Now some woman asks HER for directions, but SHE doesn’t answer. SHE doesn’t reply although SHE does know the way. The woman won’t give up, she pokes her way through the entire car, pushing people aside so she can peer under seats and find her stop. She is a grim wanderer along forest paths, and she has a habit of using her skinny cane to tickle ant hills and arouse the ants from their contemplative lives. She makes the disturbed creatures spray acid. She is one of those people who leave no stone unturned, lest they find a snake underneath. Every clearing, no matter how small, is conscientiously combed for mushrooms or berries. That’s the kind of people they are. They squeeze every last drop from every single artwork and explain it vociferously to everyone else. In parks, they use their handkerchiefs to dust a bench before sitting down. In restaurants, they polish the silverware with a napkin. They go through a relative’s suit with a fine-tooth comb, hunting for hair, letters, grease spots.
And now this lady vociferously complains that no one can give her the information she needs. She says that no one wants to give it to her. This lady represents the ignorant majority, which does however possess one thing in abundance: It is raring for a fight. She’ll challenge anyone if she has to.
She gets off at the very street the woman asked about, and as she steps out, she sneers at her.
The buffalo understands, and she is so angry that her pistons grind to a halt. A short time from now, she will describe these moments of her life to a friend while devouring sauerbraten with beans. She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.
SHE peers back several times at the completely disoriented woman before setting off on the familiar road to her familiar home. SHE smirks at the woman, forgetting that a few minutes from now, SHE will feel the hot flame of her mother’s blowtorch and SHE will be burned to a pile of ashes because SHE is late in getting home. No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.
Erika, the meadow flower. That’s how she got her name: erica. Her pregnant mother had visions of something timid and tender. Then, upon seeing the lump of clay that shot out of her body, she promptly began to mold it relentlessly in order to keep it pure and fine. Remove a bit here, a bit there. Every child instinctively heads toward dirt and filth unless you pull it back. Mother chose a career for Erika when her daughter was still young. It had to be an artistic profession, so she could squeeze money out of the arduously achieved perfection, while average types would stand around the artist, admiring her, applauding her. Now, Erika has at last been patted into perfection. Such a girl was not meant to do crude things, heavy manual labor, housework. She was destined, congenitally, for the subtleties of classical dance, song, music. A world-famous pianist—that is Mother’s ideal. And to make sure the child finds her way through every entanglement, Mother sets up guideposts along the way, smacking Erika if she refuses to practice. Mother warns Erika about the envious horde that always tries to destroy other people’s achievements—a horde made up almost entirely of men. Don’t get distracted! Erika is never allowed to rest at any level she reaches, never allowed to catch her breath and lean on her icepick. For she has to keep climbing. To the next level. Forest animals come too close for comfort; they want to turn Erika into an animal. Competitors try to lure Erika to a cliff, pretending they’d like to show her the view. But how easily one can plunge down! Mother graphically describes the chasm, so her child will watch out. The peak offers international fame, which is never reached by most climbers. A cold wind blows up there, the artist is lonesome and admits his solitude. So long as Mother lives and continues planning Erika’s future, there is only one possibility for the child: the top of the world.
Mama pushes from below, for she has both feet planted solidly on the ground. And soon Erika no longer stands on the inherited motherland, she is on someone else’s back, someone she has ousted with her back-stabbing. What shaky ground! Erika stands on tiptoe, on her mother’s shoulders. Her trained fingers clutch the peak, which, alas, soon turns out to be merely a crag; it only looks like the peak. Straining the muscles of her upper arm, Erika hoists and heaves herself up. Now, her nose is already over the edge, but all she sees is a new rock, steeper than the first. However, an ice factory of fame has a branch here, which keeps huge blocks in storage, thereby holding down its overhead. Erika, an adolescent, licks at one of the blocks and believes that a recital she gives is already the Chopin Competition. She believes that the peak is only a few inches away!
Mother taunts Erika for being too modest. You’re always the last! Noble restraint is useless. One should always be at least in third place; anything less is garbage. That’s what Mother says. She knows best; she wants only the best for her child. She won’t let her stay out in the street: After all, she shouldn’t get involved in athletic competitions and neglect practicing.
Erika doesn’t like being conspicuous. She elegantly holds back (the offended mother-animal laments) and waits for others to achieve something for her. Mother, bitterly complaining that she has to do everything for the child herself, jubilantly plunges into the thick of the fray. Erika nobly puts herself last, and her efforts don’t even bring her a couple of pennies for stockings or panties.
Mother nags away at friends and relatives (of whom there are very few, for she broke with them long ago; she wanted to keep Erika safe from their influence). Mother tells all these people that Erika is a genius. She says she keeps realizing it more and more clearly. Erika is truly a keyboard genius, but she has not been properly discovered as yet. Otherwise, she would have long since soared over the mountains, like a comet. Compared with that, the birth of Jesus was chickenshit.
The neighbors agree. They enjoy listening when the girl practices. It’s like the radio, only you don’t need to have a set. All you have to do is open the windows and perhaps the doors, the music comes in, spreading like poison gas into every nook and cranny. People indignant about the noise stop Erika whenever they run into her, and they ask her for peace and quiet. Mother tells Erika how enthusiastic the neighbors are about her outstanding mastery of the keyboard. Erika is carried along like a dribble of spit on a thin stream of maternal enthusiasm. Later on, she is surprised when a neighbor complains. Her mother never said anything about complaints!
Eventually, Erika outdoes her mother when it comes to sniffing at people. Who cares about those laymen, Mama. Their powers of judgment are crude, their sensibilities are unrefined; only the professionals count. Mother retorts: Do not make fun of praises from simple people. They listen to music with their hearts and enjoy it more than those who are spoiled, jaded, blasé. Mother knows nothing about music, but she forces her child into its yoke. A fair if vindictive rivalry develops between mother and daughter, for the child soon realizes that she has outgrown her mother with regard to music. The daughter is the mother’s idol, and Mother demands only a tiny tribute: Erika’s life. Mother wants to utilize the child’s life herself.
Erika is not allowed to associate with ordinary people, but she is permitted to listen to their praises. Unfortunately, the experts do not praise Erika. A dilettantish, unmusical Fate has exalted other people. But it has passed Erika by, averting its face. After all, Fate wants to remain disinterested and not be taken in by an attractive mask. Erika is not pretty. Had she wanted to be pretty, her mother would have promptly ordered her to forget it. Erika stretches her arms out to Fate. But it’s no use; Fate will not turn her into a pianist. Erika is hurled to the ground as sawdust. Erika does not understand what is happening to her, for she has been as good as the masters for a long time now.
Then, one day, at an important concert at the Academy of Music, Erika fails totally. She fails in front of the friends and relatives of her competitors and in front of her mother, who sits there alone. Mother spent her last penny on the dr
ess Erika wears for this recital. Afterward, Mother slaps Erika’s face, for even musical laymen could read Erika’s failure in her face if not her hands. Furthermore, Erika did not choose a piece for the broadly rolling masses. She decided on a Messiaen, against her mother’s urgent warning. This is no way for the child to smuggle herself into the hearts of the masses, whom mother and child have always despised: the mother because she has always been merely a small, plain part of the masses; and the child because she would never want to become a small, plain part of the masses.
Erika reels from the podium, shamefaced. She is received shamefully by her sole audience: Mother. Erika’s teacher, who used to be a famous pianist, vehemently scolds her for her lack of concentration. A wonderful opportunity has been wasted, and it knocks but once. Someday soon, Erika will be envied by no one, idolized by no one.
What else can she do but become a teacher? A difficult step for a master pianist, who is suddenly confronted with stammering freshmen and soulless seniors. Conservatories and academies, as well as private teachers, patiently accept a lot of students who really belong on a garbage dump or, at best, a soccer field. Many young people are still driven to art, as in olden times. Most of them are driven by their parents, who know nothing about art—only that it exists. And they’re so delighted that it exists! Of course, art turns many people away, for there has to be a limit. The limits between the gifted and the ungifted. Erika, as a teacher, is delighted to draw that limit. Selecting and rejecting make up for a lot. After all, she was once treated like a goat and separated from the sheep. Erika’s students are a coarsely diverse mixture, and none of them has ever been really tested or tasted. One seldom finds a red rose among them. Occasionally, during the first year, Erika manages to wrest a Clementi sonata from one or two students, while others still grunt and root about in Czerny’s elementary études. These students are then discarded after the intermediary examination, because they can’t find the wheat and they can’t find the chaff, even though their parents are firmly convinced that their children will soon feast on nectar and ambrosia.
Erika’s mixed joys are the good advanced students, who make an effort. She can wrest all sorts of things from them: Schubert sonatas, Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Beethoven sonatas, those high points in the life of a piano student. The work tool, a Bösendorfer, excretes an intricate blend. And next to it stands the teacher’s Bösendorfer, which only Erika can play, unless two students are practicing a piece for two pianos.
After three years, the piano student has to enter the next level; to do so, he must pass an exam. Most of the work for this exam is assigned to Erika; she has to take the idling student engine and step on the gas, slam down hard in order to rev it up. Sometimes the engine doesn’t really catch, it would rather be doing something else, something that has little to do with music—for instance, pouring melodious words into a girl’s ear. Erika doesn’t care for such behavior; she tries to stop it whenever she can. Often, before an exam, Erika sermonizes: Fluffing a note, she says, isn’t as bad as rendering a piece in the wrong spirit, a spirit that does not do justice to it. She is preaching to deaf ears, which have been closed by fear. For many of her students, music means climbing from the depths of the working class to the heights of artistic cleanliness. Later on, they too will become piano teachers. They are afraid that when they play at the examination, their sweaty, fear-filled fingers, driven by a swifter pulse beat, will slip to the wrong keys. Erika can talk a blue streak about interpretation, but the only thing the students wish to do is play the piece correctly to the end.
Erika likes thinking about Walter Klemmer, a nice-looking blond boy, who lately has been the first to show up in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. A busy beaver, Erika must admit. He is a student at the Engineering Academy, where he is learning all about electricity and its beneficial features. Recently he has been listening to all the music students, from the first hesitant picking and pecking to the final crack of Chopin’s Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands, which is rather unlikely for a student in the final phase of his studies. One day, Erika asks him whether he wouldn’t rather practice Schönberg, instead of lounging around so unproductively. Doesn’t he have any studying to do? No lectures, no drills, nothing? He says he’s on his semester break, which hadn’t occurred to Erika, although she teaches so many students. Vacation at the music academy doesn’t coincide with vacation at the university. Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that’s just fine with the artist.
Erika is surprised: How come you always show up here so early, Herr Klemmer? If a student is working on Schönberg’s 33b, as you are, he can’t possibly be interested in minor frivolities. So why do you listen to the others? The hardworking student lies. He says you can profit from anything and everything, no matter how little it may be. You can learn a lesson from just about anything, says this con man, who has nothing better to do. He claims he can get something from even the least of his brothers, so long as he remains curious and thirsty for knowledge. Except that you have to overcome those minor things in order to get further. A student can’t stay with the losers, otherwise his superiors will interfere.
Besides, the young man likes listening to his teacher perform, even if it’s just singsong, tralala, or the B major scale. Don’t start flattering your old teacher, Herr Klemmer. But he replies that she’s not old, and he’s not “flattering” her. I really mean every word I say, it comes from the bottom of my heart! Sometimes this nice-looking boy asks for a favor, extra homework, he’d like to practice something extra, because he’s over-zealous. He gazes expectantly at his teacher, hoping for a hint, lying in wait for a pointer. His teacher, on her high horse, cuts the young man down to size when she sneers: You still don’t know the Schönberg all that well. The student enjoys being in the hands of such a teacher, even when she looks down at him while holding the reins tightly.
That dashing young man seems to be in love with you, Mother says venomously, in a bad mood, when she happens to call for Erika at the conservatory. She wants to take a walk with Erika, two women, arm in arm, intricately interwoven. The weather plays its part as the women walk. There are a lot of things to see in the shop windows—elegant shoes, pocket-books, hats, jewelry—but Erika should not see them under any circumstances. That is why Mother came to pick her up. Mother takes Erika on a circuitous route, telling her it’s because of the beautiful weather. The parks are blossoming, the roses and tulips are blooming, and the flowers certainly don’t buy their dresses. Mother talks to Erika about natural beauty, which doesn’t require any artificial embellishment. Natural beauty is beautiful on its own, just like you, Erika. Why all the baubles?
The outskirts of the city beckon with warm calls of nature, with fresh hay in the stables. Mother heaves a sigh of relief, she pushes her daughter past the boutiques. Mother is delighted that this stroll has once again cost her no more than some shoe leather. Better to wear worn shoes than to polish the boots of some shop owner.
The population in this part of Vienna is rather long in the tooth. You see lots of old women. Luckily this one old woman, Mother Kohut, has managed to obtain a younger hanger-on, of whom she can be proud, and who will take care of her until death do them part. Only death can separate them, and death is marked as the destination on Erika’s suitcase. Sometimes, a series of murders takes place in this area, a couple of old crones die in their lairs, which are chock full of waste paper. God only knows where their bankbooks are; but the cowardly murderer knows it too, he looked under the mattress. The jewelry, what little there was, is also gone. And the only son, a silverware salesman, gets nothing. Vienna’s slums are a popular area for murder. It’s never hard to figure out where one of those old women lives. Just about every building here has at least one—she’s the laughingstock of the other tenants. And when a man knocks and says he’s the meter reader, but presents no ID card, she lets him in anyway. They’ve been warned often enough, but
still they open their hearts and doors, for they are lonesome. That’s what old Frau Kohut tells Fräulein Kohut, trying to discourage her from ever leaving her mother alone.
The other inhabitants here are petty officials and placid clerks. There are few children. The chestnut trees are blooming and the trees in the Prater are blossoming. The grapes are turning green in the Vienna Woods. Unfortunately, the Kohut ladies have to abandon all hope of ever going there for a good look, since they don’t own a car.
However, they often take the trolley to a carefully chosen last stop, where they get out with all the other passengers and cheerfully stride off. Mother and daughter, looking for all the world like Charley Frankenstein’s Wild Aunts, carry rucksacks on their shoulders. Or rather: only the daughter carries a rucksack, which protects Mother’s few belongings, concealing them from curious eyes. Brogue shoes with Solid Soles. Protection against rain is not forgotten (just read The Hiker’s Guide). Forewarned is forearmed. Otherwise you’ll be left out in the cold.
The two women stride along, hale and hearty. They never sing, because, knowing a thing or two about music, they don’t care to violate music by singing. This is like the days of Eichendorff, Mother chirps, the important thing is your spirit, your attitude toward nature! Nature itself is secondary! The two women have the proper spirit, for they are able to delight in nature wherever they catch sight of it. If they stumble upon a rippling brook, they instantly drink fresh water from it. Let’s hope no doe has pissed into it. If they come to a thick tree trunk or dense underbrush, they can take a piss themselves, and the nonpisser stands guard to ward off any impudent peepers.
By taking their hike, the two Kohut women store up energy for a new work week, in which Mother will have little to do, and Erika’s blood will be sucked out by her students. Every evening, Mother asks the same question: Did they give you a hard time? No, it was all right, the frustrated pianist replies; she still has hope, but Mother plucks it apart in her long-winded way. Mother complains about Erika’s lack of ambition. The child has been hearing these wrong notes for more than thirty years now. Feigning hope, the daughter realizes that the only thing she can look forward to is tenure: the title of professor, which she already uses and which is conferred by the president of Austria. In a simple festivity celebrating many years of service. Someday—and it’s not that far off—she’ll retire. Vienna is generous with pensions, but official retirement hits an artistic career like a bolt of lightning. If you’re struck, you feel it. The City of Vienna brutally terminates the transmission of art from one generation to the next. The two woman talk about how greatly they look forward to Erika’s retirement! They have all sorts of plans for the future. By then, the condominium will be shipshape, and the mortgage paid off. They’ll also have a piece of country property to build on. A cottage, for the two Kohut women and no one else. Plan ahead. It’s better to be an ant than a grasshopper. By then, Mother will be one hundred years old, but still sprightly.
The Piano Teacher Page 3