Telling Tales

by William Taylor

‘Humph,’ said the Duke, and moved on.

  Johan’s family were no strangers to royalty. His great-grandmother had been educated at the royal palace in Stockholm with someone his family referred to as ‘the old princess’. Johan had no idea who the old princess was, but, when a few years later I stayed with his family in Sweden, his father told me it was Queen Ingrid of Denmark.

  Johannes didn’t get to meet the Queen, although he was staying with me for a few weeks in 2004 and came with me, my sister, Margaret, and Robin and Carmen to enjoy the brief spectacle of my receiving my gong from Her Majesty via Dame Sylvia. Johan and Johannes both quite enjoyed quality company!

  Seven of my eight AFS ‘sons’ were of either the Roman Catholic, Protestant or Russian Orthodox faiths. None professed any desire whatsoever to attend services, although winkling out the nearest Orthodox establishment may have been difficult. Probably the most honest of all the boys was Matyas (or Matyi) of Hungary. Under ‘religion’ in his AFS forms he had described himself with elegant simplicity: Heathen. Heathen or not, he was an absolute delight to have around the place. He was with me when I fell by the wayside with pneumonia, and in consequence he spent some weeks with another family in Taumarunui. He continued to come ‘home’ to me for many weekends and at other times. He was diligent in looking after me.

  It is absolutely true to say that none of the eight always heeded my every instruction or whatever homilies were embedded in my improving lectures. However, all of them always did exactly what they were requested, advised or even ordered to do by Robin and Carmen. Robin and Carmen were with me for much of the time I was ill, and Matyi was on-and-off with me. Carmen knitted me a beanie that I was to wear whenever I left the house. Carmen told Matyi to make sure I never left the place without my headgear. ‘Put on your beanie,’ Matyi ordered one day when I wanted to drive up to National Park to the gas station.

  ‘I won’t be seen dead up in National Park wearing a bloody beanie,’ I said, truculently.

  ‘You might have to be seen dead if you don’t wear your beanie,’ said Matyi. ‘Put on your beanie or I’ll put it on you.’

  ‘No,’ I said, sulking. ‘I will not let people see me wearing a beanie.’

  ‘Put…on…your…beanie,’ he almost spelt it out. ‘You are old! No one will see you!’

  AFS didn’t let me escape. Matyas was followed, almost immediately, by Noah of California. Another character who made many friends. Another one who has managed to get back here—just last year. Surprisingly, for an American, Noah is probably the only one of my boys who had to work to raise much of the money needed to fund his exchange year—not an inexpensive exercise. Not only that, he had saved enough from his earnings to pay for his then girlfriend in California to come and visit him here. Sadly, this investment did not pay off in the longer term—the relationship didn’t survive very long after his return to America. A very clear-thinking and savvy young American with high ideals, whose politics were the absolute antithesis of those that reigned during the Bush years.

  The quietest of all the boys was Diego from Chile. It wasn’t unknown for women to want to touch his amazing head of shiny, jet-black, corkscrew curls—simply to find out what they felt like. He wore glasses or contact lenses. He gave every appearance of being shy. He was the only one of the eight who made it into the First XV rugby side at Taumarunui High. Not an easy feat to achieve for a ‘foreigner’. I think this was his main reason for wanting to come to this country. I wondered if he would survive the experience. He did—quite splendidly! Diego was also an avid snowboarder and, along with Johan and Johannes, chalked up the most days up on the mountain. Quiet and reserved and private for most of the time, when he opened up and started to talk, he could go on for hours. He is now in his second year studying dentistry at the university in Concepción.

  I thought my luck may have run out when I agreed to take on number eight. Surely I would have to get one bad egg? It is hard to write economically about Yura Zavgorodny of Pyatigorsk and St Petersburg. ‘This is the loveliest place I have ever lived,’ he said to me one day, looking out at the view, ‘but my soul will forever be in Mother Russia.’ I almost cried. A product of what must be the most spartan and rigorous education at the Suvorov Military School in St Petersburg, he held the Borodino Medal for his patriotism. ‘It’s only the second-class medal,’ he told me, modestly. Whatever, he must surely be the youngest holder of the honour. The Suvorov school nominated him for it on the basis of an essay he wrote defending the right for the continued existence of the Soviet-era war memorial to the Russian soldiers who fell freeing Estonia from the forces of Nazi Germany. Estonia, free of Russian existence, wanted to tear it down. I can understand the feelings of a young Russian, product of a nation that had lost 25 million of its people in World War II (or, as he called it, the Great Patriotic War) in which they were, after all, our allies.

  Yura had finished at Suvorov before he came here at age sixteen, second in his intake of some 250 boys—a medal for that, too! His physical prowess was, is, phenomenal; his academic achievement highly significant. When he arrived here he was still ranked quite highly as a Russian table tennis player. He could also sit down and play Bach and Beethoven on the piano, although his recreational music taste was as execrable as those of his seven predecessors here. He was widely read, particularly in the great Russian writers.

  As if all the foregoing was not enough, Suvorov had also trained him domestically. He made his bed every day, could sew a fine seam, could cook borscht and, if called upon, could peel potatoes for 600! Of the meals I provided for him, spaghetti Bolognese was his favourite. He took home my recipe for the dish: ‘It’s New Zealand’s national dish,’ he said. He painted several rooms in the house for me—all with one brush. (‘You do not waste money buying another brush,’ he advised me.) He made many friends, and made the most of every opportunity that came his way. Of course had he told me to wear my beanie I would have done what I was told without argument. Unlike all of the others, he is now coming to the end of a second AFS year—in the Czech Republic—where he hopes to move on to the Charles University in Prague to study international economics or law.

  During his year with me he read most of my books. No mean feat for a Russian to read in English. While a little slower in our language and alphabet as opposed to Cyrillic, he got through quite a pile. His favourite title of mine is Spider. I made the mistake of telling him I had once toyed with the writing of a sequel to this one. It’s now too late for a sequel—even though Yura has given me the benefit of his advice as to the course it might take, the plot and so forth. Most of his emails to me, even today, bring up the subject. Hopefully these words may serve to shut him up.

  Each of these eight young people has added much to my life. It’s nothing to do with how much they may have done, individually, to help keep the old place going. It’s more that, quite simply, they came into my life at the right time. I was part-parent and provider, part-mentor, fully a friend to each, and a bulwark for all of them as they worked to make sense of a foreign land and culture. I guess, really, it was simply that I was there for them when they needed me. My own two sons could be a mite acerbic at times over the amount of energy and time I expended on this octet: ‘You never had time to do that with us’ or ‘You’re there for them more than you ever were for us!’ There is some truth in this. I was at a different stage in my life; likely I did have more time. Additionally, I worked at home, I was always here when they got home from school or from up the mountain or wherever else.

  All these boys shared their lives with me, frequently with a greater degree of frankness than my own two ever did! Different perspectives, different situation. Most certainly they could be frank in highly personal matters. I was somewhat stunned one day when one of them announced to me, ‘All the men in my family have big dicks.’

  ‘That’s nice. How d’you know?’ I stupidly enquired. ‘Have you measured them?’

  ‘No, but I’ve had a good look.’

  An
d another time, a different character, and over a cup of tea: ‘I was conceived in the cloakroom of a nightclub’, and he named a well-known European capital city.

  ‘Were you, indeed? Was it the gents or the ladies?’

  He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Do you know, I have no idea. I’ll just phone Dad and find out.’

  I managed to dissuade him. ‘Not a good idea—it’ll be three or four in the morning.’

  Spider was the last novel I wrote. I completed the book in 2001, and it was published by Longacre Press of Dunedin in 2002. Mathis of Germany was living here with me when I wrote it. The last two lines of the story are written in German. Mathis did the translation for me. I put more time and effort into this book than almost all of the others I have written. Maybe the life I give to Matthew Trent, Spider, is the life I would have liked to have lived. A nice, ordinary and pleasant boy in almost every respect. Very ordinary, in fact, other than for the one ability he possesses that sets him apart from almost all of his peers—he is a pianist. Not just a kid dragooned into unwillingly learning the piano, not even just a competent pianist. Spider’s ability is top-drawer. With diligence and the right breaks, this is a boy who will make it to the very top.

  I learnt the piano, as a kid, for two or three years. I was not remarkably diligent and only marginally talented. It was a useful exercise. I can read music and can still play ‘Für Elise’! With enormous effort, while principal at Ohakune I also mastered ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ in order to accompany the assembled pupils, and of course stun the parents who attended our final end-of-year assemblies. With the kids singing lustily, the many mistakes I made were drowned out.

  There are two careers in the arts that, in the past, I hankered after and would have given my eye-teeth to have conquered. Not writing books! No. I would have given those eye-teeth if I could have become either a concert pianist or an opera singer. How sad that I didn’t possess what it takes. Writing Spider was some compensation for the piano-playing ambition.

  I had to get the bloody thing right. When it comes to writing the tale of a piano-playing genius it pays to have more than a passing knowledge on the subject. I immersed myself in the life of Beethoven. Always a lover of his music, this was no cruel punishment. For his ultimate moment of glory in the book, I have Spider play Beethoven’s ‘Third Piano Concerto’. There can’t be many people, anywhere, who know more of Beethoven’s life at the time he wrote that concerto than I do. Extant, there is an account of an English musicologist who was actually there at the first public performance of the piece by the great man himself. Ludwig was not in a good mood on the night!

  Tessa Duder found for me the orchestral score of the work in the Auckland Public Library. It was a fascinating old document, almost a hundred years old, indeed over halfway back to the time when Beethoven was still alive. It had been annotated with pencilled notes about the cadenza played near the end of the first movement. These notes were of how the great nineteenth-century pianist Clara Schumann, wife of Robert and the love of Brahms’s life, had played this section. Clara may never have heard Beethoven play, but she had certainly been born before he died. Inconsequential, yes, but I found this tenuous link quite compelling.

  I must have accumulated well over a dozen CDs and records of the third concerto. Old renditions and new. I listened to the piece over and over again—the score in front of me. There were certainly minor variations in interpretation, but they were just that—minor. The pianists of today and yesterday take few liberties with the work of the great man. I assuredly know that piece of music. Even today, eight years on, I am whistling it and playing it in my head as I write these words.

  Now, there is not much point writing a novel about a boy who does nothing but play the piano. It would get few readers apart from the odd piano-playing genius—and these are a little thin on the ground—so I give Spider more of a life than just the keyboard. At seventeen, he enjoys a beer—or, for preference, a half-dozen—with his mates. He had been a good keen rugby player until he had to make a choice between the oval ball and the concert grand. He goes hunting occasionally. He harbours lustful feelings towards the one he would dearly like to elevate from childhood playmate to full-blown girlfriend. He is devoted to his mother, solo-parent and businesswoman, Annabel, who exerts full parental control over her son’s intake of beer.

  Point and counterpoint. It is Annabel’s story that is the latter to that of her son. Annabel’s story was handed to me, virtually on a plate. I had completed a schools tour of the far Far North, and faced the long drive home to Raurimu. Outside one of the small Far North towns I spotted a hitchhiker sitting on the side of the road, and I stopped to pick him up in order to provide a bit of company for at least part of the journey. Sitting, as he was, I had not observed that he was at least two metres tall, was wearing a studded leather jacket and was extravagantly tattooed. I shuddered when he told me he was going as far as Hamilton. I thought it unlikely I would be allowed to survive the encounter—or the distance.

  A writer, of all people, should know to never judge a book by its cover—or its tattoos. Apart from being overly large for a smallish car, this guy was absolutely delightful. He remains the only hitchhiker I have ever picked up who has shouted me lunch—at a very good café. He was returning to his family’s home in Hamilton after a summer stint as a bouncer at a popular Northland pub. He was expecting to take up his more regular job, that of bouncer at an equally popular Auckland strip club and massage parlour where one of his main tasks was accompanying the women when they left the premises for outside ‘assignments’. He told me all about his work, and obviously I enquired as to what the girls were like. What sort of women are they? What do they do with the very good money you say they earn?

  The story of Annabel Trent was given to me by this hitchhiker. There is no need for me to repeat it here: to discover more, read Spider. Or listen to Spider. The audio rights to the book were recently bought by Radio New Zealand for a series of readings downloadable from the internet—apparently the first novel they have dealt with in this fashion.

  I have Spider tell his own story, apart from at the climax of the piece when he gets to play the piano concerto. In the course of the tale Spider turns seventeen, and his mother reaches forty:

  My mother is 23 years and one month older than me. While 17 sounds a helluva lot older and more mature than 16, 40 sounds light-years older than 39. Forty! Dear God, just thinking about it is enough to send shivers up and down your spine. The grave is approaching once you get to 40! In my considered opinion 40 marks the beginning of old age. When I gave my speech at Mum’s fortieth birthday dinner and I mentioned this undoubted fact, sort of in passing, I didn’t get a very warm or enthusiastic response…

  He has bought his mother a little antique ring, an aquamarine—aquamarines being cheaper than diamonds. Even so, financing the gift has been an uphill battle, and he has had to call on his older half-sister, Caroline, a medical student, to advance him the necessary cash:

  At this stage in my narrative I would dearly like to spend a little time on my sister Caroline and in letting the world know just how lovely and sweet she is, but I am not into twisting the facts into absolute fiction! I am a practical writer, and I do not indulge in fantasy. At the best of times, Caroline Andrews-Trent (yes, she even gets the double-banger name on account of her dad, the late Gary) looks at me as if I were some sort of loathsome bug she is about to swat, or, more likely, pull the wings off very slowly.

  ‘It’s very beautiful, Spider,’ she said, closely examining my gift for Mum. ‘Now kindly write a note to her on the back of the card telling her that I financed it.’

  ‘Of course it’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘I don’t buy ugly things.’

  ‘Oh?’ she looked me up and down. ‘Does that include the hideous shirt you’re wearing? Where did you find it? Under Bea’s dog?’

  ‘What have you bought Mum?’ I have learnt the art of complete ignore.

  ‘I haven’
t bought her anything, Spider. I couldn’t afford a present—not after paying for yours. I have brought her me instead.’

  Poor Mum! ‘Would have been kinder to Mum if you had sent her a gift and stayed back down there,’ I said, nicely.

  ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily,’ said Carrie. ‘Besides, as your personal banker I wanted to see what I was putting my money into.’ Sniff, sniff, sniff. ‘You! You haven’t been smoking, have you? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Me?’ absolute innocence. ‘Smoke? What d’you think I am?’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  ‘Smoke? Good God! Been raking up old leaves in the garden and had to burn them. Stink gets everywhere. Smoke? I’m not that big a fool.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ said Caroline. ‘But if I catch you I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Anyway, while you’re home you can earn your keep,’ I said. ‘The taxpayer has sunk a bloody fortune in you and I want a complete physical while you’re here, except for my private bits, they’re okay. And I want some prescriptions for some good stuff to make me feel better. I have been under a great deal of stress.’

  Caroline smiled her stepping-on-a-bug smile. ‘First of all, dickhead, since when have you been a taxpayer? Second of all, I have no intention of touching any scrofulous little bit of you…’

  ‘What’s scrofulous?’

  ‘Something like you. In the third place, you couldn’t trust me anywhere near your private parts—you’d end up a neutered tomcat before you even knew I was down there. And, lastly, what sort of good stuff were you thinking of? Something with a cannabis base, maybe?’

  ‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Can you give me that?’

  It’s not easy being the son of Annabel and the brother of Caroline. Two strong women, indeed; both of whom have the measure of their son and brother! He doesn’t get away with too much. His life is an open and easily-read book—apart, that is, from that one area that defines him: his music. Against all odds, and there are many, Matthew Trent gets to play his concerto: