Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “And you’ve never played the piano or had training?”

  “Only singing at school, and at the Talmud Torah.”

  “You read music?” Hamovitch seemed very excited.

  “No; what is there to read? I should be going.” Louis was suddenly afraid of what his mother would say.

  “And, if I tell you the truth, my friend Herbie, I was also a little afraid of what I had found out about myself.”

  Hamovitch was very gentle. “In one moment, Louis. I promise, in a moment I will take you home. First, just sit at the piano for a second. Just touch the keys. Don’t bother what it sounds like, just touch them. Make a noise.”

  As he sat at the keyboard, Louis felt he had known about pianos forever. Gently he tested the keys. Then, a few moments later, hesitatingly he picked out the first notes of the Bach C Major Prelude. Only with one hand, slow and stumbling, but he found the right notes. When he looked up, it was into a face wreathed in a great smile. There was also—though he could not see it then—a hint of awe in those dark pools that were Aaron Hamovitch’s eyes.

  “Later, Herbie, Aaron told me that, at this moment, he knew he was in the presence of a musical genius.”

  Kruger grunted. “This man, Hamovitch, he really knew Gustav Mahler?”

  “Oh yes, but you know there was little call for Mahler’s work for many, many years. His time has only come again since the 1960s. I, personally, did not really discover Mahler until the late fifties.”

  This made little difference to Big Herbie Kruger. He was sitting opposite a man who had touched a man who had known Mahler. It was, to Kruger, something akin to the Apostolic Succession. But he put it away in the back of his mind to concentrate on the real work at hand, as Passau talked on.

  On the way home, Aaron tried to explain, in simple terms, who Bach was. “The father of modern music,” he called him. “Born and dead many years ago, but his light still guides all musicians.”

  He also told Louis that there were many people gifted in music from their earliest days. Many never discovered their secret, but those who did climbed to great heights.

  “There was a man called Berlioz who became a great composer. I do not personally like his music very much, but he was a great man. From being a baby he knew it all. Instinct, I suppose they call it.”

  Then he went on to tell of a man who was still alive. A man with a funny name that sounded, to Louis, like Sam Sonce, who could play the piano when he was not yet three years of age; and composed music when he was three years. Another man, still alive and in Berlin: Busoni—“He writes very learned books and articles about musical theory, and composes a little, but not very good. Now he had no training whatsoever. Nobody taught him a thing.

  “Then, of course there was Mozart. His father taught him, but he required little instruction, and he was strange. Did everything: played the piano and violin; composed, almost from the cradle. They say he could write a musical score, with all the parts, while in his head he was composing something else. But he died, burned out, before forty years.”

  Forty seemed a great age to Louis and he said so. Hamovitch’s big paw clasped the boy’s hand tightly. “Listen my young one. Would you like to play the piano?”

  There was no hesitation. “Yes.” In the present, Passau told Herbie he felt, at that instant, he would need no teaching. “I felt I already knew it. Arrogant, yes, but I wonder if you understand?”

  Kruger nodded, saying he understood perfectly. “I, myself, came to music late—in my late teens. I play nothing, but I discovered what real music can do for a man, and to a man. I could not live without it. It’s earth, air, fire and water to me.”

  “And you’re not a professional musician, so think what it must have become to me.”

  “Oh, I know what it is to you, Maestro.”

  Passau gave a little sound of disgust. “Wait till you hear my whole confession, Kruger. Then you will know how I sold my eternal soul to the devil for the sake of music, and how I used the great talent, discovered in Aaron Hamovitch’s dingy little room on Hester Street.” With that he returned to the past.

  It had started to snow. The great flakes were whipped down between the buildings, making little Louis’ face sting even more, almost blinding him with their force.

  “Good. You’d like to play the piano,” Hamovitch shouted over the wind and cold. “I teach piano to a lot of people. Some very rich. So rich that I have to put on my best suit and go to their big houses to teach uninspired little girls who only want to show off. Others, not so rich, come to me. I do my best with them, though, as yet, I have found nobody who has that divine inspiration for either music or the piano. I listen to them playing their scales, and the prim girls just able to pick their way through Für Elise. This is how I make my living. Teaching the piano.”

  Louis’ heart sank. He wanted to ask what Für Elise was but, instead, he came straight to the point. His mother and father would not have the money to pay for lessons.

  “No! No! No!” Hamovitch shouted, causing two passersby, heads down against the wind and snow, to stop for a moment and stare.

  “No! You don’t understand, Louis. You, I teach for nothing.”

  Finally they reached the shelter of the building in which the Packensteiners had their apartment. Hamovitch looked steadily at the boy, his huge hands heavy on the lad’s shoulders.

  “It is too early to tell.” He spoke quietly but in a way which made Louis attend to everything he said. “Too early yet. But I think you just might have a very great gift. Some call it perfect pitch, which means that your ears can tell when a musical note is accurate and when it is not. It just might be, Louis, that you are a natural musician. I don’t promise, mind. But I must find out.”

  Again, Louis felt the same strange stirrings. The icy feeling rising and falling on his spine, the wink in his loins, and a tickling in his scalp.

  His mother was beside herself with worry when Louis arrived at the door with the large, imposing man. His father had returned earlier, set out to find him and was still searching. Frau Packensteiner was on the verge of going to the police department and the hospitals, for there was a story going around that a boy had been attacked on Hester Street. She wept and wailed when she saw her son safe.

  “My mother, Herbie. My mother was, shall we say, a tad overdramatic.” He sighed, and then again, with feeling. “Embarrassing, my mother. That night I thought I would die with embarrassment. But there you are, that is mothers for you.”

  Aaron Hamovitch calmed her. He had a way that would have tranquilized wild beasts and, within minutes, all the agitation and anxiety had left Louis’ mother, though she seemed suspicious of the man.

  When his father returned, Louis watched while his new friend performed the same soothing trick on him—for Herr Packensteiner was angry and looked stern, unforgiving, when he saw Louis.

  Even though Hamovitch worked his charm on the Packensteiners, they were obviously apprehensive. Both of them questioned the man, and Louis, as though there might be some hidden crime which had passed between them.

  Joseph Packensteiner swore he would seek out the young thugs and have them imprisoned, but Hamovitch only laughed, praising the way in which Louis had stood up to the bullies. The lad had near crippled one of them, while he, personally, had made sure the ringleader would remember the kicking his backside had suffered. “Goyim,” he spat. “They won’t come back to Hester Street in a long time. It was lucky I heard the commotion from my window. I was pleased to be of help.” Then he added, “Especially to a boy as gifted as your Louis.”

  A little later he said he would like to talk to the parents alone. So Louis left, to wash and eat his evening meal, which he took to his bedroom.

  Later, his father came to him and sat on the bed, looking very serious. “Is this true?” he asked. “Is it true you wish to study the piano with the man Hamovitch?”

  Louis said it was the one thing he now wanted in the entire world. “Please, Papa, when can I be
gin?”

  “Not so fast,” his father warned. Then, after more talking, he said it might just be possible for him to have a few lessons, starting next week. “I have to look into Mr. Hamovitch’s background, though, Louis. We know nothing of the man, and no purpose is served by rushing into things.”

  “But I want to learn. I want to learn so much.”

  His mother came into the room at that moment. “Phoof! Musicians?” she scoffed. “What good is it to be a musician? My father’s brother, he was a musician, back in Poland, and where did it get him? Study! Study! Study! The violin. A great violin player, they said he would be. Your uncle, Louis; if you had known him, your Uncle Csaba; and how did it turn out? Playing the fiddle, yes. Playing the fiddle for coppers on the street corner. A beggar; a klezmer; a Gypsy. Musicians, they’re all poor. You get from nowhere in life as a musician. Look, even, at this nice Mr. Hamovitch. …” There, she had said he was nice, “Look at him. Living on Hester Street and teaching piano. A great musician, he says you might be. A great musician—your grandfather would turn. In his grave he would turn. Be a musician and be a pauper, that’s what your grandfather would have said. Now, a doctor …”

  Joseph calmed her and said it would do the boy no harm to have some lessons. It would broaden his horizons. They would talk.

  In the days that followed, his mother continued her diatribe against musicians, conjuring up, it seemed, a whole army of relations who had failed in an attempt to make their livings from music. It was the first Louis had ever heard of most of these kinfolk and he very much doubted their existence. But he had sharp ears and, ever alert, listened to snatches of conversation between his mother and father. The first sign of hope actually came on the next day when Joseph announced, thinking Louis was out of earshot, that Hamovitch taught the piano to many of Mr. Chorat’s richest customers. The very customers he was trying to lure away from Chorat by making special deals and offers.

  Then, two nights later, Louis heard his father pass on some newly discovered facts. He said that Aaron Hamovitch had, indeed, been a very famous musician in his time. His wife had died, suddenly, and tragically, in Vienna, and Hamovitch had been very ill. Eventually it had been because he could not bear to live in the city in which his wife had died that Aaron had come to America.

  “He has money to last a lifetime,” Joseph told Gerda. “People who know of these things tell me he could be a great musician again. That there are offers for him to play with many of the best symphony orchestras, but his friendship with some famous musician has not helped in New York—this famous man, who was his friend, is not liked here, even though he is now dead. Anyway, Aaron Hamovitch lives in the manner he does by choice.”

  “So they say,” Gerda sneered. “Me? I don’t believe a word of it unless I see it written down in a language I can understand. Learning to play the piano will go to the boy’s head. An honest shoemaker like yourself he should be. A good honest trade.” As her father always said—she constantly quoted her father—“Undertakers and shoemakers are people always in demand.”

  “A shoemaker he’ll have to become, Joseph. Though, of course, I would rather he was allowed to study something that will make him really famous and a boon to us in old age. But he does not seem to be blessed with many brains, so, should this music thing get into his blood. …” There she stopped, leaving the thought hanging in the air, like a sinister question mark, black and foreboding.

  Sadly, Louis thought that was the end of it, so it was to his huge pleasure and surprise that, a week later, Joseph told his son that he would be allowed to study the piano with Aaron Hamovitch, for one hour, three times a week, after the Talmud Torah. He had even arranged for Hamovitch to accompany the boy home after each lesson. Nobody was going to risk a repetition of what had happened on that December night. Eleven years he may be, yes, but the streets were no place, even for an eleven-year-old, late at night.

  The arrangement carried one proviso, that, when he was thirteen, and a man, his father would begin instructing him in the art of shoemaking. That was his mother’s wish, and she was right to demand it.

  The following Tuesday, after the lessons at the Talmud Torah, Aaron Hamovitch was waiting outside, on the sidewalk. Together they walked back to his apartment, Aaron talking all the time—

  “This one hour, three times a week, is of course nonsense. But we shall see. In time I shall persuade your father and mother to let you come more often. Then there will be practice. We shall see; we shall see if you’re worth it or not.”

  They mounted the stairs to the Hamovitch apartment, and so Louis Packensteiner passed into a new life, a new world, exciting, stimulating, enchanting, but more demanding and exacting than he ever could have imagined.

  Big Herb had been so caught up in Passau’s tale that time had passed unnoticed. They were sitting now, almost in the dark when the telephone rang. Five times, Herbie counted. Naldo was on his way and felt safe to come to the house.

  He scurried around, pulling the heavy drapes, putting on lights in readiness, while Maestro Passau listened, unemotionally, to Eliahu Inbal’s recording of the Bruckner Sixth. Hearing the majesty of its opening, and the progression of its grandiose musical structure, Herbie wondered at the fact that someone so single-minded and direct as Bruckner had been persecuted throughout his entire life. Man’s reaction to other men’s musical genius was, Herb decided, one of God’s huge and complex conundrums.

  The symphony filled the air as Kruger began to prepare their evening meal, but it was hardly into the second movement when he heard the car pulling up behind the house, and, seconds later, faced a grim-looking Naldo Railton who demanded a sitdown with both Herbie and the Maestro.

  (11)

  MAESTRO PASSAU SHOWED NO interest in Naldo’s arrival. Herbie had to go over to the CD player and hit the stop button, sending Bruckner into oblivion. Even then, Passau simply said, “You know, that young Inbal could turn into a pretty good professional conductor if he works at it.”

  “Did you get an answer from him?” Naldo sat looking towards Herbie.

  “The question about the mob?”

  “What else, Herb, the price of melons? Yes, the mob. Yes, of course the mob; the Cosa Nostra, Our Thing, the Mafia, the Company. Call it what you like, did you get an answer? Has he got mob connections?”

  “The answer is yes, but that’s all I know.” Herbie now faced Louis Passau. “You remember, I asked you if you had mob connections?”

  “Sure I remember. You remember what I told you?”

  “You said, yes. You also said we haven’t come to it yet.”

  “Okay, then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem, Mr. Passau.” Naldo crunched at the words, as though they were rationed and he was counting each one. “The problem is that I have the FBI on my tail. In turn, they have a couple of mob hit men on their tails trying to get to you. I’ve put my ass on the line, as they so quaintly say around these parts. I need answers.”

  Passau looked up at him with his blindingly clear blue eyes, enhanced by the contact lenses. For the first time, Herbie saw the true autocrat in the man and for a second or so there was anger as he spoke. “Mr. Railton, I don’t know where the fuck you come into this, but I’m pleased that, by the course of events, I am making a full confession of my life to Mr. Kruger, here. I am doing it of my own free will, and I assure you that I will tell him more than I would ever tell some half-assed set of interrogators from Langley.”

  He shifted his body in the chair. The movement seemed, from where Herbie stood, to be a kind of seated boxer’s stance. Aggressive. Then—

  “Listen, Mr. Railton, and listen well because I only say it once. If I am to go on this journey through my life with my friend Kruger, then I must do it in my way, or not at all. If you want to fuck around with stuff out of context, then so be it: you won’t get half of the real juice. I would suggest you leave now, before I get angry and have my final heart attack, which will leave big holes in history.”
/>   Naldo swallowed. Only Big Herbie saw his hands clench and could hear the temper being controlled as he spoke again. “Very well, Maestro Passau. I think I understand. But there’s one thing you must know. In a strange way we are all trying to protect people, and that means we’re trying to protect you. Will you answer one question about this mob connection?”

  “One, and one only. Okay?”

  “Right, sir. The two attempts on your life back in New York. Do you think that was the mob, or some other link with your past?”

  Passau changed, one second the fierce glaring fury, now a soft chuckle. “Of course it was the mob, Mr. Railton. It was always the mob. This is not the first time. They’ve tried before, and I know who is really pulling the trigger. Maybe they’ll get me, maybe not. It matters little, for any day now my health, which has been so good to me, will pack it in; my body will stop functioning, and I will die. It’s only a question of time, whether God—if He exists—gets to me first, or whether it’s my old Mafia friends, who at least know one reason why I should die, in some agony.”

  Naldo nodded his thanks, then asked Herbie if they could talk on their own. Bruckner came back to life almost before they were out of the room.

  In the conservatory, Naldo motioned Kruger towards a chair, set well back from the windows. There he told him about the FBI coming in like gangbusters with the ineffectual fellow from the Embassy.

  “They’re still watching my place,” he said, “and, this morning, I had another visitor. Very clandestine. I had to think on the fly.”

  “They’re not all the time on your back?”

  “The phone’s wired now, I’m pretty sure of that, but they’re not following me all the time.”

  Kruger nodded. “Makes sense. Probably have a manpower problem, so that could change. Who’s the new light in your life, Naldo?”

  Railton said this was serious. “You know a girl called Pucky Curtiss?”

  “After my time, and yours. Never met her, but she’s a desk spook at the Office. Liaison with Grosvenor Square, I think.”