by Steve Lopez
Robinson happily escorted Nathaniel to the room and let him hear the turning of the lock when they left. Nathaniel was gone for a few hours, went to find Robinson again upon his return and discovered that the buggy had been untouched in the locked room.
This is all so encouraging, I’m determined to get Snyder back for another lesson right away to try to keep the momentum going. But it turns out the cellist is out of town for a few weeks.
Now what?
I don’t know if there’s any science to support my notion that momentum can be an important part of the recovery process, but it seems to make sense, and I haven’t let my ignorance get in my way before. Nathaniel hated the idea of coming to Lamp and now he’s a regular. He refused to set foot in the room and now he’s taken a lesson there and parked his cart there. The experts have been telling me recovery is not always linear, but I’m a natural skeptic and, besides, Nathaniel is making progress. Schizophrenics are creatures of habit, Dr. Ragins has told me. I’m determined to make the room habit-forming, and I think I’ve got an idea that’s worth a try.
Nathaniel still insists he’s going to pay me back one day for the supplies and repairs. So I tell him I think I may have a way for him to cover his debt.
“Have you ever taught music?” I ask as he heaves a big trash bag into the dumpster at the Lamp courtyard.
No, he says.
“Because I think you’d make a good teacher,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Well, I was wondering if you’d give me violin lessons.”
I’m grateful he doesn’t laugh. Look, I tell him, I was never exposed to classical music before meeting him. Now I’m playing it in my car and buying CDs, and I know I’d make for a fairly old beginner, but why shouldn’t I try to learn something new?
“Everyone can learn to play,” he says. “I cannot understand why Los Angeles is not coming to the Beethoven statue to find inspiration from that man. Who put the statue there? Do you know? It has to be there for a reason. I know that when I walked through there and saw Beethoven, I knew I was in Los Angeles. This is the Beethoven city.”
“So will you give me lessons?”
“Sure,” he says.
Now it’s all going my way. A woman sitting alone on a bench in the Lamp courtyard is screaming like a televangelist in a yodeling contest.
“Well,” I tell Nathaniel, “we can’t do it here. Too noisy.”
He couldn’t be more annoyed by the noise. He looks at the woman and back at me, his eyes dizzy as he runs a finger in a circle around his ear. The sign for crazy.
Well, I guess it is all relative. I’d like to laugh but that doesn’t seem appropriate. Instead I tell him I’m going to need some privacy for my lesson. A quiet place nearby, such as, say, his apartment.
Luckily, I step into the apartment before Nathaniel sees it. Just inside the doorway is a puddle of congealing blood.
“You know what?” I say, stepping back and pulling the door shut. “This is such a nice day, let’s have the lesson in the courtyard.”
The last thing I need is for Nathaniel to associate the apartment with what looked like the bloody remains of a human sacrifice. I call Stuart Robinson while Nathaniel sets up under the arbor and tell him it looks like something has died in the apartment. He says a Lamp client stayed there for a night or two and she’s been sick, so maybe she vomited blood. It’s still Nathaniel’s room, he tells me, but he can’t let it go to waste while other clients wait for housing. I’m in no position to argue the point. I can’t expect Nathaniel to get a better deal than he’s already got at Lamp, and this is a reminder that his privileges are not irrevocable. I’ve got to get him inside soon or it might not happen at all.
Robinson sends someone to clean the mess while I report for the first violin lesson of my life. I’ve brought one of the five violins donated by readers—I’ve been carrying it around in the trunk of my car because two others were taking up all the space under my desk.
“This is mine?” Nathaniel asks when I hold it up for inspection.
“Yeah, along with your other five violins.”
Nathaniel likes knowing he has them in reserve and double-checks every now and then to make sure I’m still holding on to them. He tunes this one and hands it back to me as if I know what to do with it. Just watch, he says, as he plays a little ditty on his violin and tells me to do the same on mine.
“Are you kidding? I don’t even know how to hold this thing.”
I wouldn’t have expected it to feel so awkward in my hands, but the violin seems to have been designed for a smaller person, with fingers the size of gherkins. I am six foot two, with long digits, and everything feels too small and delicate to me. It doesn’t help that the trick is to wedge the instrument at the curve of my neck and hold it there with my chin. Have I pulled a muscle already? My farsightedness is another issue. Straining at this odd angle, it’s all a blur, and I could just as well be holding a red snapper.
Nathaniel takes the violin from me and tucks it under his chin in a way that looks perfectly natural.
“There, like that.”
I give it another try, but with my shoulder humped to keep the instrument in place, I’m certain I must look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
“Like this?”
“Yes, now just do this,” he says, striking a few notes.
I take up the bow, but don’t know how to properly hold that, either. He gives me a quick demonstration, patient as a kindergarten teacher. I give it a whirl, but with bow to strings, I get a scratching noise that does not begin to resemble music.
Nathaniel takes a closer look and tells me the bow is the problem. It needs to be rehaired and coated with rosin.
“It’s like feeding your parakeet,” I say, stealing a line he uttered way back when I first met him.
He gives me one of his bows and I try again. This time the contact actually makes some detectable sounds, none of which can be called pleasant, and my instructor’s interest seems to be waning. My first clue is that he has stopped watching, as if purposely averting his glance, and moved on to the cello.
“Come on, help me out here,” I plead. I’m not expecting miracles, but neither did I imagine I’d feel this clumsy and inept. At the moment, the whole concept seems flawed. Getting the left and right hands to work together in such an awkward location was obviously someone’s idea of a cruel joke centuries ago, and soft fingertips on hair-thin strings is uncomfortable enough that I’m ready to confess all my sins. The strings are also impossibly close together, so that fingering one without pawing others is a variation of pick-up sticks.
“There,” Nathaniel says with encouragement. “You get a sound and work with it.”
But the sound I’ve gotten is something a butcher hears while working with live chickens.
“It’s frustrating,” my teacher reassures, “but if you admire the violin, you’ll weather the frustrations. Desire, discipline, diversity.”
Perhaps, but no amount of desire, discipline or diversity can help me pick out the notes to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” A resident walks by and winces. While I struggle with a children’s lullaby, Nathaniel breezes through Beethoven’s Ninth to completely demoralize me. Several residents have come by to see what this is all about, but it’s not me they care to watch. They’re looking at the cellist with the white shirt tied around his head like a turban and the blue cardigan that has a tennis ball in one pocket and a dinner roll in the other. One of the spectators is carrying a battery-operated drill, and he begins gunning it in rhythm. Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz. Two of the others say they’re musicians, and I suggest they start a band. The Ballington Five, or, if the guy with the drill sticks with them, the Black and Deckers. One man calls Nathaniel’s music “dynamic” and hands him a dollar. All along, I’m hoping this spontaneous little festival will make Nathaniel feel more comfortable here.
When it’s just the two of us I steer the conversation around to his mother,
who got him started on those piano lessons when he was in primary school. Jennifer has told me that for all the suffering Nathaniel put his mother through, she was talking about him to Jennifer and Del at her last birthday in a nursing home. “I miss Anthony,” she said while her only son was roaming the streets and, at that point, sleeping in the woods at times and carving on trees.
“You know,” I tell him, “your mother would probably like to know you’ve got this. A nice little courtyard, some good neighbors and a place to lay your head if you ever get tired of the street and want to get at least one good night’s sleep.”
“I lost a god and I gained a god,” Nathaniel says. “It’s rough out there, but as long as I can look at Beethoven, I’ll be all right.”
Nathaniel lets me try his cello, which feels more comfortable than the violin. But this is sure to be another sad spectacle, and a man wanders over to see just how bad I’m willing to let myself look in public. He gets in pretty close, stands next to the “Smoking Prohibited” sign and lights a cigarette.
Nathaniel leaps into action.
“Excuse me, sir. You can’t smoke here,” he says with authority, as if someone has appointed him courtyard monitor.
“Who are you?” asks the man, who calls himself James. “You don’t live here.”
“I do, too, live here,” Nathaniel insists. “I have a place.”
Was it because I invoked his mother’s memory? Was it because Stuart Robinson so cleverly and patiently planted the seed? Was it just time? Whatever the reasons, it’s suddenly and finally looking as though there might be a payoff at the end of this yearlong journey. I’m reluctant to let myself celebrate because it might never happen, but Nathaniel is standing his ground with James, insisting he’s got a stake in the affairs of the Ballington.
“Where’s your place?” James demands skeptically.
“Room B-116,” Nathaniel says, pointing toward the window. “You’re in violation of the city ordinance against smoking in that spot.”
“Well, so what? I don’t have a house on wheels.”
It’s a cruel schoolyard taunt, but Nathaniel is up to the challenge.
“You see,” he says. “I knew it was personal.”
“You need soap and water,” says James.
“You’re killing yourself and everyone else,” Nathaniel retorts.
“Get a doctor. Get some help. You know what? It’s a shame you allowed yourself to give up.”
Now James has me ticked off. I’m tempted to step in and speak up for Nathaniel, but he has survived on his own for years and doesn’t need me now.
“I didn’t give up,” he says.
“You’re a young man, strong, you could get a job,” James yammers. “You’re a musician and you should encourage someone else. You can’t encourage no one looking like that. Look at all that talent gone to waste.”
Nathaniel has heard enough. He doesn’t need this guy’s sermons or his pity, so he packs his cart and prepares to leave, the perfect way to let this guy know he’s a loudmouthed boor.
“You gave up,” says James, the bully of the Ballington. “You push a cart and say, ‘I quit. I quit on life.’ I can’t stand to see you like that. I don’t even know you, but I love you as a human being.”
It doesn’t take a genius to suspect that James is echoing his own experience. But Nathaniel isn’t going to indulge his tormentor.
“I didn’t quit anything,” he tells James.
Pointing to the window of his room, he says:
“That is my place.”
20
The thought of loading the Beethoven statue onto a truck in the dead of night and transporting it to room B-116 at the Ballington has occurred to me more than once. Pershing Square is a shabby location for such an iconic figure, and Beethoven is shoved off in a dingy corner of the park. He’s been in the square since 1932, when the Philharmonic Orchestra was housed across the street. The sculptor, Arnold Foerster, listened to a string quartet playing Beethoven while he chipped away in his studio. He wanted a disheveled Beethoven lost in thought as he conceived the Ninth Symphony while walking through the woods, hands behind his back holding hat and cane.
It’s not as if that statue is the only likeness of Beethoven. Would a bust do the trick? I search the Web and find plenty to choose from, but I can’t wait for shipping. I begin checking with local music supply shops, but Adam Crane checks in from the L.A. Philharmonic and tells me to call off the search. They have Beethoven heads in the Disney Hall gift shop, and he’s already picked one out.
Meanwhile, Jennifer’s Christmas package for Nathaniel arrives. She has sent clothes and toiletries and photos of their mother, and now I’m ready with my plan. Everyone is in on it. Jennifer, Stuart Robinson, Adam Crane, Peter Snyder. Everyone but Nathaniel, my unsuspecting mark. At his next lesson, his room will no longer be a room but a shrine to his gods. And a home.
“I’ve got to tell you, I have a good feeling about this,” Snyder says when I pick him up at Disney Hall. He’s carrying a couple of gifts for Nathaniel, including an L.A. Philharmonic T-shirt.
Nathaniel is already in the room when we arrive, taping things to the wall. He’s making it his own, with a map of the United States going up, along with a newspaper story about The Color Purple on Broadway. He also has an ad for Baby Magic lotion and is laminating it with half a roll of Scotch tape.
“There’s magic in the baby’s eyes,” he says. “It’s Caroline, isn’t it?”
Sharing the same wall is a photo of Neil Diamond.
“What’s with Neil Diamond?” I ask, wondering if his song “Sweet Caroline” is the association Nathaniel has made.
Nathaniel gives me a quizzical expression and then reexamines the rhinestone cowboy.
“I thought that was you,” he says.
Okay. I’ve got no response to that.
“This is going to be an early Christmas party for you,” I tell Nathaniel as I set Jennifer’s Christmas gift on his bed.
The first thing he pulls out is a black-and-white photo of a very attractive, smartly dressed woman of about forty who bears a strong resemblance to Nathaniel. He holds the photo at arm’s length, quietly reverent.
“That’s my mother,” he says in a hushed tone, giving her a long look.
He sets the photo on the bed while he goes through the rest of the box, saying the collection of goods is unmistakably Jennifer’s doing. She has sent him a package very like one their mother would have sent. Socks, deodorant, a pair of sneakers just the right size.
As he looks through the booty, I take the photo of his mother and stand it on the dresser, asking if that’s okay with him.
“That looks good there,” Nathaniel says.
Next he opens the small square box I’ve brought, a gift from Adam Crane. Nathaniel sticks his hand into the Styrofoam packing pellets and pulls out a head.
“Oh, my God!” Nathaniel exclaims. “It’s Beethoven!”
I take the bust and set it on the dresser next to Nathaniel’s mother.
“What do you think?” I ask.
He approves.
“Beethoven can watch over you in here now,” Snyder tells him.
I hand Nathaniel a gift from a reader and he opens it to find a book about the Juilliard school. “I don’t want to open it,” he says. “I want to imagine what it would be like to be back at my school.”
When he gets to the business of the lesson, Nathaniel shows Snyder what he’s accomplished on “Song of the Birds,” and he also shows off the work he’s been doing on Schubert’s Arpeggione.
“Jesus,” Snyder whispers as he watches his student perform. “The man feels every note.”
It was a fairly typical performance by Nathaniel. Some leaps and crashes, some issues with pitch, some moments of brilliance. Snyder offers encouragement on the Casals piece and Nathaniel’s smile stretches wide.
“There was no way I was going to ignore that assignment, because I want to record,” Nathaniel says.
Snyder politely tells him there’s a lot of work ahead, but it’s smart to set goals and work toward them. He suggests focusing on “Song of the Birds,” and offers to one day accompany him on piano.
“But can we do a recital?” Nathaniel demands.
“You must keep your dreams,” Snyder responds.
They work on rhythm and pitch in a lesson that runs nearly two hours. This room has meaning to Nathaniel now. He’s made it his and filled it with music, and with his mother and Beethoven watching over him, I don’t know how he’ll walk away.
“Our mother would be so proud of all the attention you are getting because of your talent,” Jennifer has written in the card that lies on the bed next to Nathaniel while he plays his cello. “I know Momma is smiling from heaven because she is so happy to know you have a place to lay your head.”
Nathaniel plays Bach and Beethoven as if he’s a young student again, the music filled with a sense of urgency and possibility. Every few minutes he turns toward the dresser, checking in with his mother and his muse.
Will he spend the night?
There’s no point in asking or prodding. My case has been made, and after the lesson I walk away, knowing he’s in charge. He’s always been in charge, this man of the streets, who once said he and his music belonged outdoors, where “the wings of the pigeons sound like the audience clapping.”
21
As the year turns over, room B-116 remains a shrine but does not become a home. Nathaniel sleeps in the tunnel, Skid Row is largely unchanged, and I begin to lose faith. In him. In Lamp. In myself. Sure, Nathaniel’s situation is better today than it was when I met him nearly a year ago, and my once- or twice-weekly meetings with him still have their rewards. But all the high points, in retrospect, were a tease. I wanted to believe they promised a breakthrough, but such optimism seems delusional now.
Pete Snyder’s schedule will allow only one lesson a month or so, and Lamp isn’t going to keep a light on for Nathaniel indefinitely. Meanwhile, my teacher is willing to let me try fiddling with his cello, but always finds an excuse not to conduct the lesson in his room. It would probably be wise of me to let go and move on, the way Nathaniel’s family has done. But it’s almost impossible to escape him. Driving home from work, he’s often there in the tunnel, and I find it a relief to know he’s okay. I reach to hit my horn, decide not to and drive home, feeling guilty and inept.