Dissonance (10 page)

‘What do pianists leave behind?' Erwin asked the critic.

‘A reputation.'

‘Exactly. What's that? Nothing. Eventually I'd like to make new music … music other people could interpret.'

‘Well, good luck in Hamburg, Erwin. I hear Schaedel is very good.'

‘You're going to review my recital?' Erwin asked.

‘Yes, why not?'

Reg looked at Erwin, as if to say, Be grateful, but Erwin couldn't muster any goodwill. ‘I hope you understand my playing. I don't go in for showy stuff.'

‘Good.'

Madge appeared at the door. ‘Erwin, where have you been?' She came over and started adjusting his bow tie. ‘You should be in the green room, not here.'

Reg turned to Madge and said, ‘Madge, this is Mr Durack, from
The Advertiser
.'

She looked at him and her face lengthened. He extended his hand but she didn't shake it. ‘
The Register
gave him an excellent review,' she said, pointing to the notice.

‘I saw,' he replied. ‘And it wasn't even his concert. Bravo!'

Bravo? Spare me, Madge thought. ‘Durack … that would be from …?'

‘Dutch, I think.'

‘Dutch?' She stared at him. Hardly, she thought. Unless your parents were there for a holiday. ‘Erwin had a great grandmother from Holland,' she explained, taking her son by the arm and smiling. ‘Enjoy the concert, Mr Durack.' She turned and led Erwin back into the hall. As she went she whispered, ‘Jew.' Durack turned to Reg Carter. ‘What did she say?'

Reg handed the critic his ticket. ‘Second row, centre,' he said. ‘He's an extraordinary young man.'

Durack went into the hall, his mouth still open to the warm afternoon. Reg flicked a pile of tickets through his fingers and thought, Why did I bother?

Because of Madge. Accompanying Erwin to all of his lessons after they'd moved to Adelaide. Sitting on a seat near the window with her hands on her purse in her lap. Muttering (every so often) ‘Erwin, head up' or ‘Softer, read the markings' until Reg looked at her with a sort of tortured smile. ‘Madge, please, it's best if he has one teacher.'

‘Sorry, Mr Carter, I'm just so used to it.'

Until a minute or so later, ‘That was a clunky old phrase, Erwin.'

‘Madge.'

‘Sorry.'

Then, at the end of a lesson on a humid Tuesday morning, she said, ‘Mr Carter, as a staff member here, you'd be able to hire the hall?'

He looked unsure. ‘Yes …'

‘Now, this is just a thought, but what if …'

Madge came up with a date and he booked the hall (having to shift a cello master-class); he was to choose and invite an audience and she'd do the promotion; he would arrange the urn but she would provide tea, milk, sugar and cake; he would arrange for the concert grand to be tuned and she would supply the flowers.

It would be a triumph, she promised, as Erwin packed his music. ‘You, Mr Carter, will be given a whole chapter in Erwin's biography.'

‘Well, that will be something.'

At last, Reg closed the doors to Elder Hall. He found a small bell in the ticket booth and started ringing it. Then he walked into the hall and down the centre aisle towards the stage. There was a fair crowd, maybe two hundred people, and he knew most of them. He stopped to shake a hand or kiss someone's wife or aunt on the cheek and then he climbed the six steps to the stage.

Madge was waiting for him. She was standing centre stage in a long, black dress, a light muslin scarf and a hat that looked like the exoskeleton of a giant cockroach, a band sprigged with real ears of wheat. She was sweating beneath a veneer of make-up, fanning herself with a program and smiling. She looked at a man standing at the back of the hall and pointed at the high fans. Soon they started turning and a light cloud of dust settled across the audience, triggering an epidemic of coughing.

Reg stood in front of the piano and looked out across the audience. ‘Thank you all for coming,' he said, in a loud, clear voice. ‘Especially on such a warm day.' He looked at Madge and wondered what to do about her. ‘This is Mrs Hergert, the mother of my student, Erwin,' he announced. ‘This will be Erwin's first, and last, recital in Adelaide, in Australia for that matter … as he leaves, next week, is it, Madge?'

‘Yes, next week, for Hamburg, for the Conservatorium. Herr Schaedel.'

‘Erwin has done so well, not because of me,' he said, as the audience laughed, ‘that it's been decided, Madge has decided, that he should move on.'

‘To Hamburg,' she reminded the audience.

‘Erwin is only fifteen,' Reg continued, ‘but he plays with a real maturity, an intensity beyond his age. He has a phenomenal memory and he composes … and I'm quite looking forward to hearing his
Counterpoint
today.'

Madge turned and saw Erwin waiting beside the ­proscenium. She was almost bursting. She wasn't sure whether to smile or wink or blow him a kiss so she settled on a firm, knowing nod of the head. Erwin didn't know what to make of it. He looked at his fingers and continued stretching them, wondering if they were up to the job.

‘So, without further ado,' Reg said, extending his hand towards Erwin.

He put his arm behind Madge and almost shepherded her off the stage. As she passed her son she touched his collar and said, ‘Grettir the Strong,' and he smiled.

He sat at the piano and prepared himself. He lifted his hands above the keyboard and took a deep breath. Then he looked at the audience – hushed, blank faces. Come on, let's see what you can do, they were saying. He looked back down at his fingers and wondered if they'd do anything at all. Then he heard his mother's words, from earlier that morning. ‘It's only Adelaide, what would they know? If it's not
Für Elise
they don't care. They're just out to mingle, to show themselves off.' He looked at them again and thought, Exactly, what would you people know? Who's Webern, who's Duke Ellington? Go on, tell me! See, exactly!

His fingers came down slow, soft and sweet on the opening of the Bach overture, triggering a stream of music that included broken chords, stretches of a tenth and loud, thundering pedal notes he could feel through his feet. Madge let out a breath she'd been holding for a few moments. She knew that if he got the first bar right then all the rest would follow. Thoughts would dissipate and instincts unravel. Erwin would start to feel the pleasure of the parts coming together and his gift for mood and nuance would take over. Soon he would be playing like Rubinstein, hammering the keyboard, banging around in search of what lay hidden in the music.

She looked at Reg. ‘Did you ever doubt?' she asked.

He just nodded his head, closing his eyes and listening. When he opened them he saw Madge heading down the steps beside the stage. She was carrying a red velvet bag and when she arrived at the end of the first row she handed it to a man with a handlebar moustache. He didn't know what she was doing, but she soon made it clear, taking a penny out of her own pocket and putting it in the bag.

Reg quickly came down the steps, standing behind her and whispering, ‘Madge, this isn't what we do.'

‘It's not gonna hurt them,' she replied. ‘Trust this lot to come to a free concert.'

‘It'll interrupt the music.'

‘Nonsense.'

But he knew it wasn't the time to argue.

The bag started moving along the row and as people looked at her she put her hand in her pocket to make it clear. ‘Five minutes, then they'll forget,' she explained to Reg. ‘There aren't too many notes going in.'

‘It will get people off-side.'

‘No, it won't. Not if they think he's any good.'

Reg stepped back to the usher's seat and sat down. He stared at her and thought, You old Viking, I never would've agreed. These people are my friends. Then he looked at Erwin and his feelings turned to pity. You'll never survive the old bitch, he almost whispered. You'll go mad, or run away. All because of the piano – because of a one-in-a-million shot at posterity.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift into Schumann. Clean, crisp notes – but dreamy, like light shattered into its component colours. He opened his eyes and saw Madge, halfway back, motioning to her son to play louder as she waited for the bag of pennies.

She watched as the bag approached the Jew. She noticed him scribbling on a pad and wanted to go up to him and say, What does your opinion matter? People like you are rats, nibbling away at other people's food and spoiling it. She watched as a woman passed him the bag. He looked at Madge and smiled. Then he put down his pad, took out his wallet and put several notes in.

By the time she was finished Erwin had moved on to Beethoven. She held the coins scrunched in the bag like a giant red cauliflower and walked to the back of the hall. She stood against the back wall with her arms crossed and listened. Louder, louder, she wanted to call out. It isn't God's Hill Road now, my boy.

Chapter Seven

It was still dark when they left Australia. It was raining lightly and a few hundred people in coats and boots crowded under the eaves of a giant freight shed. It was foggy, too, and as Erwin stood rugged up in a scarf and three jumpers he could see the yellow lights of tugs cutting through mist that clung to the river.

‘It's going to be a funny summer,' someone said, and Erwin wondered if this was some sort of omen.

The chilled wind blew across the black river, full of silt and oil, rotting seaweed and ceramic bottles. It whispered its way onto the wharf and mixed wool scrags and diesel in puddles that canyoned into cracks in the old bitumen. Then it blew across freshly shaved pink cheeks, the brown legs of boys destined for Empire and snow, through cotton dresses and in ears and eyes and noses wiped dry on corduroy sleeves.

Madge had her hands in her pockets. She couldn't feel a thing. She was glowing. The heater was on in their cabin and their clothes were unpacked; tea was served an hour after departure and then there were deck-sports, the Captain's lecture on New Caledonia, a slide evening, sleep, piano, more watery Darjeeling and eventually Hamburg. Somehow it had all fallen into place. Not that it had been easy. The three Ps, she'd kept telling her son: Planning, Patience and Practice.

Samuel craned his head and looked into the bridge of the SS
Gera
. He could see a young man talking on a telephone and an older man with a full grey beard and moustache looking down at them. The older man reminded him of a picture he'd seen of the captain of the
Titanic
. ‘She's a marvel,' Samuel said, looking down across the stern. ‘Where would you start?'

‘What?' Grace asked.

‘To build it?'

‘You'd start at the bottom and work up,' she replied, and he wanted to say, Have you got any idea at all? Instead, he looked at Erwin and said, ‘You're a very lucky boy.'

‘I know,' Erwin blushed, although his cheeks were already a deep red.

‘This is costing your mother a fortune.'

‘I know.'

‘Don't go on about it, Dad,' Madge said.

‘Lucky you still got a house,' Sam continued, scanning the rivets for any defects.

‘Dad,' Madge insisted.

‘Why?' Erwin asked.

‘It doesn't matter,' his mother said.

‘She was gonna sell it, for this.' He pointed to the glowing yellow cabins and then waved his hand over the whole ship.

‘Were you?' Erwin asked, looking at his mum.

‘No … Dad!' Madge scowled at her father.

Erwin looked confused. ‘But you said that Mr Schilling had agreed …' He stopped, thought about what he was saying and then looked at his mum. ‘It's good it didn't come to that.'

Madge put her hand on his head. She could feel her father's stare boring into the side of her face. ‘Schilling?' he asked. ‘Your tenant?'

‘Yes,' Madge replied.

‘He's doing a wonderful job,' Grace added.

‘He is,' Samuel said.

He'd seen it. He'd been past God's Hill Road several times since they'd left. He'd seen Mr Schilling out on his tractor (only a few weeks after he'd written the cheque) pulling out the old trellises. He'd seen him burning off the stumps, the dead vines and weeds; he'd seen him ploughing the ground into neat rows of rich, brown soil; he'd seen him planting vegetables and he'd seen those vegetables growing. He'd seen Mr Schilling out fixing up the verandah around the house and painting the gutters and woodwork. And he'd wondered.

‘It's lucky it didn't come to that, isn't it?' Samuel asked his daughter.

‘What?'

‘Selling your home.'

‘Yes, it is!'

A young boy ran out from the crowd towards the edge of the dock. A woman stepped forward and called above the voices, ‘Stephen!' and he stopped. He was close to the edge. He looked down into black water that churned like a motorised washer. The crowd watched silently. A steward appeared at a handrail on the
Gera
and said, ‘You, boy, move away from there.' His mother ran out and took his hand.

‘Silly boy,' Madge growled.

‘So, where's this review?' Samuel asked, still looking at his daughter suspiciously.

‘It's not a review,' Madge said, unlatching her purse, taking out a newspaper clipping and unfolding it. ‘It's a pity you couldn't come,' she said to her father.

‘I can't miss the sales.'

‘Don't you employ someone for that?'

‘I needed a bull. I wouldn't leave that to anyone.'

‘It's a pity. They would've had bulls next week.'

He glared at her. ‘Your mother said the review was good.'

Madge shrugged. ‘Erwin played faultlessly. But as for this Durack, he was a funny sort, wasn't he, Erwin?'

Erwin nodded his head. ‘A monkey man.'

‘“Erwin Hergert is a small, unpolished gem,”' Madge started reading. ‘See, negative from the start,' she explained. ‘Unpolished? How? Technique, expression? He doesn't say because he doesn't know. “He is a tall, strapping young man who attacks the piano like Atilla the Hun, hammering out Beethoven without fear, switching from heavy-handed to angelic without blinking.” See, Atilla the Hun, heavy-handed, what sort of insight is that?' She turned to her son. ‘Like I told you, provincial.' She looked at her parents. ‘When was the last time he went to Europe? See, this is why we have to go.' She waved the clipping in the cold air.

‘I don't think he means it that way at all,' Samuel said.

Madge stared at her father. Stick to bulls, she wanted to say. ‘What an idiot. Claimed his name was Durack, but he was no Durack.'

‘Perhaps the critics are harsher in Europe,' Grace ventured.

‘Listen … “Hergert has a solid foundation that should ripen in future years. He missed very few notes …” Very few? I didn't hear any. Did you miss any, Erwin?'

‘You can never be entirely sure.'

‘Exactly. None. And then it goes on with more of the same.' She skipped a few paragraphs, most of them praising her son's touch and interpretation, and stopped at, ‘“With the help of his mother, young Erwin should prosper in Hamburg. If she can continue to support and encourage him (and pin his blonde, Nordic locks to the program!) then we should continue hearing about Erwin from distant Europe.” Blonde, Nordic locks! What's that got to do with anything? I don't even know why I cut the damn thing out.'

She released the clipping and it blew towards the edge of the dock.

‘Mum,' Erwin said, chasing after it.

The wind lifted and dropped the small square of paper. It landed in a puddle and soaked around the edges. It dragged along the bitumen and then found an updraft, rising, falling and then gliding towards the water. Erwin chased it, bent over, stood, ran a few more steps and almost fell over the edge. He looked around and most of the crowd was watching him. Then he lost his balance, leaned forward but straightened up as a hushed chorus rose from the group.

‘Get away from the edge, boy,' the steward repeated, as he watched the review bobbing on the surface of the water.

Erwin stepped back and stamped his foot. He returned to his mother but before he could speak she said, ‘Don't worry, we should only keep the really good ones.'

‘It was … wasn't it?' he asked.

‘Not good enough. But it wasn't your fault. He was a small man.'

Small: the way Erwin felt as he'd stood in the bathroom of their apartment at the Imperial Hotel, hot, sweating, bleeding in narrow wounds from the cuts on his back. As his mother looked at the whip in his hand and asked, ‘What have you been doing?'

He had no reply.

‘Does this … help you?' she asked.

‘I was just … mucking around.'

‘But you're bleeding.'

He couldn't be mad, surely, she thought. Please God, no, that would spoil everything. He couldn't have caught anything. Couldn't have. He was never close enough. And anyway, it took years.

She sat him on the edge of the bath and removed his shirt. There were long, red marks across his back in every ­direction.

‘Why?' she asked, but he kept silent.

She ran her hand across the solid, grainy muscles of his back. The bleeding had nearly stopped. She wet a flannel, wrung it out and started cleaning his wounds. He was staring ahead. She noticed his chest, bleached cream and caramel by light through the blinds, covered with fine, black hairs, freckles and blue veins. No, he's just a boy, she thought.

Erwin bowed his head. Leave me alone, he wanted to say.

She looked at his body and felt, for the first time, as though she was losing control. She threw the flannel in the wash basket and asked, again, ‘Does it help you?'

He looked up at her and raised his hands in defeat. ‘I don't know.'

Back on the wharf, Samuel nodded his head and said, ‘There's nothing to be gained from goodbyes.' He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the horizon lighten, revealing more factories and sheds, a tank engine building up steam.

A horn on the
Gera
sounded three times and a chorus of stewards called out, ‘All visitors ashore. Passengers board, please.'

The voices on the dock grew louder. Mothers kissed daughters, adjusted collars and fumbled Box Brownies to avoid thinking about parting. The outside lights of the freight-shed came on an hour too late and at last people could see what they were losing. A young woman buried her head in her mother's coat and almost screamed. A father dragged his son away from another boy, carrying him towards the gangway without looking back. Elsewhere, people were laughing, or passing around a bottle of brandy, or singing songs that would remind them of the day Uncle Bert won a hundred quid at Victoria Park.

‘You write, every week,' Samuel said, shaking Erwin's hand, eventually pulling him close and giving him an awkward hug. ‘And just remember, if you're not happy, tell her to bring you home.' He looked at his daughter and she lifted an eyebrow. ‘It's not that simple,' she said.

‘It is,' he whispered. ‘I'll keep an eye on the place for you. Might even have a talk to that Schilling fella.'

Madge didn't care any more. It was time. Giant clouds of black smoke were rising from the funnels, drifting and dissipating, thinning out to nothing as it settled across backyards full of clean washing. ‘It could be years,' she said to Grace.

‘It won't be years,' she replied, although she knew that Samuel had signed away most of their money.

They embraced and then Erwin came between them and held them both. ‘We've got to go,' he said, as a few men took up position to cast off, as the line at the bottom of the gangway shrunk, becoming a mess of final touches, whispered promises, crying, salutes and a last minute crate of oranges being taken on board.

Madge took her son's hand and smiled. ‘Are you ready?'

Erwin felt like a man and a child. The wind had dropped and the sun was already warming his face. He felt hot under his jumpers. The freight sheds and wool stores had become solid, detailed, coloured grey and black, hung with signs and fire hoses – and this made it even harder to go. One of the shed doors opened and labourers appeared, and they looked familiar. Erwin wondered if this little game was about to finish, and if he could then return to his world of familiar things. His mother was holding him tight as they headed up the gangway. She looked down and almost stopped. ‘Keep going, it's perfectly safe,' he said.

The water was still churning. He saw his review, floating up close to the dock, and knew he had to keep going.

‘Madge!'

Grace approached the start of the gangway. ‘I forgot, this was left in our box,' she said, waving a letter in the air.

The letter was passed up through the crowd and Madge crumpled it in her hand. She didn't look back at her mother. Now they were too high, more
Gera
than Adelaide, more Germany than Australia, more future than past.

So, she stood tall. She let go off the handrail and her son's hand. ‘Schönes Wetter?' she asked.

‘Ja, schön,' Erwin replied.

‘We must practise,' she explained. ‘People are going to think we're colonial. They'll never take us seriously.'

They found a spot to wave goodbye. Madge threw a streamer and Grace managed to catch it. Then the ropes dropped and the ship moved away from the dock. One by one the streamers broke and people drifted apart. Almost instantly faces were forgotten or blurred, and the small, day-to-day expressions, smells, grunts and sighs were gone. Didn't Uncle Dick have a limp? No … Ruth's eyes are blue, eh? Or green, aquamarine … hazel?

The whole ship seemed to jolt, the engines hummed and they headed up the Port River. Tired hands stopped waving to ant-sized relatives. As Erwin studied the distant city, Madge opened the letter and read.

Dear Madge,

Why are you going? For yourself, or Erwin? What do you want? A prodigy, or a son? Erwin is such a good boy (I could tell from one meeting, and what Jo told me) – he could grow to be like his father, or –

Madge dropped the letter and it fell, turning in its own slipstream, into the ocean.

‘Nothing overboard, please,' a voice called, from high above them.

‘What was that?' Erwin asked.

‘My cousin,' Madge replied. ‘You've never met her.'

Madge looked out across a stretch of mangroves. They were grey and featureless and smelt of decay. She took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Good riddance,' she whispered, taking her son's hand, kissing it, gathering the strength to start again.