Dissonance (9 page)

‘Sight unseen,' she explained. ‘That's what Herr Schaedel thinks of your grandson.'

‘But why didn't you tell us?' Grace asked.

‘I had to be sure.' She looked at her parents. It wasn't the reaction she was expecting. ‘Well?' she asked.

‘It's wonderful, for Erwin,' Grace conceded.

‘Dad?'

‘Wonderful …'

‘But …?'

‘It's a big move, for a boy.'

‘He's not a boy, he's nearly a man. And anyway, if you haven't been noticed by seventeen it's all over.'

They sat together for another minute and no one said a word. At last Sam asked, ‘How will you afford it?'

Madge shrugged. ‘I'll have to sell God's Hill Road.'

Sam sat up. ‘You can't do that. What will you return to?'

‘If he's not a success,' Madge explained, ‘then we can't come back.'

‘What the hell does that mean?' her father asked, shaking his head.

‘Do you want us to return with our tail between our legs?'

‘Madge, stop this silliness. You can't uproot the boy – '

‘It's decided.'

Sam slammed his hand down on the smoker's table. ‘He's a boy!'

‘No.'

Silence again. Madge stared at her father with a grin. He knew the look. It was Grace's look. There was no point arguing when she'd decided. And now his daughter had become a Cruikshank print – with every line, expression, shadow and mood just as real as the original.

‘It's decided,' Madge repeated.

‘Well, you can't sell the house,' Sam insisted. ‘You might think this is all very noble and heroic, but the chances are you'll need to return, sometime.'

Madge shook her head. ‘When Erwin returns to Adelaide,' she explained, ‘he'll buy us a mansion at Torrens Park. For his holidays, when he's not in Europe.'

Sam dropped his head and sighed. ‘Madge …'

‘I won't return to the Valley.'

Sam looked at his wife as if to say, This is your doing. You filled her head with silliness. I wanted her out on a horse, but you knew better. That damn piano. And look where it's got us. Why didn't you teach her to cook a roast? Then she would've got a husband, a dozen kids, a decent home and happiness.

‘What?' Grace asked, looking back at him.

‘What do you think?'

‘If she's made up her mind.'

‘About the house?'

She shrugged. ‘If that's what it takes. Believe it or not, Erwin might have a chance. He's very good, Samuel.'

‘I know he's good,' he blurted, ‘but so are a million others.'

‘A few hundred perhaps,' Madge conceded. ‘But that's why we have to go, to narrow it down. How many years was it until a Bray Hereford won a prize?'

‘What's that got to do with anything?'

‘You had to breed those animals for years.' Madge looked at a row of ribbons hanging high on the wall. ‘Nineteen twelve,' she said. ‘You'd been at it for twenty years.'

‘Erwin is not a Hereford.'

‘It's the same thing.'

‘It's not.' He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘Go on, take him to Hamburg, get it out of your system, but you can't sell the house.'

‘I have no choice.'

Sam stared at her. He had no idea that Killalah had already been leased. He was a simple, honest man who still believed his daughter was the girl he'd tucked into bed thirty years before. Grace knew better, but never said anything; that would be like opening herself up to her husband. Even in marriage there were small, sinewy strands that had to be hidden.

‘How else can I get the money?' she asked her father.

‘Sell the truck.'

She threw her head back. ‘How much would
you
give me for it?'

‘What about some of the land?'

‘In that state?' Grace barked at her husband. ‘Don't be ridiculous. There are other ways.'

Sam stared at his wife. His eyes narrowed.

‘No, I've decided,' Madge said, draining her cup of tea. ‘It's not much of a place.'

‘It is,' Sam grumbled. ‘That's good land. You sell it, you get a few quid; then you spend that and everything's gone. That's all you've got to show for all those years with Jo.'

Grace was still staring at her husband.

‘What?' he barked.

‘It's decided,' Madge said.

‘Christ,' Sam muttered, standing, storming out of the room.

Grace and her daughter listened as he went into his study, unlocked his desk, slammed it shut and cursed every woman that God had put on earth. Grace smiled, moving the tip of her tongue around the inside of her bottom teeth.

Sam stormed into the room. He sat in his chair, placed his chequebook on the smokers' table and looked at them. ‘Well?' he asked.

‘Simmer down,' Grace replied.

‘Since I'm the only one who can think rationally …'

‘You are,' she agreed, smiling at Madge.

‘What will it take?'

They both looked at their daughter.

‘No, I didn't mean for you to – '

‘How much?' Sam insisted.

Madge shrugged. ‘I hadn't thought about it.'

Sam's hand started moving across the cheque. ‘Here's enough to get you started,' he said. ‘When you work it out, let me know.'

He handed the cheque to his daughter. Her eyes bulged and she covered her mouth with her hand. Sam dropped his pen on the table and said, ‘I hope it's worth it.'

‘He's your grandson,' Madge replied.

‘Yes,' her father mumbled, sitting back, looking at a vase full of bamboo his wife had painted blue.

Chapter Six

Erwin sat on the front steps of Elder Hall. It was warm, almost summer, and he was singing Grainger's transcription of a Bach overture as he sat sweating in the black tails his mother had bought him in anticipation of Germany. As the audience climbed the steps to the hall, looking at him and wondering, he tried to steady his hands by looking at them and willing them to stay still, eventually playing the Bach in air that smelt of jasmine and freshly cut lawn.

He could feel his heart pounding and he breathed deeply, but this just made his mouth even drier. He turned and pulled a sprig of jasmine growing across the big sandstone blocks of the hall. For a moment he forgot where he was but then there were more shoes, more legs, more bodies – more heads and ears and minds ready to judge his playing. He tried to play the Bach again and this time his fingers felt stiff.

No, stop, he thought. Get your mind onto something else.

‘You're Erwin?' a middle-aged lady stopped to ask.

‘Yes.'

‘Good luck.'

He didn't reply. That would imply he needed luck. She looked at him and almost said, Why are you sitting on the front steps?

Think of something else, he thought.

He saw a tram stop on North Terrace and watched people getting on and off. He watched to see if any of them headed towards the hall. There was an older couple. ‘Go away,' he mumbled.

He thought about vine pruning and geometry. He wondered how the gardeners would pick up the lawn clippings left on the road in front of the hall. Then Father O'Gorman appeared at the bottom of the steps. ‘Hello, Erwin,' he said, and Erwin jumped down to greet him. He shook his teacher's hand and said, ‘Thanks for coming.'

He was relieved to see a face he knew – someone who wouldn't be critical, who'd tell him how wonderfully he'd played no matter how many mistakes he made.

‘When did you come down?' Erwin asked.

‘Yesterday. I'm staying with my sister. Do you feel ready?'

‘I suppose.'

‘Of course you are. You're a marvel, Erwin, a marvel. Just remember me when you're famous.'

‘Me?'

Father O'Gorman kept smiling, but his voice became quieter. ‘Listen, you should've come and said goodbye before you left.'

Erwin shrugged. ‘Mum just decided.'

‘One day you weren't in class, and someone said, He's gone.'

‘I'm sorry.' He bowed his head. ‘It was Mum.'

Father O'Gorman held his arm. ‘Where are you now?'

‘We've been staying at the Imperial Hotel since July. But we're packing up again. The boat leaves next week.'

‘Good on you. If anyone can do it …'

It had been that quick. A few weeks after her father's cheque had cleared, Madge spent a few days packing everything they'd need for Europe in three battered aluminium trunks. She hired a taxi truck and sent the lot to town, to the Imperial, to the room she'd booked for them. Then she phoned the new tenants of God's Hill Road: ‘Tomorrow.' She got in her truck and drove to Tanunda and cancelled her accounts: milk, bread, meat, electricity, water and gas. When she was asked for how long she replied, ‘For as long as it takes.' She drove to school and gave the headmaster a letter that said, simply, ‘Dear Sir, Erwin Hergert (10B) is moving to Europe. He is finished with school in THIS VALLEY. Yours with respect, Madge Hergert.' Then she drove home, packed the things they wouldn't need into fruit crates and put them in the shed under an old grey tarpaulin.

The next morning she locked the front door, put the key under the mat and said, ‘Good riddance.' They caught a taxi to the station and a train to town. On a cool spring day they walked up King William Street to the Imperial, collected their key and went up to their room to find their trunks waiting.

‘Perfect,' Madge said, stepping into the room.

‘When do we leave?' Erwin asked.

‘A few more months,' she replied. ‘In the meantime, we can get acclimatised to civilisation. I'll organise a farewell concert.'

‘A concert?'

‘Yes, to create an expectation. So people can follow your success.'

‘A big concert?'

‘Huge.'

Back outside Elder Hall, the day had arrived. Father O'Gorman moved to the very top step to read the program on the noticeboard.

Elder Hall Concert

October 18, 1937

As a farewell to Adelaide's finest young talent, Erwin Hergert, who has been accepted as a student of Herr Schaedel at the Hamburg Konserv., a free public concert will be given to say thank you to family, friends and staff at Elder Conserv.

Program

O'Gorman's eyes lit up. ‘One of your own?' he asked.

‘It's only a small piece,' Erwin replied. ‘But Mum insisted I put it in.'

‘And so you should. I'm looking forward to hearing it.'

Counterpoint
, by Erwin Hergert, Work Number 1. Almost entirely composed, as Madge stood over his shoulder, in their room at the Imperial. Testing and rejecting melody and counter-melody, harmony and fugue that jumped from right hand to left. Trying and retrying contrasting themes that always seemed too light, too heavy, too serious, too dark, too forgettable. Too awful. Until at last they had a piece that seemed almost passable. At which point they'd move on to more practise. Not just for the concert, but for Herr Schaedel. Six, seven hours a day. Until there was a knock on the door and the concierge saying, ‘We're having complaints again, Mrs Hergert,' going on to remind her how he'd only agreed to let her hire the piano if she played between ten and four.

‘The piano is not for me, it's for my son. He's on his way to study in Europe.'

‘Nonetheless.'

Father O'Gorman looked at the photos Madge had pinned up around the program. ‘Nice touch,' he said.

‘I told her not to,' Erwin replied, and O'Gorman thought, I bet you did.

The first was Erwin as a five-year-old, sitting in front of a backdrop of painted ferns in a photographic studio, resting his fat white legs on a marble bench. He was wearing a black dress and an oversized sun hat that was pushed back to frame his face like a halo.

‘Bubbles?' O'Gorman asked, reading a label that had been written in Madge's best copperplate.

‘They thought I looked like the kid from the Pears print,' Erwin explained.

O'Gorman could see it – a small button nose, aqua-blue eyes and long, blonde hair that fell across his shoulders in curls that Madge had encouraged with her curling iron.

‘Bubbles … I never knew,' he said.

Then there was a more recent photo, a formal portrait taken only a few weeks before in Mr Crossley's studio. Erwin was wearing his day-old tuxedo, staring at the camera with a hint of melancholy, with a man-of-destiny, dead-at-thirty-five-like-Schubert look. He'd smiled but Madge had just kept saying, ‘Serious … we don't want people thinking you're a clown.' As Erwin lifted his hands, playing an imaginary piano that was just out of shot.

‘A handsome boy,' Mr Crossley had said, focussing, and Madge had replied, ‘Yes, we'll have to watch that.'

Then there was a shot of an audience at a recital. Madge and Erwin were in the front row and Madge had circled their heads with a black biro. Then she'd drawn a line to a piece of paper beside the photo and written
‘Risvegliato' Concert at Freemasons' Hall
. She'd been telling people about this concert for weeks. How the pianist, a Mr Layton, had heard all about Erwin and invited him onstage to play a piece; how Erwin had blushed and said no but finally given in to his mother (‘Go on, it'll be good practice for your recital'); how he'd played the
Pastorale
faultlessly and received a standing ovation; how a reviewer from
The Register
had come up to her after and asked, ‘How old? Fifteen? No!' and how the following day, when she read the review of the concert, she found half of the space taken up with mentions of Erwin. So there it was, beside the photo, the part of the review that praised her son, finishing with ‘… he is a flaxen-haired phenomenon who plays like a master of the piano'.

O'Gorman read the review and then said, ‘Your star is rising, Erwin.'

‘It's only Adelaide,' he replied.

‘So?'

‘What would they have said in Hamburg?'

‘What does it matter?'

Erwin shook his head. Typical O'Gorman. ‘That's all that matters, Father. No one made their career in Adelaide.'

‘Nonsense. There are several – '

‘Proper careers,' Erwin insisted.

Madge had pinned up the letter from Herr Schaedel, a photo of her and Erwin standing arm-in-arm in Murray Street (with Jo, who'd been standing with them, cut out), a photo of Hamburg's Music Hall (cut out of a book from the Circulating Library), as well as a few strands of Erwin's blonde hair, pinned up with the label, ‘Erwin's locks, May 1937'. If she could've pinned his eyes up, she would've, with the caption, ‘Genius – courtesy of the Scandinavian race'.

Father O'Gorman turned to Erwin and extended his hand. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I look forward to hearing you. One day, perhaps, there'll be a statue of you on these lawns.' He pointed to a huge, bronze rendering of a university elder, sitting in a chair on an eight-foot-high sandstone plinth. All they could see was the back of his head, mutton-chop whiskers and a rumpled frock coat that disguised a man (Erwin thought) who'd had it too easy. ‘I'll never be there,' he said. ‘He was one of the rich, and stupid. They never amount to anything. It's all about struggle, Father. Survival of the fittest.'

‘Darwin.'

‘Exactly. Music more than anything. Pianists eat each other for lunch.'

Again, O'Gorman could hear Madge talking. ‘And what about you?' he asked.

Erwin shrugged, grinning. ‘We'll see.'

The minute O'Gorman went into the hall Erwin remembered his nerves. He crossed onto the lawn and sat on the plinth. Then he tried his Scarlatti again – runs of notes up and down, as his fingers started to collide and trip over each other. Stop it, you useless idiot, he thought. You're making it worse.

He was alive, at least. He could feel it; in his mouth and eyes, his stomach, full of acid and curdled milk. His body was light and his toes and fingers tingled. He felt he might mess himself, and he tried to will his body to behave. But all he could feel were the leather thongs across his back.

Madge had gone out and he was left alone in their rooms, practising. He opened one of the trunks, looking for sheet music, and there was one of his mother's horsewhips, wound up and packed between two pieces of clothing. He took it out and undid it and said, ‘Well, why didn't you listen to me, Erwin?' He laughed and whipped himself softly on the back. Then he did it again and again, using more force. Soon he had his shirt off, and he set to it seriously, trying to work out if it was pain or pleasure, but not really caring. Harder and harder, until he saw blood on one of the thongs, until his body, weak with pleasure, collapsed on the floor. He just wanted more, more of his muscles wilting, of his toes and fingers quivering.

Then Madge was at the door, and he grabbed his shirt and ran to the bathroom, throwing the whip in the chest and slamming it shut. He locked the door and a minute later she was knocking. ‘Erwin, let me in, please.'

‘I can't.'

‘Are you alright?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Well, let me in.'

‘It's … private.'

‘Erwin …'

After a long pause he unlocked the door. Madge looked at the blood that had seeped through his shirt. ‘Erwin, what have you done? Have you had an accident?'

‘Yes … an accident.'

‘Tell me.'

Erwin sat in the shade of the statue but it was still hot. He adjusted his collar and took a deep breath. He looked at his watch and mumbled, ‘Nearly there.' Reg Carter appeared at the top of the steps and shaded his eyes to see. Erwin stood up and Reg motioned to him. ‘Come on.'

Erwin flew across the lawn and up the steps and when he arrived there was another man standing beside Reg.

‘This is Mr Durack, from
The Advertiser
,' Reg explained, as the tall, bony man stepped forward and extended his hand.

Erwin greeted him and noticed that his hand was cold and weak, lacking fat or tissue. ‘Interesting choice of pieces,' Durack said, but Erwin couldn't look at his face – gaunt, cheekless skin hanging like crepe paper, dark-brown eyes and bat-wing ears, tight, black, curly hair and an attempt at a moustache. Durack, Erwin thought. I hardly think so. Almond or Leonard, perhaps. And what are you going to write about me?

‘And one of my own pieces,' Erwin added.

‘
Counterpoint
?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're interested in composing?'

‘Playing is one thing, but music's about being creative.'

‘Interpretation is creative.'

‘No it's not,' Erwin scowled. ‘It's notes and dots and ­duration. You could teach a monkey that.'

Durack grinned at Reg Carter. ‘A very clever monkey, perhaps.' He tried to get the piano teacher to laugh but he wouldn't.