Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “Trouble? You think … ?”

  “Nothing we can’t handle. Just watch the airports. Get in touch with the secretarial pool. Have them send a couple of people out to Gatwick. Just do it. I’ll be in touch. Where are you?”

  The young man told him, then cradled the phone. He thought of going out. Living it up on expenses. Then decided to stay put. It had been a long and weary journey, but he was sure it was almost over. After that he could go home to his wife and children.

  (2)

  “SO WHAT NEXT, LOU?”

  Outside the big bow windows of the suite, looking down across a terrace, towards the golf course, bracketed by trees, it was still damp. Soggy. No rain or drizzle to speak of, but nobody was about to go sunbathing. The dampness hung in the air like the dry ice used in horror movies.

  They had braved the dining room, taking Passau with them. “Nobody’s going to recognize him here,” Herbie said, his fingers crossed behind his back. The old man had made such a song and dance about going down to breakfast that it was the only way to keep him sweet. He wore tailored check trousers and a navy cardigan, complete with pockets and pearl buttons, hanging slack over a royal blue silk shirt. He looked shaved, polished and in his right mind. “Fancy a walk today, Herb. Long walk. Maybe by the sea,” he said as they held their breath in the elevator.

  “This is the only walk you’re going to get, Bubbie. No walkies until we finish the story. Okay? And even this is not one hundred percent certain.”

  “What’d I say? What’d I do?”

  “And watch the language, Lou,” from Pucky. “They have nice people here. Good people.”

  “You’re wearing a garter belt.” Passau looked up at her with a brilliantly contented smile.

  She slapped his wrist away. “You monstrous old man. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Lou,” said Herbie. “You want to live another day?”

  “You want the whole story? Then you gotta have me.” He grinned at Kruger before adding, “Bubbie.”

  In fact he behaved very well. Annie, the waitress, took to him. Made a fuss. Giggled as he whispered something to her. Said, “Oh, you’re awful,” and blushed. He drank juice, ate a large bowl of a revolting-looking cereal—nuts, raisins and dried banana mixed in with the flakes. “This stuff,” he began, motioning at it with his spoon. “This stuff keeps …”

  “Don’t you dare say it, Lou. It’s not worth dying for.”

  He grinned and nodded, looking dapper, pink-cheeked, respectable and rich.

  Annie brought his kippers. “Haven’t had real kippers in a coon’s age,” he announced and began to sort the flesh from the bones.

  So there was silence. Only the occasional murmured comment as Annie and a friendly young waiter brought toast, more coffee, and even more coffee. They fussed around Passau as though he were some prince.

  As they were leaving, the young waiter sidled up to Herbie and muttered, “Your father, sir? Or is he your grandfather? Has he stayed with us before? I know his face from somewhere.”

  “Probably saw it on a wanted poster,” Kruger snapped, then followed in the wake of Pucky trying to lead the old man towards the exit.

  The suite had been cleaned, the beds made up. Herbie and the Maestro sat in comfortable chairs, well back from the windows. Passau wanted to sit and look at the view, but Herbie told him they were not yet safe. “I think that waiter recognized you.” He looked grave as a tombstone. “Not a good idea to take you down again.”

  “Okay,” the lascivious grin once more. “Okay, Herb, I stay up here with the chambermaids.”

  “Christ.” Herbie clenched and unclenched his large hands. Then—

  “So what next, Lou?”

  “Forget where we got to. Been joyriding on all those airplanes. Flashing around in cars. You should’ve seen me when I used to drive regularly, Herb. You don’t know what speed is. Where we got to?”

  “The erotic eighties, and you were being erotic, regularly, with a little Russian swallow called Therese.” Herbie felt the quick stab, the pain in the mind. He could not bear to think of his once-beloved Ursula ministering to Passau in the place on Lexington Avenue.

  “Oh, yea. Now there was a girl.”

  “The ninth decade of this century. You were in your eighties, Lou, and still jumping on women?”

  Passau gave him a neat little wink. “Therese knew how to look after a man. Patient, caring, gave me great pleasure.”

  “What else she give you?”

  “Little packages. One of the guys would come to me—leave something. We’d exchange presents. That’s what she called it. ‘Lou, you got a little present for me?’ I would say, ‘Yes, of course. There you go.’ ‘I got one for you also,’ she’d tell me. You know, Herb, I did buy her presents. Little things, frivolous things. She enjoyed our relationship.”

  “One of the guys would come in and pick up her present to you?”

  “Always telephoned congratulations. ‘You’re doing a great job, Lou. One day the President himself’s going to pin a medal on you.’ I never saw them take the incoming gifts away.”

  “This part of the way it was fixed? The tradecraft?”

  “Sure. Had it sewn up.”

  “And this went on? Right up to … when?”

  “Almost to the end.”

  “And when was the end?”

  “The last thing I did for them was this spring. Nothing since.”

  It was tempting. Big Herbie wanted to rush him, jump the ten years or so and bring him into this year. To the tour behind the old Curtain, when he had made the side trips. Sitdown meetings with the old guard of the former Eastern Bloc countries. He resisted it, and asked instead—

  “Who did what? Your four friends—which of them did what?”

  “I used to meet with Matthew and Gregory from time to time.”

  “They bring the stuff, as you like to call it?”

  “No. They came to hold my hand. Once every couple of months or so they set up a little meeting. We’d drink some vodka; talk. They’d ask me how I was bearing up. Once they brought a doctor to give me a checkup—I think that was eighty-five, maybe eighty-six. Told them I didn’t need a checkup. Had my own doctor.”

  Herbie nodded. They had given up all pretense of taping the conversations in secret. Pucky sat, silent, out of Passau’s sight line, turning or changing the tapes. Herbie asked about Matthew and Gregory—“They never brought packages?”

  “No, usually Vincent came breezing in with them. Vincent, the guy with the big schnozola and the noisy ties.”

  “And Therese? She came, how often, during those ten, twelve, years?”

  “I can’t recall exactly, Herb. Didn’t keep count. I had work to do.”

  “Give me a guesstimate.”

  “Every couple of months. Sometimes once in three months. It varied.”

  “And how did you know she was coming?”

  “Usual. Same as we did in the sixties, and not so often in the seventies. One of the guys’d call me. Give me a word. Confusing. Used to give me times that I had to add or subtract, to get the real time they wanted to see me. In the end—late eighties—they just told me the right time. I said if I could do it. If it was okay, I’d go to the Lexington Avenue apartment. Vincent would come in, we’d put the package in a hiding place. …”

  “What kind of a …”

  “Book. They gave me this book that was really a safe. Proper lock on it. Combination lock. Secret number to open it. Book as heavy as hell. Steel. Fireproof. Thick. Looked like a beautiful leather-bound copy. Title in gold leaf. Kobe’s Complete Opera Book.”

  “What next, Lou? After the package was brought?”

  “Next day, sometimes a couple of days later, I’d make my call. Same old dance around the gooseberry bush. Special number, like always. I’d call and say I had a couple of things to talk about. Then Therese would call to say she was coming. Had some great lines: ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’; ‘Wind in the willows’; ‘Com
fort ye my people’; Stuff like that.”

  “Those are real? Real signals?”

  “Sure. Her favorite was, ‘Is that the Man of Sorrows?’ Pile of phrases. I was supposed to remember them. They needed me to be there. To be seen by her. Give her the stuff. Physically I had to be there. This was necessary to them, like I was the one doing all the work.”

  “So you went to the apartment. Exchanged presents. Then you left.”

  “Not straightaway. Therese was a nice girl. Made sure I was happy. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes she’d do striptease for me. Sometimes other things. Kept me sweet. Would’ve made someone a good wife. But you’d know that. Said you knew her.”

  “Leave it at that, Lou, okay? One of the boys would come in and take her present away? The one she brought?”

  “I guess so. They all had keys to the place. Let themselves in. Worked the book. Took out the present she left.”

  “Okay, Lou. Ten, eleven, twelve years. 1980 to this year. Give me your really sharp memories of that time. I know you can’t give a blow-by-blow account. Just fill in the things that really stick in your mind.”

  Louis Passau made a little grimace, then started to talk. Incidents, reminiscences, anecdotes flowed from him. For the first time he spoke of the men and women of his orchestra and organization and, also for the first time, Herbie saw him as a man who genuinely loved his fellow musicians. It was like suddenly getting a peep at the inner soul of someone who, until then, had appeared merely self-centered and autocratic. He told of his Concertmaster, Robin Cross, who had been with the orchestra for the past fifteen years, and had, according to Passau, “as much talent in one hand as the great Pinkie Perlman has in his entire body—and that isn’t a put-down as far as Pinkie’s concerned.”

  There were timpanists who had given up weeks without extra pay to work on special projects; oboe players whose fathers he had known; flautists who had slogged their hard way up from school bands, worked long hours, starved and studied to be what they had become—valued members of the Passau Symphony Orchestra of America. He talked of trumpeters who turned out in the night to help copy scores because someone had become sick. He held forth eloquently, for an hour or more, about these people, his orchestra, human beings with joys and sorrows. He loved them all, and loved them deeply. Pucky had the distinct impression that this foul-mouthed, unprincipled old man would have died for any and every one of his musicians.

  He recalled performances which had moved him—a splendid rendition of the Verdi Requiem; a recording of the Rakhmaninov Second Symphony, of which he was particularly proud; an open-air Mozart festival in Virginia; the first performance of his suites based on the film scores for Blood of a Nation and Nights of Lightning—the ones written for Rita Crest and Stefan Greif all those years before.

  There were productions of operas; his ballet company’s premiere. “They did Copland’s Appalachian Spring—he wrote it for Martha Graham so it was well-known. And a wonderful Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Also a specially choreographed Medea’s Dance of Vengeance—Sam Barber’s piece, part of the ballet he did for Martha Graham. All-American evening. Terrific.”

  He continued. Spoke of a Beethoven night at the Passau Center, remembered with great joy and tenderness. “I never hear the ‘Ode to Joy’ without thinking of old Aaron Hamovitch. Sometimes brings tears to my eyes: I was only a little boy then yet I remember everything.”

  “Don’t go maudlin on me, Lou. Brings tears to my eyes.”

  There were other fragments, the recording of the complete Bruckner symphonies, and his great Mahler cycle, all done through the eighties. He also spoke of a famous production at Glyndebourne. Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “There is true magic at the end of that opera. I wept at its beauty as I conducted. Glyndebourne was wonderful.”

  “That was when, Lou?”

  “Glyndebourne? Eighty-three. I spent nearly all summer and fall in England. Got married there. Eighty-three.”

  “Tell me about it?”

  “My getting married?”

  “Why not?”

  “Nothing to tell. Fell in love. Got married.”

  “At eighty-three years of age? To a woman of thirtysomething?”

  “Why not? It’s what she wanted. Not bad really for an old Jewish shoemaker’s son: the Honorable Angela Barnscome.”

  “Tell me about it, Lou.”

  He gave a little shrug, remained silent for a while, then muttered, “Okay,” and told it from his viewpoint.

  “Angela was a huge music-lover—is a huge music-lover. Yet she has a couple of problems. An inability to learn an instrument. It’s like some kind of dyslexia. Just cannot learn. Broke her heart because she wanted to be a concert pianist, or some such. Just couldn’t do it.”

  “What’s the other problem?”

  “Other? That’s more complicated. Lord and Lady Barnscome had Angela when they were pretty old. In fact, I think Lady Barnscome’s in The Guinness Book of Records for it. Gave birth at some ridiculous age, like sixty-one. Aberration, of course. Can never happen according to doctors. But it did. By the time Angela was in her teens she spent all her time looking after the old folk. After her birth they both aged quickly. When she was only eighteen Angela was caring for her mother, who had Alzheimers, and her father, who was recovering from a stroke. That way she got fixated on old people. That way she fell in love with me.”

  “This really true, Lou?”

  “Would I lie to you, Herb?”

  “Yes. Come on, I don’t believe the bit about Lady Barnscome.”

  He gave a little grin, showing his teeth. “That was the story. In fact, and nobody’ll tell you this but me, the old man—Lord Barnscome—put one of the young female grooms in the family way. They adopted Angela. Title went to her uncle, so she remained only an Hon. Funny, the English and their titles.”

  “I heard some story where the Barnscomes tried to stop the wedding.”

  He gave a little laugh, contemptuous and amused. “The family, yes. Couple or three relatives. Much younger brother on the father’s side, and a pair of cousins. Tried hard to stop it. Had Angela go see a shrink, who got up and told them she wasn’t a nut. Poor old Angela, she was really cut up about it—I mean the attitude, not the shrink. He was on her side. Very cut up, Angela.”

  “She would be. What was in it for you, Lou?”

  “I told you. Fell in love with her.”

  “Still love her?”

  “’Course I still love her. What’s a wife for? You love her. You cherish her. Name of the game.”

  “Bet the wedding night was a smash.”

  “A sell-out, Herb. Paying customers sitting in the aisles. Got a standing ovation, but that’s none of your business.”

  “You’ve told us just about everything else. I don’t see why this should be any different.”

  “She has her particular little foibles.” He shut his mouth, closing teeth and lips like a trap. “That’s all. Talk about something else.”

  “You still saw the lovely Therese, even though you had this great marriage.”

  “Sure I saw her.”

  “That summer and autumn in England? You saw her then?”

  “Why not? Terms of the contract. Saw her twice.”

  “Where?”

  “Dorchester Hotel. Angela and I had a suite at the Savoy. I met with Therese twice. Dorchester Hotel.”

  “And who serviced you?”

  “She did. Once a striptease, second time a blow job. Did it well.”

  “I mean which of the boys gave you the goods and took her present away with them?”

  “Oh, that. Sure. Duncan. Duncan did all the business. Abroad it was always Duncan. Come to think of it, you saw me abroad, or so you said. Heard the orchestra in Vienna. 1980, you said. See what a memory I’ve got when I put my mind to it. Heard my Mahler Second, right?”

  Herbie nodded.

  “Yes. Saw Thérèse in Vienna also. Duncan comes in one day. I do the calls and she follows
up. Duncan enters, stage left, the day after. Three-day gig. All for God and country.”

  The old man had talked for almost three hours, backwards and forwards. It would have made a great interview for some classical music magazine. Herbie let him relax, chatting on about the music he had made in the eighties. Pucky went down and got sandwiches, coffee, a beer for Herbie. They ate in silence. Passau did not even want music, and Herbie sensed they were getting close to the Maestro’s other dark night of the soul. What he really knew. What he suspected. What he had done.

  They started again at ten past two in the afternoon, with a weak sun struggling to push through outside; golfers stalking little white balls over the course.

  “In the eighties, Lou, you really got on well with the White House.”

  “I always got on well with the White House.”

  “Yes.” Herbie moved his head, and his right hand, as though indicating that things were different in the eighties. “Yes, but you seemed to have a special relationship with the Presidents of that time. Little private dinners, lunches. Cozy chats. That’s what I heard.”

  “Okay, so that’s what you heard.”

  “Any truth in it?”

  “Sure. I was on good terms with President Reagan. I am on good terms with President Bush.”

  “Ronnie and George?”

  Passau sat up, as though bitten by a snake. “Never!” He was angry. “Never! Always Mr. President. We had—have—good rapport. After I married Angela, President and Mrs. Reagan asked specially to meet her. I was on the private list. Still am. President and Mrs. Bush ask us a couple, maybe three, times a year. We go there alone. Have a good meal. Good wine. Good talk.”

  “They ever say anything to you off the record?”

  “You’re joking. Why would they do that? Seems they admire my work. We just chat. Nothing deep.”

  “Any of the boys ask about your talks at the White House?”

  “They ask about everything. Ask when I take a crap.”

  “What kind of things do they ask?”

  “How I perceive the President? How’s he bearing up? They ask if he makes any remarks, comments, on the current world situation—at any given time, that is.”