Page Turner Pa

by David Leavitt

  "Oh, I've always been good at amusing myself."

  "Good. Well, till later." And he headed off to say his professional farewells: first to Tushi and her young man, then to Kirchenwald, then to Thang's parents. As for Thang himself, he and Oona Ford were on the couch now, engaged in a surprisingly intimate tête-à-tête.

  Soon they left as well. Paul, sensing that he ought to keep a low profile, had by this time ensconced himself in the alcove with the CD and record collection, where he was looking at another photograph. It was one of those contract-signing shots that are such a staple of the classical music world. In it Kennington, still boyish, stood with a pen poised over the sheets, while men in dark suits watched him hungrily.

  After a moment, Joseph joined him. "Alone at last," he said.

  "I was just looking at your records," Paul said. "I've never seen such a big collection."

  "Goes with the job." Joseph loosened his tie. "So what would you like to drink, Paul?"

  "Nothing, thanks. By the way, I couldn't help but notice how many recordings you've got of Mahler's Fifth."

  "A particular favorite of mine."

  "Oh, and here's Richter in Italy!" Paul pulled an old LP from the shelf. "I've been looking for that for years. Wow, it's even autographed."

  "Take it."

  "No, no. I didn't mean—"

  "Go on, take it," Joseph repeated, pressing the record into Paul's hands. "I never listen to it anyway."

  "Really? Thank you."

  They were quiet for a few seconds, their eyes on the spines of the CDs. Soon Paul felt a tingling on his scalp that gradually deepened into a caress.

  "You have nice hair," Joseph said, pressing his fingers into Paul's temples.

  "Mmm."

  "You sure you're not thirsty?"

  "I'm fine.

  "Say, I know. How would you like to hear a tape of Richard's new Chopin recording? Harry Moore gave me an advance copy."

  "I'd love to."

  Removing his hand from Paul's head, Joseph extracted a cassette from one of the drawers below the CD shelves. "You're going to be one of the first people in the world to hear this," he said, inserting the cassette into the stereo.

  The music began. "The Barcarolle," Paul said distantly.

  Again Joseph ran his fingers through Paul's hair.

  Paul closed his eyes. Joseph turned him around and kissed him.

  "What are you doing tomorrow night?" he asked when the kiss was over.

  "Nothing."

  "Would you like to hear the Berlin Philharmonic?"

  "But it's sold out."

  "I have tickets."

  "I'd love to, if you're sure it won't be a problem."

  "Of course it won't be a problem. We'll make an evening of it, how about that? First drinks here, then dinner at Café Luxembourg, then the concert."

  "Sounds great."

  Moving back into the living room, Joseph sat down on the sofa. "Come sit by me," he said, patting the spot to his left.

  Paul sat. Almost immediately Joseph's arm went around his shoulders.

  For the second time, they kissed.

  After a minute Paul pulled away. "I'm sorry, but would you mind changing the music?"

  "Sure."

  "It's not that I don't like it... it's just—"

  "You don't have to explain," Joseph said, bouncing up and removing the cassette from the stereo. "Just tell me what you'd like to hear instead."

  "Anything. Scarlatti."

  "Scarlatti, Scarlatti..." With his fingernail he scanned the CDs. "Ah, here we are. And whose Scarlatti would you prefer? I've got Horowitz, Landowska, Pletnev, Pogorelich, Charles Rosen on the Siena Pianoforte, Schiff, Maria Tipo, Alexis Weissenberg, Christian Zacharias—"

  "Horowitz."

  "Horowitz it is." Pulling the gem case from the shelf, Joseph removed the CD and laid it carefully on its bed. Then he returned to the sofa.

  "Is that better?" he asked.

  "Yes. That's good."

  Again, they kissed. The fingers of Joseph's right hand made circles over Paul's chest; slipped between the buttons of his shirt.

  "You've got a very nice musculature," he said.

  "Thank you."

  "Let me see what you look like."

  Obediently Paul stood. He undid his tie. And so it has come to this, he found himself thinking as he unbuttoned, the way it might have begun, in San Francisco ...yet he was not unhappy, nor unaroused. Instead, as he opened his belt, and peered over at Joseph, who was watching him urgently, he could feel the lust rising in his own throat. Also in his pants.

  Eyes closed, he pulled his T-shirt over his head, sat again, his nipples hardening. He thought of Thang, his hands.

  "You're a beautiful boy," Joseph said. He palmed Paul's chest like a blind man, while Horowitz played, and the pictures in their frames stared from the piano.

  14

  "PAUL, DEAR," Miss Novotna said, "it's called the Well-tempered Clavier, not the Ill-tempered Clavier."

  "I'm sorry," Paul said. "I'll start again."

  "No, don't start again. Sit down over there. There, we shall have some tea. Consuelo! Tea! And some of those Peek Freans!"

  Folding her hands in her lap, Miss Novotna smiled across the table at Paul, who was fidgeting in his chair. It was just past noon on Christmas Eve, and he was visiting his old teacher for the first time since starting Juilliard. She kept her apartment dark these days, he noticed. Heavy curtains, drawn to meet, blockaded the winter sunlight, a few rays of which nonetheless broke through to illuminate a bust of Kessler here, a photograph of Kessler there, the Mason and Hamlin piano, from which dust particles rose, only to resettle on other, older, dustier things.

  "You are not playing your best today," Miss Novotna said, adjusting one of her rings.

  He looked away. "Not an easy Christmas. My parents are divorcing."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "Thank you. My mother's very depressed."

  "And how is school?"

  Paul cracked his knuckles.

  "Don't do that, it brings on arthritis. Now how is school?"

  "School is ... all right. Not great."

  "And Kirchenwald ?"

  "Fine. He's not like you, of course. Also ... I don't know. He just doesn't seem very interested in me." Paul rested his cheek on his fist. "To be honest, he's much more interested in a boy called Thang Po. Have you heard of him? Joseph Mansourian's already signed him on. He's going to Brussels for the Queen Elisabeth."

  "Ah, the Queen Elisabeth."

  "Yes. And I'm jealous. At least I admit it. No one else will. I'm not going to Brussels, though. I don't think I'm ready."

  "Judging from your performance today, Paul, I'm afraid I must agree."

  He glanced up, startled a little bit not to be contradicted.

  "I have to be honest," she continued. "You have fallen off since the summer. What I had hoped Juilliard would develop in you ... that quality of sincerity, of holding the music together ... I do not hear. No, don't interrupt!" She stood and hobbled over to the old record player. "I am going to play you something. I am going to play you the adagio of the Hammer Clavier. Listen."

  Then she sat down again, and they listened. It is a difficult adagio, one that only a great pianist can keep from falling apart. And in these hands it did not fall apart; it was more than broken things, even though broken things were what it spoke of. Paul heard a voice that was tired, perhaps of life. Then a cuckoo seemed to call slowly, softly—not like a cuckoo at all. And the voice sustained the ability to go on. Nothing so poetic as peace, or a reconciliation ... just that stark sentence: the voice sustained the ability to go on.

  When it was over, Miss Novotna lifted the needle from the record with a shaky hand. "It is very sad," Paul said, as she passed him a box of tissues.

  "Yes, it is."

  After a moment, he said, "I shall never play like that, shall I?"

  His teacher stared for a few seconds at the tabletop. "No," she answered at
length. "No, I suspect you will not."

  "And yet earlier you seemed to think—"

  "That was my failure. It is possible to see one thing one moment, and then later realize—"

  "But Miss Novotna, if I can't be a pianist, what am I going to do? I'm not good at anything else."

  "Nonsense. You can do anything you wish. Go to medical school, or law school. Or write. That is, if you can't bear remaining in the world of music. If that's the case, I understand. It is easier, perhaps, for women, to take a supporting role, to become teachers and nurturers, accompanists—"

  "Page turners," Paul interrupted.

  "To be a page turner is not a profession," Miss Novotna said quickly. "To be an accompanist, on the other hand, is a noble calling. You might consider that option. Certainly you could make a success of it, since as I've always said—"

  "Will carries an artist further than talent. I know."

  "Precisely. And will, Paul, you possess in abundance."

  "But talent only enough to accompany brilliant violinists and cellists and singers, is that what you're saying?"

  "I'm only trying to spare you future suffering," Miss Novotna answered stiffly. "Believe me, if you prove me wrong and become one of the great pianists of your day, I shall be the first to admit my misjudgment. But if you do not, and this is likely for anyone, then it's best to decide now whether you can bear accepting a secondary role."

  "The way you did."

  She bowed her head.

  "And yet it seems so unfair! When Kennington was my age, he'd already—"

  "Do not speak of him like that!" Miss Novotna lifted her hand peremptorily. "Remember, this is a man who lives for music itself. Keep that in your mind when you speak of him. Otherwise he becomes for you nothing more than a projection of your own ambition. And Kennington has never been concerned with ambition. To him fame is a grief. It is what gets in the way." ■

  "Oh, what I wouldn't give to worry about fame getting in the way!"

  "Don't have any illusions about pain," Miss Novotna said. "You are still a child in this regard. A child believes that joy is infinite and suffering is short. And why shouldn't he believe that? He scrapes his knee, it heals. Another child is cruel, he cries. Yet his mother always loves him. And then he grows up, and his mother dies, and he learns that the opposite of everything he believed is true. Joy is short, but suffering ... suffering lasts."

  "Miss Novotna—"

  She raised her hand. "And now," she said, "I must see what is keeping Consuelo with that tea."

  Lifting herself creakily out of her chair, she left. In the dark, dusty room, the swimming bars of light defined a border that Paul now crossed more easily than he could have imagined possible. He picked up the jacket of the record Miss Novotna had just played for him, and saw on the cover her own young face.

  15

  CHRISTMAS WAS OVER. It had passed, as usual, in a fever of generosities, and left an aftertaste of swindle in its wake. Nothing had gone as Paul's mother had hoped, by which she meant that the turkey was dry; she had bought Paul the wrong recording of the Rachmaninoff Third; the volume knob had broken off George's new Walkman. On top of which one of the P's had disappeared from the Scrabble set. "Anticippointment," Pamela said, feeding the wrapping paper to the flames, and there was in that invented word all the regret and resignation that forty-seven years of Christmases had built up in her. For despite what she had been promised since infancy, suffering and worry had not taken the day off. Pain had not taken the day off. A rent breached the universe, one that neither comfort nor joy could heal. Nor would the Hammerklavier have taught her anything she didn't already know. She understands the drill. When life can only be borne a minute at a time, you measure out your life in minutes. Then the hours make themselves. The days make themselves. And you sustain the ability to go on.

  Why was she so sorrowful? She had not loved her husband. Still, his presence was something to which she had become habituated. And now he would have nothing to do with her, and when she woke on Christmas morning, it was to face the uncomfortable image of a woman ragged at the edges, fingernails dirty, the dye growing out of her hair. He did not love her: that was the painful part. And Kennington did not love her either; she had taken a misunderstanding for a miracle; she had let the chasm of hope yawn open, had leapt over it from sorrow into joy, a journey that is perhaps always better taken slowly, the long way round. Now, ensconced in sorrow's hinterlands, she looked out at the scarred patch of earth where hope had closed, and vowed never to be fooled again. She never was. Perhaps to be loved one must always run the risk of being fooled. In any case, what happiness she knew in later years, and it was ample, would be entirely of her own making.

  Sorrow is perhaps the most selfish of emotions. Certainly it is the most voracious. It eats up the food of the spirit, and empathy starves. Therefore it will probably come as little surprise that Pamela failed to register her son's suffering that Christmas. Instead, when she looked at him, and at George and his wife, Christine (her daughter, Julie, was with her in-laws), she saw only youth, which insults age with its heedless insouciance. How could he not rejoice, she asked herself, having every chance for joy ahead of him? Yet he was glum. His brother and sister-in-law noticed it too. At breakfast with their father he spoke ill of their mother. Then at dinner with their mother he spoke ill of their father. He seemed without loyalties, when in fact his aggression was merely affixing itself to any stray target that came its way. For it seemed that no sooner would he start coming to grips with Miss Novotna's sad assessments, than someone would be thrusting a piano-key scarf in his face. Every present that year was music: in his stocking gold-plated cuff links shaped like tiny pianos, new CDs, books about romanticism, and blue Henle scores. And his brother wanted him to play. "Schumann!" George demanded, but Paul, remembering Thang, shook his head.

  "Then how about Prokofiev? Play Peter and the Wolf." George was sitting with Christine on the sofa, fashioning a new P for the Scrabble set from a piece of plywood.

  "It's not written for the piano, although there is a transcription by Tatiana Nikolayeva."

  Instead he played "Romeo Bids Juliet Farewell"—badly. His brother and sister-in-law got distracted and started talking about how much they'd loved Peter and the Wolf as children. "And wasn't the duck the clarinet?" (The cat was the clarinet.)

  "When we have our five children—"

  "Our three children—"

  "When we have our five children—"

  So the holy day proceeded, and in the end, perhaps the best that can be said for it, at least so far as the Porterfields were concerned, is that it was gotten through. When midnight struck at last, the tides of the future immersed that island of Christmas over which the world, for a few weeks, had fussed and doted. And in the resulting ocean, Paul saw Kennington. Was he drowning? He hoped not. In New York, in addition to Alden, with whom he had continued more or less to live, Paul had started having an affair with Joseph Mansourian, whom he had once found so unattractive, and from whom he had learned, among other things, that Kennington was in town again. Also from Joseph—or more specifically, from Joseph's Rolodex—he had gotten Kennington's address and phone number. He'd called several times, never leaving messages; even spent an afternoon standing across the street from the building on White Street where Kennington lived. But when, around four-thirty, Kennington finally emerged, he'd had to hide. The sight of his erstwhile lover after so many months, handsome and windblown, stunned him into a peculiar reluctance, a hesitancy to approach. For if he loved this man (and he was sure he did), then why was he sleeping with Alden? Why was he sleeping with Joseph? Well, the answer was obvious: it was because this man did not love him, and in the meantime he had to get on in the world, didn't he? He had to forget. And yet how could he forget, when Kennington's face was everywhere in Joseph's apartment, so omnipresent that Paul couldn't seem to turn around without confronting it? With that face, in all the stages of its growth, he had regained, over the weeks, a
n intimacy, so much so that when the time came to fly home for Christmas he could hardly bear to part with it. Which was why, in Menlo Park, the photograph of his friend throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain lay buried amid the carefully folded T-shirts in Paul's suitcase. His last afternoon he'd swiped it from the bookcase, taken it back to his apartment, removed it carefully from its frame. On the back someone—Joseph or Kennington—had written, "You are all that I wish for"; yet even in fantasy, Paul could never quite convince himself that the message was meant for him.

  The next morning he and his mother woke early and drove to Walgreen's to shop for Christmas cards and wrapping paper. Beginning on the twenty-sixth, Christmas cards and wrapping paper were half price, and Pamela liked to buy up a supply in advance, so that the following year she could congratulate herself on her economy.

  Together, as was their ritual, they pushed the cart down the aisle. They did not speak. Too much family activity had diluted that intimacy that had evolved between them in the years after George and Julie went off to school. Only now, in this drugstore where they had spent so many hours, did a certain desultory humor return to them, a humor cultivated over years of being left alone together at the end of holidays. Wheels squeaked. Pamela threw bags of colored bows and bright cylinders of paper into the cart (their value slashed, they glimmered with pathos) while Paul kept an eye out for the video camera in the corner. As a boy he'd made a game of running to the cash register just as his mother passed so that he could see her face captured in the closed-circuit television. Now, of course, a more brooding eye peered down, watchful for darker thefts.

  Pamela wanted to know how school was going. Because Paul's decision to commit himself to the piano had more or less coincided with Kelso's (unannounced) defection, not to mention the departure of his brother and sister for midwestern cities, only his mother had really shared in its evolution. Now she asked the questions he had hoped to be spared: Was Juilliard a success? Were his teachers a success? Did they recognize the jewel they held in their hands?

  "I'm thinking of quitting" was Paul's answer.