Chamber Music (7 page)

At the end of the third week he dressed slowly and went downstairs. I could hear the fresh snap of long sheets of staff paper as he turned them impatiently, the runs of trial notes on the piano. For a few days he allowed Paderewski to lie in the room with him during the morning as he worked, an admittance that delighted the loving old dog, who worshiped him in somewhat the same way Elizabeth did. But the slap of his tail and his occasional strolls about the room between naps began to irritate Robert. He was expelled to the garden and never again, in the time of his life that remained, was he granted that privilege.

I took heart from that interlude. It made me hopeful that we could find paths to each other that might wipe out my loneliness. The year that followed was near the end of our time in Boston. One day in October—a beautiful fall full of cool sunlight and the little gusts of air that made life on the old Hill and along the paths of the Public Gardens so pleasant—Churchill Weeks knocked on our door at teatime.

Settled in the sitting room, munching on cookies and drinking cup after cup of tea, he told us of his plans. He had come home to begin his American career as Robert had done before him. You will remember that in those days European training was thought to be essential for an American musician. He said he was on his way to Milwaukee, where his parents lived. We spent the time of dinner and the early evening hearing tales of life at the Hoch Conservatory, of the students Robert and he had taught, of their teachers, some now dead, others about to retire.

I was content to sit on the edge of those hours of talk that night, providing the coffee and schnapps they both liked, listening to the talk that moved so easily between the two old friends. I was content because I had realized at their first moment of meeting that time and distance had transformed Weeks's feelings: the strength and passion of his professed love for Robert, in the letters, had weakened or died out entirely. They sat at a distance from each other, having seemed to choose chairs to effect this, and their voices were loud and forced, as though they were giving instructions to a class or lecturing to a club.

Weeks was attentive to me, ascertaining my comfort in the small chair I had chosen, twice offering to surrender his upholstered armchair to me. I began to like him, to forget about the anguish his person, even at a distance of three thousand miles, had caused me. I asked him if he would care to stay the night and he accepted gracefully, with no hesitation. “It is very good of you to think of it.”

“Not at all. You're an old friend. We're both pleased to see you again.”

But Robert said nothing. He seemed nervous, rubbing on his lower lip in his old way. After his illness of September his energies were low in the evenings. He excused himself to go early to bed. Weeks seemed disappointed but showed no surprise at his departure. “He looks very tired. It must have been a severe illness.”

“It was. And as usual he refused to have anything done for him, anything professional, that is. He waited it out, as he likes to say. But he's much recovered now.”

“I see, yes. And you're looking very well.”

“Thank you. And you.” It was true. His pale skin had been colored by his ocean voyage, he looked sturdy, healthy, and, somehow, American. The Berlin cut of his coat could not disguise his country look.

“I am about to be married,” he said. “I wanted to tell you both, but Robert went up before I was able to.”

I took a deep breath and relaxed in my hard chair, almost unable to say anything to this news. “You can tell him in the morning. I'm so pleased for you. To someone from the conservatory?”

“No. The daughter of my mother's close friend. The three of them visited me in Germany last year. We've been in correspondence ever since. The wedding is to be at Christmas in Milwaukee. Do you think you and Robert could come?”

“Surely,” I said, very quickly, and then checked myself. “That is, yes, of course we would both love to, but I must consult Robert about his schedule.”

“I'll send you an invitation in plenty of time to arrange for it.”

I showed Weeks his room. On my way to ours I felt light-headed, almost giddy, uplifted by his news. Now I believed it all to be a sick fancy. The letters did not exist or they were merely literary exercises, romantic jokes exchanged by the two men. Robert was asleep when I came to bed. I lay awake for some time thinking of how time, by means of its simple accumulation, had wiped out the apprehensiveness that had lasted so long. Weeks left the next morning before Robert was awake.

Robert worked very hard in the next month, to catch up, he said. Because money was still a problem for us, he took on a third pupil, a boy of eleven named Paul Brewster whose self-taught prowess was almost miraculous, said Robert. Now three pupils occupied his afternoons, always the best hours of his day. He kept his mornings, in which he was usually very slow to start, for composition, and in those hours he worked with such concentration that he abandoned his walk with the collie, taking him out only in the late afternoon. Paderewski had grown very old since our return from Europe; his still stately gait was now very slow and deliberate. This satisfied Robert, who was weary from working for nine hours before the walk. I would sometimes come upon the two old companions ambling along the paths of the park, Robert dazed and self-absorbed, Paderewski looking back at him every now and then.

We made our plans to take a Pullman room on the
Twentieth Century
train to Chicago and then on to Milwaukee for Churchill Weeks's wedding. I had persuaded Robert he ought to go. But in the end we did not do so. In early December Robert had a letter from his mother. It was a stiff, formal, strange letter:

I
wish to tell you, Rob, that I feel very close to the end of my days. I am now almost always bedridden with what my physician has called a disease of the heart. My feet and ankles swell badly at times so that I am unable to walk at all. I would not concern you with this but my physician has issued a warning to me, advising me to communicate with my relations in America so that I will not be alone in a last illness which, he says, may well be imminent. I am not writing as he suggested, for I wish no company now, having had none in the last years. But it seems wise to convey to you the warning he has given me so that you will have had notice
.

Your mother, Virginia Maclaren

Much disturbed, Robert booked passage for himself on the first ship sailing to Wilhelmshaven, the
Kaiser Wilhelmder Grosse
, I think it was. We were not in a position to afford two passages, he said. I agreed: Virginia Maclaren needed Robert unaccompanied by his wife. Two days before he was to sail, a cable came for Robert from the coroner of the city of Frankfurt informing him of his mother's death. Sometime later a long letter arrived from an attorney-at-law describing the contents of Virginia Maclaren's will. Her husband having predeceased her, she left her small estate from him to her sons Burns and Logan. To her youngest son, Robert, and wife, Caroline, were to be given her personal effects and her clothing. To the Hoch Conservatory, with her gratitude for the fine training it had given to her son, the composer Robert Glencoe Maclaren, she gave all her books and the manuscripts in her possession of his early works, including the one most dear to her, Opus 3,
Barcarolle pour pianoforte
, dedicated
A ma chère maman
.

Boston was growing too much for Robert. He talked often of finding a quiet place in the country in which to live and work. I still loved the city, having renewed acquaintance with some of my school friends, visiting the Museum of Fine Arts with them and with Elizabeth, lunching often in the downtown shops. I went each week to the Boston Public Library, where there were afternoon lectures on the most recent books. Sunday mornings Elizabeth and I went to the Unitarian church together.

But Robert was restless because of the demands upon his time. He became increasingly short with his pupils, especially with young Paul Brewster, who was advancing so fast that it seemed to me to be in direct disproportion to Robert's patience with him. Robert always referred to him as Master Brewster, suggesting by the designation that he was far too young for opinions, of an age only to listen and then do as he was told.

I must tell you more about him. Paul had been coming to Robert for some months when we decided to find a place in the country. Working as hard as he did, Robert had lost weight. In the first three months of that year he had gone on tour, performing, lecturing, conducting his work and the music of his admired European masters, Liszt, Mozart, Beethoven. He came home exhausted from these trips. On lesson days he would lie on his couch through most of the morning, write almost nothing, storing up his meager supply of energy against the arrival of the precocious Master Brewster.

Paul Brewster at eleven still dressed as a young boy, in dark knickers, a silk shirt, a black silk tie. Twice each week, accompanied by his mother, he came to our door. When I opened the door to their ring, his mother would dip into a small curtsy, as I had not seen it done since the peasant women in Germany, greet me in a language I did not understand, and then disappear.

Robert told me she was Hungarian. Paul was her only child. In her eyes she and her son were sentenced to exile, living in the United States until the time came for Mr. Brewster's firm to send him back to Budapest, where they had met and where Paul was born. To her, Boston was a tomb, a cell, a cage, she had told Robert, who understood enough Hungarian for those words. Having arranged for Paul's lessons, and unburdening herself of these few details of autobiography, she made no other explanations. Her sole function became the delivery of the small genius, her son, to our house, and his retrieval an hour later.

In that year, because of Paul's avidity and skill, Robert sometimes instructed him far longer than his allotted hour. The boy seemed to consume the music he was given. His small, thin, tense, accomplished fingers were capable of performing extraordinary feats for one so young, his memory was perfect, his understanding of what he was doing almost that of a mature musician. I worried, not about him, for I hardly encountered him at all and knew all this only through Robert's weary reports of him at our late suppers, but about Robert, whose fatigue grew with the boy's virtuosity. No longer did he stand to give his lessons but had moved a wicker chair from another room into the music room, a chair that reminded me, when first I saw it there, of Mrs. Seton's.

Many afternoons, through the closed door of the music room, I heard Robert's sharp, angry voice, reproaching Paul for a mistake, I surmised, since I was not able to hear the words. His voice would maintain the same tone after the repetition of the long passage, which to my ear was played brilliantly. Robert would find some small matter to carp about, the boy would play the music again with verve, with greater accuracy, although, not having discerned the initial error, I cannot be sure of this. Again Robert's voice would cut across the last notes. Often I went downstairs and out into the garden so that I did not have to listen to Paul replaying the same passage, the same rejected perfection followed by the same unreasonable anger.

After all this time I no longer can remember how prepared I was for what happened. But I did wonder: Would the boy complain to his mother so that she would take him away from Robert's lessons? Would Robert completely lose control of himself at the boy's undeniable talent and send his pupil away?

It was not to be either of these suppositions. In the spring of that year, and just after Robert had returned home exhausted from his tour, Paul arrived alone for his lesson. He had been caught in a sudden rainstorm. His eyes red, his nose running, he stood, coughing, on the landing. His coat dripped water, his thin face was apologetic, his shoes full of water. The boy seemed afraid to go to Robert in this state, and yet there was little I could do for him except to insist he remove his shoes. I gave him a pair of Robert's old slippers, many sizes too large. Coughing and shuffling in the slippers, he knocked on the music room door and went in.

I took the sodden shoes down to the kitchen to try to dry them. So I missed the explosion. Paul had been ill with a cold, he had apparently told Robert: “I did not practice yesterday. I hope you will understand that …”

The ceiling above me shook. Something heavy had been—thrown? dropped?—to the floor. I heard a crash, and then a desperate, thin, child's voice cry: “
Stop
!” I went up the stairs as quickly as I could, hiking up my skirts to facilitate the climb. The door was ajar. In a fury such as I had never thought him capable of, Robert, in his shirt sleeves, stood in the center of the room, holding the fire poker above his head. Paul was crouched on the window seat, his face drawn and white, his mouth open in a mad, terrorized grimace. All his small, even, sharp teeth showed. “Robert, what
is
it? What are you doing? Stop that. Put it down.” Commands and entreaties poured out of me in one long line of sound.

Robert looked at me, dazed. Then he sat down, almost as if he had collapsed, onto the piano bench, dropping the poker at his feet. He put his head into his hands. I started over to him, but I was too slow. The boy had jumped toward Robert from his crouched position on the window seat, like a small spring released into the air. Before I could stop him he had crossed the room, stooped down, opened his mouth, and dug his teeth into the flesh of Robert's upper arm.

Robert sprang to his feet. “My God! Let
go
!”

Paul Brewster appeared for a few seconds to hang by his teeth from Robert's raised arm, the cloth of Robert's shirt bunched into his mouth. Robert went on screaming, the high, thin sound flowing from his mouth like sickness. His other hand slapped at the boy, trying to make him let go. I held Paul's mad head in my hands and tried to pry open his teeth, which were like small pointed stones. His mouth was lined with foam. I felt it wet my hands.