“I don’t mind,” I told my grandmother.
Mario asked, “You’ll play for us at the dinner, right?”
“Of course he’ll play,” my grandmother replied, and patted Mario on the shoulder. “Go tell your mother it is settled and I will see her tomorrow to make arrangements.”
“Okay, signora,” Mario said, and grinned at me. “See you, Maestro.”
My grandmother remained standing there, regarding me in silence until the door closed behind Mario. Then she said, “That was not your work for the professor, was it?”
I shook my head. “That was a warm-up exercise.”
“A warm-up exercise that takes half an hour?” Her face became stern. “I don’t want you to avoid practicing your pieces for the professor because you think he will be hard to please. Do you hear me, figlio mio? Because he is so demanding you must practice twice as hard, and play his pieces twice as long. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I replied. She was very perceptive, my grandmother.
“Good.” Her voice became brisk. “I want you to tell your father of the dinner. He must come and bring his wife. If he does not come—” She stopped, changed her mind. “He must come,” she finished. “And you must work hard at your lesson for the professor. Do not ever let me hear you are shirking your lessons. Finish.”
The dinner took place five days later. When I returned from school and opened the apartment house door, the aroma of rich cooking wafted around me. I raced up the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment, only to find the door blocked by Mario’s mother.
“Out, out! There’s too much to do to have someone else underfoot today,” Signora Angeletti said.
“But I need to practice.”
“No practice,” my grandmother called from the kitchen. “Practice has been canceled by the authorities.”
“Go help Mario in the store,” his mother said. “No, wait, the fool is upstairs playing with his stereo. Go upstairs and tell my youngest fool that if he comes down tonight with dirty hands, he’ll sleep on his belly for a week.”
My grandmother came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron. Her face was flushed, and her eyes glittered. “Did you tell your father he was to be here at seven o’clock?”
“Three times,” I replied.
“Stop worrying about the father,” Signora Angeletti said, her eyes still on me. “Either he comes or he doesn’t. Basta.”
“I’m not worrying,” my grandmother said. “I just want it all very clear to him when he learns—”
“He learns what he learns,” Mario’s mother interrupted. She and my grandmother shared a look that left me very puzzled. Signora Angeletti turned back to me and said, “Go. There’s too much happening here. A piccolo maestro underfoot might find himself stepped on.”
Rough hands pushed me out, and the door closed on their laughter. I stood in the gloomy hallway, astonished. I had not heard my grandmother laugh like that since before my grandfather died.
Mario let me into his apartment. “Hey, Gianni, just in time. C’mon over here, I gotta have another pair of hands.”
I followed him down the long hallway. Their apartment was big—three bedrooms and a kitchen larger than my grandmother’s living room. I asked, “Why aren’t you in the store?”
He waved me to silence. Once we were in what now was his workroom, he said, “We gotta be quiet; my father’s in bed with the flu. My brother’s downstairs minding the store.”
“I thought he worked for the American army.”
“Yeah, he does. He’s a waiter in the Officers’ Club. My uncle is head of the restaurant and got him the job, you know that. But everybody’s off on maneuvers or something, so Danilo’s back here for a coupla weeks. C’mon, Gianni, give me a hand.”
“I don’t want to get electrocuted.”
“What electrocute?” Mario said, sitting down in front of a work-table cluttered with coils of wire, tools, testing instruments, soldering guns, and the entrails of a very complicated-looking gadget.
“Someday I’m gonna invent me a soldering gun that lets the solder out automatically on the point where you need it,” Mario said. “You press a little button and you’re done. After that I’m gonna retire to the Riviera. Now you gotta hold the solder with one hand, the gun with the other, and the wire with something else, I dunno, maybe your teeth.”
The room’s right-hand wall supported a series of shelves made of concrete slabs and plywood boards. On it rested seven stereo components, none of them fully intact. A spaghetti of wires ran down between the back of the shelves and the wall.
“What’s that thing you’re playing with?”
“It’s an equalizer, and I’m not playing. Are you gonna come over here or do I solder you to the wall?”
I had to be careful around Mario when he was working on his stereo. Years of quarreling with his parents over his burning obsession with electronic gadgets had left him very thin-skinned. Once during the summer I had referred to the stereo as his hobby, and for a minute I thought he was going to slug me. How would I feel if he called my guitar a hobby, he had finally shouted, just another stupid little kid’s hobby.
“Hold that blue wire right there so the end touches that point,” Mario said.
I did as I was told. “What does an equalizer do?”
Mario mumbled something about balancing tonal sound and told me to keep my hand still. His parents paid him slave wages for his work in the store, so all his equipment had a bandaged and battered look. I was not sure Mario minded all that much. Every time he was finished with one gadget he would put it up on the wall and take down another, unless he had saved up enough money for something else.
He had one loudspeaker that sounded deathly ill and another that did not work at all. What was the use of buying speakers when his parents wouldn’t let him turn the music up, I asked him once. So I can learn, Mario had said, chopping the words off with anger stored from answering the same question to his parents.
Soon after that headphones appeared, but they did not work either. I knew because I tried to listen to the broadcast of a guitar concert on them, but it sounded as if the audience clapped the whole time. When I said something about it Mario whipped them off my head and talked about them needing a little adjustment, that’s all. I did not ask to listen again.
“There’s some other guys playing music around here,” Mario said. “Friday nights, right over my head.”
“What?”
“Yeah, between you underneath and them on top I’m going crazy.” Mario glanced up. “Just kidding, Gianni. You know I can’t hear your guitar.”
“Who plays upstairs, Mario?”
“Here, hold that wire just there, okay? Thanks. Some Jewish doctor, I dunno. Dr. Levisto. My mother thinks he’s another prophet, the way she goes on. He’s okay, I guess. You know those two skinny dark-haired twins that’re always together?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen them.”
“Hey, c’mon, you’ve been here how long, six months? Half a year and you don’t notice two kids stuck together like they were Siamese twins?”
“I’m not out on the street that much.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know. Okay, you can let it go now. Drop by sometime and I’ll introduce you to our two shadows. Wouldn’t hurt for you to get outside some, Gianni. You could meet some of my friends.”
“I don’t have anything to say to them,” I said quietly.
Mario paused in his work to give me a look of depth far beyond his years. “There’s not much in your world besides music, is there, Maestro?”
“It’s my life,” I said simply. “Tell me about the music upstairs.”
“Yeah, if you wanna call it that.” Mario turned back to his soldering. “Every Friday night about a thousand people stomp up the stairs. Sounds like those old war movies when the secret police tromp around stealing babies after everybody with any sense has gone to bed.”
“The music,” I pressed.
“Every Friday night?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Think maybe I could go up, you know, and listen?”
Mario looked up again, smiling this time. “You feeling okay, Maestro?”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re always serious. The day you laugh is the day I fall over dead from shock.” He bent back over his equalizer. “I could ask Mama. She likes you almost as much as she does Dr. Levisto. Levisto and my Maestro. Two prophets in the making. You don’t believe it, just ask my mother. Sure, I’ll ask her, Gianni. They’ll probably let you go up. Why not? Half the city’s up there already.”
At six o’clock Signora Angeletti came upstairs to yell at Mario for not having taken his bath and at me for not having gone home. I ducked under her swat and scampered, followed by a dire warning of what she was going to do to me if I was late for my own party.
When I arrived at my father’s apartment I found him where he always was after work, in front of the television. I heard Anna moving around in the kitchen. I started to say something to him about the party, then decided, why bother? Three times was enough.
Half an hour later, I paused outside my grandmother’s door and listened to the loud talk and laughter from inside. I recognized Mario’s voice, and his mother’s, and my grandmother’s shrill reply from the kitchen. Then I heard a deeper voice also speaking Italian. Mario’s father? No, he was in bed with the flu. It had to be Mario’s older brother, Danilo. It seemed very strange hearing all those voices and laughter in my grandmother’s apartment. I felt awkward as I unlocked the door and walked inside.
“Hey, the birthday boy decides to show up after all.” A wiry young man with Mario’s pinched features and lively eyes walked over and stuck out his hand. “I’m Danilo. Nice to meet you, Gianni. I heard a lot about you. Hope you’re gonna play something for us tonight.”
I smiled uncertainly, feeling awkward and vaguely grown-up as I shook his hand.
The buzzer beside the door sounded. I pushed the button to release the outside door, then opened the apartment door and listened to heavy footsteps clumping up the stairs. Around the bend in the stairwell appeared Herr Scherer, who looked up at me, grinned, and waved. “I’m glad you don’t live another floor higher up, Gianni. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m not sure I’d have the strength to make it.”
I didn’t say anything because I had spotted the woman walking up the stairs behind him. It was Fraulein Rohr.
Herr Scherer stopped in front of me, caught the direction of my gaze and grinned at my surprise. “My wife is in bed with the flu. Half of Dusseldorf is either in bed with the flu or walking around looking as if death is about to strike.”
He put one arm around Fraulein Rohr’s slender shoulders; in his bulky overcoat the arm looked too heavy a burden for her to bear. “So I brought my favorite music teacher instead.”
“I hope that’s all right,” Fraulein Rohr said.
“I would have called,” Herr Scherer said. “But I don’t have your grandmother’s number, and even if I did I couldn’t tell her I’ve been dreaming about this meal for five days.” His yellow teeth appeared through the dark scraggly beard. “Besides, my music teacher promised I could eat her pasta.”
Fraulein Rohr dug him in the ribs. “No, I did not.”
“It’s fine,” I said. It was wonderful. “Come on in.”
My grandmother appeared from the kitchen. I made introductions. My grandmother said, “So this signora was the one who started it all?”
“Signorina,” I corrected. “Yes.”
“Tell her it is an honor to have her in my home.” I did so. Then my grandmother said, “Ask the gentleman if he brought it.”
“Brought what?”
“Just ask him, Gianni.”
The yellow teeth appeared once more. Herr Scherer held out a guitar case I had seen but not really taken in because of my surprise over Fraulein Rohr’s appearance.
I asked him, “Are you going to play tonight?”
Herr Scherer laughed. “Not unless you put something in my wine.”
“Ask them for their coats, Giovanni,” my grandmother said. “And let’s all move into the living room.”
They gave me their coats and started down the hallway. My grandmother stopped me with a hand on my arm. She asked, “Where is your father?”
“Watching television,” I said.
My grandmother turned to look at Mario’s mother; then she pushed me forward. “Go put their coats in the alcove and see if the guests need anything.”
The living room seemed tiny, cramped, and very noisy with the seven of us milling about. I slipped into my alcove, draped their coats over a chair, heard Mario ask, “Is that it?” and his mother reply, “Shhh.”
When I came back out people were finding seats, my grandmother was pouring wine into her good glasses, Mario’s mother was handing it around, everybody was wearing smiles, and all eyes were on me. The guitar case Herr Scherer had brought up was sitting in the middle of the floor. My heart gave a sudden lurch.
“Happy birthday, Gianni,” my grandmother said quietly.
I looked at the case, then back at her, then around at all the grinning faces. I could not move.
Numbly I walked to the case and dropped to my knees. My fingers seemed barely able to release the catches. I raised the lid and stopped breathing.
Herr Scherer said, “She’s a beauty, no? A Galoya. Spanish. I told your father and grandmother about it when I met them at the school. It belonged to an old friend of mine, another crazy music teacher. Ever since his arthritis stopped him from playing he’s been thinking about selling it. Trouble is, he wanted to find somebody who would appreciate it as much as he has. I told him about you, and it seems he knew Professor Schmitz, so he talked to him as well. He let it go for a song.”
I scarcely heard him. The guitar seemed to glow softly. There was no mark on the neck to tell who had made it, but everything about it was artistic. Outlining the body’s curves and around the central mouth was a double line of inlaid mother-of-pearl and ebony. The pattern was repeated inside the six tuning keys. Faint indentations in the middle of the first four frets spoke of age. Innumerable coats of wax buffed to a rich sheen spoke of years of loving care. I reached for the guitar and felt an energy that made my fingers tingle.
Mario asked, “Do you like it, Gianni?”
I cradled the guitar in my lap and looked up. I could scarcely see his grinning face; it seemed to swim a little before my eyes. I nodded my head, and looked back to the guitar. I could not believe it was mine.
“Fifty years old if it’s a day,” Herr Scherer said.
My grandmother clapped her hands. “Enough! Food is getting cold and guests are hungry. Giovanni, down with the guitar, you can play for us later. Mario, show the guests where to wash their hands. Giovanni! Put the guitar by the wall and come help me in the kitchen. It will still be there when we finish eating.”
Reluctantly I set the guitar back in its case, and moved it over by the far wall. I followed my grandmother into the kitchen.
She looked at me fondly. “It is a good guitar, no?”
I stammered, “I-it’s beautiful. I—”
She shoved a serving bowl full of steaming pasta into my arms and spun me around. “Wait until everyone is seated, then serve the signorina first, then the gentleman. Wait. Here.” She placed two serving ladles in the bowl. “Now
go. And make sure everyone has bread.”
I have never seen anyone eat as Herr Scherer did that night. Three bowls of pasta, my grandmother’s hand-made tortelloni con spinaci alla panna, followed by two heaping plates of arrosto di vitello with patate al forno and a sauce made from cream and white wine and fresh porcini mushrooms. My grandmother kept glancing at him and then at me as though to say, look here, see how a man is supposed to eat. It was all lost on me. I sat between Mario and Fraulein Rohr with my new guitar directly across the room, as happy as I had ever been in my life.
“Ach du lieber,” Herr Scherer groaned and dropped his fork with a clatter. “If I have one more bite I will positively explode.” He stifled a belch. “I beg your pardon.”
My grandmother held the platter under his nose, suggested, “Perhaps a little more veal?”
I could see he was tempted, but he shook his head. “Gianni, tell your grandmother that I would, except she’d have to use a shovel and the vacuum cleaner to get me off her carpet.”
“Don’t you tell her any such thing,” Fraulein Rohr said sharply.
“Wait ’til you see dessert,” Mario said happily.
Herr Scherer groaned and held his stomach. “Dessert! I forgot all about dessert. And it’s probably something I’ll just love.”
My grandmother set down the platter. “What’s the matter, is he sick?”
“Torta di zabaglione, with two layers of fudge and fresh whipped cream on top,” Mario said, thoroughly enjoying himself. “My mother used half a liter of rum in the custard.”
“Ach du lieber,” Herr Scherer repeated. “I knew it. Maybe I should go jog around the block.”
“Serves you right,” Fraulein Rohr said crossly. “Three servings of pasta. I’ve never seen anyone in my life be such a pig.”
“Tell me what they’re saying,” my grandmother insisted.
“Herr Scherer’s eaten too much and doesn’t have room for dessert,” I said.
My grandmother gave a short harrumph and worked to keep her face straight. She looked at Mario’s mother and said, “Come help me in the kitchen.”
The Maestro Page 10