My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As Lyle and Willard crouched over him, trying to rouse him, poor Roland hovered about, wringing his hands and apologizing. He hadn’t known such a thing could happen, he claimed. Why, he didn’t even know what had happened—he was quite innocent of any intent to harm. Bertram tried to sit up, clutching at his head. His trim brown moustache was sprinkled with sand and his skin had gone ashen. As his brothers comforted him, he began to vomit; choked; coughed spasmodically; vomited again—a thin white substance, like gruel; all the while poor Roland hovered nearby, apologizing, and insisting that he didn’t know what on earth had happened. Their own expressions somber and blank, Lyle and Willard eyed Roland without comment: noting how, for all his agitation, he yet held himself in a slight defensive crouch, his sinewy legs bent at the knee; noted how muscular his shoulders suddenly appeared—how the cords in his beefy neck stood out—how, through a slash in his shirt, dark curly hairs bristled like steel wool. His straw hat had been knocked off in the scuffle and without it the curious breadth and squareness of his forehead were pronounced. Above all, his eyes—so steely-cold, darting from face to face, sobering to see.

  “I must have learned to defend myself out West, you know,” Roland said earnestly, “—and forgotten all about it, in my illness. Do forgive me, Cousin Bertram!”

  BUT BERTRAM WAS not to forgive; still less was Bertram likely to forget.

  When, after Labor Day, the Shrikesdales prepared to depart Newport, Bertram chanced to brush near Roland (who was busying himself with preparations for his mother’s traveling comfort), and said in a lowered, furious voice: “You lead a charmed life, cousin!—but only so long as Anna Emery lives.”

  For a half second it seemed that Roland might err, in looking his accuser full in the face, and speaking too abruptly; then, with impeccable restraint—of the sort, indeed, that caused St. Goar so to admire him—he simply said, in Roland’s very voice: “But my mother, you know, is still young—just at the start of her eighth decade. If God is just she will outlive us all!”

  “PATHÉTIQUE”

  1.

  The eighth of December 1916. A benefit recital for the United Church Fund of Vanderpoel, New York, held in the newly built Frick Hall on the campus of the Vanderpoel Academy for Boys. The evening has been sold out; an audience of more than five hundred people has been warmly enthusiastic; and now as the final item on the programme the Vanderpoel student Darian Licht, sixteen, who has accompanied most of the soloists this evening—a violinist, a mezzosoprano, an Irish tenor and a string trio—is playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata no. 8 in C minor, popularly known as the “Pathétique.” How childlike the pianist appears, seated at the keyboard of the great gleaming Steinway, his body taut as a coiled spring, fair brown hair in soft flamelike wings, his narrow, long-jawed face putty-colored in the bright stage lights—yet how powerful his hands on the keyboard, as if he were entranced, mesmerized by the music he himself is creating.

  The end of childhood. Which I’d imagined in my vanity had ended years before.

  Because the Beethoven sonata is too long and too demanding for this audience, Darian is playing a foreshortened version worked out with Professor Hermann. “It is never wise to test the limits of the music lover’s love of music,” the elder German has warned Darian, “—especially at the very end of a musical evening.” Each movement of the great sonata is represented, yet each has been ingeniously edited; though Adolf Hermann is present in the audience this evening, no doubt hunched forward in his seat, staring at his pupil and listening with painful concentration, pinpricks of oily sweat glistening on his fleshy face, Darian plays as if he’s entirely alone. In this stark brightly lighted place the figure of his lost mother Sophie will not appear.

  Darian Licht. A fifth-form boy who has established for himself a reputation for independence, aloofness, arrogance. His classmates regard him as they might an adult set in their midst: with grudging respect yet without warmth. Though he has made a few friends—he believes. Misfits like himself, disfigured by eccentric talents (for chess, for poetry, for advanced math, for long-distance running) as by acne. Darian knows from his sister Esther’s letters that he’s disappointed their father by standing only twelfth in his class of ninety boys and by having failed to “cultivate” important friends like his suitemate Roddy Sewall. How much more disappointed Father would be, how angry, if he knew that Darian neglected his academic studies because he cared only for music; and that Darian had made no effort at all to befriend Roddy or any of the rich men’s sons. In fact it’s Darian who avoids Roddy as Roddy lingers in their common room as the bell sounds for meals. (In the dining hall the older boys’ talk is of war: the United States should declare war against Germany, it’s as Roosevelt says, pacifists are just cowards, their hope is that fighting won’t end before they can get to it.)

  Strange that Darian Licht should snub rich boys. The rumor is, Darian’s tuition hasn’t been paid for the fall semester. Not a penny paid of course for the spring semester. Headmaster Meech called Darian into his office to speak with him in confidence, taking care not to embarrass the boy (for Meech remembers with pride the extraordinary guest sermon Abraham Licht made in the chapel and the hint he’d given of one day endowing a trust fund for the school); delicately he asked Darian if he knew anything of his father’s financial situation, for the school had emergency funds which might be tapped if necessary. No I don’t. I don’t know. I’m sorry, sir. May I be excused, sir. I know nothing of my father’s private life.

  Esther wrote to Darian, and sometimes Katrina added a postscript. Every few months, Millie sent a postcard that made Darian’s heart leap with anticipation and dread; for Millie’s gay, slanted handwriting was a riddle to record, and sometimes all Darian could be certain of were Dearest Darian and Love, your sister Millie. Abraham Licht was living now in Philadelphia but had an additional post office box in Camden, New Jersey, across the river. From Esther, Darian learned the surprising news that their brother Harwood was back East—but where he was living, whether he was reunited with Father, wasn’t clear.

  Of Thurston there was never any news. He’d traveled to South America “on business” and hadn’t returned, so far as Darian and Esther knew; nor was there word of him; yet how strangely Abraham Licht deflected questions about his eldest son with a shrug of his shoulder. Thurston? Who? Ah yes. But no. So much time had passed since Darian had last seen Thurston, he’d begun to wonder if his tall fair handsome genial brother had been . . . a dream of his. A vivid heartrending phrase of music.

  It was hours after the awkward meeting with Headmaster Meech that the shame of it hit Darian like a wave. His father hadn’t paid his tuition! Making of me a beggar. A criminal accomplice. He’d been on his way to the chapel to play organ and turned at once and ran back to the headmaster’s residence to ask, breathless, if there was something he might do to repay the money he owed? Work in the dining hall, or on the school grounds? The older man regarded him with pity and exasperation. “You must know by now, Darian, that such a thing is hardly in the Vanderpoel tradition. You would be embarrassing your classmates, too.” Beyond Headmaster Meech’s grave, grizzled head were busts of Shakespeare and Milton in stark, poreless white with blank white eyeballs and utterly serene expressions. The Vanderpoel insignia, what appeared to be a flaming scepter, was engraved on a bronze plaque above the script Monumentum aere perennius, the school motto. Darian wondered what it might mean to these long-deceased men, to know that in some way incalculable to them they’d become immortal; even as, in the most obvious way, they were simply . . . gone. Dr. Meech was about to send Darian away when a thought struck him: the upcoming recital. The United Church Fund would be using Frick Hall, though the evening was not under the auspices of the Academy; perhaps if Darian would like to participate in the recital, there might even be a modest fee involved. “Yes?” Darian said hopefully. “I would like that very much, Dr. Meech.” He’d spoken impulsively, and would have time afterward—days, weeks—to wonder if h
e’d done the right thing. To perform in public, when his musical abilities seemed to him so raw, so far short of perfection, so often a source of extreme anguish to him . . . surely this was a mistake? He’d been sleepless with the prospect of stage fright.

  His fee for the evening, as accompanist and soloist, would be $35.

  Adolf Hermann was both bemused and annoyed that Darian was participating in the recital. “They asked me first—of course. They have hired me, if ‘hire’ is the adequate term, from time to time for this event.” Professor Hermann paused, fixing Darian with a gloomy stare. A sickened thought came to Darian—was his piano teacher resentful of him? “These are not serious music lovers, these Americans. You must beware their influence. They are ‘nice’ people—seemingly. They will want ‘nice’ music from you. They will pay you—as modestly as they dare. In return, all they will take from you is your soul.”

  Darian said, with a smile, “I’ve never earned thirty-five dollars in my life, Professor Hermann. It isn’t much but—there it is! And I’ll be given a ‘cold supper’ afterward at the Frick residence in the city, in the company of the other performers.” And I will invite my father to the concert. And Millie, and Esther, and Katrina. My family!

  Professor Hermann muttered that, as Darian Licht was his protégé, he hoped that Darian would not sell himself cheaply to such people who knew nothing of music and so did not deserve music. For long minutes the elder man spoke ponderously, vehemently, as Darian sat with increasing restlessness at the piano, his fingers twitching to strike the yellowed keys of the old, stained, yet still beautifully resonant Bösendorser. What did he, a sixteen-year-old, care of an old man’s fretting, when there was music to be played? And what music: Beethoven’s “Pathétique.” He’d been preparing it for weeks and had only just begun to feel he was gaining ground. But Professor Hermann, wiping his damp face, persisted in speaking of the “tragical” situation in Europe which might well poison the entire civilized world; the insane belligerence of the great German nation against weaker, neutral nations; the distressing nature of anti-German sentiment in the States—“For all Germans, it seems, are now barbarians and huns.” It was difficult for Darian to determine, listening to his piano teacher’s ranting, in a heavily inflected Teutonic accent, whether the man’s rage against Vanderpoel citizens was based on their presumed dislike of him as a possible traitor in their midst, or his dislike of them, as Christian bigots. To all this Darian murmured a faint assent, while knowing he wouldn’t change his mind about playing in the recital.

  My music I will play for its own sake and not for others’ ears.

  For music is born by way of our fingertips, it passes through us. We don’t hear, we overhear.

  “Darian, you must have your pride,” Professor Hermann said, laying a heavy hand on Darian’s shoulder as he too often did, with a wheezing, humid breath against the boy’s face. “We must have our pride—for you are Adolf Hermann’s pupil. Of all things, don’t sell yourself cheaply!”

  “Yes, sir.” Darian frowned at the piano music as if about to begin playing, positioning his fingers above the keyboard.

  “—For once they guess how eager we are to please, and would lower ourselves to their brute capitalist level for mere money,” Professor Hermann continued, “then we are lost, and the sacred cause of music is violated. Do you understand, mein Kind?”

  I am not mein Kind. I am no one’s Kind.

  Even Bach, Mozart, Beethoven sold their music. Even a great genius must eat.

  But Darian said nothing, and hurriedly fled into the opening measure of the great sonata.

  SOON AFTER THIS, Darian Licht began earning small sums of money by way of music. He gave elementary instructions to several children of Academy teachers, including the Meeches’ grandchildren; he played organ on Sundays at the Free Baptist Church of Vanderpoel; he was even hired for a wedding, at which he accompanied a busty local soprano who sang “Make Me No Gaudy Chaplet” from Lucrezia, though he’d never set eyes on the piano music before. How easy it was to please an audience, to make people smile; yet how tempting, to strike disharmonic chords, to play for their appalled fascination Chopin’s enigmatic first Prelude, or an arrhythmic, cacophonous little composition by Darian Licht! Yet he resisted. He was too needful of goodwill, and of the cash gifts that accompanied such goodwill. I will pay my own tuition, I will astonish Dr. Meech. I will astonish Father who has abandoned me.

  Really, Darian didn’t believe that Abraham Licht had abandoned him. Not yet.

  It greatly helped Darian’s reputation in the Vanderpoel area that he was a polite, sweet-tempered and delicately attractive youth, with distinct “feminine” features; his eyes in particular, which were dreamy, thick-lashed and large as the brooding, mystical eyes of certain pre-Raphaelite portraits of androgynous beings of exotic beauty. Though he didn’t believe himself shy, and was, in his heart, rather arrogant, he did give the impression of being shy; modest; uncertain; a youth with whom women might identify, and whom they might “advance.” There was no need for Abraham Licht to have told his youngest son what Darian knew by instinct, that women will advance a young man to the degree to which he’s “talented”—that is, attractive to them, and no evident threat.

  And none of this mattered, in any case, once Darian Licht sat down at the keyboard. Piano, organ—it didn’t matter. A Steinway grand or a nameless American-made upright; the costly pipe organ in the Academy chapel or the wheezing foot-pedal organ at the Baptist church. Once Darian began to play, another more forceful personality took over. Is it I, Darian, or the music that speaks at such times? But what is “I” apart from the music? Even when he played his own peculiar, gnarled compositions, it seemed to him that he was the mere instrument by which the music was given life; that it existed elsewhere on another grid or plane of being, frozen into silence as a statue is frozen; doomed to silence except for the accident of Darian Licht!

  Of such paradoxes he’d have liked to speak with Adolf Hermann but in the past half year, since the Lusitania and the deepening of anti-German sentiment in the States, the older man had become increasingly doubtful about Darian’s prospects for the future. As if Darian’s future had anything to do with Germany’s, or with Professor Hermann’s own!—Darian bristled at the assumption. “There is nothing for people like us except music,” Hermann would say, sighing, “yet can there be ‘music’ without ‘civilization’?”

  Darian’s impulse was to cry boldly Yes.

  It wasn’t any secret that Adolf Hermann’s piano students were disappearing. Their parents, once so deferential and flattering, now cut him in the street. Even his neighbors who’d known him for years had turned cool, if not rude; the pharmacist, the local stationer, the greengrocer—of English descent—were openly hostile. An anonymous prankster desecrated his doorstep with HUN in black tar, and one afternoon while Darian was having his lesson, boys threw stones against the parlor windows, breaking several panes. Vanderpoel police weren’t helpful, for they too were bigoted against all Germans, as Professor Hermann charged. What to do? Where to flee? Vanderpoel was his home, the United States was his country, for he’d broken all ties with Germany and was sickened to his soul by his homeland’s war tactics, and could not countenance war in any guise most of all for imperial gain. “My only hope—the only hope for civilization—is that the war will end soon and that Germany will make amends for all she’s done, and be forgiven—”

  The previous year, Adolf Hermann had been in a fever over the issue of Henry Ford’s much-publicized peace ship, Oscar II, which had set sail for Europe in early December with the goal of paying $1 million to anyone in Europe who could stop the war. This was a proposal so insane, so vainglorious and childish in its assumptions and expectations there was, as Herman acknowledged, a kind of purity about it—“A native American spirituality.” For weeks Darian had to listen to Hermann’s commentary on Henry Ford and the Oscar II and the absurdity of meddling with such an imperial world power as Germany; yet when the ven
ture failed, and the Oscar II merely returned with its $1 million untapped and the great Ford himself sick, it was gloatingly reported by newspapers, with a severe head cold, Professor Hermann sank into a depression. “I might have given aid to the cause instead of belittling it,” he said. “I might have volunteered to go along as a German-speaking American citizen—but now it’s too late. Darian, it’s too late.”

  More distressing, Professor Hermann was growing increasingly eccentric as a piano teacher.

  Because of his ranting monologues, when he finally roused himself to teach, it was late; and so the lessons ran later, and later; beginning at midafternoon, they might stretch into evening; and Darian would miss dinner. Sometimes the older man would insist upon Darian playing the “Pathétique” from start to finish, no matter his errors; sometimes he’d slam a fist down on the keyboard and lecture the frightened boy on the spot, when Darian’s playing displeased him. For there was a way in which Beethoven’s sonatas must be played, and numerous ways in which they must not be played. It was Adolf Hermann’s belief that a Teutonic sensibility was required to fully comprehend Beethoven; no Frenchman, for instance, could play Beethoven correctly. So it infuriated Hermann when Darian played Beethoven, or Bach, or Mozart, or Schubert, in a style not Teutonic; in any case in a style that differed from Hermann’s own, which he demonstrated for Darian. “Are you not ‘Licht’? Are you not one of us, boy, despite your ‘American’ birth?” he once cried.