Page Turner Pa

by David Leavitt

  A knock sounded. "Five minutes!" the stage manager called, and Kennington stumbled onto his feet. To his embarrassment he had an erection. He closed his eyes, tried to will it away, for he couldn't very well walk out on stage like that. And yet despite his efforts to fill his mind only with the Archduke, an image of Paul on all fours, with his shorts around his knees, materialized insistently on the insides of his eyelids. On the insides of his eyelids he was stroking the arched behind, the line of pale hairs that ran from the small of the back into the cleft between the buttocks. And Paul was begging him, he was saying, "Please, sir. Please." This wasn't in itself unusual. In fantasy at least, Kennington liked being begged. He liked withholding before satisfying. It was all rather like a curtain call.

  No, the thing that unnerved him was that the fantasy seemed to be having him rather than the other way around.

  Another knock. "Mr. Kennington?"

  "Okay," he said, and pulling himself together, headed downstairs. In the wings Paul stood where he had left him, apparently not having moved for the entire length of the interval. "Feeling all right, sir?" he asked, his cheeks pink, gazing at Kennington with horrible sincerity.

  "Better now."

  They returned to the stage. In the orchestra the last stragglers hurried to their seats, applauding even as they ran. Opening the score, Paul tried not to look at the backs of the bowing players, the lights, the blur of human pandemonium in the midst of which, somewhere, his mother sat, probably waving at him. (It was embarrassing even to contemplate.)

  At last Tushi, arranged in her chair, nodded to Kennington. The audience quieted, and the Archduke began.

  It is the rare privilege of a page turner to hear a pianist almost as he hears himself: to hear his humming, the occasional grunts that escape through his teeth, the dull clack of his nails against the keys. And not only hear, but see; study. As Paul was learning, Kennington didn't move a lot when he performed, didn't lunge or writhe on the bench, or drape himself over the keyboard in an attitude of sublime transfiguration. Instead his face remained impassive, even expressionless. He kept his lips together, his back straight, supple. And those hands! Earlier, they had seemed unremarkable to Paul, but now, in the throes of doing, they revealed their rarity. Precision and unity, that was the formula, each note offered with an eloquence that somehow never distracted from the larger narrative in which it was bound. His hands were themselves a kind of music.

  Forty minutes later, when the trio ended and the applause began, Paul obediently picked up the score and followed the musicians off the stage. Izzy Gerstler was wiping his mouth with a wrinkled handkerchief.

  "So what say we let the blue hairs have a chance to clear out, then give them the Schubert?" he asked.

  "Fine," Tushi said. "Richard, you up for it?"

  "What? Oh, sure."

  They did not move. From the upper tiers the music students stomped rhythmically, insistent that the musicians should now play their appointed roles in that approach-avoidance ritual known as the encore—an insistence they knew better than to oblige too quickly. After all, a certain coquettishness is expected from great artists. Not to keep your public waiting would spoil the game.

  Finally, in wordless agreement, the trio filed out onto the stage, bowed, filed back. In row twenty-two Pamela Porterfield rose to her feet.

  "Bravo!" she shouted.

  No one else was standing.

  Embarrassed, she sat down again.

  "Diane, have you got any aspirin?"

  "Sure thing, honey."

  "You all right, Pammy?" Clayton asked.

  "Oh, I'm fine. I just have this crick in my neck from stretching to see over that man's head. Thanks." She rubbed her left shoulder. "You were lucky, Clayton. You didn't have anyone in front of you."

  Instead of answering, Clayton clapped. Diane put on her coat. Already most of the subscription holders were hurrying out, eager to be first in line at the coat check or the valet parking. Idiots, Pamela thought (swallowing the aspirin), the kind of people who unwrap hard candy during the slow movement, or applaud before the end, or talk. Why, once she and Paul had sat next to a man who'd actually brought along a transistor radio to a recital, so he could listen to the World Series. The management had had to be summoned.

  "So what'd you think?" Diane asked. In the narrow aisle she was already buttoned up, purse in hand.

  "I liked the Beethoven better than the Tchaikovsky," Clayton said.

  "Really? I liked the Tchaikovsky better than the Beethoven."

  "How about you, Pammy? Which one did you like better?"

  Pamela, still seated, said nothing, as the trio, wearing expressions of reluctance and indulgence, stepped back onto the stage. This time Kennington led. They carried instruments, music. Those people who happened to be in the aisles grabbed whatever empty seat was closest. Chatter and applause ceased utterly, as if a vacuum had sucked away sound.

  The Mosses, looking disappointed, sat down again.

  Almost offhandedly, Kennington struck the first chord of the Schubert. It is a piece that brings to mind the moment of departure at a train station; that makes the fingers stretch to touch a last time; that makes you think, yes, the life of sensation, and no other. Indeed, Kennington's playing of it transfixed Paul's attention to such a degree that at one point he nearly forgot to turn the page. But fortunately he caught himself, and from then on he made certain to keep his eyes on the score instead of the keyboard.

  The andante lasted a little more than eight minutes, after which the musicians got up, bowed again, and left the stage. Ritual demanded further curtain calls, further stomping for a second encore that was not forthcoming: with the exception of Izzy, who could have played all night, they were too tired.

  "That's it!" the stage manager shouted as the houselights went up. Roars of disappointment sounded from the upper balconies.

  People left.

  In a corner of the wings, meanwhile, Kennington was drinking water from a cooler: cup after cup, gulp after gulp.

  Very quietly Paul approached him.

  "Sir?" he asked, holding out his hand.

  "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just want to say that you played splendidly tonight."

  "Thank you."

  "I'll never forget it, not for the rest of my life. Sorry about the watch, by the way."

  "Oh, that was no problem."

  "Also, I realize that I nearly missed one turn during the encore."

  "It was nothing. From my point of view you were perfect. Flawless, even."

  "I appreciate that, sir, even if it isn't true."

  "Please don't call me sir. I'm not that old. I'm not your grandfather."

  "But I didn't say it because I thought you were old. I said it because I think you're great."

  "Well, that's a little better, I suppose." Filling his cup again, Kennington looked at Paul, who with a kind of studied obduracy was refusing to meet his eye, fixing his attention instead on the men in overalls who were moving the piano off the stage.

  "So do you live here in San Francisco?" he asked after a moment.

  "In Menlo Park, actually. That's down the peninsula. But I was born in Boston." Paul smiled. "You're from Florida, aren't you?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "I only mention it because I have aunts in Florida. In Hallandale."

  "That's the other end of the state from me. Holmbury is near the Georgia border."

  "I know where it is. I looked it up in the atlas. I'd like to go to Holmbury some day and pay my regards to Clara Aitken."

  "How do you know about Clara Aitken?"

  "Judging from what you said in that interview in the November 1986 issue of Gramophone, she must have been quite a teacher." He blushed.

  Kennington laughed. "It sounds like you know more about me than I know about myself."

  "What can I say? You're a role model to me, sir—I mean, Mr. Kennington."

  "Richard."

  "Richard." Paul grimaced, blu
shed.

  "There, that wasn't so bad, was it? And anyway, wouldn't you agree that it's much more pleasant to be called by your own name?"

  Paul seemed to consider the question seriously. Then he said, "Well, I'd better be going. Good luck with the rest of your tour. And thank you. Again."

  "Thank you, Paul," Kennington answered; yet he did not take the hand Paul held out. Instead he stepped closer. "In a way, I'm sorry you have to go."

  "Why?"

  "Well, I was thinking we could have a drink together, or..."

  Paul's eyes widened. "A drink? But people must be taking you out!"

  "No, no one's taking me out."

  "But I came with my mother, and I haven't got a ride home. I couldn't—"

  "That's fine."

  "Not that I don't want to. Of course I want to ... only how would I—"

  "Paul!"

  "Well, you could take a taxi. I'd be glad to—"

  He turned. His mother was striding toward them, flanked by the Mosses.

  Instantly Kennington drew back, drew away.

  "Darling, I'm so proud of you!" Pamela said, filling the air with her scent of cola and perfume. "You were wonderful!"

  "Mom, please—"

  He looked over her head for Kennington. From where he'd stood Diane Moss pulled a camera from her purse.

  "Say cheese!"

  "Cheese!" Pamela said.

  A flash went off. For a moment its reddening waves blinded Paul, who blinked, signaled with his arm. "Wait!" he almost called. But the darkness had picked up Kennington, and carried him away.

  He still held the music. What was he supposed to do with the music?

  "Honey, are you all right?" his mother asked.

  "Fine," he said. "Excuse me, will you?" And he went off to ask the stage manager where to leave the scores.

  2

  MISS OLGA NOVOTNA (née Higginbotham), eighty-six years old with flame red hair, liked to claim she'd been responsible for Kennington's career. "This was almost twenty-five years ago," she told Paul as they drank tea in her apartment on Russian Hill. "I'd been asked to serve on the jury of the Chopin, and Kennington was one of the competitors. He couldn't have been much older than you are now. And when he performed—well, I was overwhelmed. It was as if Chopin had been waiting for this young man to be born. So you can imagine my astonishment when a few hours later, still aglow from his performance, I found that he had failed to make the semifinals." She raised a jeweled hand to her neck. "My back went up, Paul. I tell you, my back went up."

  "What did you do?"

  "I said to my fellow jurors, if you eliminate Richard Kennington, you eliminate me. I resign from this jury."

  "And you walked out?"

  "I never judged the Chopin again. Of course they laughed at me. Oh, they regretted it later, when he got the contract, and was famous overnight. Vindication is sweet, my dear! Never forget it."

  "Who won that year?"

  Miss Novotna shrugged. "Who remembers? No one that matters. Take it as a lesson, Paul. Mediocrity rewards its own, but talent will always out. Now play Bydlo, and remember, hard at first, then soar, as if the cart is rising into the heavens."

  Paul played. In his mind he was Kennington—the young Kennington, from his first album cover—losing the Chopin. For weeks now, ever since his page-turning debut, he'd been trying to learn as much about Kennington (Richard!) as he could. Unfortunately information proved scarce. All he knew was what he'd gleaned from magazines and liner notes: that Kennington had grown up in Florida (teacher Clara Aitken, herself a pupil of Dohnányi); that he'd started performing at fourteen, made his first recording at sixteen ("one of the few piano prodigies," Gramophone magazine said, "to survive the difficult transition from wunderhind to superstar"); that he lived (alone) in New York.

  When his lesson ended, Paul gave Miss Novotna a rose that he'd brought in his satchel. "And now you are off to Italy," she said. "Oh, my dear, how I envy you."

  "I'll send you a postcard from every city I go to."

  "Italy! I remember it as if it were yesterday. The Pergola, the San Carlo." She shook her aristocratic old head. "Well, you are young, and you deserve it—and yet age has its pleasures too. Remember that as you make your way. I went through it all with Kessler. First they crown you a young king, and then you turn thirty and find you can do no right with them, and then when years have passed of struggle and disappointment, suddenly you find yourself an old man, and the crown on your head again. Horowitz went through it. Kennington may be going through it now."

  Paul became brave. "Tell me more about Kessler," he said.

  She lifted her hands in a gesture of questioning. "What's there to tell? The music says more. That was why I stopped playing. Because he needed me in order to write. And if I hadn't, you realize, Paul, there would have been no Second Symphony. There would have been no Third Symphony." She folded her white arms atop the table. "The feminists will say I had no business to do it, and I'm sure in principle they're right. And yet a world without that music ... well, it simply can't be imagined, can it? Whereas what contribution I might have made..." She laughed bitterly.

  "But you were a great pianist."

  "No, no. I might have been..." She closed her eyes. "Every great artist is a vampire, Paul. Remember that. They will suck you dry."

  "What an amazing life you've had, Miss Novotna. It's like a novel."

  "I often thought of writing one. And now Kessler's biographer sends me nagging little letters every other week. What was Kessler's opinion of York Bowen, Miss Novotna? Do you happen to have the program from the 1961 Maggio Musicale, Miss Novotna? Is it true that Kessler left sketches for an opera based on The Good Soldier, Miss Novotna? Oh, she bores me! But speaking of boredom, this old lady has probably tired you enough for one day. Now go, go to Rome." And she patted him on the behind.

  "Thank you. Good-bye."

  "Say ciao to the Campidoglio from an old friend," she called, while the surly-looking maid held the door open.

  Out on the street, the sun warmed the top of Paul's head. He tried to absorb Miss Novotna's final advice for future use and contemplation; and yet the troubles of thirty can mean little to one for whom twenty is still an unimaginable horizon. Nor can the fate of a woman who gave up her career for love of someone greater seem very real to a boy who has never touched, never kissed, another body.

  Well, that's that, he thought, as he climbed on the bus to the train station. The last piano lesson. The last bus ride home from a piano lesson. Very possibly the last time he'd see his old teacher, whom he loved dearly. At the thought of her dying, a quiver of loss registered in his bones. His heart broke a little. It was interesting. Though Paul possessed the full complement of emotions, most of them were as yet untested. Now, in a controlled way, he flexed the muscles of grief; imagined himself attractively mournful at Miss Novotna's funeral; planned the oration he'd deliver, the music he'd play: Schumann, of course; and maybe that Brahms intermezzo she loved so much...

  At the station, as was his ritual, he bought a candy bar. Then he threw it away uneaten because candy bars were one of the desperate consolations of his adolescence, and his adolescence, which he had loathed, was as of today officially over. How interminable they had seemed to him, those years, a kind of endless Sunday afternoon of the soul, every shop locked and shuttered! Now he could luxuriate in the contemplation of past miseries from afar. He could bask in that calm that descends when one thing is over, the next has yet to begin, all is potential and thus harmless; yes, for the moment Paul sits still and tilting, a rider atop a stopped Ferris wheel below whom the world spreads out its unexpected symmetries. That was then, it says. This is next. There is no now.

  On the train he got hungry, and regretted having thrown away the candy bar. It seemed extraordinary to him that the flight to Rome left in less than twenty-four hours, that in twenty-four hours he'd be in the air. And how remote this landscape of tract houses and chain motels seemed from the imagined vantage p
oint of the plane! Through the sooty glass of the window, the lights of the houses seemed as pregnant with imminent loss as those on Christmas trees. He looked upon them with generosity. These days he was looking upon all kinds of things with generosity that until recently he had thought base and ugly. Just a week ago, for instance, having cleaned out his locker and taken a long-rehearsed final glance at the band room, he had gotten on his bicycle and pedaled away from his high school for the last time. In the dusk sky an orange lozenge of sun melted. Knowledge of lastness made the grim architecture almost beautiful. "Yes, you are beautiful, too!" Paul said to the high school, which regarded him with bemused indifference, hardly distinguishing his presence among multitudes.

  It would have been pleasant if Paul could have stayed a long time in that caesura, that bountiful sway atop the Ferris wheel. Such calm is rare in any life, and grows rarer as one gets older; in some cases it never comes at all; in Paul's case it was destined to last only the length of the train ride.

  When he climbed down onto the platform, his mother's station wagon wasn't there. Several other cars waited in front of the depot. Pamela's just wasn't one of them.

  He sat on the curb. How strange, he thought. She's always on time. She must be packing. Meanwhile the last of the cars took on its passenger and drove off. Paul was alone. As a child, not being picked up had been one of his animal terrors. Whenever his mother had been late to fetch him he'd sat in the school library and imagined twelve-car pileups. Now once again he imagined twelve-car pileups, in which case the trip to Italy would have to be canceled, he would have no choice but to go on living in this country of his childhood: this country which, because he was fleeing it forever, he could forgive, but which if he had to remain in it, he sensed, would never forgive him.