Who Is Martha?

by Marjana Gaponenko

  “It doesn’t matter,” Levadski says turning to Mr. Witzturn, “in what form we encounter beauty.” Mr. Witzturn slowly turns his head. His eyes are dull, tired, as if he were pleading for mercy, that’s how Mr. Witzturn looks through Levadski. “The moment and the connection in which we experience that beauty are also irrelevant,” Levadski goes on. “We should not let ourselves be confused by the recurrence and arbitrariness of beauty. For it is … it is,” Levadski repeats a little more softly.

  “It is what?” Mr. Witzturn asks, after blinking several times. Levadski doesn’t know.

  He is suddenly scared of tackling the thankless subject.

  “Perhaps beauty is just the certainty that you don’t need memory of it in order to be certain of it,” Levadski replies, almost inaudibly and falls silent, which doesn’t seem to bother Mr. Witzturn.

  “We are good at being silent,” Levadski says to Mr. Witzturn a moment later. “But one of us is more deeply silent than the other. Just as in a conversation there is always one person who talks more than the other. When somebody speaks, a story is being told and someone is listening. And when there is silence?”

  Levadski looks at Mr. Witzturn’s hand, which absentmindedly allows itself to be bitten by a nut in a silver bowl.

  “When it comes to silence, there is keeping silent and concealing,” Mr. Witzturn replies.

  “What are you concealing from me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, did you want to tell me something?”

  “When you started so euphorically to writhe on the floor of the box during the concert, I remembered a person I have not thought of in a long time,” Mr. Witzturn says, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Well, during the concert I thought of my piano teacher. He must be dead now for at least eighty years. He was

  already an old man at the time. But as perky as a pickle. Once I arrived at my piano lesson and started to play a piece. I was hunched and tense, I was expecting a shower of abuse any second. But something else happened. My piano teacher just tipped out of his armchair and was suddenly in a better world, without having wasted a word. A dull thud. Do you know what it sounds like when a head hits a parquet floor?”

  Levadski shakes his head.

  “It makes a pleasant sound, it is all but hollow.”

  Mr. Witzturn is stirring a little Chinese umbrella in his glass. “It was only when I heard that thud that the tension in my shoulders disappeared, and I could play. I could fly. I could embrace the world.”

  “I understand,” Levadski mumbles.

  “Of course I was sad, I was scared, and suddenly alone with the music, the secret of which I was at the time beginning to divine. My God, I felt wretched at that moment. Yet something inside me was rejoicing: a person had died; a person whom I admired had breathed his last, in my presence, while I was sitting at his piano. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yes. Ahem,” Levadski clears his throat.

  “My piano teacher did not say a word and still left a message for me in his silence. A secret. You understand?”

  “Yes.” Levadski has a herring standing on one leg in his throat.

  “And so,” Mr. Witzturn continues, “and so I remembered this man during the concert. Now I know what an enormous role this silence played in my life. Oh!” Mr. Witzturn bursts out laughing, “what a remarkable person he was, I can see him before me. When I consider that this figure, for so long, for such an unspeakable length of time, failed to touch the surface of my memory, as if he had existed in an earlier or different life, but barely in my own. Oh,” Mr. Witzturn slowly shakes his head, “if your concert hadn’t …”

  “And now in honor of the two gentlemen at the bar,” the voice of the piano player can be heard saying, “the most beautiful song in the world!”

  Ochi chernyyyyyye. Dum dum dum.

  Ochi strastnyyyyyye

  Ochi zhguchiye i prekrasnye. Convulsion.

  Kak lyublyu ya vas!

  Kak, hit the keys, boyus’ ya vas!

  Znat’, uvidel vas ya v nedobryi chas!

  “What does that mean?” Mr. Witzturn is pulling Levadski’s sleeve.

  “The most beautiful song in the world. Black Eyes. Do you know it?”

  “I vaguely remember it.”

  “In which case, take my magnifying glass,” Levadski orders.

  “Don’t put it to your eye!” Levadski guides the magnifying glass in Mr. Witzturn’s hand towards his right ear. “Right, and now focus on the song!” Levadski slips off his barstool.

  “Where are you going?” Mr. Witzturn exclaims, holding the magnifying glass to his ear, a sound of slight dismay in his voice.

  “I am seizing the opportunity, so long as it’s still dark in the room!” says Levadski. His laughter is drowned out by the applause of the bar guests who seem to have considerably increased in number in the space of two glasses of vodka.

  “Ochi chernye, if you would be so kind,” Levadski whispers in the withering ear of the piano player. The piano player nods and drops his fingers on the keys.

  Des yeux noirs, des yeux pleins de passion!

  Des yeux ravageurs et sublimes!

  Goodness, thinks Levadski, never before have I sung in public, not even to myself, and now at the end of my days I am singing in a foreign language and swinging my hips like a female longtailed tit.

  Comme je vous aime, comme j’ai peur de vous!

  Je sais, je vous ai vus, pas au bon moment!

  Levadski, his gaze directed upwards, puts a hand to his chest as if wanting to stop his heart, his life and the course of time, to let the moment linger!

  Pas au bon moment …

  … He hurls the lyrics gently towards the ceiling, clenching his fist that a moment ago had been resting on his heart. His life is pulsating inside it.

  “Bravoooo!” This is what Levadski has been waiting for. Relieved, he unclenches his fist and lets his life flutter into the room and do a little business on the heads of all the audience. Unnoticed, it returns to its master and slips into his left trouser leg.

  “Salto! Salto! Salto!” chants the audience, urging him on.

  “Please, Professor!” Levadski hears from the bar. Who was that? The bartender or Mr. Witzturn? A white spitz is sitting stiffly on Levadski’s barstool. Levadski’s stick in its muzzle, it seems desperate to go for a walk.

  “I’ll be quick!” Levadski calls out to the dog. “Sit!” he adds, and with thrashing arms climbs onto a one-legged table. I hope the dog does not eat my expensive drinking stick, thinks Levadski, and besides, the shards of the glass tubing could damage his stomach. Who would be liable for that?

  “Salto! Salto!” the bar guests slur cheerfully in Levadski’s direction.

  “Olé!” Levadski, his hand raised and index finger outstretched, requests silence. He looks over at the bar again. The spitz seems to have grown, not just in height but in breadth too, and is now standing, leaning on Levadski’s stick, a silent threat in front of the barstool. It is not the pursed mocking muzzle that irritates Levadski, not the whistling that he thinks he can perceive, it is something else. What is it? “God almighty!” Levadski shouts, teetering on the table, “there is a ray of sunlight growing out of the dog’s ear! It’s pointing at me!”

  Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga,

  I know you can’t control yourself any longer,

  … the piano player sings, winking at Levadski.

  Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga,

  I know you can’t control yourself any longer,

  “What shall I do?”

  “Dance! Show the mutt you’re busy!” the piano player whispers, while he hammers the keys like he was born to do it. “Maybe then he’ll go for a walk on his own.”

  Come on, shake your body baby, do the conga,

  I know you can’t control yourself any longer,

  Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger,

  Don’t you fight it ‘til you tri
ed it, do the conga beat.

  Levadski is on the table flailing his arms again. “Not like that,” the piano player growls, “otherwise the dog will think you’re drowning and he’ll try to rescue you.”

  Everybody gather ‘round now,

  Let your body feel the heat.

  Don’t you worry if you can’t dance,

  Let the music move your feet.

  Levadski wriggles his behind and traces zeros in the air with his palms. When he throws a cautious glance at the bar, the silver knob of his stick in the vodka glass stabs him in the eye. “The dog is gone!” he shouts at the piano player, who wistfully brings the song to a close.

  It’s the rhythm of the island

  And like sugarcane so sweet,

  If you want to do the conga

  You’ve got to listen to the beat.

  “Thank you, you saved me.” Levadski, still standing on the table, shakes the piano player’s hand. “

  You are welcome,” he smiles, and a white curl falls out of his mouth.

  The dog! shoots through Levadski’s mind. In order to gain a few moments, Levadski asks the piano player for the time. His mouth twists itself into a smile again. Levadski desperately tries to think what it is that he actually wants to gain time for.

  “I – don’t – wear – a – watch,” the piano player says. With every word another curl of hair flutters out of his mouth. Weakkneed, Levadski returns to the bar. His diversion tactic is still a mystery to him.

  “Well danced, Professor,” Mr. Witzturn, who is now back, says in praise. His head is a dog’s head, his body is Levadski’s drinking stick, inside which a dark liquid is rising and falling.

  “Stop the thief!” Levadski hears himself call, while his dentures take on a life of their own and leap from his mouth. With a smacking sound they bite through Mr. Witzturn’s waist, which is made of glass.

  “Mr. Levadski, hello! Your bread is getting warm.”

  “Sorry, I drifted off for a moment.”

  “Microsleep can be dangerous for drivers and people sitting at the bar.” Mr. Witzturn scrutinizes Levadski with a tired smile. “You didn’t miss much. We are still sitting here without electricity, isn’t that so, maestro?”

  “The guests are slowly getting nervous,” the bartender observes, filling several glasses with vodka. “Everybody would like to be in their rooms, but nobody dares to go to the upper floors in the dark.”

  “The steps can be fatal.” Mr. Witzturn’s forefinger ascends an imaginary spiral staircase. “One step too many or too few, and you are in paradise. Not a certainty of course,” he adds after taking a generous swig from his glass.

  “Tell me about your piano teacher instead!” Levadski bids him.

  “You know …” Mr. Witzturn says, closing his eyes. “Oh, it’s such a long time ago.” Mr. Witzturn forces open his eyes again and turns toward Levadski’s barstool. His gaze staggers over Levadski’s face, like after a thousand-year sleep. “This evening during the concert I remembered a dead man, and suddenly … oh, everything is unspeakable!” Mr. Witzturn repeats.

  “And suddenly?”

  “And suddenly for the first time in my life I am sure that I have lived.”

  “Oh, Mr. Witzturn,” Levadski pulls a crumpled handkerchief from his trousers. A family of dust bunnies has used the darkness of his trouser pocket in order to multiply shamelessly. Their wool bodies are soft.

  “Oh, Mr. Witzturn, don’t say a thing like that, you are alive. Still alive.”

  “Just a memory,” Mr. Witzturn shakes his head, “a single memory, resurrected as if by magic, is sufficient for answering all questions, for airing all secrets that have tormented you, you understand?”

  Levadski places a hand on the cool glass of Mr. Witzturn’s wristwatch.

  “A single memory appears to be sufficient in order to close the circle of life,” Mr. Witzturn says, carefully with-drawing his hand. He pulls a checked handkerchief with a large ink spot from his suit trousers. Levadski wrestles with himself for a few seconds before deciding it is best not to point out the ink spot to Mr. Witzturn, so as not to disconcert him.

  “This evening my life has come full circle,” Mr. Witzturn says, wiping a tear of pity from his left and then his right eye. “I have, if you like, been liberated.”

  “Let’s drink to it!” says Levadski, vigorously blowing his nose, in which nothing worth mentioning is to be found.

  “Lucky you!” Mr. Witzturn smiles. With his inky eyes he looks as if he had been hit with a potato masher. “I wish I could blow my nose like you.” Mr. Witzturn taps his plastic nose three times.

  “Touch wood,” Levadski jokes.

  “Well,” Mr. Witzturn continues, “my piano player was an eccentric old man. If he were sitting here at the bar, here between the two of us,” Mr. Witzturn brushes his hand over the impressive hunchback of the absent man, “if he were here, he could easily be taken for our son. I mean for one of our sons,” Mr. Witzturn corrects himself.

  “You mean the son of one of us,” Levadski gently corrects him.

  “For our mutual son,” Mr. Witzturn stresses. “While we are on the subject of it, what role do biological parents play?”

  “By all means.” Levadski presses a hand to his chest, while making a dismissive gesture with the other.

  “At some point,” Mr. Witzturn whispers, “you are so free, so high, so …” – his eyes of India ink scan the ceiling – “so, how should I put it, hhmm. Where was I?”

  “Your piano teacher,” Levadski comes to the rescue.

  “Yes, my piano teacher sometimes had the habit of naming the piece being played after hearing only a few bars. How often we went to concerts together. I was a flourishing meadow of pimples, my master an elegant devil. Nothing was too difficult for him. Not even the most obscure compositions. He knew them all. As if he had written them himself.” Mr. Witzturn gives a snort and mops his brow with the inkstained handkerchief. “His hearing was as remarkable as his tonal memory and his knowledge of compositions. He could isolate every single instrument from even the most boisterous orchestral clamor. While I contentedly devoted myself to the music, he would say, That’s all very well, but the clarinet played G sharp instead of F.”

  “Unbelievable.” Levadski is amazed and slides back and forth on his barstool several times.

  “The best thing,” Mr. Witzturn slaps his hand on the bar, “ha-ha-ha! The best thing … ho-ho-ho,” Mr. Witzturn is rocking on his seat, “was his spyglass. It was a heavy Victorian telescope that my piano teacher was in the habit of taking to concerts. Perhaps my imagination is deceiving me now, but I could swear it was a telescope.”

  “How eccentric!” It warms the cockles of Levadski’s heart. “A telescope!” “

  Or an ear trumpet, hm, one of the two.” Mr. Witzturn’s eyebrows shoot up. “Of course it was a telescope!

  We mostly sat right at the front, in the wrong seats. This was of no consequence to my piano teacher. If someone arrived who had the right tickets he would be sent away with the words, ‘Look for another seat, you don’t know anything about music anyway.’”

  “Delightful!” Levadski taps his thighs. To be on the safe side I am getting off the barstool, just in case he gets more amusing, he thinks, placing his feet on the ground.

  “And then,” Mr. Witzturn sprays Levadski’s eye with spittle, “from one of the front rows, my piano teacher would stare through his very conspicuous instrument at the virtuoso’s fingers, embarrassing the poor man completely. After being dealt the devastating blow of ‘Wrong!’ he would then turn as white as a sheet. ‘Wrong’ and ‘Bad,’ he would mostly add, and that was that.”

  “What do you mean, that was that?” Levadski asks, doubled over with laughter.

  “Well,” Mr. Witzturn smirks, “he made them all uneasy that way. Anybody who remained practiced on the quiet, until they really could play. Play elegantly, as if they were drinking a glass of water. The more difficult and unplayable a piece in the
music was, the faster and more easily a survivor like that would play it.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “The others were unable to cope with the unreasonable demands of my piano teacher, I assume. No loss, God forgive me. Anyone who like a shrinking violet sways in the wind of great art ought to jump in the lake!”

  “After us the Flood” Levadski says, holding on to the chair leg, or is it one of Mr. Witzturn’s legs? Like an ark on the high seas, thinks Levadski, an ark without passengers. An ark in a world without animals and human beings. The plants will survive us. It is said that mushrooms grow for years on the ocean floor without sunlight.

  Sailor, stop dreaming …

  “The pianist has risen,” Mr. Witzturn whispers in Levadski’s ear.

  … don’t think of home.

  Sailor, wind and waves

  Are calling you.

  “Well, he needs to keep the guests in a good mood,” Levadski remarks yawning. “There will be some guests who have fallen asleep in their dark corner, won’t there?” Instead of moving his head, Mr. Witzturn rolls his eyes as far as they will go to one side. Like two billiard balls on a sinking ship. “In the dark, it is difficult to see who is sleeping and who is squinty-eyed by nature,” he mumbles. “Maestro, how about a ladies’ cocktail for the two of us?”

  Your home is the ocean,

  Your friends are the stars

  Over Rio and Shanghai,

  Over Bali and Hawaii.

  “What’s that?”

  “I was just telling the maestro that you would like something syrupy, a ladies’ drink, for a change.”

  “With pleasure, if you will join me.”

  “Would the gentlemen like to take a look at the cocktail menu?” the barman opens a leather folder.

  “We can’t see anything,” Mr. Witzturn laughs, “even less than we could two hours ago.”

  Your love is your ship.

  Your yearning is the distance.

  And only to them are you faithful