One month later, though it felt like the following day, I was looking out the window of a Boeing 747, one of the new models with the stretched upper deck, en route to Osaka, Japan.
As the plane flew across the continents, over clouds and bodies of water and mountain ranges, I thought of the symphonic structure. The first movement sets out the major themes. Blustery and martial, or slow and mysterious, or lyrical and teasing. The second movement plucks one of these themes and puts it under a microscope, turning right side up to upside down, switching left and right, leaving behind the big to magnify the small. The third movement is scherzo. Just kidding! it says. It was all a joke! You couldn’t possibly think any of this was serious? The fourth and final movement answers with a hammer. No! It was serious. It is serious. It’s all serious. The fourth recollects and amplifies all the action of the previous movements. Slow-fast, expressive-virtuosic, mysterious, calamitous, insidious, heroic, and fateful, assembled under a building continuo of cymbals bursting and gongs gonging. Where there are moments of silence, they are brief and they are loud.
Which movement was I in? What was next? Was this a new start? A new-old start? Was it a debut? A reunion? Was I going from first to second? Second to third? Or was it the fourth, and final, that was waiting for me?
I got in three days before the concert. Three days to get used to the time change, including two spent rehearsing En Blanc et Noir with the lead pianist, Milan Sudek, and one spent buying a new suit. Before I left, Taub had told me the public schoolboy look had to go. He was forwarding the money to make it happen. That’s how, on my first day in town, I ended up at the Hankyu Department Store, picking out a Nehru-style jacket and pants. Midnight blue. I knew it was a ridiculous choice. But from what I could tell, Osaka was a ridiculous place. The tall buildings along the main street had holes in their stomachs and hats on their heads. A tailor was summoned to mark the cuffs and hems, and I added a collarless white shirt and black socks to the tab. I was meant to pick up everything the day of the performance.
At the end of that first long day I unpacked my clothes in the room and turned on the television. As the sun started to set I walked to the window and looked out. My room was on the tenth floor and the view was mostly rooftops and roadways. In the distance was an elevated train track. Probably the local line, as opposed to the one that connected Osaka to other major cities. On street level the shop lights were being turned on. The sidewalks were filled with workers on their way home.
I picked up the phone, read the instructions for long-distance calling, and dialed the apartment. Nobody answered. I thought of calling again, but instead went back to the window. With a surprising suddenness, the sky had darkened; it was properly nighttime now. I would try Lena again tomorrow. Or failing that, the day of the concert. At that point my thoughts of Maastricht, the apartment, even Lena, were abstract. There was so much happening in front of me that I could barely think laterally.
I turned on the TV and sat back on the bed, trying to figure out what was happening on the screen but without much luck. What I needed, I realized, was a translator. Ridiculous-to-sensical. With many examples on hand to explain the finer points.
Rehearsal with Sudek went without a hitch. If anything, I was overprepared. The morning of the concert I woke up at eight, had breakfast in the lobby, and walked up to Hankyu. I handed in a receipt. They handed me a tan garment bag, which I slung over my shoulder. On the way back to the hotel I had what I came to realize was an “Only in Japan” moment when I saw an advertising poster of a geisha, with Marie Antoinette hair, being clobbered by a Zeppelin-sized beer. The beer was labelled, in English, “The Placenta.” A man in immaculate coveralls was removing the poster from an advertising column at the entrance to a subway. Using sign language, I asked if I could have it. The man rolled it up for me and I tucked it under my arm, making a mental note to ask the hotel concierge for bubble wrap and tape.
On the day of the show there was no rehearsal, so I was free to do what I liked. I dropped off the goods in the hotel lobby and went back onto the street, spending the next couple of hours walking along the river and popping into the odd shop.
At two o’clock, I went back to my room and lifted the phone onto the bed. It felt heavy in my hands. I reread the instructions for long distance.
The phone started to ring. It was morning in Maastricht and I was expecting Lena to be a little sleepy. But when she answered she sounded like she’d been awake for a while.
The first thing she said was that I hadn’t called when I got in. “I waited by the phone for hours,” she said sharply.
“I made a mistake with the time difference,” I said. “You were probably at the office.”
“You could have tried me there.”
She was right. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about it,” I said.
Silence on her end. There was a blip on the line. The long distance.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid as the words came out but not knowing what else to say.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Did you really call when you said you did?”
“Yes, of course, Lena. I told you, I mixed up the time.”
“And since then?”
“I’ve been caught up.”
“You know, Jan, I’ve got this feeling you don’t even care that I’m not there.”
A stab. But the pain was localized. It didn’t hurt the way I thought it would.
“Am I wrong?” she said.
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
There was a fuzzy silence. The sound of two people far away from each other.
“I’ve got to get ready for work,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Is that why you called now?” Her voice was a serrated edge. “Because we wouldn’t have much time to talk?”
“I hadn’t even thought about that,” I said.
For a long time neither of us spoke.
“I’ll be out tonight with friends,” Lena said, almost absently. “The movies.” The message was clear: don’t call to say how it went. But before I could answer there was another blip on the line. It cut off something Lena said. The next thing I knew she’d hung up, and I was holding a dead receiver in my hand.
I put the phone aside. I’d sift through this later, I thought to myself. Her words, her anger, what she might have known, what I owed her. Even if I had wanted to reflect at the time, I couldn’t. I was in a hotel room, six thousand miles away, on the cusp of my debut concert. I got up from the bed and unzipped the garment bag, which was hanging from a hook on the open bathroom door. The suit. Seemingly untouched. I brushed a hand over the jacket, the covered buttons, feeling a charge in my fingertips. I touched the jacket again, looking for another charge.
I got to the concert hall at six on the dot, one hour before curtain. The stage manager unlocked the backstage entrance for me and left me alone in the green room with a Yamaha CFIIIS, the same model as the two being lined up onstage. I lifted the fallboard and skimmed my fingers over the keys, not making a sound. In my head I could hear the score of my entire tour. Certain sections wavered. Lines switched place with other lines. A sonata borrowed a part from a concerto, then gave it back. I knew, from the experience before the showcase concert, that this was normal. When it came time to walk onstage and play the piece, muscle memory would take over.
I slid the fall back over the keys, pulled the bench from under the Yamaha, and sat down. I looked around the little room. A memory came to me. Dirk riding a pogo stick, the first I’d ever seen. Dirk didn’t own it; God knows how he’d gotten it. The metal tube was blue and the rubber handles were yellow, and Dirk was pogo-ing up and down the main hall of Sint Ansfried in the middle of the day, doing impressively well right up to the point where he fell forward and smashed his head on an open locker door. He looked up at me, a red slice across his forehead, blood just starting to stream from the cut, but the expression on his face was passive, even self-impressed.
“It was worth it, Old Man,” he said.
Living life beyond the bounds was worth it. Squeezing excitement out of every moment no matter where it led you, no matter what calamity it brought down, was worth it. Was the whole point. Alone in the little room, I was smiling, almost laughing. I looked down at my hands, resting on the bench, and saw they were shaking with excitement.
The assistant stage manager knocked on the door to give me my five-minute warning. As if on cue, the volume of the music in my head, the opening of the Debussy, slightly increased. I stood up, checked myself in the mirror, and corrected the angle of my pocket square. Less than a minute later, I was at the stage right entrance, standing in a group with Sudek, who was wearing a dark suit and black tie, a woman holding a clipboard, and a sound technician who was gurgling into a walkie-talkie. Regular beeps sounded through the backstage, indicating the performance was about to begin.
I took a deep breath, squeezed my hands into fists, then stretched my fingers out, feeling bursts of electricity in the very tips. As I touched the buttons down the front of my jacket I felt breathing next to me. Sudek, looking out to the stage, frowning, turning away, then turning back. He broke his routine to tell me he had to go to the washroom. If he didn’t come back in time, he said, I should start without him. Ha ha ha, he laughed, like a Transylvanian count, then went back to staring at the stage.
The regular beeps stopped. There was a change in the light that filtered into the wings.
He was here. I was sensing him here.
So do it, I said to myself.
At first I didn’t move.
You have to, I repeated to myself, this time almost aloud.
Okay, fine.
I stepped away from Sudek to the edge of the wings, pulled the curtain a little farther back, and looked. Electric volts of anticipation ran clear through me. I knew where Dirk’s complimentary seat was located. Around the corner from where I was standing, in a side box. “With the people who can’t climb stairs,” as Dirk would have put it. My breathing became shallower. My heart picked up the pace. I wanted so badly to peek around the corner, I would peek around the corner, but first I needed to scan some of the audience. That was my routine. I’d get to where he was sitting, I said to myself. Just start at the top.
My eyes went to the leftmost seat in the back of the hall, then zigzagged through the rows. I watched middle-aged husbands and wives, formally dressed, whispering to one another. Occasionally there was a single man or younger woman, reading a program. Very few stood out. Most of the men wore dark suits like Sudek’s. All the while I kept picturing Dirk in his box. How he’d wave his arms in the air like a nutter as soon as I’d walk onstage. Histrionically bite his nails through the show. Clamour to the edge of the box when it was done, as if he was on the verge of losing his mind. Launch imaginary bouquets at the stage, as if they were hand grenades. Then Dirk and me, leaving the concert hall. The two of us heading back to the hotel together. Wired from the excitement. A new world in front of us.
Look around the corner, Jan.
I knew if I did that, I would be visible to the audience; I’d have to be quick.
Look now, Jan. Before the lights go.
I stopped scanning the rows, held my breath, and craned my neck past the curtain. I was exposed to the audience. I got a full view of the box at the very moment the house lights dimmed.
Did you see him?
The stage lights rose. They shone down on us even in the wings.
Well?
He could have been elsewhere in the audience. Maybe he didn’t like his seat and took another.
You would have seen him.
I’d rushed through the rows. I might have missed him.
But you didn’t.
Maybe there was some kind of emergency. Or something simpler. Missed train stop. Traffic jam. The opening bars began to speed up in my head. Runs of chords. Banging, banging. A change of tempo. A change back. The audience was starting to applaud. I saw Sudek walk onstage in front of me and, beyond him, the white lights shining on the interlocked pianos at centre stage. My palms were sweating. A buzz ran all the way up my arms. I touched my collar, pulled at the cuffs beneath my jacket sleeves.
He’s not here.
Onstage, the lights turned to a blinding, phosphorescent gleam. The opening bars rushed through me at an ultra-fast tempo. Prestissimo. Then ultra slow. Largo. Then both at once.
Not here.
I needed to divide the parts, section them off. I needed to concentrate, listen for those opening bars at the right pace, the right tone, the right volume. I needed to anticipate Sudek coming in. Change of key, change of tempo.
The applause began. I followed Sudek onstage, to the bench.
I placed my hands above the keys, and looked across the lid for Sudek’s signal.
Somewhere in those few moments, the noise had evened out and quieted down. The first bars had resolved in a clear opening.
Sudek gave the signal. I struck the opening notes with force.
I landed back at Frankfurt International, on the same Boeing 747 model, three weeks later. Lena was waiting at the exit gate, as we’d arranged. She was wearing a light-coloured felt hat, with a wide brim that framed her face.
Often during the rest of the tour and constantly on the long flight home, I pictured this moment. This and others. The first time I saw Lena. Our first date. All the nights spent in the practice rooms. I’d come so close to losing her. I was angry at Dirk, of course, but wasn’t it me who was responsible? I promised, over and over, I would not take her for granted again. I promised not to forget what I had almost lost.
When Lena saw me through the doors, she broke into a beautiful, heart-melting smile. After more than twelve hours of travel, whatever doubts and fears I had built in anticipation instantly faded. I felt that I was hers again. That nothing had changed.
“I picked up a hot chocolate for you,” she said. “There’s a Lindt and Sprüngli stand in the terminal, if you can believe it. It’s still steaming, so be careful.” We went to the baggage carousel, where I grabbed my checked bag, then to the curb, where we joined the line for limos into the city. Her eyes were alert, her hand gripping mine.
We glided into Frankfurt along dusky streets. Lena had booked us a hotel room downtown, near the Museumsufer. She had also booked us dinner, she said, but on second thought nixed it. “We’re going to have room service,” she said in a decidedly self-possessed way. “I’ve vetted the menu.”
She paid the limo driver with a credit card, which had apparently come in the mail while I was away. I asked her if she’d used it to pay for the new hat. “This,” she said, taking the hat off and admiring it, “came from a store on the Wolfstraat.”
“I think I know which one,” I said.
We squeezed into a small elevator with our luggage and the porter. For a second, in the uncomfortable proximity, something was off. I caught it in Lena’s face. An uncertainty. But once we were in the room, Lena went about busying with drawers and curtains and running the bath and things went back to normal.
By the time I got out of my bath, the meal had arrived. Lena had taken the dishes off the trays and spread them over the bed. Not like her to encourage mess-making, but we were on holiday. The second I sat on the bed, though, I started to lose steam. “Do you mind if I just take a break for a sec and close my eyes?” I asked. Lena leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. “Do what you want,” she said. Those were her last words before I drifted into jet-lagged dreamland.
I awoke later that night, and sat up in bed. The clock showed five in the morning. The room was dark, but I could see well enough to notice the plates of food had been cleared off the bed. As I turned next to me, I heard Lena move. She was awake too.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said.
I shook my head. I didn’t understand.
“For what I said on the phone,” she said. “I regretted it the moment I said it. These la
st three weeks, being out of touch …”
“Me too,” I said.
“I didn’t think it would be this hard,” she said, sniffling. She slipped her fingers between mine. I squeezed.
“I’m sorry too,” I said. “I realized, while I was away, I’d taken you for granted.”
Lena seemed to ignore my words. “You need the space to practise and work. I know that, I just had this feeling, while you were away, there was something wrong. Actually it had been building for months, and I only realized it after the call.”
I shook my head.
“There’s nothing,” I said.
“I didn’t ruin the debut for you?”
“No, my love. You couldn’t ruin anything for me.”
I lay down next to her. Our faces inches from each other. She was breathing from her mouth into my nose. It smelled sweetly of her morning breath. I could never get enough of it. She didn’t believe me when I had told her this, and she subsequently rolled away from me whenever she noticed I was timing my inhales with her exhales, but it was true.
“Will you tell me everything, Jan?” she said, breathing sweetly. “From the beginning of the tour? The hotel room? The concert hall in Osaka? Everything?”
We kissed.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Come on, Jan,” she said, “you know I love details. First international performance. Four-city tour. Different country. Different continent. Tell me something.”
I scanned over the trip, starting to feel drowsy again. I told her about the strangely high-pitched voices of the women I spoke to, about the soup in a pouch called ramen, about how televisions in hotel rooms were easy to turn on but impossible to shut off.
“And Dirk?” she asked. “How did it turn out with him? His festival?”
“He came to Osaka for the performance, then went back to Tokyo for his show.”
“You didn’t go with?”
School of Velocity Page 10