The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  I looked at the clock beside the door, and was shocked to find that I had been sitting there for almost twenty minutes. I wiped my hands on the towel I had packed in my guitar case and carefully tuned the strings. The notes echoed loudly in the empty room. I liked the sound. The linoleum floor and concrete walls seemed to amplify the guitar’s power. I played a simple practice run, a tonal exercise that ran up and down one octave from middle C. I listened to the sound bouncing back at me, enjoying the way the echo melted the notes together.

  I played the run again, much faster this time, and the edges of the notes seemed to blur with the reverberation. I did the run in minor and then in seventh, then slapped the strings silent with the palm of my hand. The air vibrated from the music that was no longer there.

  I felt the world stop to catch its breath. I saw myself back in my living room, sitting quietly and listening to the rosary beads click through my grandmother’s fingers. I felt the peace settle upon my mind and heart, and knew without needing to question it that she was praying for me. And there, faintly, barely audible, straining to be heard through the ringing silence, was my lilting inner melody.

  I held my breath and tentatively began to play. It seemed so faint, so fragile that it might fade away at any moment. But it did not. As I followed its lyrical course on my guitar, I felt the peace and calming joy continue to build.

  The bell ending class rang, and the inner melody faded away. Yet the peace remained. I was certain that my grandmother was seated in her favorite chair, a Bible open in her lap, her eyes closed, her lips moving in whispered prayer. I felt her calm strength and knew that somehow I was shielded from my fear.

  I walked to the teachers’ lounge. Fraulein Rohr was standing outside the door with a portly woman I did not know. She smiled when she saw me.

  “This is Frau Holz, Gianni. She will walk down with you in a few minutes.” She was very excited. “Are you nervous?”

  “A little,” I said. I felt calm and yet nervous. Very afraid, yet not afraid at all. How was that possible?

  “You go on to class,” Frau Holz said. “It will be a zoo in there with all those students.”

  “Herr Scherer should be helping out, if he was able to get away on time.”

  Frau Holz laughed. “Herr Scherer will be the worst of the lot. Go. We will be just fine.”

  Fraulein Rohr smiled at me. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, Gianni.” Then she was gone.

  “Would you like something to drink? I believe I might find us a nice cup of cocoa if you are thirsty.”

  I told Frau Holz that cocoa would be fine and followed her into the lounge. Teachers glanced my way as I entered and gave little smiles. They all seemed to know who I was. I found an empty chair in the corner and sat down. Gradually attention in the room turned away from me. Frau Holz returned and handed me a steaming mug. She sat down in the seat beside me and told me how her dog had just had puppies, and how she was afraid she would have five little monsters tearing up her garden that next summer instead of just one. I sat and took tiny sips from my cocoa and listened to her describe a dog that could eat roses without getting stuck by the thorns.

  Frau Holz glanced at her watch and asked if I was ready to go. I said yes and gave her my mug. She carried it back into the kitchen and did not say anything about how little I had drunk. As we walked down the hall she told me she had a free period, and asked if I would mind if she stayed to listen. I said no. She asked if I was nervous. A little, I repeated.

  “You’re just like my husband,” she said, stopping at the door to Fraulein Rohr’s class and knocking. “You’d never know he was scared about anything. Cool as ice, at least on the outside.”

  Fraulein Rohr opened the door. She looked strangely flushed. She gave us a nervous smile and held open the door.

  I walked in, the calming power shielding me from the sight. The class looked entirely different now, much larger and much, much fuller. Every seat was taken and two teachers I did not know stood in the back corner beside the window. The principal was there, in the front row next to the door. From the chair beside him Herr Scherer gave me a yellow-toothed grin and a wink.

  I walked over to Fraulein Rohr’s desk and fumbled with the catches to my guitar case. My fingers trembled slightly, but the calm within remained the stronger force. I was pulled in two directions, one shaking with fear and the other sheltered in an oasis of peace.

  I wiped my hands thoroughly on the towel before picking up the guitar, and listened to Fraulein Rohr tell the class who I was and how I had come from Italy and that I was now the youngest student at the Musikakademie. I carried my guitar and the towel over and sat down. I rubbed my hands again, then the guitar’s neck, and kept my eyes turned away from that cramped gathering. Fraulein Rohr laid her hand on my shoulder as she finished her introduction. When she stopped talking Herr Scherer started clapping and the class joined in.

  “All right, Gianni,” Fraulein Rohr said. She gave me another little smile and sat down beside Herr Scherer.

  I took a deep breath, flexed my fingers, plucked each string to check the tuning, made one adjustment, took another breath, and began.

  There were some stirrings and whispers as I started playing. My fingers were still trembling. I did not make mistakes, but I played the first bars awkwardly and had no feel for the strings. But the calm remained, a welling up from the very center of my chest, a quiet message of strength. Before I reached the midpoint of the piece the trembling had passed, and the room had become very still.

  When I finished, the applause was loud, pressing at the room’s confines. It both embarrassed and excited me. I wiped my hands on the towel and was glad to see that they were steady. I did not look at the people. As soon as the applause died down I started the second piece. It was a fast arpeggio, the first of the difficult pieces and the shortest. I played it very well, very fast. The ending started low on the bass string and flew up to a light trilling on the top fret of the highest string, fading away before the speed of the run could register. There was a moment’s silence at the end, then applause and excited laughter. I looked up, and saw Fraulein Rohr clapping hard, smiling with her eyes and biting her lower lip. Herr Scherer called out a loud bravo and winked at me again. I could not help grinning.

  Soon it was all over. Too soon. The audience clapped loud and long, and I wished there was time to play some more.

  The principal stood up while the class reverberated to the applause, shook my hand with both of his, then turned to the class and raised his hands for silence. He was a short, chubby man with eyes that did not smile with the rest of his face. When he raised his arms his coat lifted to reveal a protruding belly.

  “I am sure you all want to join me in thanking Giovanni di Alta for his performance,” he said. He let the applause go on for a moment, then stopped it, saying, “I am very happy to say that Giovanni has agreed to play for the school assembly before the Easter break, so we will all be able to enjoy his music again.” There was some excited talk and people started moving about.

  “Class dismissed,” he said, and the class erupted. As the students laughed and talked and tumbled from their cramped rows, I went to Fraulein Rohr’s desk and packed away my guitar. A couple of students I knew vaguely called out to me; I looked up and smiled in reply. The principal came over and shook my hand again. He was joined by Herr Scherer and Fraulein Rohr.

  “That was outstanding,” the principal said. “Have you ever heard anything like that before?”

  “He captivated the room,” Herr Scherer said. “Nine-tenths of them wouldn’t know Mozart from mozzarella, but for a whole blessed hour you could have heard a pin drop.”

  “I’m very proud of you, Gianni,” Fraulein Rohr said, her eyes shining.

  “Young man, I hope you’ll excuse me for announcing that you would play for the assembly before asking you officially. Fraulein Rohr said you were willing.”

  I told the principal it was fine.

  “Excellent. Now, let’s
see—” The principal’s ruddy features creased in thought. “We have the two speakers, they will take perhaps twenty minutes. Then there’s the skit by the dramatics class, another twenty. Would you care to play for twenty minutes between the speeches and the play?”

  I said that whatever he wanted would be all right.

  “That’s settled then. I must be getting back to work.” Briskly he shook my hand a third time and departed.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Fraulein Rohr’s eyes flickered back and forth between me and Herr Scherer. “I’m honestly at a loss for words.”

  “Then I’ll say it for you.” Herr Scherer laid a hand on my shoulder and said solemnly, “Gianni, you have the makings of a world-class guitarist. For every thousand people who can play the right notes, only one will be able to reach out and capture their listeners. Maybe only one in ten thousand. Before today I thought you might have this power. Today I am sure. You held this circus absolutely spellbound for an hour. I was listening for it, and even so there were moments when I forgot where I was. Do you understand what I am saying? You are a magnificent guitarist. Keep it up. I am very proud of you.

  “There.” He dropped his hand and looked at Fraulein Rohr. “Was that all right?”

  “Perfect,” she said, her voice a little shaky. She blinked her eyes very rapidly and repeated, “That was perfect.”

  ****

  One afternoon as we were returning from school together, Mario told me, “The whole school is talking about you, Gianni.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “How you’re the youngest in the whole history of the Musikakademie, you know, stuff like that.” Mario swept his hair back and gave a satisfied grin. “Some of the students are talking about how there’s this young Italian kid studying at the academy, and that there’s never been a German his age to do it. Really gets their backs up, Maestro.”

  The previous summer and autumn Mario had been busy turning some invisible corner. Now when we met after school, it seemed that he was speaking some alien language. His caustic humor had become a cynical, all-knowing bitterness. He had let his hair grow out very long, and had taken to wearing black. He was always getting into fights. At least once a week I went home alone because he was held after school for one problem or another. The battles he had with his parents were becoming the stuff of legends around the neighborhood.

  The discussions we did have revolved around three things. Girls and what they did or did not do were described in the most graphic detail. Mario was an endless source of knowledge about the rock music scene, traveling almost every weekend to some city or another for a concert. And his pleasure in street-fighting knew no bounds.

  Earlier that autumn, German television had broadcast a series of programs about four villages in southern Germany where the population of foreigners was larger than that of Germans. Following that, a couple of the weekly magazines had dedicated entire issues to the theme of foreign cultures infiltrating Germany. There were pictures of mosques and smoke-filled cafes and kerchief-covered women and swarthy-skinned street cleaners and restaurants with menus only in Turkish or Greek or Portuguese.

  The backlash was swift and smoldering. Swastikas appeared on numerous buildings. Neo-Nazi and other extreme right-wing groups became both vocal and abusive in their appeal for the foreigners to go home. At night, cars filled with foul-mouthed men began patrolling neighborhoods where the majority of inhabitants were foreign, looking for trouble. A multitude of discussions and spokesmen and advertisements called for calm and pointed out that without immigrant workers, the prosperous German industrial machine would grind to a halt.

  In the school, skinhead gangs vandalized the walls with words like Kanake, Neger, Spaghetti-Fresser. All ended with Raus, the German command for “out.” The Turks and the Italians and the Greeks formed their own gangs, and violence was a constant threat. Mario hung around a group of toughs who spoke of battles as something to yearn for.

  Mario stretched his legs under the tram seat in front of us and said casually, “I’m quitting school in the spring, Maestro. Had about all I can stand.”

  “So?” It did not really surprise me. “Have you told your parents yet?”

  “Gonna do it tonight. You and the old lady might wanna take a walk after dinner. A long one.”

  I nodded. Several times a week their voices made our walls shake. “What are you going to do?”

  “Got a job working in a Frankfurt recording studio. My brother helped set it up. Said at least then he’d be able to keep an eye on me, since it’s only an hour from where he works at the Darmstadt base. I’ll be going to school nights; there’s a special place there to study sound engineering. Best place in Europe, so I’ve heard. The studio’s kinda mickey mouse, but there’s another one here in Dusseldorf I’ve been talking to that’s promised me a job when I finish the course. The one here does a lot of the big rock groups.”

  “That’s great, Mario,” I said, thinking how much I would miss him.

  “You gotta come down and visit us, Gianni. Danilo still wants you to come play for his friends.”

  I put him off with, “Let me get through this recital, Mario. That’s about as far ahead as I can see right now.”

  ****

  As Easter approached, teachers began to stop their conversations and stare at me as I walked by. They would smile as I looked their way. Students I didn’t know said hello in the halls. The attention both flustered and pleased me.

  I had decided to give myself one simple piece at the beginning of the assembly to relax and get used to being on stage, and then spend the remaining time on three very difficult pieces. I no longer felt a need to play familiar tunes to draw them in.

  The morning of my performance, my grandmother was strangely quiet. As I rose from the breakfast table I asked her if everything was all right.

  “You are playing for the school today, is that correct?”

  “Yes.” I did not understand the question. We had talked about it several times, most recently the night before as she ironed my suit.

  She nodded her head slowly, her eyes on her coffee cup. “Do you perhaps recall the promise you made before your last performance, figlio mio? Does that busy head of yours have time to remember promises made to an old woman?”

  I heaved a silent sigh as I placed my dishes in the sink. Why did she have to hit on me about such things just as I was preparing for a performance? A door that normally remained locked deep within me threatened to spring open, revealing all the pain and anger and memories that I kept so carefully buried.

  I pushed the thoughts aside. “I remember.”

  “And have you come to any conclusion about this? Has there been any answer within your heart?”

  I stood there behind her, looking down on the disheveled gray curls. Do not force these things on me, I wanted to tell her. You don’t know what it does to me when you talk about all this. But the words would not come. I remained standing there, silent and angry.

  “I cannot stop praying for you, Giovanni,” she said finally. “I would rather stop breathing. But my first prayer is for the salvation of your eternal soul. There is nothing more important than this. Nothing.”

  She swiveled around, raised her face, and held me with her eyes. “There are two things you must remember at all times, Giovanni. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, then. First, whatever part of your life you do not dedicate to the Lord’s service becomes a barrier to knowing Him. There is always the danger, figlio mio, that He may destroy this barrier in order to draw you closer to Him.”

  Her eyes were solemn, her voice stronger than I had heard it in months. “Do you wish for this to happen to your music? Do you wish to make it into some defense of your selfish nature that you use to keep your Lord and Maker out of your life?”

  I shook my head. A storm of confusion rose around me as thoughts swirled and pushed at me. Yet there was an answering chord to her words that st
ruck somewhere deep inside. And this troubled me most of all.

  “No, of course you do not. This is why you must open your eyes, Giovanni. Learn what it means to pray, to seek your Lord.”

  She lowered her eyes to the table. With careful motions she folded her napkin along precise lines, gathering herself. She went on, “And here is the second thing, figlio mio. You will never know a purpose, never find a reason great enough to satisfy your endless hunger to play and perform, until you learn what it means to live with a deep and abiding faith in your Savior. All else is sham. All else is the ultimate lie, a lie you tell both to yourself and to Christ.”

  ****

  As the assembly was about to begin, I stood backstage and watched through a space in the curtain as the students filed in. It felt exhilarating to be free of all the normal school restrictions, to stand and observe several hundred students file in and keep quiet and sit where they were told. I spotted Mario up near the front of the hall and suppressed an impulse to wave. Behind me the two dramatics teachers were busy herding their students together into a relatively silent group along the side wall. My guitar was in a back cubbyhole, one with a door that shut so I could practice during the speeches. But I didn’t feel the need to rehearse anymore.

  The calm was not there that morning, but I tried hard not to think about it, or about my grandmother’s words. Confusion and inner turmoil were the last things I needed then. I was a little nervous; a cool tingling in my belly made everything stand out sharp and clear as though I had been tuned to a higher level. My hands were steady and not sweating too badly. I could barely wait to walk out there and show them that I was more than just the youngest kid at the academy. I wanted them to smile and say hello because of me.

  I stood and watched the principal give a few opening remarks, then listened to the first speaker without really hearing what he was saying. When the second speaker started talking I walked back to my alcove. As I passed the gaggle of students in their costumes and garish make-up, they and the teachers gave excited smiles and wished me luck.