by Noel Hynd
“The other side”. He turned those words over in his head. Life used to be as simple as the infinite variations that an artist could find on a keyboard. Now it was more complex than theologians and philosophers could have ever imagined.
Geiger sighed and rose from his chair.
He wandered to the kitchen and turned on a small color television that sat at the end of one counter. He made a sandwich, then found a bottle of beer in the refrigerator. It was very cold. The way he liked it.
Deep down, he knew what he was facing. The supernatural explanation was the only one that made any sense.
He picked up the remote control, to channel surf. For one of the first times in his life, he had had enough of music.
Enough about Beethoven. Enough about Chopin and enough about whether or not he would play such and such a concerto in Paris.
Music, music, music, art, art, art. Who cares?
What, he wondered, was the value of his craft compared with the value of life? He thought back to a quote he had seen once form an artist who said that if he had been in a burning museum and could save a Vermeer or a stray cat, he would choose the stray cat.
Meow. Girl With a Pearl Earring is being broiled and baked, but meow. The thought amused him. Of course, he mused further, if the artist had owned the Vermeer his response might have been different.
Rolf cursed to himself again. He realized that he had grown much more profane over the past few weeks. He had long considered profanity highly undignified. It reminded him of his dirtball relatives in West Virginia and old foul-tempered old Rabinowitz. These days, Rolf had become profane and didn’t much care about it anymore.
Geiger kept flicking the remote control to the television.
Suddenly, bulls eye.
Baseball. The New York Yankees were playing the Philadelphia Phillies in one of the interleague games. Geiger was a baseball iconoclast. He liked the Designated Hitter, he liked the divisions, and he liked interleague play. What he didn’t like was pretentious people pontificating about some other era of the game in rusty, sweaty, cigar-stenched old parks.
The Yankees.
Geiger admired the excellence and the tradition with the passion that only adopted New Yorkers can muster. Better yet, on this evening in the new Yankee Stadium, the Yankees had no special musical significance at all, other than their insistence, after the game, on playing Sinatra’s rendition of New York, New York.
Geiger even liked that in its nervy in-your-face belligerence.
Tonight, as he finished half the sandwich and then grabbed a third beer, he was in the mood for some assertive Sinatra braggadocio. He had always liked Sinatra and loved those old Ocean’s Eleven reruns.
Make it an Italian special, he contended. From the genti who brought him Verdi, Puccini Rossini, and Vivaldi, now how about some Sinatra brio, with a touch of Rizzuto, a memory of DiMaggio, and a trace of Girardi? All this now seemed like better idea than any rubato, arpeggio, or molto vivace that he could think of.
He tried to do a pan-Italian Yankee lineup. Berra, Pepitone, DiMaggio, Crossetti, Rizzuto. Billy Martin would manage. Giambi would DH. For reasons of pure mischief, Sal Maglie—who had passed through the Bronx in the latter days of his career—would pitch.
He smiled for a moment. Then he finished the third beer. He didn’t normally quaff suds this way, but tonight he needed it. He needed to just crash out and get lost for one evening. Then he could put his mind in order and quickly prepare for the Philadelphia concert.
He settled back. Brew helped him think. Sometimes. So he grabbed a fourth.
Seeing the ghost of Rabinowitz had turned his brain inside out. It had been a liberating experience. After all, now that he knew ghosts existed, and that Rabinowitz was floating around out there along with maybe everyone else…well, was there any line of thought he couldn’t entertain now? If ghosts were possible, hadn’t the underpinnings of his religion and his sense of the rational world been completely redefined?
An image of Brother Matthew came before him again, his onetime friend and confidant. He wondered how Matthew would counsel him in this situation.
A mad urge was upon him. Pick up the phone and call the Franciscan brother. He would be easy to find as he was back at St. Agnes’ School. Of course, could a man in Rolf’s position just pick up the phone after a dozen years and glide gracefully into a chat about the supernatural?
Then again, why not?
Thoughts cascaded forth from the past. Visions of childhood. Poverty. Abuse. The ability to use his great musical gift to rise above all this.
His reverie lasted for several minutes. Then he snapped to attention. He sensed the presence of the ghost. Geiger took a long gulp of his beer. He felt combative now. Alcohol was a great equalizer.
“Hey Rabinowitz! Where are you?” he shouted. “Isador! You old bastard! Come on out!”
To any witnesses, he would have looked like a madman. One arm flailed at the air, in case the specter was within reach. Geiger listened to an echo bounce quickly around his home. Then he laughed aloud.
No response from the spirit world. Geiger looked around. Then he rose from the kitchen table and, carrying the bottle of beer with him, walked into his library.
“Anyone here?” he called out. “Anyone else here?” he demanded. “Hey!” he shouted aloud. “How’s life after death so far Isador?”
No response again. He laughed.
“You contrary old bastard!” Geiger mocked. “You want to be alive again?” he ranted as the full effects of drunkenness came upon him. “I’ll make you wish you weren’t!”
Geiger’s drunken hands found the keyboard. He zipped off a Chopin Fantasie, playing it the way Geiger wanted to play it. Then he transmogrified it into something ugly, giving it an annoying disco beat.
“Chop, chop. Choppin’ at your door!” Geiger proclaimed to the tune of Knock, Knock, Knockin’ at Heaven’s Door. “The man with the ax plays in concert tonight!”
The chords thundered. Geiger assaulted the keys relentlessly.
“Can I raise a ghost?” he asked. “Can I offend a sleeping spirit? Sure! I can always play a little something to raise the dead!”
He played Pictures at an Exhibition. One of Rabinowitz’s pets.
“You put the music out for me, Isador. So maybe you’d like to hear it.”
Geiger started playing the main themes, but these pictures at Rolf’s imaginary exhibition were from Mapplethorpe. That would have the old man sizzling. Geiger proclaimed it aloud as he hit noisy ugly themes:
Queer couples. Defiled Flowers. A crucifix dipped in—
Mapplethorpe, Mezzathorpe.
Heidi high, heidi ho.
The ghost of Isador,
Has gotta go!
“Hey, Isador, you frustrated old maniac! How about Pictures of an Exhibitionist instead?” Into themes from Chopin, Geiger nestled stanzas from Queen. Radio Ga-Ga intertwined around an arpeggio. Then Bohemian Rhapsody floated with great finesse through a Chopin rhapsody.
Mamma mia! Mamma mia!
Yeah. The old man could take the late, great Freddie Mercury and listen to him till he kicked the lid off his coffin. Mamma mia, indeed! Those sexy Swedish chicks from Abba ruled. Where are they to tonight, Anni-Frid and Agnetha?
“And come on, Rabinowitz,” Geiger taunted. “Where are you? Where in hell are you?” Rolf crushed the right pedal on the piano. The music filled the chamber, rattling some figurines on the nearby shelves. Geiger’s hands thundered with a power that might have pulverized the keys and harps of lesser instruments. Then Geiger burst from the bench screaming, as music echoed within the heavily sound-proofed room.
“Where are you?” he bellowed again. “Come out! I know you’re here!”
Geiger went from closet to closet in the library, throwing the doors open, tearing the contents from within. He raged around the room, knocking over books and scores, sending a standing lamp tumbling to the carpet. It hit with a crash. Its porcelain bowl shattered.
Then he felt a presence. He felt the conduit from one world to the next. He wandered out to the front foyer of his home. He went to the window and stared out. The watcher was waiting for him. The old man was waiting to be summoned.
“Unless invited,” as he had once said.
Geiger stared downward. By the shadowy illumination of the streetlamps, he could see the features of his unwanted sentry. The watcher’s eyes seemed to glow like coals as he glared upward. Geiger’s body was bathed in sweat. He could hear the kettledrum of his own heart.
Rolf averted his eyes and shook his head. A conduit from the dead and back to life.
“Invite me in,” the spirit asked.
“No.”
“Invite me in!”
Drunkenly, “Yes. I will.”
Geiger looked downward through the window to the street. The watcher’s face creased with a demonic grin. The figure on the street fixed Geiger with taunting eyes.
Geiger turned and lurched slightly. He wove his way back to his library. He went to the center of the room, breathing hard. He was there when his nose picked up again the horrible stench of decaying flesh. The air pressure in the room changed.
Geiger looked up with a start. The watcher was in his home now. He stood in the open doorway of the library. Solid and substantial. Geiger stared at him. His fear plateaued. What now could happen that hadn’t already happened? The old man’s image faded out before Geiger’s eyes. The watcher disappeared.
Or actually, he moved. Invisibly through the air. Geiger knew exactly what was to follow. With his back to the piano, ever so slightly, Rolf heard something.
A tap. A slight tapping.
It was almost inaudible. An infinitesimally soft touch to a key of the Steinway. An old Rabinowitz mannerism as a prelude to playing.
Removing specks of dust from the keys. Soft as an angel.
What hearing Geiger had! He sensed the sound of a man’s learned fingers settling upon the keyboard in preparation for playing.
Yes! Rolf knew he had heard it. The sound, barely above a silence, of the flesh—if that’s what it could be called on a ghost’s fingers—settling on the keys.
Rolf spoke aloud to the room.
“You should hold your fingers higher,” Geiger taunted. “Your fingering sucks.”
Then he cringed. He could see—he could even hear—the skin of his visitor’s face stretch into a frozen smile.
Then Geiger thought he heard a slight laughter.
“Turn around, Rolf.”
“Not till I hear you play,” Geiger answered.
“Have it your way, you young fraud!”
Geiger knew.
The ghost was now fully present. Same as he had been present all along, same as he had been present on the stairs those several nights ago.
“Present,” a drunken Rolf Geiger now said to himself. “First in my mind, then in my home.”
“Next in your cursed soul forever!”
“No,” Rolf answered. “Anything but that!”
Then Rolf did hear laughter. He heard the fingers come down on the keys. Ever so sweetly, ever so exquisitely, the late Isador Rabinowitz began to play for an audience of one. Music from heaven, played by a soul from hell!
A brilliant flourish and arpeggio to start. A rubato to bring tears to the angels. A Chopin to make women cry.
“Turn around, Rolf,” Rabinowitz said in his brittle mittel-europa accent. “Observe here the excellence of which you will every day never be capable.”
Geiger steeled his nerves. He braced himself for what he would see.
As he heard the music swell, Geiger turned.
The watcher had been transformed out of his earthly disguise. There at the keyboard was Rabinowitz, solid and substantial, dead for two months, sitting and playing Geiger’s Steinway.
Geiger didn’t scream. He didn’t bolt and didn’t faint. For some reason, after all that happened, it seemed strangely natural. The master was back from the dead.
To haunt him forever?
“Maybe,” said Rabinowitz.
Chopin continued. A ravishingly pretty polonaise. It contrasted magnificently with the terror Rolf felt.
“Next step to whereabouts, young Rolf?” Rabinowitz asked casually from the piano. “Do you know where you’re heading?”
Rolf broke into a hot sweat. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here for you, Rolf,” the master said.
“What does that mean?”
The old man made a tsking motion with his dry dead tongue. His lips moved as he spoke.
“You’ll know in time,” Rabinowitz said. The old man shrugged. He threw off a brilliant rubato.
“You learned nothing from me,” the ghost insisted. “And at least, if you had learned something from me, I would have though preferred it to be musicianship. A seriousness about your art.”
“What do you want from me,” Geiger demanded.
The old man’s eyes, alternatively shimmering and hollow, rested on Geiger. There was a skeletal grin on his lips in response to the question. Then he broke into a joyfully campy rendition of Heart and Soul.
“That’s what I’ve always wanted,” Rabinowitz said. “Your heart and your soul.”
Geiger cringed again. He began to move slowly in his library. But he had a sense of moving as if in a dream. He was floating, not touching the ground.
“Or am I staggering?” he wondered. “Drunk out of my mind?” He felt himself revolve around the piano, even though he was attempting to approach it. Obviously, he concluded quickly, he couldn’t control his own movements with the ghost present. As so often had been the case, Rabinowitz was his master.
“Are you sleeping well these days?” Rabinowitz asked.
“Hardly at all.”
“That’s good,” the ghost answered cheerfully. He raised his eyes and seemed to be focused upon his young protégé. “And I will arrange for you now to sleep even worse.”
His eyes established contact with Geiger’s. Then the eyes were gone for a flash and there was a yellow rotting emptiness in the sockets. Geiger jerked backwards and felt an equal hollowness in his gut. The sensation was half fear, half revulsion. Geiger stifled a gasp. Rabinowitz face contorted, the eye sockets filled in, the gleaming black eyes were back.
“Imagine that when you die your brain doesn’t really die,” the ghost continued evenly. “Oh, to the modern doctors your brain has ceased to have electrical charges. So they think it’s dead. But not really. Only your body is dead. So they pump you with embalming fluid, put you in a coffin, slam the lid, and let you lie there thinking, unable to move, for eternity.”
“Is that what it’s like? Death, I mean?” Rabinowitz raised a single brow. He played a few bars of a mazurka next.
“You’ll soon find out,” he answered. The master kept playing. “Let’s say, I’m familiar with death. Would you like to be familiar with it, too? Sometime soon?”
“No.”
“Your lady is going to die, you know. The girl sleeping upstairs. Only you and I can hear each other now, you know. And you will kill her. Nothing you can do to stop it. Then you will die, too. It’s all arranged. A tragedy which the tabloids will milk for years. Do you like that notion?”
For an instant Rabinowitz raised his hands, hands that used to flirt with Geiger’s neck when Geiger was a student. Then the hands descended as quickly as they had come up. Geiger had the impression that somehow Rabinowitz hadn’t even missed a beat.
“I’m going to banish you. By thinking about something else,” Geiger said.
Rabinowitz laughed again, an evil cackle.
“You will only banish me by surpassing me in greatness. And you will never do that.”
Geiger steamed. At the keyboard, the ghost changed his tempo.
“For example, do you recognize this mazurka?” Rabinowitz inquired. “Technically quite challenging. You could never perform it with justice.”
Geiger turned from the specter. The intensi
ty of the music heightened.
“Think about this, Rolf,” Rabinowitz said. “The guillotine. You are placed in it and your head is chopped off. But the head does not lose consciousness for several seconds. Your final seconds of life are spent contemplating your head’s severance from your body.”
“Go,” said Geiger. “Leave.” Rabinowitz laughed.
“Only when I choose to. I will always be your master. I will always be your better.” He paused. “Your Diana,” Rabinowitz began slowly. “She copulates joyfully with someone else. Another man penetrates her.”
“That’s not true!”
“She has sex with the artist! He’s a filthy Arab, I believe. Very powerful loins. He’s a large man, prodigiously endowed. He pleases her considerably.” Geiger bristled.
“That’s a lie. All of it.”
“At least he’s an artist,” Rabinowitz said. “Not a pretender such as yourself.”
Geiger held back for a moment.
“He enjoys her from the back side, you know, as Arabs do. It’s a way they claim their women. They’re like sheep, the Arabs are, but when they find a nice slutty ewe-”
Geiger whirled and approached the Steinway, his movements a cross between a man in a nightmare and a belligerent drunk.
Rabinowitz laughed gleefully and held his place at the piano bench. His hands never swerved from the keyboard. He glanced up as Geiger approached.
“I’m already dead,” he said. His eyes went yellow and hollow again. But he continued to speak. “There’s nothing you can do to me. I don’t even feel pain anymore.”
As soon as those thoughts were in Geiger’s head, Rolf reached his tormentor. He lunged at him with both hands, as if to throttle him.
But there was nothing there. Geiger’s hands sailed through Rabinowitz, though he looked as solid as any man whom Geiger had ever faced. His hands, as they went into that horrible, inexplicable space that comprised the ghost, felt as though they had been plunged into ice water.
For an instant Geiger remained rigid, staring at his arms which had entered the ghost’s plane and come out the back. Another smile curled on the corners of Rabinowitz’s mean lips.
Then he was gone and there was nothing in front of Geiger. But he still heard music playing. And he still heard that voice.