The Finishing School

by Gail Godwin

  “I do!” cried Ursula passionately. “I do feel guilty! The older I grow, the more that woman haunts me. This summer her ghost has been breathing down my neck. There are certain parallels, you see, which I can’t go into, but it is as if she were determined to make me feel what she felt, and to suffer what she suffered. You are part of it, too.…”

  “I am? How?”

  “Well, you are like my daughter, a dream daughter I might have had. And I look at you and talk to you and read your face, and it would be, oh God, so painful if you ever betrayed me. So now I can see it from the other side. Except that I truly believe I love you more than my mother ever loved me. I respect and admire you. I wouldn’t want to change you, as she wanted to change me.”

  “Thank you.” Overcome by the suddenness and extravagance of her declaration, I tried to hide my feelings by shifting the subject slightly. “Whatever happened to that Karl?” I asked. “Did you ever hear from him anymore?”

  “Did we ever hear from him anymore?” she repeated with arch mysteriousness. “Ah, Justin, do you remember how I told you our family history was as convoluted as a Greek drama? Well, Sophocles himself couldn’t have plotted this one any better: Karl came back for Julie.”

  “Came back?”

  “Yes, he came back. Just like a bad penny. And Julie went off with him and spoiled his own career. Karl showed up at Julie’s Carnegie Hall recital. Yes, that’s right, my brother’s brilliant night, crowning all those years and years of studying and practicing and all our scrimping and saving so Julie could have his chance. And he was brilliant that night, he played like a god. And there were eleven hundred people in the audience. I credit myself for that: I organized that recital within an inch of its life. I spent more than two thousand dollars, hired the best recital manager in town, had beautiful fliers printed, with Julie’s picture, and I made Julie compile a list of every person he had met while at Juilliard, every old dowager at whose brownstone or Sutton Place apartment he had played chamber music, and I sent these fliers to them all, some with personal notes. I went around the city of New York myself, posting the fliers in every allowable space I could find—and some not allowable! I put them in hotel lobbies, apartment buildings, everywhere! And we got eleven hundred people. That’s no mean achievement. I’m talking about Carnegie Hall, not Little Carnegie, where most Juilliard graduates give their recitals. I was determined Julie was going to make a splash and he did. He had never looked so beautiful or played so well. Only, as fate would have it—our peculiar convoluted fate—Karl Klauss was winding up a tour of lieder singing in this country and was stopping off in New York, looking for some way to keep from going back to Germany—they were just about to start the war, you know—and he comes down to breakfast with his accompanist one morning at their hotel, and what do you think he sees? A flier announcing the recital of Julian DeVane. A flier I myself had put up, because it was a hotel popular with musicians.

  “So Karl came to Julie’s recital and went backstage afterward. Julie was overwhelmed. When he finally understood who this big German was—Karl had filled out quite a bit, to put it kindly—he kept repeating, ‘You came. You actually came. You said you would, all those many years ago, and you actually came!’ He hung on to Karl’s sleeve and made him stand there beside him while people came up to congratulate him on his performance. And to each one of them he said, ‘This is my first teacher, Karl Klauss, and without him I wouldn’t be here tonight!’ And Karl, I must say, caught on to his role at once and played it to the hilt. He told everyone who would listen how he had discovered Julie’s perfect pitch, and how, when he himself had won a ‘scholarship’ to the Hochschule and had to return to Germany, he had left instructions behind for Julie in a notebook. Instructions I happen to know that Julie’s teacher in Kingston never used; she told Father they were full of affectations meant to cover up a lack of solid technique.

  “After the recital, I had a small reception back at Julie’s apartment. Karl came and drank champagne and ate at least fifty hors d’oeuvres, and I heard him telling anyone who would listen how, when he was a child, he and his family had shared a single potato among the six of them. But Julie was simply mesmerized. He stayed at the side of his old teacher, hanging on to every word Karl uttered in his booming voice. And when Karl made a toast to ‘your dear parents, who took me in when I had nothing, and whose generosity set me on my life’s course,’ my brother actually wept. It was just too much for him, this dramatic reappearance of the man who had been his last connection to the time when he had both his parents. Now, even Father was gone; he died the year before Julie’s recital.

  “I thought that Karl had blossomed into a bombastic old phony. If he had felt that grateful to my parents, why had he never—except for one thank-you letter, shortly after he left our house—gotten in touch with us again? Yet I understood the pull Karl exerted on Julie. He was a poignant link with Julie’s childhood; he was vitally connected with Julie’s music. And—I have to confess it—I was glad of his timely appearance, even though I didn’t think he had changed for the better. I was sailing for France on the Normandie in a month’s time, and I had been worrying that Julie would miss me and there would be no one to encourage him in his music. And when Karl came to see us a day or so later and announced that he had sent his accompanist back to Germany without him and that he was going to apply for a permit to stay in America and work, I thought it sounded like a good idea when Julie asked him to share the apartment in New York. I thought Karl would be paying half the rent. I later learned that Karl paid for very little during his years with my brother.

  “And when Julie wrote to me in France, when I was staying with the DeVanes and was all involved with Marius, that he had been on tour with Karl, accompanying him in some singing engagements, I still didn’t see any real cause for concern. And then, just as I was about to leave for England, Julie wrote a rather sad letter, saying that Karl had been denied his permit because the immigration office didn’t think that he would be able to support himself singing lieder with the increasing anti-German feeling in America, and so Karl had signed on with an impresario who was taking him on tour to South America for the winter. Julie mentioned that he was helping Karl with his passage money, as he was low on funds, and I thought: Well, Karl Klauss has set sail twice out of the family’s pocketbook, but we have seen the last of him now. And I went on to London to enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I had waited so long to begin my own life, and I felt I had every right to start now. I had nursed Father for almost six years, when other girls my age were going to college and getting married; I had done everything in my power to launch my brother’s career. And I probably didn’t read Julie’s letters as closely as I should have, during the next year. I should have read between the lines, but I didn’t. He wrote about the engagements he was getting, which weren’t the kind I had expected him to take. He was playing mostly with chamber groups, in private homes, or in small halls. I wrote him that he should get after his manager and tell him he wanted bookings with orchestras—that was the way he was going to make his name. But Julie wrote back that he liked chamber music, he liked being part of a group, that it was less lonely. Julie is not very aggressive, you see. He can provide the art, but he needs someone behind him to advertise him and push him out into the world.

  “Then the Germans started bombing London, and, at about the same time, Julie wrote to tell me that Karl wanted him to come to South America. Karl said there was plenty of work for the two of them because concert life down there was booming, especially in Argentina, and Karl’s impresario had put together an irresistible program: Julie would accompany Karl in his lieder singing, but would have at least two solos of his own for each appearance. ‘If you were still here, I might try to stay and make a go of it in New York,’ Julie wrote me, ‘but you have to pursue your own career now, and, to be honest, I miss Karl.’ I cabled Julie back at once: ‘Returning soonest. Wait for me.’ Well, it took me more than a month to get out of England. It
would have taken a lot longer if I hadn’t had the idea of offering myself to something called The American Committee as an escort for children who were being evacuated to the Americas. The woman organizing things liked me, and I found myself in charge of fifteen children, sailing across the Atlantic in the middle of a convoy. I hadn’t heard again from Julie, but I felt that he would wait for me; he had always done what I had asked him before. I felt full of power and purpose. I was going to get Julie back on the track, and then I would perhaps enroll in another acting school in New York. Everything still seemed possible. I kept my fifteen children beautifully occupied the whole way: we played charades and had spelling bees, and I made the children act out scenes from their lives as a way of getting acquainted. It worked wonderfully. That was when I realized I was a good teacher, that I might be able to support myself teaching while I went on with my acting lessons.

  “But when I got to Julie’s apartment, I found out he’d been gone for weeks. He’d left for Buenos Aires without waiting for me. I didn’t see him again until after the war. He stayed on in South America, concertizing with Karl, until Karl found another accompanist who happened to be a rich young woman who wanted to marry him. The impresario told Karl they would make an even more irresistible team than Karl and Julie had made. So Karl more or less told Julie, ‘Auf Wiedersehen. It’s been fun, but you’re in the way now.’ Julie was heartbroken; he also happened to be broke. He went to the American Embassy and offered himself as a soldier—we had entered the war the year before—and they paid his way back to basic training in Texas. He hoped he would be sent overseas and killed. He didn’t want to live. But when they found out about his talent and his training, well … you know that story … he spent the rest of the war playing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the Officers’ Club and accompanying the chaplain on Sunday. He stuck it out, but when he was demobilized he fell apart. I quit my job at the girls’ school and brought him home to Clove. I resolved that I would devote all my energy toward saving him. I let him talk about Karl, and in turn I told him the whole story of what had happened in 1922. I nagged and shamed him into wanting him to live. ‘I was going to play Saint Joan, in front of George Bernard Shaw,’ I said, ‘but I threw it all up to come home and save you from ruining your career. And now you say you want to die. If you die, what will I have to live for? My sacrifice will have been pointless. Whereas, if you live and fulfill your potential as an artist … if you make our name famous … I will feel it has all been worth it.’ My strategy worked. He stopped talking of death and began playing again. He took on one student, an extremely promising boy, who has since gone on to Juilliard himself—he was the same boy Julie called into the church during that recital, just before it was Becky’s turn to play her piece; that boy did a lot toward restoring Julie’s faith in music and in himself. And then IBM opened a plant in Kingston, and before we knew it we had enough children—even when we were being picky—to keep the wolf from the door. Now, unless something really unfair happens, I intend to reverse the family fate and see Julie on the concert stage again, where he belongs.”

  “That song he played for us that day,” I said. “The one you sang the words to in German? He said he wrote it for an old friend and teacher. That was for Karl, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. But, Justin, that is the redemptive power of art. It can make something haunting and beautiful out of something that, in real life, was painful and degrading. Julie wrote that song to win back Karl, when he sensed Karl was abandoning him for the woman. Karl never sang the song, though he kept promising to do it at their next concert. Then there was no ‘next concert.’ Yet, there is the song. It exists. It will exist after Karl is gone, and perhaps after all of us are gone. But if Julie’s career finally takes off, the way I am hoping it will, he’ll be able to make his own programs, and one day—maybe you will be there to hear it—some splendid bass baritone will come out on the stage and stand next to the piano and sing that song while Julie plays it. Then we and art will have triumphed!”

  When at last we emerged from the woods, and the rambling wooden hotel with its towers and gables and porches rose up before us across the dark blue lake surrounded by white cliffs, the scene seemed to me simply a continuation of the world into which Ursula had drawn me. As we followed the path around the lake toward this Old World landscape, it was as though my own life, with its still-to-be articulated themes and concerns, hovered like an unborn shape in this storybook atmosphere fraught with so much history. Ursula had switched moods, in that masterful way she had, and was relating to me in a blithe, ironic manner how this place had started off as a mountaintop tavern whose proprietor had chained drunks to the trees until they sobered up, and how two Quaker brothers, inspired by the romantic cliffs and the grand, sweeping views, had bought the land from him and built this mountain house modeled after a European resort—but with the difference that guests could drink no alcohol in the public rooms, or dance, or play cards. “Father used to entertain his political friends up here a lot before he married. They’d drink whiskey and play cards in their rooms, and then, on Sunday morning, they’d go down to the parlor and join all the other bleary-eyed guests who had been drinking and playing cards in their rooms, and everybody would participate in a nice church service. Father used to say that the reason the hotel was so popular was that it completely embraced the divided American soul.”

  But I was not so acrobatic in my mood-shifting. I was still caught up in her terrible family story and all its implications. All I could think of as we walked along together was: She has to make it all right. She just has to. Nothing must prevent her from saving him. If anything happened to prevent it, her life would be meaningless. And I wanted to cry for this vision of a defeated, wasted Ursula. I walked beside her with a knot in my throat, while her voice gathered wit and music as she elaborated on her concept of the Divided American Soul, pious on the outside, demonic within. I love her, I thought. No matter what she has done, she is the most interesting person I have ever known. And at that moment I would rather have been inside with her and her wrongness than separated from her and judging her.

  “We’ll take a quick look around inside the hotel before our lunch,” she said, leading the way up to the long porch, where people, many of them old, sat in large oak rocking chairs, gazing out at the lake. We crossed the porch and went inside, and she showed me old-fashioned rooms and then a vast parlor, with a giant fireplace and oak beams and chandeliers, and lots of quaint wicker furniture. Even the sunshine pouring through the French windows seemed old-fashioned. “Oh God,” she said with a sigh. “I haven’t been in this room since I was a young woman. Father brought us up here to dinner to celebrate Julie’s going off to Juilliard. That was in nineteen thirty-five.” She did a strange sort of dance turn on the carpet, and I remember feeling embarrassed, hoping that nobody would come into this room and see her, in her rumpled Army fatigues and her brother’s thick boots, dancing around like that. Then she stopped in her tracks and looked at me critically: “You’d better take advantage of the bathroom before we go off into the wilds again,” she said.

  “I don’t need to.” I wanted to punish her for treating me like a child.

  “Very well, suit yourself. I need to. Be right back.” And off she went, leaving me alone in the parlor, whose wicker rocking chairs seemed to stir faintly with ghostly sitters. I went to one of the windows and looked out at people on a putting green. Their clothes were modern. I could not decide whether I was glad or sorry for this reminder of present-day reality. I felt tired and hungry and vaguely apprehensive, and realized I should have gone with Ursula to the bathroom.

  When she came back, she raised her eyebrows at me challengingly and gave me an impish, knowing smile. “Sure you won’t reconsider?” She knew that I needed to. “Go down that hall,” she said, taking me by the shoulders and aiming me in the proper direction. “It’s the third door on the right.”

  My reflection in the bathroom mirror came as a shock. I was so real, so visible, so you
ng, It was almost an affront to these surroundings, to the spell of the past Ursula had woven around us, that I should be so solid. Yet there I was, bending over the sink to wash my hands. That was my face, miraculously unlined, dewy with perspiration. Those were my long, brown arms and bony shoulders and my small breasts, about which I still felt ambivalent, sticking out beneath my blouse, which had been pulled askew by the backpack Ursula had strapped to me. I still had my whole life before me. I hadn’t yet done anything I would regret for the rest of my life. And it seemed perfectly possible to me, as I stood there, relieved and pleased by my fresh, unmarked image, that with resolution and a little prudent foresight—and from learning from the example of people like Ursula—I could get through life without ever committing any act that would haunt me later.

  “You know,” said Ursula, “I had a memento mori while you were in the bathroom, but it turned out to be rather wonderful.”

  We had climbed the pathway halfway to the tower and stopped to eat our lunch in one of the little summerhouses built along the cliff. From where I sat, I saw the hotel stretched out below us, against a backdrop of distant valleys and mountains. I tried not to look through the cracks in the floor of the summer-house, poised as it was above a steep ravine.

  “I’m not sure I know what—”

  “It’s a reminder of your mortality. From the Latin: ‘Remember you must die.’ I was standing in the lobby, waiting for you, when this old man and his nurse came in from the porch. I suppose I must have stared, something I don’t usually do, but he was so very old and white and frail, he was practically transparent with age, and I was impressed by the sheer phenomenon of someone that ancient, standing perfectly erect beside his nurse, who was carrying a folded blanket. Their backs were to me while they waited for the elevator, but then, all of a sudden, he turned around and looked me straight in the eye. His eyes were very smoky, the way old people’s get, but there was a force in them. And I knew he was thinking: One day you will be this old, and one day not long after that you will die, but it’s not as horrifying as you think. It was as if he were trying to tell me: ‘You are much more afraid of death and age than I am.’ And I smiled at him. The smile just came out all by itself. He acknowledged it with a slight bow, and then their elevator came.” She passed me the canteen of red wine with one of her knowing, “mysterious” looks. She was obviously expecting me to “get” something from this anecdote.