Dead People's Music

by Sarah Laing

  ‘Okay.’ Klara was reluctant to leave her gaze for his, but Nurse Kelly turned, lifting a white sheet onto an ironing board, slapping the iron down ferociously.

  ‘It’s me, Heinrich — Klara.’

  He reached his chicken foot hand out to hers, its yellow claws digging into her wrist. She bent forward, kissing his protruding cheekbone. His skull wished to reveal itself. He smelt funny, embalmed in medicine and pee.

  ‘Dadadaaa, da da da d-d-daaaa,’ he said, and she wondered whether he thought he was talking to her in English or German. Her lack of understanding frustrated her; she was so skilled at extracting meaning from unarticulated notes.

  ‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’ And Heinrich looked at her cloudily. ‘I’ve been living in New Zealand for thirteen years now. Who would have thought?’

  ‘Da-daa, da,’ said Heinrich.

  What to say, what to say? She thought of the letters she’d written him, mainly about music; she hadn’t wanted to bore him with domestic trivia. He’d lived a monkish existence. He couldn’t relate to what it was like to spend a day with a child, the aimless intervals between eating and washing and sleeping. She thought of the conversations she’d imagined them having, the flashes of understanding and recognition that no one else could provide her. The acknowledgement of her abandoned self, the one that might have played in Vienna. Those conversations had been fantasy. She’d left it too late. But still, if she talked, she could give her side of the story; she was used to imagining his.

  ‘It’s very green there, and they’re so eager for music. Not everyone. Lots of people only care for rugby, think that classical music is for snobs, but the ones who are thirsty for it drink you as you play. That’s what you said, Heinrich, that you had to be a vessel for music, that you had to know when to let it pour out of you, and when to replenish yourself.’

  Heinrich made a catching sound in his throat.

  ‘I know you thought I was throwing it all away by going there, Heinrich. It’s true, Rostropovich doesn’t hold master classes in Wellington. But I think I make a difference in New Zealand. The composers I play are so remote, buried in their graves in Europe, in America. But I can imagine what Dvõrák might have seen from his window. I think of myself as a kind of medium, channelling music where it might not have gone before. I play the cello to men who shear sheep, to women whose lives are spent scrubbing and baking. Not the jaded crowd that goes to Carnegie Hall, who’ve heard it all before, who are no longer moved by music because it’s just another appointment on their social calendar.’

  Heinrich rose on his elbows. ‘Da dad daa daa.’ The light tone of his voice had gone. She wanted to know whether he agreed, whether he forgave her, or even understood her. Most likely it was anger that propelled his movement. She didn’t know whether what she said was true, or just a story she told herself.

  ‘Sometimes I think I made the wrong decision, Heinrich. Sometimes I think I should have stayed here. With you.’ And she had considered it on occasion. Could she have been wife to this man? She loved his mind, his heart, but could she have loved his old and damaged body? ‘I don’t regret my life with Owen. I have my son, Frank. But I have never stopped missing you.’

  Silence.

  ‘And here you are, an old man, and I’d hoped to talk to you as an adult, not as a child or a pupil. I wanted to thank you for teaching me the cello. It gave me another way to speak.’ She thought of all the sorrow, the loneliness, the anguish she’d bowed into it. The grit worried into pearls.

  ‘Are you okay there, Mr Weiss? Do you need your bedpan?’ the nurse asked, and Klara noticed the wetness growing around him. ‘We’ll have to change you then, won’t we?’ She started pulling back the sheets, but Klara retreated into the other room, unable to face Heinrich’s stripped dignity.

  It was where Heinrich made some of his instruments, the ones that didn’t fit in his warehouse, or perhaps the ones that required special attention. There was a neck in a vice, a half-carved coil like the ponga fronds that filled her Wellington garden. There was a front with the f-holes outlined in pencil, small holes drilled for the fret saw to be inserted. There was another whole cello, perhaps the first one she met, standing in the corner.

  When Klara was sure the woman had finished, she brought it out. She would play ‘The Swan’. She could play it perfectly now; it was useful as an encore, and although it wouldn’t have the watery piano accompaniment, both she and Heinrich could imagine it.

  Klara pulled out a wooden chair from the table, and sat down, the cello between her legs. Bending to adjust the spike, tightening the butterfly, she was struck with the familiar smell, the particular grain of the wood. She no longer saw princesses and golden trouts as she played; instead she thought of Saint-Saëns, his two children dead within a year, his abandoned wife, his emotional scars from the Franco-Prussian War. The music spoke of Paris in the 1880s, and the wart-faced Liszt, to whom it was dedicated. Liszt could see colours for each note, asking the baffled orchestra for more blue, more violet. And which swans had Saint-Saëns observed? The ones at Versailles? Who had he been with? A lover? A man? Had it been an autumn day, like this? Was he steeped in regret, the weight of his loss, and yet feeling a rogue joy because the day was too beautiful only to be sad?

  And yet this music was intimate, personal, so much about Heinrich and her.

  When she finished, her cheeks were wet, and so were his.

  ‘Oh no, look what you’ve done. You mustn’t upset him, that will jeopardise his health,’ said Nurse Kelly, hurrying forward the moment Klara put the cello down.

  ‘I haven’t upset him, I’ve made him happy,’ said Klara, hating this woman and all the people who didn’t understand, who never really cared for music. Her arm, the one near the lump, hurt slightly but she tried not to think about it.

  ‘Dada da daa da dada da,’ Heinrich said, falling back onto his cushion, closing his eyes.

  He was snoring by the time she returned from putting away the cello. Nurse Kelly tucked the sheets around him, swaddling him as if he were a baby.

  ‘Goodbye, Heinrich,’ Klara said, kissing his crumpled cheek. And she knew that although she could come back, ministering to him during her remaining weeks in New York, she probably wouldn’t. It was too hard seeing him this way. Klara hoped, for his sake, it would be over soon. If it were her, she’d like someone to press the pillow over her face, or give her an extra dose of medicine. Rubbing her sore arm, she looked up the stairs towards Tante Dagmar’s old apartment. A young man burst down the stairs past her, yelling, ‘Wait up!’

  The evening was crisp, and she felt eager to return to Esther and Ruby’s place, where the leaves were mounded in tawny piles, spread across stone steps in reds, oranges and yellows. The beauty of it all — she’d almost forgotten. She wondered whether this lump, this soreness, would kill her. Tante Dagmar had died of breast cancer, or so said Esther. She wasn’t allowed to die; she couldn’t leave Frank. Nor Owen, who would be heartbroken, erasing her with another bottle of chianti, another gin and tonic. But particularly Frank. She’d never plugged her own parentless hole, and she still cried at the sight of a passing car, a woman inside it who looked like her mother. Klara thought of Frank’s bunkroom that was barely warm, and so very dark at night, and the moreporks that called from the trees. She thought of the letters she sent him, that he read and carefully folded up into his trunk, writing her a conscientious reply, the plaintive, homesick notes buried in the third paragraph, after he’d told her of his mathematics and science successes, his first place in the discus.

  If she did die, she wondered how they would tell him. Whether Owen would arrive one afternoon at boarding school, pulling him out of a class. How it might seem like a blessing at first — the class long and boring, Shakespeare impenetrable, but then, after Owen had delivered the news, Frank would wish that he’d never been excused at all. She imagined Frank at the ferry terminal, in later years, with only Owen to pick him up, who didn’t really know how to show
affection to his son, who could only ruffle his hair and challenge him to a mock wrestle. How they wouldn’t speak of her even though they both longed to.

  But no, she was being silly, maudlin, imagining history to repeat itself, primed for disaster. The lump was nothing, something to be dug out of her skin like a bulb.

  CHAPTER 25

  New York, 2003

  Bruno looks a little shocked after I finish my story.

  ‘So you dumped me because you had a one-night stand? I might have slipped up myself. You should have told me: I would’ve forgiven you.’

  ‘Really?’ I feel a bolt of anger. ‘You wouldn’t have been jealous, thinking of me with another guy?’

  ‘Not as jealous as I am now.’

  ‘Come on, bullshit. You don’t act jealous. You’re Mr Chilled Out. What are you jealous of?’

  ‘Of the way Toby looks at you, like you belong to him and he’ll do anything for you. The way he can touch you, whenever he wants to.’

  It’s true. I take him for granted and yet his desire is precious. It compensates for my insecurities, making me feel sexy despite myself. He gives me something that I don’t have to analyse or isolate into measurable units.

  ‘You’ve got Fenella.’

  ‘Yeah, I love Fenella. Fen’s great. She’s really brainy, her politics are in the right place, she’s attractive. It’s just whenever I think of spending the rest of my life with her, you keep on popping up in my head. And I know you still think of me.’

  Am I that obvious, or is this a calculated gamble? Whatever, he’s got it right — I do think of him, and in that way.

  ‘How ’bout it, Beck? Why don’t we put this to bed? We never did have a break-up fuck. We could get a room, Chelsea Hotel, like Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin —’

  ‘Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.’

  ‘I still think you’re really hot.’

  My whole body flushes. Sex with Bruno. Would it be different, the imprint of others on our flesh? Do I remember his shape, how to accommodate him? His hair looks soft and shiny after a wash, and I reach out my hand.

  And yet, Toby. Toby loves me. Toby knows the real me, the neurotic diabetic me. The one who feels overwhelmed by her failure, the one who is trying to atone for her mistakes. Toby has reassured me again and again that I do have musical talent, that I don’t have a double chin. That my songs are unique, and people will want to hear them. Toby is generous: he will share his money so I can make music. I don’t think that Bruno would do that; he’s more likely to give his money to the Red Cross.

  Bruno can’t see me properly: he thinks I’m someone else, someone more earnest. I’m not going sacrifice everything to save the world, unless the Klara song cycle has miraculous Band Aid powers. Ultimately I would disappoint him. And he would me: I’ve turned him into my plastic-moulded love inside a snow dome. But I’ve been too busy shaking it up, and now that the snow has settled, I see that Bruno is now, in person, a little righteous, a little likely to cheat. Bruno in person is getting on my nerves.

  And it’s not just about Toby versus Bruno, it’s about me. I suicide-bombed our relationship, I sabotaged my scholarship. I don’t want to self-destruct again. I want to follow through on what I’ve started. I want to find out more about Klara, finish my songs, find a drummer, perform. I might die young; I want to leave a legacy, to be a worthy descendent, not some dilettante. Also, even though our partnership’s not perfect, I’d be worse off without Toby.

  Bruno takes my hand and pulls it to his lips. The kiss shoots to my groin but I know that my body is untrustworthy, and my chemistry can be easily altered.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say, yanking my hand back.

  ‘Really? But you want to, I can tell.’ He reaches for it again.

  ‘I might want to, but that doesn’t mean I should.’

  Bruno shrugs, as though it doesn’t matter after all, and I wonder whether he was just trying it on. My jealousy evaporating, I suddenly feel very worried for Fenella: not only does she picks stones out of lentils, but she imagines this man to be true.

  ‘Toby and I are going to get married.’

  ‘Fuck. Why did you say that you weren’t sure back there?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t. But you helped me figure something out.’

  ‘I did? Next time I’ll remember to keep my big mouth shut.’ Hands speared into pockets, Bruno kicks a half-eaten burger into the gutter, and it’s pursued by a one-legged pigeon.

  ‘I’ve got to rush. We’ve only got another couple of weeks until my visitor’s visa expires. If we get married then I can stay here for as long as Toby’s working.’

  ‘So it’s like that, is it? A technicality. I thought better of you, Beck. And Toby, well, he’s nice enough, but he’s not going to change the world or anything.’

  I feel reluctant to tell Bruno that I love Toby, even though I suspect myself of cowardliness. ‘You don’t have to change the world to be a good person. Maybe it’s more important that we’re good to each other. Think global, act local. What would happen if everyone was out dismantling the landmines? There’s be no one left at home to make tea or run the kindergartens.’

  ‘That’s just an excuse for your apathy. You’ve always been self-absorbed.’

  ‘Don’t you think that music is good for people’s emotional well-being? That it might offer them an escape from drudgery, that it might stop them from beating the shit out of each other?’

  ‘What about the punk scene? That was all about beating each other up.’

  I can’t stand this any more. ‘Look, I love Toby. That’s why we’re getting married.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Bruno grinds his teeth, and I feel lighter all of a sudden, as if nothing he can say can touch me. ‘The thing about punk was that it was political,’ he says, and I sigh — another lecture. ‘It was fighting against the establishment, it was saying fuck you to all the complacency and sentimentality in the world. So you can be an activist in your music. You should bear that in mind, Beck.’

  ‘I will. Here’s the subway station.’

  As we take the 6 south to Canal, the set of Bruno’s mouth loosens a little, his shoulders unhunch. We step onto the durian-stinky platform, and push our way up the stairs into Chinatown. Bruno scopes the fish sellers, poking his head into buckets of frogs. ‘No photo, no photo,’ they say as he cocks his digital camera. Pausing at a trestle table, he tests the mechanics of a miniature yellow cab, worrying the embroidery on a Yankees cap with his fingernail. At another stand, he buys a pink pashmina and offers it to me to stroke.

  ‘Nice,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, pink suits Fenella’s complexion.’

  ‘Is it fair trade?’

  Bruno shoves it in his backpack and zips it shut.

  We are meeting Toby at Joe’s Shanghai, on Pell Street. We read about the dumplings, which have soup inside, exploding in your mouth when you pierce the wrapper.

  Toby’s already there; he’s got us a table, which I’m grateful for, since the line stretches out the door. We walk past the fish tank, filled with someone else’s dinner, and sit down on office chairs, blue-tinged prints of mountains and flowers framed above us. Toby pours us each a cup of green tea.

  ‘Congratulations, man,’ says Bruno, clinking cups with Toby so hard that his green tea spills on the tablecloth.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘On your engagement. Beck tells me you’re getting married.’

  So this is Bruno’s idea of payback; I wonder how Toby’s going to take it, coming from my ex. This isn’t the way you’re meant to accept a proposal.

  ‘Are we? She hadn’t told me.’ Toby is calm, and it’s only from the twitching at his jaw that I can tell that his duck flippers are paddling.

  ‘I just decided,’ I say. ‘I was planning on telling you in private.’ I glare at Bruno.

  Toby looks confused and worried, his brow scrunching, like this might be a set-up. ‘Well, that’s great. I mean, that’s awesome.’ Standing, leaning across the squar
e wall-wedged table, Bruno at his left, Toby kisses me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Bruno glowering, but when I break away he’s studying the menu.

  ‘We should tell the waitress. Maybe we’ll get a free bottle of champagne,’ says Bruno, sarcasm barely submerged.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, for sure. So we’re getting married, huh? I thought you were working up to dumping me.’

  ‘I just wanted to make you sweat a little. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m pleased. Hey, I’m popping out for a sec. If the waitress comes, can you order me number twenty-nine?’ Toby stands, grabbing his jacket, pushing through the waiting crowd.

  ‘Okay.’

  Uncomfortable silence.

  ‘God, so much to choose from,’ I say, stuffing the gap. ‘I get a little overwhelmed by these menus.’

  Bruno flicks through the laminated pages in English and Chinese, then slams it shut.

  ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to be here for this.’ He looks at me and there are tears in his eyes. I feel awful, this delayed break-up that my letter failed to staunch. I want to rescue him, to have Bruno as well as Toby. I want to hug him, but I can’t even touch his shoulder any more.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Give me your keys. I’m going back to the apartment.’

  ‘Okay.’ I hope that Toby has his keys; anyway, Wendy should be home. If not, we could get a room ourselves. Maybe we should, Chelsea Hotel. We could rinse our underpants in the sink and dry them on the radiator overnight. I put the keys on the table.

  Grabbing them, Bruno stands, bumping into the waitress. She jumps back, hands in front of her face: there is violence in Bruno’s exit.

  ‘Now only one?’ she says, looking at me sympathetically, as if I have just been dumped.

  ‘No, my boyf— fiancé, he’s coming back. He’s having number twenty-nine, and I’ll have ten.’ I point to make sure she’s got my order.

  Toby reappears at the same time as the dumplings arrive.