“Did you say?”
Osmah pointed the razor still in his hand. “If you’re ready to return, I think you should come with me. Having an American on my side will be of great benefit. I will be the foreigner then and you can help me should certain situations arise that might otherwise—what is the expression?—blow up in my face.”
I walked home from Dungee’s with Niles sometime after 1:00 a.m. and dropped into bed, running the rope around my ankle before stretching out to stare at the ceiling and consider what I should do. (“Stay or go, Bailey.”) At some point I drifted off without having made up my mind, and woke late the following morning. I was scheduled to teach in just over two hours, and rolling over, I reached toward Liz’s side of the bed, where her absence registered severely as I stroked and grabbed and strained to feel her there. (“A person could easily cross the Strait of Gibraltar and find her if he wanted.”) I pictured her on stage, dressed in a black velvet gown, her feet in a thin pair of soft leather slippers as she lectured the audience on Beethoven’s influence over Schubert, the way Schubert’s “Sonata in С Minor (D. 958)” relied heavily upon gestures found in Beethoven’s “Pathetique” for example. I saw her sitting at the piano playing her own compositions, and performing with guest pianists, sharing a bench with Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia, Evgeny Kissin, Garrick Ohlsson, Boris Berezovsky, and Marc Hamelin no less. The image made me uneasy, and undoing the rope, I got up and went to my piano where I played Chopin’s “Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23” which, rather than soothe, only exacerbated my raw state of disrepair.
Liz’s leaving had me muddled and dysphoric, and even as I switched my focus and concentrated again on Niles, I couldn’t hold my train of thought and wound up reflecting once more on the vagaries of love. I saw the wounds beneath Niles’ clothes, pictured him with Jeana while Marthe ran around the windows outside looking for a way in. If here was the root of Niles’ nocturnal dementia—the madness of love taken as a whole—then it seemed in terms of Liz the only distinction between Niles’ carnage and my own was the advent of physical harm.
I went to shower, and wrapping a towel around my waist, came out of the bathroom and sat in my chair, flipping through the pile of books I pulled from my shelf in the days since Liz’s leaving. I reread passages marked in Kafka’s “Blumfield, an Elderly Bachelor,” and “A Little Woman”: “This little woman, then, is very ill-pleased with me… If a life could be cut into the smallest of small pieces and every scrap of it could be separately assessed, every scrap of my life would certainly be an offence to her.” I set the book down and picked up another, a novel by Max Frisch that contained a paragraph where the protagonist’s inability to sustain a relationship was described as “an incapability to be loved as the person he was … and therefore he involuntarily neglects every woman who truly loves him, for if he took her love really seriously, he would be compelled as a result to accept himself—and this was the last thing he wanted.”
Disturbed, I got up again and went back to my piano where I played a rousing piece by Don Pollen, using my elbows, forearms, and fists to flail away, filling the air with splash clusters and two-handed chords. After a while I moved to the window, where I leaned against the glass and stared outside. A heavyset woman in a paisley summer dress and black walking shoes came around a corner and collided with a man in a grey T-shirt and white slacks. The man stumbled and the woman reached to hold him up, both posting awkward grins and quick apologies before parting. I observed their crash as yet another example of how shit happened—the consistency of consequence, how the fat woman climbed from bed a minute early while the man rose a minute late and their intersection was set in motion from that point forward no matter what they planned or otherwise wanted.
What an uncompromising system, and infallible counterclaim to Chaos, the foundation of Universal Order, which upset rather than comforted me as I recalled my mother slipping on her coat and carrying my father’s shovel from the garage. The chill on her flesh as the winds rose and howled, and the autocracy of Order not shielding her in any way, the absence of abatement and temporary interruption deliberately cruel, for what could be more vulgar than a universe that adhered to such an impervious sense of Law and mechanical indifference when in a less austere world the winds would have warmed, the snow subsided, and my mother not have died.
I came from the window and sat again in my chair, where I thought further about the Order of Things and what connection such had to Niles’ determination to fly to Algiers. “I need,” he said, and immediately then I considered my own desires, the consequence of What Was and the resistance I created for myself these past several years, all my need to want for nothing, and how the two forces clashed until, with Liz, the latter willed out and I fell foolish and fitful back to earth.
CHAPTER 9
ELIZABETH
The summer after Shannon left, I went to Dungee’s on a night I wasn’t scheduled to play, thinking I could earn a few extra dollars in tips nonetheless. I performed for an hour or so, knocking out a melody of “Cry Baby,” “Satin Doll,” and “Wheatleigh Hall,” and around 11:30 p.m. collected the few bucks I made and went to the bar for something to drink. I had a deck of cards with me and practiced a trick while sipping my whiskey. At last call, I put the deck in my pocket and went off to the bathroom where a woman in a pale blue cotton dress and light leather sandals was talking on one of the pay phones in the hall. Her hair was a thick orange brown hanging just above her shoulders, her cheeks fine and sharply drawn. She stood with her right arm tucked beneath her left, her head tipped to one side. I heard her laugh in response to something said on the other end of the phone and watched her full lips as they parted.
As I came from the bathroom she was just getting off the phone, and wanting to speak with her, I removed the deck of cards from my pocket, turned and showed her the ace of hearts. I then placed the card back in the deck, shuffled and fanned the deck in front of me, and asked her to pick one. She reached with her left hand and pulled out the ace of hearts. “Magic,” I said and introduced myself. She had a long neck, like one of the models painted by Klimt, and extending her right arm toward me the feel of her fingers caught me by surprise. I could see she was waiting for my reaction, and not wanting to disappoint her, I said, “Hands down, your trick is better than mine.”
“It’s an icebreaker.”
I laughed. “Yes, I’m sure it is.”
She settled her right arm back beneath her left, turned and began walking off when I asked if she’d like to have a drink. “Are you alone? Am I keeping you from someone?” She didn’t answer at first, but when I told her that I’d just finished playing piano and was hoping to have a drink, she said, “I know.”
“What?”
“That you were playing,” the green of her eyes caught the light as if she might be teasing me, though I couldn’t quite figure how by what she said, and standing there, unsure what to say next, it was Elizabeth who reminded me, “About that drink.”
We went and sat at a side table near the piano where I got another whiskey and brought Elizabeth a glass of wine. The bar was ready to close though I told her, “If you’re in no hurry, we can stay as long as you like.” She held her wine in her false hand, everything from the creases in the knuckles to the shades of vein in the plastic designed with anatomical exactness. I posed a series of casual questions, curious to know how long she’d been in Renton and if she ever stopped by Dungee’s before. After ten minutes or so, she asked about my piano playing, identified the song I was performing when she came in as Ellington’s “Pie Eye’s Blues” in E and wondered, “Where do you study?”
“I teach Art History at the university.”
“No, I mean your music.”
“I don’t study.”
“I see,” she took a sip from her drink. “You just play?”
“More or less.” I told her about the lessons with my mother and how, “Basically, that’s it. Why?”
“You play like someone self-tau
ght,” she said.
Again I didn’t quite know whether or not she was teasing me, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “You can tell from hearing me play one time?”
“Actually, I’ve heard you play before,” she took another sip from her drink. “Enough to recognize the absence of instruction. Your mechanics are erratic. There’s no consistency in how you perform. Your tone and tempo tend to drift in and out, as if you’re restless and feel a need to tinker with the music,” she mentioned again Ellington’s “Pie Eye’s Blues,” and how I interpreted the twelve-beat formula perfectly at first, only to gravitate toward something ancillary by the start of the second refrain. “You don’t do any exercises either, do you? You’re all gusto and wild performance.”
I was stunned. What was this? What did she mean my mechanics were erratic? I wanted to get up and play “C Jam Blues,” or “In a Mellotone,” or Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude, Op. 23, No. 6 in E-Flat,” and let her tell me then what was wrong with my music. “If there’s a rawness to my playing, it’s because it’s supposed to be there.”
“Ahh.”
“Its true.”
She removed the stem of her wine glass from the space between her right thumb and index finger and set her drink down on the table. The stiffness of her hand made moving the glass look surreal and when she lifted her chin my image appeared in her eyes. I wasn’t used to being criticized this way, and lighting a cigarette, asked, “How is it you think to know so much about my playing?”
“Does it matter?”
“If I’m to take you seriously.”
“So I need credentials to critique you but you don’t need the slightest bit of training to play.”
I couldn’t help but smile at this, and Liz in tum told me, “I teach Performance, Theory, and Composition at the university. Those who can’t,” she tapped the surface of the table with her false hand and went on to explain, “I was at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore through last year and came to Renton because there are other projects I’m working on and I was promised a certain flexibility. Listen,” she said suddenly, “you shouldn’t be offended by my comments. Your playing is actually quite good.” She brushed her hair back behind her ears, her attractiveness unconventional, her features edged sensually, and as I sat and tried to decipher her compliment, she laughed at my apparent confusion and wondered, “What would you have me say? Do women usually tell you that you’re brilliant? Is that what you want to hear?”
I blew smoke high into the air. “I don’t usually talk about my playing.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t,” I said. “I play, that’s all. I don’t even think about it.”
“Bullshit,” it was somehow exciting to hear her swear. “You should think,” she insisted. “Having a love for music doesn’t mean being out of control.”
“So now I’m out of control?”
“You’re too talented to ignore your responsibility.”
“And talented, too?”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“And if I prefer using my talent to play as I like?”
“I’d say that’s fine but rather a waste.”
“Well, then,” I blew more smoke and sipped off the remaining whiskey from my glass while letting Liz know, “as far as I’m concerned, there’s a huge distinction between academic assessment and the actual joy I take from sitting down to perform. You have to realize, I like the way I play. Changing my mechanics won’t improve how I feel and why should I try and fulfill someone else’s expectation of what the music should be? Learning to interpret Liszt’s “Liebestraum” or Beethoven’s “Für Elise” doesn’t make anyone a great musician. There’s much more to it than that, and besides,” I foolishly continued and dared Liz to find anyone in Renton who played better than I.
Three things happened then in quick succession. First, Elizabeth got up from the table and went to the piano where she played a remarkably beautiful piece using only her left hand. I would not have thought it possible had I not been there. The music was transporting. Beginning adagio, the arrangement built its way through an intoxicating lyric, into something bluesy and classical and slightly jazzed. The melody was simple, yet filled with such intricate harmonies and rifts, with hints of arabesques, trills, and tremolos, that no one would have guessed a single hand could produce such a spectacular sound. Elizabeth did not sit down but played while standing and looking out into the empty bar. Her expression made it seem she was doing nothing more than demonstrating scales, yet the corners of her mouth showed the most private start of a smile.
No sooner did she finish then someone knocked on the locked door and a man I didn’t know, older than I with short cropped hair brushed forward, a round head, and wire-framed glasses pushed high up on his nose, stepped inside as Elizabeth undid the lock and greeted him by name. In the next moment she thanked me for the wine and ended our night by inviting me to come see her at the music school sometime. “If you like,” she turned away and disappeared outside.
I waited almost a week before accepting Elizabeth’s invitation, sitting at my piano in the time between, practicing chords and scales and the mind-numbing mechanics of finger exercises. I was determined to impress her and spent hours searching through countless recordings, stacks of sheet music and books, racking my brain for just the right arrangement to perform. I considered hundreds of compositions, from baroque to ragtime to jazz, a dozen obscure masterworks by Dizzy Gillespie, Cootie Williams, and Erroll Garner, torch songs and show tunes, pop hits and classic rock and roll, everything from Clapton’s “Badge” to Debussy’s “Reverie” and Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu, Op. 66.” I’d a very clear sense of what I wanted and still it took forever to find.
Such enterprise was new to me, the motivation behind my industry hard to explain. My affinity for jazz notwithstanding, I decided on Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude, Op. 32, No. 5” in G, convinced this was the music Elizabeth preferred. The composition was not as overpowering as some of Rachmaninoff’s other scores, not as explosive as “Op. 3, No. 2,” nor rousing like “Op. 23, No. 7,” and in this way depended more upon the pianist’s skills to reproduce the inherent awe of the arrangement. Just short of three and a half minutes long, “Op. 32, No. 5” was built upon a lyrical conversation exchanged between the right and left hand. While the right hand was buoyant, flowing from slow to fast and back again, swooping in and out like a clever bird, the left hand provided ballast, was sotto voce, more tempered and exacting in its rhythm. Overlapping, the two voices created a harmony which, if played by a less skilled musician, risked cacophony and disorder.
I practiced the score over and over again, until each note had its own identity and every phrase was worked out, and just after noon that Friday I walked to the music school where a woman in the main office suggested I look for Elizabeth downstairs. I found her in a rehearsal room and slipped inside as one of her students finished Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.” (A boy of maybe twenty, his straight black hair clipped in bangs above the dark frame of his glasses and his crisp short-sleeved dress shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck, he performed while concentrating less on the music than on not making a mistake.) After Liszt, Elizabeth conferred with her student, who left the room with a great sigh of relief.
“Good morning, Mr. Finne,” she spoke formally once we were alone and in such a way that I couldn’t be sure if she was happy to see me. She appeared to know that I was there to play however, and pretending she was my instructor and I’d come for a lesson, she asked if I was ready to begin. I sat at the piano while Elizabeth stood off to the side, and eager to dazzle her, I couldn’t otherwise keep from performing with the same physical animation as my father, squirming about on the bench, hovering in tight above the keys then swaying side to side before leaning far back in order to let the music dance down my arms. When I finished, I folded my hands in my lap and watched Elizabeth stand silent for several seconds before walking back toward the piano.
“Your mechanics are hopeless,” she said. “What is it you’re doing? Your elbows seem to be fighting with your wrists and your wrists with your fingers. As for the music,” this caused a second silence that lasted even longer than the first. I tried to free my mind of all expectation and was rewarded in this way when Elizabeth said, “You are a bastard, aren’t you, Mr. Finne?”
“It’s a beautiful piece,” I told her.
“There’s potential in your playing.”
“There’s always potential, Ms. Rieunne.”
At this she smiled. “I guessed you might choose Rachmaninoff.”
“Does that mean you’ve been thinking of me?”
She pressed her knees against the front of the piano. Her shirt was sleeveless, dark blue with small white threads outlining the shoulders and collar. She had on shorts and no shoes, her sandals tossed to one side of the room, and resting her false arm atop the piano, she said with assurance, “No more it seems than you’ve been thinking of me.”
“It’s true, I have. All week, I confess.”
“And what am I to do with this information?”
“Have dinner with me.”
“All right.”
“Are you free tonight?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“Pick me up at seven.”
Elizabeth’s apartment was on the west side of campus. I don’t drive much in the summer and wound up spending an hour that afternoon cleaning last winter’s trash from the floor of my old car. I showered and put on a blue shirt and sport coat, clean slacks and dark shoes. Elizabeth wore a white dress which hung loosely from her shoulders and was tied at the waist with an orange sash. Her hair was pulled back and set inside Chinese sticks. We went to Lutrane’s and drank wine before dinner. Elizabeth asked about my studies at the university, about my interest in Art History, the subject of my dissertation, and the classes I taught. She wanted to know how long I’d lived in Renton and what precipitated my playing at Dungee’s. We talked about the time she spent teaching in Baltimore, about the trip she took to Italy last year, and the project she was finishing now, an article on Louise Talma, the neoclassical composer and first American to teach at Fontainbleau. We had a second glass of wine at the end of our meal and I asked her then about her hand.
The Weight of Nothing Page 10