Who Is Martha? (6 page)

“At last among the like-minded!” the sisters sighed on the way to the buffet, wiping the dust from the marble steps with the hems of their shabby dresses. With a dignified impatience, holding Levadski by the hand, they hurried towards the people who understood music. They recognized each other from a distance, intimated a bow or a kiss on the hand; ladies wearing arm-length gloves shook each other’s hands. You could see the sparkle of pocket watches on gold chains, wilting carnations in the buttonholes of gentlemen gave off a barely perceptible scent, so heavy were the clouds of perfume of the supposedly weaker sex who had done their best to dress up to the nines. People conversed during the intermissions as if this were the last opportunity to impart something of essence to the world. The topic of conversation was music; after all it brought the old elite together, veterans of an out-and-out lost and futile war. A folding fan dropped to the parquet floor, was picked up with a smile and a slight creaking of the spine, people continued to converse about music. People offered toasts to the music.

This group of people was even more suspect to Levadski than their opponents who, with champagne glasses filled to the brim, skirted around the island of the elites, as if they were ashamed of the course that history had taken. Levadski found it difficult to distinguish between the true and the false music lovers, for both clans were equally convinced of their love of the art. The hangers-on gave the impression of being clueless and inquisitive, which made them a little more sympathetic in Levadski’s eyes than those who were of his great-aunts’ ilk, so immersed in their knowledge of the essence that there seemed to be no room for music itself in their emotional life. In spite of this, Levadski’s passion for music was kindled by these partially unintelligible conversations in the buffet hall of the
Musikverein
, in between the canapés with carefully counted caviar roe and the tinkling drops of crystal chandeliers warmed by the breath of the people, slowly circling around themselves. The
Musikverein
hall was gold, the pearls of the champagne were a dusty gold in the flutes, like wax candles forming a circle around the speaker with the gold tooth in his mouth. Levadski listened to him, hanging on every word. Like crumbs of gold, the man scattered his words into the circle of altar boys and girls holding wax candles in their hands.

“How, ladies and gentlemen, can music free itself from its fetters? From which fetters?, the eyes of the youngster (Levadski ducks) ask rightly. My friend! From which fetters? The answer is simple – from the fetters of its existence as a masterpiece! Called back into life through the palpable feelings of the interpreter. But, my dear sir, the charming ladies (looking over at Levadski’s great-aunts) will object, what about fidelity to the work and the historically correct way of playing it? (Pauses for a drink, scans the circle with a mischievous glance.) Are we academic classicists? Do we belong to that pedantic breed of people who blindly believe that the work will speak for itself if the interpreter restrains his feelings and snatches those of the composer out of thin air? (Levadski’s great-aunts shake their heads decisively.) No, no and no again! What an absurd thought! How, if not by means of a tender heart, is the musician meant to understand the composer? It is only through the living, through our presence, that the idea of a work can be realized. But (the prophet raises a chubby forefinger) how to play, in particular the younger ones among us ask (looking at the shrinking Levadski), in order to do the composer justice? Let us forget, dear friends, (conciliatory nodding of the head) our misgivings about the personal touch. A respectful virtuoso will never vainly abuse it. Where would that get us, yes, where would that get us? (Pauses for a drink, absent-minded wiping of the moustache.) The composer is dead! (Fixed stare into the circle.) Yet for as long as he lived, he found consolation in this one thought: his music will outlive him and be played by generations to follow. Irrespective of the personal touch, the music has survived the composer. Ladies (pause) and gentlemen, it is only, I repeat, it is only when it is in harmony with our time that music is alive and able to move us deeply. (Small outbreak of applause with a confused Levadski at its head.) And I am most decisively saying this aloud to all the academic classicists!”

“Bravo!” the great-aunts shouted. It was not in the hall, but during the intermissions, when speeches like this were bandied about, that they truly seemed to come alive.

“In the time of our grandfathers, everything was played according to their own perception of it,” a heavily powdered beauty from times gone by announced. “The adaptation by a virtuoso was considered more significant that the original score!” Levadski’s great-aunts nodded, gazing into the distance with nostalgia.

“And then our grandfathers died, and our fathers suddenly stood there lost,” said her grace, waving her bony arms. “As if burdened by a curse, people started to play in a historically faithful manner – the slightest whim of the composer, however absurd, was maintained, even transcription errors in the first edition were celebrated as being ingenious and accepted!”

“God forbid,” the great-aunts murmured, and Levadski was on the verge of making the sign of the cross. The caviar canapé tasted good because it looked like a glade filled with enlarged bark beetle eggs.

“Perfection became an obsession,” the old lady whispered, lowering her eyes. “No faith was placed in chance, in a person’s own nature …”

“And music itself,” groaned the great-aunts, “as fleeting and unique as it is! A spider’s web in flight!” And then slightly tearfully to Levadski, “Although it is only possible to harness the music if you let it fly!”

“Our grandfathers were still able to do that,” the powdered lady sighed at the stuccoed ceiling of the buffet hall, “then our fathers were conceived.”

“I remember,” one of the great-aunts recollected, “my – our – father, praising an interpreter by calling his style harsh!”

“Delightful!” her sister said, pinching Levadski’s hollow cheek, “now everything has changed!”

At another table a conversation was going on about the interpreter’s behavior towards the composer’s authority. “Passive recipient or generous servant of the composer – that is the question!

” “Willing servant, no question, willing servant!

” The ladies smiled into their glasses, as if they hoped to find a witty turn of phrase at the bottom. The gentlemen, on the other hand, dished them out and drank to the bottom. People patted each other on the padded shoulders of their tailcoats, raising particles of dust that glowed gold in the light of the crystal chandeliers.

A gentleman with sideburns and a red face, leaning on a bistro table, declared: “Not every grand piano and pianist can do justice to the Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106! (Inquisitive raising of plucked eyebrows.) Let us consider the well-known moment before the entrance of the reprise of the first movement!”

“Oh yes!” a blushing Fräulein in respectable school-teacher-blue interjected. “Beethoven’s Érard grand piano has very little in common with the tone and variety of our grand pianos.”

“The sound of the orchestra of his time,” a richly bejeweled matron with an unhealthy palor growled, “can hardly be compared to that of today, either.”

“An Érard grand piano and a Steinweg! Ha!” laughed a bent old little lady with a diamond tiara, “chicken broth and goulash soup!”

“I have a fortepiano at home that is in sore need of attention at the moment,” a faded diva remarked. “Its tone is like a cembalo, I should add …”

“Oh, if you could just play a musical instrument with a sense of humor,” interrupted a corpulent woman of indeterminate age, “you only need think of Beethoven’s
Kind, willst du ruhig schlafen!
It’s hilarious!” (Long thoughtful pause, disappearance of the fat lady behind a curtain.)

“Well,” the gentleman with the sideburns said, enlivened, “to speak of an amusing experience, I once attended a concert in a small castle during which a virtuoso interrupted his playing to throw two groaning pieces of fire-wood out into the snow. He killed two birds with one stone: the terrible racket in the fireplace and the coach-man who was unfortunate enough to be doing his business beneath the very castle window.”

One of Levadski’s great-aunts was the first to disengage herself from the general state of shock. “What annoys me most are the lower middle classes in the hall who, in the silence of the general pause before the minuet, slide around on their chairs, cough and clean their pince-nez, totally oblivious to the reason why there is a general pause … (Waiting, a concerned glance towards Levadski.) What for? In order to create a state of motionless silence (a finger solemnly raised along with lacquered red fingernail), before the minuet deliciously and consolingly pours forth over the great lament.”

“How anybody can be that unreceptive to music!” out-raged, giving a curt nod in the direction of where the lower middle classes were mingling. “How should they know that the silence that follows the final chord is more important than the sound that goes before it? Instead of celebrating the silence for a while, they race each other to the cloakroom.”

“It would be best if people like that didn’t turn up here in the first place,” the man with the sideburns suggested.

“That lot,” laughed the fat lady who had reappeared, “can’t even tell the difference between Beethoven’s
pianissimo misterioso
and
dolce
!”

“What
is
the difference?” the man with the sideburns asked innocently.

“You are having me on, my dear sir,” the fat woman smiled. “
Dolce
is warm gentleness.
Pianissimo misterioso
is a shudder of amazement. Oh, if I only think of the teasing finale of his variations!” she chirped, “of the sweeping polonaise, of the impetuous
Rondo alla ingharese
…”

“Warm gentleness and a shudder of amazement,” the man with the whiskers repeated thoughtfully, “I would like to be drinking what you are!”

“Wasn’t that amusing?” the sisters sighed on the way to the organ balcony. “What could be more intellectually stimulating than company like that!”

At the bottom of his heart Levadski felt pity for his great-aunts. Years later, however, it was driven out by understanding and deep sympathy. The pathetic sparkle and the paltry entertainment to which the old women desperately clung could be likened to a sparsely populated lake, where a mollusk counts as half a fish. In spite of everything, it had been intellectually stimulating company, Levadski realized when he was older, intellectually stimulating by virtue of the presence of the music itself.

V

M
ORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY
L
EVADSKI
’
S MOTHER SPOKE
of her yearning for honest country air, which in her opinion only still existed in Galicia. “Galicia just happens to be in Poland,” she said, “and the war has been over for years.” What spoke most in favor of a return was that Levadski had long since reached school age. “We are going back,” she announced to her aunts one evening in spring. With a bow and a kiss of the hand Levadski said farewell to the old ladies. When he turned around again on the stairs to wave, he saw that the sisters had already closed the French doors. He imagined hearing heartrending sobbing behind them, a dull thud, as if a heavy velvet curtain along with the iron curtain rod itself had fallen to the ground.

At the age of eight, Levadski was sent to school in his homeland, which now belonged to the Second Polish Republic. In honor of this day a tough goose from the market was slaughtered and a broth made from its bones. Levadski made a pipe out of its gristly throat. Every morning, on Saturdays too, Levadski carted his heavy bag to school – which consisted of a single room – in the neighboring village. He had to learn Polish, which he did not find difficult as the son of a Little Russian.

“Be happy,” his mother said cheerfully, “be happy, my son, for the more languages you speak, the more human you will be!” The language of birds would have sufficed for Levadski. Even as an elementary school pupil he could have sworn that the language of birds was universal, that the only difference lay in the voices of the respective birds, and that the magpie could understand the crow, just as the blackbird could understand the duck. “What about ducks who live in a different country?” Levadski’s mother asked provocatively.

“When they meet they will talk to each other in such a way that everyone understands,” Levadski said. “Human beings should also find a common language. After all, we are animals too.”

“That is the way it once was,” said Levadski’s mother. “Your father and I lived in a world like that. We had sub-scriptions to all sorts of bird journals: Cabanis’
Journal of Ornithology
, the
Zoological Garden
, the
Journal of the Zoological Botanical Society of Vienna
, Nitzsche’s
Illustrated Hunting Journal
, bird conservation papers, and many others. They were all sent to us by post. We shopped at the Polish market, went to the Russian saddler, the local Jew sewed my wedding dress for me. Everything worked fine. The world was connected through trade, it was an aviary with the most diverse birds, who admired and enriched each other. We could send letters to all the countries of the globe, even to the director of the Caucasian Museum in Tiflis who was a bird lover and, moreover, a Prussian.”

“What is a Prussian?”

“A Prussian is also a human being!” Levadski’s mother laughed.

And so, time passed. While Levadski’s behind was parked on the school bench in Lemberg and he ripped one pair of trousers after the other, his mother remained in the forester’s hut, planted a vegetable garden and learned Polish, so that she could subscribe to a handful of bird magazines and read them in the native tongue of the land of which she was now a citizen.

When Levadski was in his fourth year of study and poring over his thesis concerning the numerical deficiency of Corvidae, his mother sensed that something was about to happen in the world. “A Flood is nearly upon us!” she wrote to the student Levadski at the Institute of Zoology in Lemberg.