Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
Page 34
Indeed, that is what I heard; I have heard it many times since that first time, when I played the tape in my car. I have played it for countless appreciative houseguests, and at almost every dinner party where the conversation (predictably) flags. Only my most musically inclined friends are quick to recognize the three pieces that Elisabeth and Claudio play: a minuet by Mozart, a Schumann (one of the pieces for children), and a Bartok (also for children). And none of my friends has been able to identify Claudio as an English setter; they generally offer the guess that Claudio is a somewhat gifted child.
It was Claudio's great-great-grandfather, Arlecchino, who was the typist. Elisabeth included some samples of the typist's masterful nosework -- Arlecchino was called Arli, for short. And so it happened that Arli's great-great-grandson Claudio would learn to play the right-hand part of a minuet by Mozart, and pieces for children by Schumann and Bartok -- with his nose -- and that Claudio's piano teacher would be an oceanographer, who herself is a great novelist's daughter.
It is exactly as Gunter Grass has written: "People want to hear the truth. But when the truth is told, they say, 'Anyway, it's all made up.' Or, with a laugh, 'What that man won't think up next!'"
As for the story that I used to call "Elisabeth's Cough," I would now suggest a different title. Besides, Elisabeth assured me in her letter that she was completely recovered from the cough that conjured up the sanatorium in my mind. "Many years ago," she wrote, "a lot of young people thought they had TB, after reading The Magic Mountain, but don't worry about me: I don't have it. That cough was passing and harmless."
The matter of a suitable title for this story will doubtless be an ongoing subject of conversation between Gunter Grass and me; naturally, I plan to take the tape recording of Claudio's nosework with me to Behlendorf in September. Grass is a much more symbolic writer than I am; he is a more subtle writer, too. I imagine him thinking that "The Right Hand" -- in reference to the side of the keyboard that Claudio plays -- would be both the symbolic choice and the most subtle title. But there's very little that's symbolic and even less that's subtle about me. From now on, whenever I tell the story of meeting Thomas Mann's daughter on an airplane, I am calling the whole adventure "Claudio's Nose."
As soon as I come to this conclusion, I hear again from Elisabeth. I had sent her the German edition of Owen Meany -- she reported that she found the German translation excellent -- and she responded with a book of her own. (Having first said she had no book of her own to send me, she is an author after all!) This one is called Chairworm & Supershark, a cautionary tale for children about the pollution of the oceans. I read it to Everett, who is disturbed by the part about the dead fish floating on a poisoned sea. From the author's biography, I learn that Elisabeth has written and edited a series of books on the oceans, and that she teaches Political Science at Dalhousie. I also learn that Elisabeth Mann Borgese was born in Munich in 1918, which makes her a year older than my mother.
But there is sad news in Elisabeth's most recent letter: Claudio has passed away. "There won't be another dog like Claudio," Elisabeth concludes. Now when I play the tape, it seems unsuitable for dinnerparty entertainment; I like to listen to it alone.
The other night Everett heard the minuet by Mozart, and then the pieces for children by Schumann and Bartok. "What are you listening to, Daddy?" he asked me.
How do you answer a four-year-old? (Everett will turn four on the fifth anniversary of German reunification. We'll take him to Amsterdam, interrupting the German book tour between Hamburg and Berlin; Amsterdam is a pleasant city for Everett to enjoy his birthday in, and we'll thereby avoid the celebrations and/or demonstrations that will doubtless mark the anniversary of reunification in Germany.)
"What are you listening to, Daddy?" Everett repeated.
"'Claudio's Nose,'" I told him -- trying out my new title.