“In Excelsis Deo!” He was conducting a chorus of a hundred voices accompanied by full orchestra. Behind him, the Schnitger organ opened its immense throat and poured lush arpeggios through the labs. He turned to the organ and, pressing his left palm slowly toward the heavens, commanded the organmeister to give all his strength, his breath, his very life to his instrument. “Bach,” he shouted to the organmeister, “addressed his music directly to God!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaah!” The chorus attended to his every movement, their eyes fixed reverently upon the forceful strokes of his baton and the fierce uplifts of his palm.
“In Excelsis Deo!” Mouths stretched to their limits and the swell of voices resonated through the labs. His knees pumped. Up. Down. His chest heaved. Perspiration dripped from his brow. His arms wove rapturous arcs through the air. The chorus ended. Exhausted, sweating, he dropped his chin to his chest. His arms fell limp at his sides. The glass baton splintered on the floor. He let himself fall forward against the lab bench. He shuddered. The firm swell in his trousers endured. The wetness had soaked through and was already growing cold.
PART TWO
Twelve
July. Days of light. Days of unremitting cheerfulness. Nights like days. A time of light unceasing.
Fifty. He had said the word over and over in the last two years in order to locate it properly in his mouth. “I am close to fifty,” he would say. “I am, believe it or not, approaching fifty.”
It should toll a halfway point, he thought. As a half dollar. A half century. But surely he did not expect to live a hundred years. It was, then, not at all what it should be. It was more than halfway. Much more. When had he passed midpoint? How had it slipped by him? He was said to be at “midlife” but that word now seemed a cruel euphemism for something much nearer to the end than to the beginning. Or was the line beyond this point somehow curved or irregular? In any event, the measure of time that took his fiftieth year as “midlife” was no Euclidean measure, he was certain of that.
How he craved in winter the sunlight and laughter of July! Yet, the seventh month came freighted with cloying sunshine and laughter reverberating in its heat as in a nightmare.
He had become someone. He had a name, a reputation. He had a family: A nest of daughters and in-laws wove itself about him. He had the society of both colleagues and friends. He had cultivated his interests and developed his talents. His eldest daughter played duets with him on the harpsichord; his youngest matched him curve for curve on the ski slopes. They used his words, his phrases in their conversation. He was well-exercised and perpetually tan. His was unquestionably the good life. There was nothing to want but to repeat it, to live it exactly that way yet another day. Days of incessant sunlight.
He might have mastered the oboe or the viola. He might have chosen architecture. An academic life perhaps. Or the law. He might have taken up photography. Or golf. He had never learned to speak Italian. Had he settled in Europe after the war, married the German woman with whom he’d passed such delightful times … That would have been another life entirely. He would not design a museum nor teach Shakespeare. He would remain a man confounded by cameras. He would speak French to the Italians. He was who he was. Alternatives stood now like markers along a way that was already behind him. They were the names of what might have been and they were cold, granitic. He was precluded. He wondered when that had occurred. Ten years ago he had learned to fly a plane. Anything was possible then. This good life had congealed about him. There was nothing now but the repeating. Nights like days. A time of light unceasing.
“I would call it Manneristic,” the woman was saying. She wore a dark green dress so unfashionable it was endearing. A youthful bosom rose above the scooped neckline. Some sort of rayon that had been to the dry cleaners too often. More than fills the hand is wasted, Nathan mused, contemplating the freckled mounds. He’d been pacing impatiently about the icy auditorium lobby, picking out bits of conversation, waiting for the concert to resume.
Four muted notes on a xylophone. On a steamer, they might have signaled lunch. Nathan returned to his seat. A warm July night is not a night for “Die Kindertodenlieder,” he thought. The contralto was terrible. July is no time for children to die, he decided. He rose to leave just as the pianist reappeared onstage.
His car slid indifferently down the Rockefeller University driveway and onto East End Avenue. He would thank Marvin Lampert for the ticket and say it had been a first-rate concert.
The damp July heat threw gelatinous halos about the streetlamps surrounding Gramercy Park. He paced the tiny terrace where beads of rain dotted the pink impatiens and glanced at the clock tower rising to the south of the Park. It was Friday. Carla was in Peekskill. He would not join her there on Friday, even if it meant dining alone. It was their arrangement, a symbolic renunciation by which they signalled to each other what their marriage had become. And now there was the business with Tom. Tom Szabo might be … well, interested in his wife. Interested. He wouldn’t be fucking her. Well, Tom could be doing anything. But Carla—that’s what he meant about it—Carla could not be fucking Tom. It was enough for her to give in to him occasionally. Carla had no interest in sex. Otherwise, she was an excellent woman. She would be shocked if Tom … It was a flirtation. Women were like that nearing forty.
The baroquery on the buildings to the south of the Park grew indistinct in the dampness. Tom would never risk it. They were tennis partners. He advised Tom on new patents. They spent vacations together. Tom had his pick of women. He wouldn’t make a serious pass at Carla. They were flirting, that’s all. The clock to the south of the Park said five past eleven. He would be up for most of the night, he knew.
The woman in the dark green dress had had a tiny hook at the end of her nose and keen dark eyes that flashed intelligence. A sparrow of a woman. Manneristic. What had she been speaking of? Not Mahler, surely. He was uneasy. He could not really say what Mannerism was. She had known when she used the word, but he could not have answered her had she been speaking to him. He left the terrace. Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art, he remembered, was where he’d first seen that term. The bottom shelves in their bedroom held the books he’d saved since college. It was Hegel who had made something important of Mannerism. He would find the book.
Yes, it was Hegel. Art history as the history of Spirit made manifest to the senses, the evolution of human ideals incarnate. He’d loved Hegel’s analysis of the development of styles. A style, defined by its particular view of the world, moves from its primitive statement to its classic, most perfect statement and then, yes, to its manneristic form and finally to its baroque phase. The primitive expression of an idea occurs when it is struggling to define itself, when lines drawn or constructed in steel or in melody reveal a still inchoate idea in a necessarily abstract form. And then the classic, the most perfectly realized, statement of the idea, the fleeting moment when even the artist himself is not aware of what he has achieved. And from there, decline. For after the classic manifestation of a style, its artists become self-conscious, their work affected, precious, overworked. Manneristic. As when Impressionism degenerated into Pointillism, he thought. And then, further decline to that moment just before abandonment of the ideal: death throes, the baroque phase of the style. An elaboration of a style that carries its forms to excess, that creates a longing for its opposite, that lays the ground for revolution and a wholly fresh idea of the world. What had she been talking about, the woman in the green dress, when she had used the word, “Manneristic?”
They were having supper in the kitchen. After eighteen years, it was still alien domain to him and on this evening, it seemed almost eerie. Carla moved about, pulling forks and spoons from drawers he never touched, producing paprika from the dark recesses of closets he never opened. Corned beef and a cranberry mold.
“Unusual,” he told her. “Unusual, but it works.” he said.
They were in town for the weekend. Lily’s daughter’s bat mitzvah. Alexandra would wear
her first high heels.
“Carla,” he said softly when the girls had left the table, “there’s something I must tell you. I’ve thought about it all day and I’m still not sure how to begin.”
She sat opposite, stirring sugar into her coffee. Sugar that had long since dissolved.
“Sweetheart,” he smiled gently. “It’s not what you think.”
“Well, then?”
“It’s Phil Neuman,” he said. “Your old boyfriend.”
She laid her spoon in the saucer and began sipping her coffee.
“Well, he’s applied to join the Eye Clinic,” he said.
“I didn’t know he was an ophthalmologist.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I only knew he’d joined the navy after medical school.”
“Look, Carla.…”
“Yes, Nathan, what is it?”
“He came to the department meeting today, to be interviewed.” The words were tumbling out now despite his effort to keep an even tone. “He’s all swollen, Carla. His face, his fingers, and … well, his chest.”
“Is he sick?”
“I’ll say he’s sick!” Nathan heard his voice rise. “He’s had electrolysis, Carla! He’s on estrogen! He’s growing fucking breasts!”
“What do you mean? How do you know?”
“Everyone at the interview knew. We can’t admit him to practice with us! He’s having a goddamn sex-change operation! They’ll cut off his penis, for chrissake! Who does he think he is, applying to practice at the clinic like that!”
Nathan’s voice had reached a screeching high note and he found that he was trembling. He composed himself and looked up to meet her eyes. She had left the table and was standing with her back to him. He noticed her broad shoulders heaving under the little collar of dark hair. She might have married Phil Neuman.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. But I really had to tell you.” He rose and walked across the kitchen and put his arms around her. All at once, he felt immense pity for her. She had, he suddenly understood, been as much an exile in that kitchen as he.
“You know,” she said to him later, tugging at the frayed blue satin trim on their bed blanket, “you really didn’t have to tell me. But it’s a good thing you did. Poor Philip. So much pain!”
“Yes,” Nathan said, “it’s an extremely complicated surgery.”
“I didn’t mean the surgery,” she said. “What he must have been going through all those years! And I could never help him. I just never understood. It’s a good thing you told me, Nathan. A very good thing that I can finally understand.”
Thirteen
Small, greyish knots of music lovers at intermission. Straight-backed figures, chins tucked in, chatting and nodding affably. Men in shapeless tweeds, their arms folded across their chests. Rouged women draped in shawls. Thin, sallow girls straight and flat as soda crackers. Bespectacled young men in four shades of black. They drew their glasses of white wine to their lips. Their gestures were animated as they spoke and yet the lobby where they stood seemed soundless.
She was there as he had hoped she would be. The question was how to approach her. She excused herself to her colleagues and moved toward the restrooms. He followed her and waited, a paper cup filled to the brim with ice water in his hand.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said.
“Please don’t apologize,” he said, producing a handkerchief. “It’s you that got wet.” He handed her the handkerchief after just the slightest hesitation. She had smallish breasts, he knew, under the navy-and-white polka-dotted organdy. And they were freckled, he knew. It seemed too much to know this as he handed her the cloth. She dabbed at moisture that had already soaked through. To her freckles, he thought.
“Dr. Kline,” he said extending a hand and bowing slightly. “Nathan Kline. I believe I saw you at the Rockefeller concert several weeks ago. We weren’t introduced, of course, but I know I saw you there.”
“Muriel Berger,” she said. “Was that the Mahler?” There was a gap in her front teeth. Passion, he thought.
“Yes, it was,” he replied.
“It was pretty awful, I thought,” she said.
“Actually,” he chuckled, “I left halfway through.”
“After we were seated,” she said. “You got up and left as the pianist was entering.”
“Oh God, you saw me.”
“Well, it’s more noticeable in small halls like Rockefeller. And in subscribed concerts where everyone knows everyone.”
“Well, now you’ve caught me in two clumsy situations.” He paused to catch her gaze. “I’d be grateful if you’d allow me to offer you some dessert after the concert. Your friends, too, if you wish. I imagine you’ve come with friends this evening?”
He crossed and recrossed his legs as the violinist tore into the Bach A-major concerto. Where would he take her for dessert? Someplace memorable. He could think of nothing. Polka dots. Freckles.
They joined a long queue of concert-goers at Eclair.
He learned that she lived alone, had never married. She was thirty-five. She immersed herself in her work and lived entirely for that. She was a pianist. “Small concert engagements,” she said. “Chamber groups and such.”
“My God,” he said. “You really must have loved my leaving as the accompanist entered at the Mahler concert.”
“Hated it,” she said.
“Do you ever do solo concerts?”
“Some.”
“Chopin,” he said.
“Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Mahler,” she said.
“Aren’t you a bit frail to play Lizst?”
“I stand up to play Liszt,” she said.
He could not wait to have her. He ordered a second cup of coffee, a second Riga torte, a second glass of water to wash it down.
“Did you enjoy the violinist tonight?” she asked.
“Ah, yes.” He had forgotten the violinist.
“I love the A-major concerto,” she said.
“A most intriguing composition,” he said. As one suddenly wakened from a nap, he found his thoughts would not arrange themselves quickly enough. And then at last he said, “So ingenious the way Bach weaves the theme of the second movement back into the coda.”
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” she said without hesitation.
“Have you ever heard Wolfgang Schniederhan play it? He’s not well known in the States, but …”
“Yes, absolutely. He does one of the most interesting interpretations,” she nodded.
Nathan’s pulse raced. He had never before met a woman so utterly absorbed in her vocation. Consumed by it. Consumed by music which, he reflected, consumes like nothing else. Inflamed by the most stirring music of all. By Liszt! Liszt! This tiny bundle of dainty bones stands at the piano to play Liszt! He imagined standing behind her as she played. Did she have freckles down her back?
“How did you happen to recognize me?” she was saying.
“Actually,” he smiled shyly, “it’s rather strange. I overheard you using a word I hadn’t heard in such a long time. It was the word that caught me. Manneristic.”
“What was I saying?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine you were talking about Mahler.”
“No, I’m sure not. I wonder what I was saying. It’s an important word.”
Returning to Gramercy Park, he thought he would invite Marvin Lampert and his wife to dinner. It was Lampert who had provided the ticket to the Rockefeller concert and, many years earlier, the analysis of the A-major concerto. She had taken that analysis for granted. He really must have her.
As the elevator reached the twelfth floor, strains of Purcell’s G-major Harpsichord Suite wafted from the apartment. Alexandra was a joy to him these days. She was precocious, and hadn’t many friends. Her deliverance was her classmate, Martin, a musical prodigy. His constancy would buffer her through a difficult adolescence. And, of course, her father would be her refuge as she would be his.
He had come to des
cribe the condition of their apartment as scandalous. The dining room was an impenetrable forest of cartons and magazines stacked above eye level. There was no sitting at the dining table or at the piano for the stacks of newspapers, boxes, catalogs and such that were stashed beneath. The kitchen counters had become a grimy colony of tiny boxes and canisters, homes to ancient cinnamon sticks and bay leaves turned brown. His closet overflowed with shoes and jackets Carla had worn in college; there was barely room for his own clothing. And now there were cartons under his harpsichord!
“Carla,” he bellowed. “I’ve reached the end of my rope. I’ve tried to understand this as a symptom. But now I am telling you to take your boxes out of the living room because I’m certain I will kill you if this spreads any further. Dammit, Carla, get yourself some help, will you?”
“Mom’s not home,” Alexandra said. “It’s her sculpture. She’s bringing it to the Y on Friday for the student show. It’s just here for the next two days.”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, Daddy. You’re right. She needs help. She’ll never get any, though.”
The Speed of Light Page 7