by Gerald Elias
“How do you spell ‘euthanize’?” asked Jacobus.
“I’ll get the phone,” said Nathaniel, patting Trotsky on the head. “Good dog! Good dog!
“Hello,” he said into the phone. “It’s Cy Rosenthal,” he relayed.
Rosenthal, the lawyer who had been a last-minute substitute to defend the crossover violinist BTower in the notorious René Allard murder case four years earlier—a case that almost cost Jacobus his own life—was the last person Jacobus expected to hear from. “What’s that shyster calling here for?”
“It’s for Yumi. I’m gonna go make some tea.”
Jacobus heard Yumi take the receiver from Nathaniel and go into the kitchen, which she was able to do only because Nathaniel had bought an extended cord for the phone ten years earlier. Jacobus had drawn the line with the cord and was obdurate in his refusal to get another phone or an answering machine.
As Jacobus waited, trying unsuccessfully with clogged ears to decipher Yumi’s quiet conversation from the living room, his Scrabble wrath was replaced by concern. Yumi Shinagawa, his former prize student who had become as much of a daughter to him as if she had been his own, was the only person in the world he truly loved, and though he had never said that, and never would, Yumi knew that that was the case.
Jacobus had a good idea what Rosenthal’s call was about, and all the reasons why he had fled the professional world of classical music many years earlier flooded back. He put his head in his hands as he listened to Trotsky gleefully crunching Scrabble tiles like Liv-A-Snaps between his powerful jaws faster than Nathaniel was able to sweep them up. Jacobus pulled the blanket more tightly around him, seeking to snuff out the downward spiral his thoughts were taking him.
“You still cold, Jake?” asked Nathaniel. “Here’s your tea. I found a jar of honey. It was stuck to the shelf but I managed to pry it off and chisel some into your tea. For your throat.” He heard Nathaniel right the overturned coffee table and place the teacup on it.
“Honey? What, do you want me to puke?”
“No. I don’t want you to puke. I poisoned it. I want you to die.”
* * *
“Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal,” Jacobus heard Yumi say, followed by her footsteps back into the living room where she hung up the phone.
“So?” asked Jacobus, sipping his tea.
“Mr. Rosenthal said that Crispin’s attorney has made a proposal to settle out of court, ‘to hopefully avoid the kind of harsh media spotlight that none of us want,’ or something like that.”
“What a politely worded threat. Lovely.”
“Mr. Rosenthal would like the members of the quartet to meet at his office in Uniondale tomorrow after the morning rehearsal. That’s all. Shall we finish our Scrabble game?”
“Sure. Just let me know when you finish pumping Trotsky’s stomach to get the tiles he inhaled. In the meantime, you had a question about a student?”
“Oh, yes. I just started with her at the Rose Grimes Music School. Her name is Louisa. She’s been studying for four or five years—she’s twelve or thirteen—but her previous teacher didn’t give her great instruction, and she has a single mom and has to take care of her little brother, so now she’s behind and has a self-esteem problem.”
“Sounds more like she has a violin-playing problem.”
“Well, yes, that’s what I think accounts for her low self-esteem.”
“Can she play scales in tune?”
“Not really.”
“Then she’s absolutely correct to have low self-esteem.”
“But playing scales well in tune is so hard. It takes hours and hours of practice.”
“Exactly. And when she’s done the hours and hours of practice and can play scales in tune, then she’ll have high self-esteem.”
“But what if she can never do that? What if she just doesn’t have the talent?”
“Then she should either get accustomed to low self-esteem, or go do something else. Not everyone was born to be a violinist.”
“But—”
“That’s three ‘buts’ in a row, Yumi! Who are you trying to make excuses for? I can’t help it she has a tough life. But she’s the one who decided to play the violin, not me.
“You want to tell her how great she is when she can’t play scales in tune? What’s going to happen ten years from now after everyone’s inflated her self-esteem and then she has to go looking for a job? She’ll show up for an audition, play one note, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We’ll call you.’ You asked me my opinion, here it is. Kick her butt until she can play her scales in tune. If she can’t, then at least she’ll go down swinging and then neither you nor she will ever have to worry about her self-esteem again.”
“I suppose that’s what you did to me when I was your student.”
“And you’re still coming back for more. Masochist! What is it you wanted to play for me?”
“Schubert. ‘Death and the Maiden.’”
“Must we? Must we really?” he asked. Some days, thought Jacobus, everything was meant to put me in a foul mood. Maybe I’m being punished by a higher authority. Fuck it, there ain’t no higher authority. I’m going to enjoy being in a foul mood.
“Just because it’s Franz Schubert’s two hundredth birthday,” he said, “why does every singer, every quartet, every orchestra in the world have to try to outdo each other? You want to celebrate the music of the man who might have become the world’s greatest composer if he had lived beyond his thirty-one years? Fine. You’ve got no argument from yours truly. But why wait two hundred years? By the time the year’s over he’ll be celebrated so much everyone’ll be sick of his music for another hundred.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?”
“I told you we’ve been contracted—”
“Suckered! Not contracted. Suckered!”
“We’ve been contracted,” Yumi continued with patience, “to perform ‘Death and the Maiden’ at Carnegie, set to dance and video enhancements by the famed choreographer—”
“Charlatan!”
“—Power Ramsey.”
“He’s a charlatan! ‘Death and the Maiden’ is Schubert’s greatest string quartet, maybe his greatest instrumental masterpiece period. What the hell does it need ‘enhancements’ for? I’ll tell you what I think of enhancements!” Jacobus coughed up some readily available phlegm and spat on the floor.
“And haven’t you already performed it a million times with the quartet?” asked Jacobus. “Why do you need to play a second-violin part for me?”
“I’m just not feeling comfortable with it. Tomorrow’s our first rehearsal.”
“Whatever.”
“So you don’t mind taking the time?” asked Yumi, searching in vain for a flat surface on which to place her case. She finally put it on the floor in the corner.
“Of course I do!” said Jacobus. “Who do you think I am, Albert Schweitzer? Let’s get it over with before I change my mind. And don’t forget, the meter’s ticking.”
“I’ll take Trotsky for a walk,” offered Nathaniel from the vicinity of the front door.
“There’ll be a lot of Tanglewood traffic about now,” Jacobus mused.
“I’ll be careful.”
“No, I want you to leave him in the middle of the road.”
Jacobus heard Yumi undo the clasps of her violin case, rosin her bow, and tune her instrument. He didn’t really understand why she felt the need to play for him. To keep an old man “active”? To keep me from thinking about death, maybe? A joke on him, then, to bring “Death and the Maiden.”
“Second movement,” he said. The movement for which Schubert had adapted his song by the same name.
Yumi began the fourteen-minute Andante con moto, exquisitely calibrating her dynamics with finely honed sensitivity and maintaining a rhythmic pulse that was paradoxically under total control yet sufficiently flexible for subtle nuance. Though Yumi’s part—the second-violin part—was more often than not the
secondary melodic voice, the music nevertheless spoke with character and purpose.
What is there to say to someone who now plays so much better than I do? Jacobus thought. Or maybe better than I ever did? She’s at the top of her profession and I’m at the bottom. Maybe I should be taking lessons from her. Can anything I say make her playing any better, or will I just make it worse? Jacobus mulled. Would saying anything at all make me an impostor?
He noted with satisfaction Yumi’s ability to play espressivo even within pianissimo. And yet … and yet …
“Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!” hollered Jacobus. “Why do you keep pushing the tempo? And why’s your vibrato so fast? You think Schubert meant death by buzz saw? Your vibrato’s got nothing to do with what your right hand’s doing. Something bugging you? Start at the third variation. Keep your shoulders and left wrist relaxed.”
It occurred to Jacobus, as Yumi started over, that something indeed might be troubling Yumi. Rosenthal’s call. Even before that—opening a Scrabble game with ANT! Jesus! Hard enough to play music, as it is; harder still to block out the world, and here she was, her future in limbo, trying to keep her mind on Schubert.
What’s been my purpose as a violin teacher? he asked himself, his mind wandering. To show a pupil how to plop his—or these days more likely her—fingers up and down in the right place at the right time? Could’ve taught a chimp to do that, but was that music? Teaching must be more than that. What, for instance, do I know about how Schubert’s music should sound, other than what my own teachers taught me or from the performers I’ve heard? That’s my entire experience. And where did they obtain their knowledge? And so on, all the way back to … Schubert himself. Teaching’s not instructing. Teaching’s conveying. Conveying the DNA of each composer’s soul from one generation to the next. My responsibility. And what if I don’t do it right? What if I tell the next generation how Schubert should sound and I get it wrong? What happens to the generations after that? What would my life have been worth if I blow it?
The movement gradually wound down from the climax in the fifth variation into the final G-natural whole note that tapered into nothingness. Jacobus sat in silence for several minutes, eyes closed behind his dark glasses, saying nothing. He had felt his mortality in listening to the music. His head bobbed.
“Jake, are you awake?” Yumi finally asked.
Trotsky lifted his head.
“Who are you?” Jacobus asked.
“It’s me, Yumi! Jake, are you okay?”
“No, I mean in the music. Who are you?”
“The second violinist? Is that what you mean?”
“No. You’re not Yumi and you’re not the second violinist. You are Death. You are Death. ‘Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!’” Jacobus sang, every note from his tobacco-ravaged throat stupendously out of tune and raspy as coarse sandpaper. “‘Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender image! Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen. I am a friend and do not come to harm you. Sei gutes Muts! Ich bin nicht wild. Be in good spirits! I am not evil. Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen! You should sleep gently in my arms!’ Those are the words of Schubert’s song, the second stanza, that he transcribed for this movement. Now play the beginning again, not plain old pianissimo, not Yumi. Death.”
Yumi started over. Jacobus detected a slight tremor in her innately confident bow strokes. He could hear her bow slide dangerously far over the fingerboard in order to create a tenuous, unearthly sound; and her vibrato, usually so rich and focused, was now almost pallidly nonexistent so as to portray shadowy lifelessness. Music over technique. Chilling. If Death had a heartbeat, this was its pulse. Then Yumi stopped.
“What about the Maiden?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“Why are you talking so loudly?” asked Yumi.
“Loudly? What do you mean?”
“Just that it’s not your usual raspy mutter,” Yumi chided.
Jacobus hadn’t realized he had been talking loudly. Again he began to panic. It’s only congestion, he reminded himself.
“Where are my cigarettes?”
“You want one now? Before we finish?”
“Yes. No. Forget it.” He lowered his voice to a level he thought might match Yumi’s, hoping to disguise his anxiety.
“So,” he continued, “what about her?”
“Doesn’t she plead with Death to leave her alone? Doesn’t she say, ‘Stay away! Oh, stay away! Go, fierce Death! I am still young, please go! And do not touch me’?”
“You’ve done a little homework.”
“You taught me to do that.”
“No, I taught you to do a lot of homework, but I guess I was unsuccessful. The text you’re quoting is from the first stanza. Schubert doesn’t use that music here in the quartet version. But for argument’s sake, say you were the Maiden. What would you do?”
“One must accept one’s fate. No one can predict when one’s life will end.”
That’s easy to say when you’re young, is what Jacobus thought. No one can predict. Some end too soon. His own? If he were to lose his hearing, then Death would have been too late, in his opinion. If Death reached out to him, what would he do? When is the right time?
What he said out loud was, “Brave words, but what about the Maiden in the song?”
“Clearly, she struggles. She can’t accept her fate.”
“And Death? Is he sincere about being gentle and loving? Or is he conning her?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What does Schubert think?”
“I never read what Schubert thought about this.”
“You don’t have to read. It’s in the music. Play it again.”
Jacobus joined in this time. Playing the first-violin part he had learned so thoroughly in what seemed a lifetime ago, the music was etched in the muscle memory of his fingers. Though now slowed by age and infirmity, his hands led him unhesitatingly, and as the two of them soared together through the movement’s five variations, no violinist could have been more expressive. Finally, the music evaporated into the ether from which it had emerged. A life cycle.
“So?” he asked.
“Yes,” Yumi said. “She offers him her hand. She resists at first, but then at the climax of the fifth variation, she gives him her hand, doesn’t she? And then the movement ends so peacefully, in G Major. She accepts him and then there’s no more struggle. Is that right, Jake? Do we embrace Death when it arrives, or do we struggle to live?”
“How the hell do I know?”
THREE
MONDAY
Jacobus knew it was dawn, not from anything as poetic as the peach-colored glow of sunlight magically transforming forested steeples of maple, ash, and cherry from dormant gray to radiant green, but rather from the increased traffic noise up on Route 41 as workers, making their way between West Stockbridge and Great Barrington, shifted gears going up the hill, and from the three circling crows that engaged in heated debate every morning without fail over which one had discovered the tastiest roadkill. Jacobus also knew it was dawn because Nathaniel hollered cheerfully from the living room downstairs, where he had slept on the couch, “Jake, wake up! It’s dawn!”
Disgruntled though he was at being awakened, he heard Nathaniel’s voice loud and clear, and was heartened that his hearing was beginning to return. He also knew that, though it was still chilly, the inclement weather had departed. How he knew this he could never figure out. Maybe it was just in his bones.
“We have to leave for New York so Yumi can get to her rehearsal,” Nathaniel continued.
“What do you mean ‘we,’ black man?” Jacobus yelled back. Jacobus, pleading illness from the Tanglewood concert, didn’t want any part of the excursion to the city, especially in Nathaniel’s duct-tape–reinforced Volkswagen Rabbit, and congratulated himself on giving what he thought was a rather convincing portrayal of Mimi dying of consumption in La Bohème. But Yumi pleaded harder. It wasn’t so much the rehearsal that was on her mind but
the meeting at Rosenthal’s law office. She professed inexperience in legal dealings and wanted to be sure her interests would not be subverted to Kortovsky’s or to those of any others in the quartet. Still Jacobus resisted, and it was only when Nathaniel threatened to drive him to the doctor instead of the city that he finally relented, admitting that yes, he might survive a day or two longer.
Before they departed, and over Jacobus’s profanity-laced objections, Nathaniel, a highly sought-after consultant to insurance companies in the realm of art and musical instrument theft and fraud, installed the only home security device that Jacobus had ever agreed to, but which he had never used: a bunch of one-by-three lengths of pine, each cut to fit wedged in between the top of the lower sash and the underside of the top frame of his cracked, dust-coated, lockless downstairs windows.
“You never know, Jake,” said Nathaniel. “If anyone ever broke in and stole your violins—”
“Violin. Singular.”
“Whatever. Violin. And if you hadn’t done anything to keep the house secure, your insurance company might not reimburse you for the loss.”
“What insurance company?”
Once the four of them were in the car—with Nathaniel and Jacobus in front; Yumi, lithe and lovely, ensconced in the backseat beside Trotsky, his tongue-lolling, eye-rolling, gargoyle head craning out the back window—Nathaniel lamented that if only Trotsky could play the viola they’d make a fortune as the world’s most bizarre string quartet.
Nathaniel dropped off Yumi, Jacobus, and Trotsky at the New Magini Quartet’s rehearsal space on the Upper West Side early enough to give Yumi a chance to rattle off a few scales to get her fingers moving before things got under way at 9:30. Nathaniel excused himself in order to return to his spaciously unruly apartment on East Ninety-sixth Street to catch up on the work that had accumulated during his Berkshire weekend getaway.
Emerging from the elevator at the second floor, Jacobus heard a lot of “busy” noise, but it was only when Yumi opened the door of the rehearsal space that Jacobus could hear Annika Haagen, the quartet’s violist, and Pravda Lenskaya, its cellist, already warming up in the acoustically engineered studio at the end of the hall.