Who was it? ah yes, the father of Marcella Sembrich. That gift-giving father, Joey remembered, learned to play many of the instruments of the orchestra without any formal training. At the store Joey blew into everything that had a mouthpiece and soon was able to do party, wedding, or retirement tunes on a lot of them, which pleased Emil and Millicent Kazan, his employers, since he could thus provide customers with demonstrations. He handled the rental business and then sales of sheet music as well, an addition to his work that increased his musical knowledge, too, because Joey devoured the liner notes, and his score-reading markedly improved, though, of course, it was for catchy melodies that were not long on difficulty or merit.
His fellow clerk was a kid called Castle Cairfill. At first, Joey felt sorry for him. Apparently, all through Woodbine High, he had been called Airful or Careful or, with another kind of scornful irony, Sir Castle, not Caz as he had hoped, and Joey was by his plight reminded how happy he was to be a Skizzen (odd as the name was) and not a Yussel—Yussel Fixel, what a burden!—even though he was called Skizz, because Skizz wasn’t so bad. But Airful was an asshole. He was Joey’s first asshole, though a regiment would follow. Airful had a head of stiff red hair the color of brick that he wore unevenly short so it resembled the bristles of a military brush that has been through many enlistments. You saw a lot of that head because Castle was noticeably tall as well as thin and, apparently embarrassed by his height, went about as if under arrest and concealing his face from the press. The belt he wore—there seemed to be two that worked each week—had so much tongue, when cinched, it fell from his waist like a panting dog’s. Caz’s complexion was both pale and flushed—that is, it was splotchy—and the splotches appeared to pulse when Airful was himself hot about something, whereas when he was frightened or anxious, his skin grew whiter than a fish’s belly, so he looked sickly, tubercular, Joey imagined, like a male Mimi.
The seamstress but not the singer. Singers, he’d learned, were plump as geese, even when the character they sang was poor, overworked, and ill. Ill, overworked, and poor was as Caz seemed, but there was nary a song to suit the pallor of his personality or the blood-pink splotches on it either, nor was Joey the fat guy hired to sing it for him. Castle’s long fingers were good for forking through sheets of music or stacks of records; he was even rather nimble at it; and these same straw-thin fingers strummed the guitar and the banjo fairly well except that they played nothing on these instruments that interested Joey’s ear now that his taste was turned toward finer kinds—the most sentimental of operatic arias, he would later realize. He had recently come across the tenor of tenors, Beniamino Gigli, and “Una Furtiva Lagrima” was, at the moment, the apex of all art.
Castle wanted but wasn’t granted amplification because Mr. Emil forbade the sale of noise cannons, as he called them, since they were instrumental in making much of the music Mr. Emil hated (a hatred, fortunately for profits, the parents of his principal patrons shared); however, his store did stock records by metal, cotton and earcandy rock groups, both hard and soft, as well as country-western naselizers and Broadway belters, because, otherwise, Mr. and Mrs. Kazan would have had no customers. Semirural Ohio was no place for blues, rap, hip-hop, jazz, or rag. But in the High Note store you could mosey a long while on the nostalgia trail from Kay Kyser or Guy Lombardo to Wayne “the Waltz” King or go as far as Benny Goodman and the big bands.
Joey’s education was advancing by octaves. He already sensed the importance of airs, which, just before he went to work, he put on as regularly as his shirt. With a smile of condescension, Caz watched Joey gobble up the classical music section, such as it was; but it wasn’t long before he could see the entire floor coming under Joey’s reign, because kids who’d known and teased Airfill at school didn’t have to ask him where a certain album was now or even pay him for it but could deal with Joey, who was a sort of cipher, and ignore the Castle where Sir Skinny lived.
Joey sensed the social meanings inherent in each sort of music: the old folks’ need for a lullaby lady, the frat boys’ for a glamour-puss, or that of a lamenting wife for a lamenting wife, as well as the value to obnoxious youths of eardrum-bruising yowls. The world-weary were soothed by sighing strings and entranced by Hawaiian hammock music. In addition there was a general though unacknowledged affection for ironically romantic baby talk: whose yr lit-till whozzis? whoze yr turtle dove? Crooners were well named, making sounds like soft stools. The honky kids he knew loved ghetto music. They felt it suited their mood when, for instance, they couldn’t have the car. Volume alone was medicine, a defense against the world, or a cry of protest. Trips down memory lane were exclusively for the old folks; young folks like to think they have nothing to remember, so they have little patience with hoedowns and disdain for turkeys in the straw, no matter how noisy and frantic the violins get. In every case, for every age, whether loud, soft, rough, or gentle, music was used to obscure reality. Even if rural Ohio didn’t have much.
Nevertheless Joey forced himself to become familiar with this oddly assorted sonic material in order to better serve his clientele—as he wished his patrons would learn to be. Pop buyers preferred singers who couldn’t sing and musicians who couldn’t play because these performers were—as they rose out of sight in their idolaters’ eyes—like pop people themselves, their incompetence was the common touch and made them seem more sincere. Folk music, for instance, had to seem simple, uncouth, and untutored, or it wasn’t folk. Joey thought it might be a good tactic to hum in the neighborhood of the customer. He rather liked “Moonlight in Vermont,” but he didn’t remember if any words went with—who was it?—Glenn Miller’s version. It was the words the fan wanted to hear, interpreted and heightened—the message, the story—thus allowing opinions to be expressed and verified while feelings were shared and legitimized. Whereas, for his favorite aria, Joey knew only that it was about a furtive tear, and that the tear was as foreign as its language. For him it was the music—the music in the voice—the voice—smooth, sweet, easy, athletic, soaring above this poor earth—its sounds said all that needed to be said—un ah furr teev ah la gree ma. They went where the world wanted to go: out … outside itself … out of the ugly and painful and tawdry and cheap, out of the reach of reality just like everyone else, even in disdain of tears, to the place of beauty, its serenity, and its certainties.
In short, beauty was protection against the ordinary way of being. And rural Ohio had a lot of ordinary.
By present taste, the more difficult and sophisticated instruments—the violin, the clarinet—were avoided in favor of anything you could hammer or strum—the piano, alas, the drums, the guitar—and wiggles replaced real rhythm. Pop stars played the microphone like masters because electronics could turn bad breath into big-time bucks. They knew what their listeners wanted—what they themselves loved and served—substitute feeling and the pointless energies of borrowed life. Joey had to admit that like the others he had his head hid, but their heads were buried in the sand while his was immersed in the clouds.
In a rare moment of frankness, Joey had to ask Joseph whether un ah furr teev ah la gree ma didn’t do the same thing with the same success as “Red Sails in the Sunset.”
Joey harbored these thoughts only in a hidden cove, but he recognized very early the importance of snobbery as a support for principles. Snobs never sold out their class. However, that unlikely loyalty may have been because their class was all they had. Steady on. Hold course, he’d learned to say from a seafaring novel. Had he wished to, and there were moments when he wished to, hear what other kids heard and share their certainties, it would have been denied him, for he was as odd as an oyster. Later, Joey would exhibit, as if for a textbook, the progression to the higher stations of appreciation: he’d begin by extolling Puccini and Tchaikovsky and pouring scorn on Ponchielli while admitting that the London recording of La Gioconda, with Zinka Milanov, was a splendid one; after that he’d advance to middle Verdi and The Ring, bringing with him only Turandot as a kind
of mangled hostage, in the company of Gianni Schicchi, of course; then he’d continue on to Mozart, preferring The Magic Flute, annexing late Verdi, and adding Berlioz, with rare daring, on account of Les Troyens: meanwhile Joey would have been shifting his interest from opera altogether, especially anything that was popular in Italy, in order to embrace the chamber music genre and particularly those composers with the genius to predate Bach and Handel (some of whose immense oeuvres it was still permitted to admire), especially Palestrina, Purcell, and Monteverdi; but these enthusiasms would be swept away by the inevitable but notorious Schoenberg phase, which would naturally include the fanatical Anton von Webern and Alban Berg orthodoxy; the entire progression would culminate in Joey’s ultimate sidestep to the Bartók Quartets and the Transcendental Études along with some Bach unaccompanied partitas and certain of Beethoven’s late opus numbers, almost the only music left worth listening to, unless it was some pieces by Aleksandr Skryabin (especially when so spelled).
The snob in motion is hard to head off. But the seventh sense the snob attains is most dearly prized: that of a superior taste. And the smug possession of taste is far more infuriating to the wide world (which is, of course, lamentably without it) than any offensive lyrics or annoying noise.
The fact was that the true snob, even if he wielded his taste like a stick, cared about the quality he kept waxed in his garage and did know at least enough to make an effective show of superiority, which, for the most part, was all that was needed.
In the academic world where snobbery was native, it earned you enemies and promotions in equal measure. Being an Austrian émigré didn’t hurt at all either. Joey wondered whether if his name were Amilcare like Ponchielli’s, he would fare better and have more friends. But were friends worth the risk?
You really like that stuff? Caz’s crooked smile pretended to honest interest without success. In this role—Joey would reply, negligently waving the cardboard sleeve of the store’s only Tosca arias—well, in this role I prefer Giuseppe Di Stefano. In Joey’s case, ignorance encouraged certainty. According to Caz, if Joey liked opera, Joey was a fairy, and that would account for his curious lack of interest in girls, although no one could have had less success in this area of life than Caz himself. He responded to Joey’s withering scorn with sullen malice.
Joey took to addressing him, when he had to, as Mr. Castle Cairfill—Mr. Castle Cairfill, could you come over here a moment please and assist this young man who wants something in grunge—concluding his request with a smirk that Joey, on his way to becoming Joseph, would later edit out. Caz, during maliciously spent after hours, would put Benjamin Britten in the Brahms box and distribute Debussy randomly among the Strausses, or he would hide the store’s single Massenet altogether. Not that anyone ever asked for Massenet.
Joey’s fondness for Giuseppe Di Stefano would later fade, indeed disappear, when he learned that there was an Argentine soccer player of that name. For “Moonlight in Vermont,” which he couldn’t remember, he substituted the signature bars of “ ‘A’ Train.”
These were small skirmishes both parties tried to keep from Mr. Kazan, who brought his beard around every morning at ten when the store opened, if he remembered the key; otherwise Joey would have to go to the drugstore next door and phone Mr. Kazan’s wife to ask her to fetch it, please, as Mr. Kazan had forgotten again. Caz and Joey would wait with Mr. Kazan in front of the door as if they were customers eager to get in, though Mr. Kazan never held a sale or marked anything down, not even demos (though he insisted they be clearly labeled as such), so there was no point in looking eager. A reasonable price is a reasonable price, and if the price is right there is no reason to change it. Otherwise, he’d say, anything that’s fair is fair forever. As a consequence there were a great many old records in brand-new condition that remained at the price of their issue years ago; and in the back of the shop there were bins of 78s and 45s no one wanted or could play—speeds limited to the poor and lonely, Joey guessed, thinking of Mr. Hirk’s even more antiquated equipment.
In his knotty dark beard, Mr. Kazan’s wet red lips lay most invitingly. Joey, almost from primeval instinct, was partial to them. Mr. Kazan spoke in a gentle voice and often smiled without cause, lengthening his lips and softening their glint. However, he appeared to be a very nervous man, lingering near the office at the back of the store but only after peering up and down the street through the window in front. He only approached customers after he had watched them browse in the bins for a bit. By noon, though, he’d be gone for the day, unless some special business, such as inventory, required his presence. He sometimes seemed happy the goods he had once ordered were still there in case and box, on shelf and counter. Mr. Emil’s absence in the afternoon meant that either Caz or Joey would turn the worn-out lock and set the antique alarm before they left at five, except on Saturday when Mrs. Kazan, pleasantly dowdy and mildly overweight, would appear to pace the floor till nine.
The Kazans were a pair of decently agreeable shopkeepers who had apparently more interest in keeping a shop than in the items it sold. Nor did it seem to concern them that Joey often stayed for hours after five to practice on the piano from scores in their stock, or to play the few operatic records the store had—of course only albums that wore a demo sticker—unfortunately La Gioconda and Parsifal were among them. To Joey’s private “Why these?” there was no answer. A great deal depended on what the salesmen were flogging, of course, and the samples they were prepared to offer, as well as the specials in catalogs and other mailings. The Kazans clearly couldn’t keep up with pop culture and depended on promos to stay abreast, or on the advice of their principal clerk, Mr. Castle Cairfill, whom Joey felt they trusted only because of his name—Careful—which was a switch, his name normally giving Castle nothing but trouble.
Mr. Emil was unaccountably close with money, and Joey supposed that was the reason, though there was an old phone fastened to the wall, they had no operative service. Imagine trying to run a business, that far back in the habits of the old days, in these lazy technological times. Like driving a car without a horn. But Mr. Emil said only bad news came through the receiver; that’s why it was black, why it gave off an odor of death, and why only gossip got spoken through the cone. But suppose, Joey said, you had a fire—only for instance, mind—or one of us fell ill, and you wanted to call for assistance? Mr. Emil’s beard would wag. Nit, he would say, nit. You see them sometimes? eh? they all wear boots, those Cossacks. Caz reminded Mr. Emil that Mr. Emil had a phone at home, which was a good thing because they needed it to call about the key when the key was forgotten—as it, a lot, was. On account dear Missus Kazan wants one, Mr. Emil said, wiping his mouth. So we have one. Consequences come like bad news through those threatening wires. We know you can call—understand?—consequent we are careless about the key. He shook his head more emphatically. If you have to walk eight streets, you make yourself careful and keep to your character and don’t forget the key. Without a phone at home I’d be a better man.
Joey would often stay till the light failed. While he played he’d whisper “We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay” or “Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair.” Oldies weren’t pop anymore. They were just easier to play. Into the slender stock of scores had somehow slipped a copy of an instructional book called Theory and Technic for the Young Beginner. It taught you to play by numbering the keys, and Joey found this little book so wonderfully helpful he took it home but quickly brought it back so the book could be propped where the music stood. He sat and dreamed. Streetlights would come on, and Joey would go faintly gooey, feel slightly soft inside. Sometimes he’d slip on the “Moonlight Sonata” in a performance by Claudio Arrau, which was the only one they had, although the album notes had warned him that Beethoven hated the popular sentimental description of the adagio sostenuto—the latter word one Joey had adored long before he knew what it meant or how something sostenuto sounded: in this case, a dreamy drifting calm before the storm. Despite Beethoven’s d
isapproval, the streetlamps made moonlight when they came on. The stand-up cutout of a strumming Johnny Cash would become a silhouette against the shop’s front window, and then Joey would slip out the back and walk home, haunted by grave meditations on beauty, futility, and change; though with winter coming, since he didn’t want to turn on the store lights, his practice time would shrink—it might entirely disappear.
As it threatened to anyway, because Castle Cairfill, catching the drift of things, had also begun to stay after hours, in his case on the pretext of dusting records, ordering racks, or redisplaying the Beatles, happy in the knowledge that his presence would make Joey too uncomfortable to play. Is this on your own time, Joey would ask. And Cairfill would reply, The same time as yours, running a rag over Dolly Parton and looking an album of Dusty Springfield right in the eye. He had heard Joey humming—it was an unconscious habit—so he hummed rather loudly though awkwardly in order to get on Joey’s nerves, which now felt as if jangled by the interminable ringing of the phone they didn’t have. Because it was not simply his humming but Castle’s habit of hanging around to overhear what was being said when Joey was helping a customer that annoyed; as well as his tendency to lurk near the door to intercept patrons the moment they came in and thus carry them off; or his loud forceful suggestions of this or that recording or label or artist—his choices seemed random—a tactic at which he aggressively persisted although the customer had already presented him with the phrase “just looking” like a card on a tray, or the curt word “no” had been testily uttered—by itself, never enough—or even after a definitive request for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” had been made by someone flustered and in a hurry.
It became a contest to outwait each other by finding some excuse to stay late, each on the side of the shop he had chosen as his territory and each lingering into the edge of the evening, eyeing his enemy uneasily across the display tables, until, as was increasingly the case, Joey, his plans undone by darkness, would abruptly disappear through the rear door, suffering Castle’s triumphant snort like an arrow in his back.
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