, at best, a soccer field. Many young people are still driven to art, as in olden times. Most of them are driven by their parents, who know nothing about art—only that it exists. And they’re so delighted that it exists! Of course, art turns many people away, for there has to be a limit. The limits between the gifted and the ungifted. Erika, as a teacher, is delighted to draw that limit. Selecting and rejecting make up for a lot. After all, she was once treated like a goat and separated from the sheep. Erika’s students are a coarsely diverse mixture, and none of them has
ever been really tested or tasted. One seldom finds a red rose among them. Occasionally, during the first year, Erika manages to wrest a Clementi sonata from one or two students, while others still grunt and root about in Czerny’s elementary études. These students are then discarded after the intermediary examination, because they can’t find the wheat and they can’t find the chaff, even though their parents are firmly convinced that their children will soon feast on nectar and ambrosia.