Middle C (8 page)

Mr. Hirk had managed to raise an admonitory finger. Marcella Sembrich, wisely counseled, he said sternly, had not strained her voice singing Wagner. Oh she was pure bel canto, pure Italian, he said with hoarse approval. Always, small Joey, she studied. Her whole career. To sing
Lucia
, to sing
Traviata
. To sing Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini. But you are playing at playing, not working at playing, you are only pleasing yourself, small Joey. Well, you must stop having fun and learn the fundamentals. Then you may be able to please someone else.

In these words small Joey heard he hadn’t made Mr. Hirk happy. That’s what he heard. Moreover, the name—Small Joey—was new, and not nice. These criticisms restiffened his resolve. He would hand Mr. Hirk his envelope, give him the small sum he was charging for the lessons, and say his services were no longer needed. He would do this with a dignity for which he was presently searching.

But Mr. Hirk, who had not heard what Joey was resolving, who had
not felt the stiffening of anyone’s will, went on without pause to another tale. This anecdote was about a true pianist. It might have been titled: “Ignace Jan Paderewski and the Spider.” The story was wholly unfamiliar to Joey, who had decided not to listen. Like you, Paderewski was slow to become a student; like you he had bad teachers; like you he learned through his ears and had no technique, only instinctive fingers that went for the nearest note like kids after cake; yes, yes, like you he did not know how to work. Yet he became the greatest pianist of his time. Of his time … And more than that …

Joey let his features settle into the sullenness that Miriam found so insufferable, but Mr. Hirk’s mind was in another country, an ocean and a sea away, where Joey was an eager auditor whatever his face let on. Mr. Hirk cleared his throat of phlegm that, fortunately, never materialized.

Paderewski was studying in Vienna with Leschetizky—a name you do not know, because I have taught you nothing—and he had taken a couple of tiny rooms near the villa of this greatest of piano teachers, the author of a method named for him that had helped to eminence some of the most famous pianists of that age. Young Paderewski, as I say, had no technique; he was like you in that, small Joey, though he was, I must also say, a master of the pedal, he pedaled better than you do perched upon your bike. He did not kick the pedal, or otherwise abuse it, he caressed it—“footsie,” we say, you know—he played footsie with the pedal. Never did he chew upon himself neither. He was growed up! Anyway—are you listening? This is a lesson, which is what you are here for—so—one day, in his little candlelit room as dark as this one on account of the plants, Paderewski was practicing a piece by Chopin, an exercise in thirds. You do know thirds? While he was playing, a tiny spider dropped down from the ceiling to just one side of him, a bit above the deck of the piano, on a threadlike length of web. Do you know the word “gossamer”? The spider hung there listening to the Chopin. It was no more than a dot suspended in the air—a piece of punctuation. The spider hung there while Paderewski played. Hear him? How he played, that man!

You may smile, Mr. Hirk said, although Joey hadn’t softened his sullenness by a twitch. Paderewski smiled himself. He was charmed. So … when the exercise in thirds had been completed, he went on, as was his habit, to another one in sixths. The spider immediately scampered,
as it seemed, up his silver line to the ceiling. Observing this—you see it?—Paderewski returned to the exercise in thirds and began to repeat it. Lo, believe it and behold, eh? down like a fireman his pole the spider slid. All the way to the piano deck where he sat and once more listened. At the end of that exercise, which he had to repeat entirely because it so enchanted the spider, Paderewski went about his other business. How long must one entertain a tiny spider, no bigger than a period? Especially one who hasn’t paid for its seat at the concert …

Joey did smile now, but he thought the story was at an end. Mr. Hirk stared vacantly into vacated space. Time in the tale … time in the tale was passing. That’s why he stared. A stare that was to stand for elapsing hours. Then his head moved back to Joey. It was an animal’s maneuver.

The next morning Paderewski returned to the piano and his practice. The thread hung there still, and down that thread came the spider again the moment the study in thirds commenced. Paderewski pursued the étude, and the spider continued to sit on the deck or hang just above it from the thread so long as the piece was played. This behavior went on, not for another day, or a few days, or a week, but for many weeks, Joey … many weeks … Faithfully the spider appeared, quietly it listened, its brilliant tiny eyes shining like diamonds, and just as often, just as promptly, it disappeared up its rope when the étude concluded, as if annoyed, even angry, Paderewski thought, leaving beneath it the detestable sound of sixths.

I once had a small mouse that kept me company, Mr. Hirk said, though he was only foraging for food and was never an enthralled audience for my playing. No enthrallment. Not for me. So … where was … ah … I am here … but Paderewski … Well, vacation time came for Paderewski. He didn’t practice in that room again for a number of weeks, and when he returned in the fall, the spider was gone, as was the spider’s thread, rolled up after him perhaps, when he went searching for a more melodious space.

What is the lesson? Is that your question, Joey? Joey had heard Mr. Hirk’s story despite his intended deafness and would remember it too, against every wish, but he had no curiosity about its character and therefore no question about its content. It was just an amusing oddity—this story. Like the fables of Aesop, Mr. Hirk said, rather portentously, this trifling occurrence has a moral.

The major third, my young friend, Mr. Hirk continued, changing his tone, is that upon which all that is good and warm and wholesome and joyful in nature is built. Not for it the humble, the impoverished, the sacrificial, the stoical—no—it is the ground of the garden, it signifies the real right way, as Beethoven knew when he wrote the finale for his
Fifth Symphony
. Mr. Hirk leaned like a broken pole against the piano. Hold out your hand, Joey, hold it out, the gnawed right hand that plays—there—that hand is pagan, it is a human hand, it is for shaking and touching and grasping and caressing; it is not made to be a fist; it is not made for praying, for gestures of disdain, for tearing one’s hair or holding one’s head, for stabbing, for saluting; well, now, see my hand here? this crab? this wadded clutch of knotted fingers? it is the sacred hand, the scarred and crucified claw, the toil-destroyed hand, fit only to curse its God. It has given up every good thing. Having given up every good thing, no good thing comes near. Not, certainly, the major third, the pagan chord. The foundation of nature—which is vibration … Nature is nothing but vibration.

These hands—my uglies—my hands are a denial … they deny life. They deny you, Joey, all others’ bodies; they deny me. They deny light; they keep caged the darkness clenched in their clench. They are my shame—these uglies—my pain—these uglies—my curse. It makes me sad—sorry—sad and sorry to see them. You understand? Sometimes I hide them inside of my shirt. Then I feel their heat hot on my belly.

Out of breath Mr. Hirk sat in silence for a few moments. When Monteverdi wished to say “joyful is my heart” he did so in the major third; when Handel refers to life’s sweetest harmonies he does so in the major third; what is central to the “Ode to Joy” but the major third? in
La Traviata
, when they all lift their glasses and cry “Drink!” “
Libiamo!
” they do so to the major third; and what does Wagner use, at the opening of
The Ring
, to describe the sensuously amoral state of nature? he employs the major third; then just listen to that paean of praise in Stravinsky’s
Symphony of Psalms
or the finale of Shostakovich’s
Fifth
, and you will hear again the major third.

And the spider heard it, suspended there between floor and ceiling, felt it when the thin silver thread he hung from vibrated in sympathy with Chopin, with the étude’s instructional thirds. Joey—look at the green-gray light in this room, at this secondhand light, the pallor of
death … and what do you hear in my voice, or what would you hear if you were to hear my heart? you’d hear the minor sixth—the sixths that the spider fled from, the gold ring in
Rhinegold
—the source of so much contention—Leonora’s bitter tears in
Fidelio
, sorrowful Don Quixote, yes, sixths serve anguish, longing, despair, so tell me why should the spider stay when the line he clings to trembles like a tear? Only
we
wallow in bitterness, only
we
choose gray-green lives and devote ourselves to worlds, like the shadow-lean leaves of those ghost plants littering the floor—leaves, worlds—which do not exist, the traces of a light that is no longer there.

Joey made as if to go, rising from the piano bench, when Mr. Hirk’s nearby presence pushed him down. Mr. Hirk hung over Joey now, supported by the piano itself, bent because of his bones. If one day you learn to play, Joey, you must play, whatever the key or the intervals are, as if
for
, as if
in
, the major third, the notes of praise. Play C. Joey struck a key. There were several Cs, but Joey knew which was meant, a key that would sound a certain way. In filling our ear just now it was everywhere, Mr. Hirk said. Every. Where. Was it sitting beside that pot? No. Was it lying on the rug? Of course not. Everywhere? Ah, in the piano? No? Where it was made? Not this tone. Suppose someone shuts the door and then you, Joey, ride away on your bike. Where is the slam? eh? where is the small growl of the tire in my gravel? Why there it is—the growl—it’s in the gravel where it was made; there is the slam, too, where the door shut on the jamb! Bam! Do D. Joey did D. Hear? The note is everywhere again. Not at the end of your finger. In its own space! That’s where it is, filling us up with it, making a world of its own on its own. Just one note is enough. Do E. Joey E’d. Another filling, yet the same jar! Each note makes the same space and then floods it.

Joey thought he sensed relief in Mr. Hirk’s voice, like someone wound up dangerously tight might feel once they began unwinding or the spring of a clock that was finally allowed to tell time.

Oh, a dunce might say, hey, it came from the piano. And the French horn’s passage is from the middle of the rear of the orchestra, while the violins sing to the left of the conductor, violas and cellos moan on the right, the strings closing in on the winds from both sides of the fan. Like the door’s slam, the dunce hears only the jamb where it was made. Because the bang, the gravel’s
brrr
, means something. So he fastens them there
like tied dogs. But if you insist on silence, enjoy a little shut-eye when you listen, so there’s a bowl of darkness where your head was—then, in the music, where notes are made to appear through the commands of form, not by some tinkler on the triangle, Joey, not because they say something about their cause—then you can almost perceive—though squeeze-eyed—you can see what you hear, see the space, and see how one note is higher than another, farther away, or closer, closer than the heart. See, sir, the brightness of the trumpet among the constellations like a brighter star? Closer to whom, though, Joey? brighter than what? not to you or me, for we are no more than gravel or doors. Oh no. Brighter … closer … meaningful … to one another.

In this damn dark, Joey, when I get the phono cranked, I can follow the song exactly where it goes, and it, not Galli-Curci, it alone is real—is a rare wonder, not of this world—a wonder and a consolation.

Nor will you hear its like anywhere but in its own space. A sneeze in C? Hah. A laugh in E? A siren that runs the scale like a soprano? The notes of music live in music alone, Joey. They must be made, prepared with care. To give voice to feeling.

You will never learn anything about music that is more important than this. Mr. Hirk, with a groan, straightened somewhat. Then he used his groan for instruction. You hear it, my ache, emerge from my mouth. It has a location. Because it is in ordinary space. It is there, fastened to its cause. My grunt, I mean, not my pain. My pain is nowhere, but that’s another matter. And my pain is a call like a child’s for its mother. But when we listen to music we enter a singular space, Joey, a space not of this room or any road. This you must understand.

Sound them together, sound the chord, play CDE, Joey. Can you do it? Joey protested by doing it dramatically. Suppose I mix a little yellow and a little green together. What after all are my sick plants doing? Is chartreuse two colors or one? Joey naturally made no answer. One. One. One. One. The book beat on the piano seat. But in the chord I hear clearly C and D and E. They penetrate but do not disappear into one another. They are a trinity—a single sound in which I hear three. C is the Son. D is God the Father, the sacred root, and E is the Holy Ghost. Now, Joey, can you do this? play all at once a loud C, a soft D, and an ordinary E. Which Joey did, triumphantly. Again and again to demonstrate how easily. There! You can hear them! They are everywhere yet
in different places! They are one, but they are three. If theology wrote music … Mr. Hirk’s voice trailed away. At the heart of everything, in music’s space, multiple vibrations …

Joey was relieved to get away. Mr. Hirk was somewhat embarrassing in addition to being ugly and poor and pitiful. Needy too. His hands were beginning to look like tree roots. But Joey rode away sad himself—a small sad-infested Joey—for he had not canceled the lessons; he had been allowed no suitable occasion or merciful excuse, moreover he had permitted shame and cowardice to dissuade him, and now he would have to mail, messageless as was his mother’s habit, a few small bills in an envelope the way he understood a payoff would be made, so that next week, when the time arrived for his bike to skid in the gravel in front of Mr. Hirk’s door, at the time when Joey would be expected to pop in and ask, How ya doin? there’d be nothing and no one, no bowl of silence ready to be filled with the latest tunes, only patient expectation, puzzlement, disappointment, hurt. Joey felt guilty and sorry and sad. He pedaled recklessly. He hoped his father had, at one time, felt something of the same shame.