The Piano Teacher

by Elfriede Jelinek

  In Erika’s briefcase, a letter to the student rustles among the music scores. She will hand him the letter after scornfully telling him the score. Her angry nausea is still rising up the column of her body in regular cramps. Klemmer disgorges a freshly stuffed thought-sausage through his teeth: Schubert may have been highly talented, since he managed to get on without a teacher comparable to a Leopold Mozart, but Schubert was definitely no genius. Klemmer hands his teacher the thought-sausage on a paper plate, with a dab of mustard. A man who dies that early can’t be a genius! I’ll never see twenty again, and I still know so little, I keep realizing it again every single day, says Klemmer. So how much could Franz Schubert have known at the age of thirty! That enigmatic, enticing little schoolmaster’s child from Vienna! Women killed him with syphilis.

  Women will drive you to the grave, the young man moodily jokes, scherzando; then he talks a little about the moodiness of the female. Women waver in one direction, then another, and you can’t glimpse any pattern in their wavering. Erika tells Klemmer he doesn’t have the foggiest inkling of tragedy. She tells him he’s a good-looking young man. His teacher tosses him a thighbone, and he crunches it with his healthy teeth. She has told him he doesn’t have a clue about the way Schubert places accents. Beware of mannerisms: That is Erika Kohut’s opinion. The student goes with the flow at a brisk pace.

  It’s not always appropriate to be so generous with instrumental signals—say, brasses—in Schubert’s piano works. However, before you, Klemmer, learn it all by heart, you ought to beware of wrong notes and too much pedaling. As well as too little! Don’t hold every note as long as the score tells you to; on the other hand, not every note is marked the way it ought to sound.

  For a bonus, Erika shows him a special exercise for the left hand, which he needs. She wants to calm her own nerves. She wants her own left hand to atone for what the man forces her to suffer. Klemmer does not wish to calm his passions by way of piano technique; he seeks the struggle of bodies and pain, a struggle that does not stop with Erika Kohut. Klemmer is convinced that ultimately his art will profit, once he has endured the struggle, icy and victorious. When they go their separate ways after the final bell, the distribution of points will be as follows: He’ll have more, Erika less. And he’s already looking forward to it. Erika will be one year older, he will be one year ahead of everyone else in his development. Klemmer digs his claws into the topic of Schubert. He bickers: His teacher has suddenly and confusingly spun around 180 degrees. She is expressing as her own opinion something that he has always advocated. Namely, that the imponderable, the unnamable, the ineffable, the unplayable, the unassailable, the incomprehensible are more important than any tangibles: technique, technique, and more technique. Have I caught you napping, Frau Professor?

  Erika feels boiling hot because he has spoken of the incomprehensible, by which he can only mean his love for her. She feels bright, warm, luminous. The sun of amorous passion, which she has not, unfortunately, felt all the while, is now shining again. He stills feels for her, the very same feeling he felt yesterday and the day before yesterday! Obviously Klemmer loves and respects her ineffably, as he tenderly told her. Erika lowers her eyes for a split second and murmurs meaningfully that she only meant that Schubert likes to express orchestral effects purely on the keyboard. One must be able to recognize and play these effects and the instruments they symbolize. But as she said before, without mannerisms. Erika offers friendly female solace: Don’t worry, you’ll get it!

  Teacher and student face each other, woman and man. Between them: heat, an insurmountable wall. The wall prevents them from climbing across and sucking out the other’s blood. Teacher and student are seething with love and a comprehensible desire for more love.

  Meanwhile, under their feet, they can feel the seething gruel of culture, which never finishes cooking; they assimilate it in small bites, their daily diet, without which they could not exist. The gruel throws off iridescent gas bubbles.

  Erika Kohut is in the dreary, callous skin of her years. No one can or wants to remove it. This skin cannot be worn out. So many things have been missed out on, especially Erika’s youth, including the eighteenth year of her life, which Aus-trians call “sweet eighteen,” It lasts for only one year, and then it’s gone. Now others are enjoying this famous eighteenth year in lieu of Erika. Today, Erika is more than twice as old as an eighteen-year-old girl! Erika keeps checking the figure, but the gap between her and the eighteen-year-old will never lessen—although, granted, it will never widen either. The repugnance that Erika feels toward any girl of that age increases the gap unnecessarily. At night, Erika sweatily turns on the spit of anger over the blazing fire: maternal love. She is regularly basted with the pungent gravy of musical art. Nothing alters this immovable difference: old/young. Nor can anything be altered in the notation of music by dead masters. What you see is what you get. Erika has been harnessed in this notation system since earliest childhood. Those five lines have been controlling her ever since she first began to think. She musn’t think of anything but those five black lines. This grid system, together with her mother, has hamstrung her in an untearable net of directions, directives, precise commandments, like a rosy ham on a butcher’s hook. This provides security, and security creates fear of uncertainty. Erika is afraid that everything will remain as it is, and she is afraid that someday something could change. She struggles for air, experiencing something like an asthma attack—then she doesn’t know what to do with all this air. Her throat rattles, she can’t drive a peep out of it. Klemmer is terrified down to the very foundations of his indestructible health. He asks what’s wrong with his beloved. Should I get you a glass of water? he asks carefully. He is so amorously attentive—this representative of the firm of Knight Errant & Co. The teacher coughs convulsively. She coughs herself free from something far worse than a tickle in her throat. She cannot express her feelings vocally, only pianistically.

  Reaching into her briefcase, Erika produces a letter that is hermetically sealed for safety’s sake. She hands it to Klemmer, just as she has pictured it at home a thousand times. The letter indicates the progress a certain kind of love should take. Erika has written down everything she does not wish to say out loud. Klemmer thinks that this is something ineffably wonderful that can only be written down, and he shines bright like the moon on mountain peaks. How terribly he missed this sort of thing! Today, he, Klemmer, by dint of steady labor on his feelings and their expressive potential, is finally in the fortunate position of being able to say aloud anything at any time! Indeed, he has learned that he makes a fine, fresh impression on everyone when he pushes ahead in order to be the first to say something out loud. Don’t be shy, it won’t help. As far as he’s concerned, he would, if necessary, shout out his love. Luckily, it is not necessary, because no one is supposed to hear it. Klemmer leans back in his movie seat, munching his popcorn and delighting in his image on the screen, where, larger than life, the delicate theme of a young man and an aging woman is being played out. Also starring a ridiculous old mother, who wants all of Europe, England, and America to be fascinated by the sweet sounds that her child has been producing for so many years. The mother expressly wants her child to stay tied to the maternal apron strings rather than to stew in the juice of sensual love and passion. Feelings cook faster in a pressure cooker, and more of the vitamins are preserved. That good advice is Klemmer’s response to the mother. Within six months at the latest, he will have greedily guzzled Erika up and can then turn to the next delight.

  Klemmer showers kisses upon Erika’s hand, which gives him the letter. He says: Thank you, Erika. He wants to devote the entire weekend to this woman. Horrified that Klemmer wishes to break into her closed sacrosanct weekend, she rejects the idea. She improvises an excuse for why it won’t work this weekend or probably next weekend or the one after that. We can always talk on the telephone, the woman lies impudently. Current flows through her in both directions. Klemmer meaningfully crackles the mysterious
letter; he announces the thesis that Erika can’t mean it as nastily as she thoughtlessly babbles. The dictate of the hour is: Don’t string the man along.

  Erika shouldn’t forget that, given her age, every year of Klemmer’s life is equal to three years of hers. Erika should jump at the chance, seize the day, Klemmer advises her kindly. Crumpling the letter in one sweaty hand, he hesitantly holds his other hand out, feeling the teacher like a chicken that he might wish to buy. But he has to check whether the price is right, whether it’s commensurate with the age of the hen. Klemmer doesn’t know how to tell whether a soup chicken or a roaster is old or young. But he can see it in his teacher, very precisely. He’s got eyes in his head, he can tell she’s no spring chicken, though she is relatively well preserved. You might almost call her crisp, if it weren’t for that somewhat mellow look in her eyes. And then the never-waning charm of her being his teacher! It inspires him to turn her into a pupil at least once a week. Erika eludes the student. She pulls away from him, and is so embarrassed that she wipes her nose for a long time. Klemmer depicts nature before her eyes. He describes it just as he got to know it and love it. Soon he and Erika will indulge and delight in nature. The two of them will go to where the forest is densest, they will settle down on moss cushions and have a picnic. There no one will see the young athlete and artist (who has already appeared in several competitions) rolling around with a decrepit old woman (who would have to avoid competing with younger women). Klemmer has a hunch that the most exciting aspect of their future relationship will be its secrecy.

  Erika has grown mute, her eyes do not gape, her heart does not swell. Klemmer feels it’s time for his thorough retrospective correction of everything his teacher just said about Franz Schubert. He will barge his way into the discussion. Lovingly he rectifies Erika’s image of Schubert, placing it and himself in the best light. He will win more and more debates. That is what he forecasts to his beloved. One reason he loves this woman is her wealth of experience with the overall repertoire of music. But in the long run, her experience cannot hide the fact that he knows a lot more about everything. This realization gives him supreme pleasure. He raises a finger to underscore his opinion when Erika tries to disagree. He is the insolent victor, and the woman has taken refuge behind the piano to escape his kisses. Words will falter eventually, and feelings win out by sheer persistence and vehemence.

  Erika boasts that she knows no feelings. If ever she has to acknowledge a feeling, she will not let it dominate her intelligence. She inserts the second piano between her and Klemmer. He calls his beloved superior cowardly. Someone who loves someone like Klemmer has to appear before the whole world and proclaim it loudly. Of course, Klemmer doesn’t want it to get around the conservatory, because he normally grazes on younger pastures. And love is fun only when you can be envied for having a beloved. In this case, later marriage is out of the question. Luckily Erika has her mother, who won’t allow her to marry. Klemmer drifts along on his own head waters; he is never in over his head. When it comes to water, he’s in his element. He shreds a final opinion that Erika has about Schubert’s sonatas. Erika coughs and, in her embarrassment, she swings back and forth on hinges that Klemmer, limber and nimble, has never noticed on other people. She buckles at the most impossible places; and Klemmer, surprised, feels his gorge rising slightly, but is unable to integrate his nausea into the scope of his feelings. You could say that it fits. But one shouldn’t spread out like that. Erika cracks her knuckles, which is beneficial to neither her playing nor her health. She stubbornly peers into remote corners, although Klemmer orders her to look at him, freely and openly, not tensely and stealthily. After all, no one’s watching.

  Encouraged by the dreadful sight, Walter Klemmer investigates: May I ask something unheard-of from you, something you’ve never done? And then he instantly demands this test of love. For her first step into a new love life, she is to do something incomprehensible, namely come with him and cancel her lesson with her last student this evening. Of course, Erika should, by way of precaution, plead illness or a headache, so the student won’t get suspicious and tell tales out of school. Erika balks at this easy task: she is a wild mustang that has finally managed to smash the stable door with its hooves, but nevertheless remains inside because it has changed its mind. Klemmer tells his beloved how others have shaken off the yoke of contracts and common laws. He cites Wagner’s Ring as one of the countless examples. He hands Erika art as an example of everything and nothing. One need only hunt through art—that pitfall lined with scythes and sickles mounted in concrete—and one will find examples enough of anarchistic behavior. Mozart, that examplar of everything, who, for example, shakes off the yoke of the prince bishop. If that ubiquitously popular Mozart—whom neither of us particularly appreciates—could do it, then we can manage it too, Erika. How often have we agreed that neither the creator nor the performer can endure rigidity. The artist prefers to avoid the bitter pressures applied by truth or by rules. I’m amazed—please don’t be offended—that you’ve been able to endure having your mother around all these years. Either you’re simply not an artist, or else you do not feel that a yoke is a yoke even when you’re choking in it. Klemmer, now taking a familiar tone with his teacher, is glad her mother is looming up as a buffer, a scapegoat, between them. Her mother will make sure he doesn’t suffocate under this elderly woman!

  Mother provides incessant topics of conversation—as a thicket, a hindrance for all kinds of fulfillments. On the other hand, she holds her daughter fast in one place, so her daughter cannot follow Klemmer everywhere. How can we meet regularly for our irregularities, without anyone finding out, Erika? Klemmer relishes the idea of a secret room for the two of them, furnished with an old record player and records he’s got duplicates of. After all, he knows Erika’s taste in music; it’s duplicated too, because he’s got exactly the same taste in music! He’s got duplicates of a few Chopin LPs and an album of some eccentric pieces by Paderewski, who was overshadowed by Chopin—unjustly, according to Klemmer and to Erika, who gave him the record, which he had already bought for himself.

  Klemmer is bursting to read the letter. If you can’t say something out loud, then you ought to write it down. If you can’t stand something, then don’t do it. I am so much looking forward to reading and understanding your letter of 4/24, dear Erika. And if I deliberately misunderstand your letter—something I am also looking forward to—then we’ll kiss and make up again after the fight. Klemmer promptly starts talking about himself, about himself, and about himself. She’s written him this long letter, so he’s got the right to let it all hang out. He’ll have to spend some time reading the letter, and he can already use that time now, for talking, so Erika won’t get the upper hand in their relationship. Klemmer explains to Erika that two extremes are struggling within him: sports (competitively) and art (regularly).

  As the student’s hands move toward the letter, Erika orders him not to touch it. Klemmer, clamp yourself down to researching Schubert, Erika puns, taking Klemmer’s precious name in vain.

  Klemmer rears up. For a whole second, he toys with the idea of yelling out the secret about him and his teacher, shouting it out in the face of the world. It happened in a toilet! But since the deed did not work out to his greater glory, he holds his tongue. Later on, he can twist the facts, informing posterity that he won the fight. Klemmer suspects that if he were forced to choose between the woman, art, and sports, he would not choose art or sports. He still conceals these foolish things from the woman. He now senses what it means to introduce the uncertainty factor of someone else’s self into his own intricate game. After all, sports involve certain risks too; for example, your form can vary considerably on any given day. This woman is so old, and yet she still doesn’t know what she wants. I’m so young, but I always know what I like.

  The letter is scrunched up in Klemmer’s shirt pocket. Klemmer’s fingers twitch. He can’t stand it anymore, and so he, fickle hedonist that he is, decides to read the le
tter in peace, in some peaceful spot out in the country. And he’ll take notes right away. For an answer that might be longer than the letter. Maybe in the castle garden? He’ll seat himself in the Palm House Café and order a cappuccino and an apple strudel. The two diverging elements, art and Erika, will increase the charm of the letter ad infinitum. Between them, Klemmer, the referee, who always rings the gong to indicate who’s won the round: Nature outside or Erika inside him. Klemmer blows hot, then cold.