Dissonance (14 page)

Erwin smiled. She turned to him but he managed to stop before she could see.

Chapter Two

Just after 9.30 the next morning, Erwin sat in a small lecture theatre decorated with gold-framed prints of Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven, and a Meyerbeer no one had thought to remove. At the front of the room Hans Knorr, principal composition teacher at the Hamburg Conservatorium, sat at a desk on a raised platform. Knorr was in his sixties, his face consumed by a wild, grey beard that he kept stroking and twisting as he moved his hand up to his nostrils, which he cleaned out with a strong, vigorous movement of his index finger. He leaned forward across his desk and lifted his head to see his students. His wide, blue eyes moved from one boy to another, settling on them, working them out, moving on to the next as he used his finger to clear wax from his ears.

‘You, Hergert,' he said in German, ‘how old are you?'

Erwin looked up from his exercise. ‘Fifteen, sir.'

And Knorr scribbled in a big, brown ledger.

Erwin was copying a ground bass from the blackboard. Once he had these notes he started adding harmonies in the left and right hand. He wrote the name of the chord in each bar and indicated sevenths and ninths, flattened fifths and augmented octaves. Then he stopped. Most of the dozen or so other students had just started. He didn't want to appear over-confident in his first lesson so he pretended to write, shaking his head, reassessing his work, scribbling in the margins, rechecking the board and looking down at the backs of other students' necks.

The lecture theatre rose steeply towards the back wall where students entered and walked down one of two aisles to get to their seats. Knorr wouldn't allow his students to sit together. That's not what your parents are paying for, he told them. So his class was silent, serenaded by the clunking of an oil heater that had come loose from its brackets.

Knorr looked at Erwin again and asked, ‘Where in Australia?'

‘The Barossa Valley,' Erwin replied.

‘Do they have orchestras in Australia?'

‘Yes, Adelaide has an orchestra.'

‘An amateur orchestra?'

‘Partly. But we have very good musicians. And a very good conservatorium.'

‘I see.' But Knorr didn't want facts messing up his vision of Australia. ‘Apart from that, most people are busy farming … and running shops?'

‘I suppose,' Erwin replied. ‘Like here.'

‘Yes, of course.'

Knorr didn't know if this was impudence, or just the Australian manner. He wasn't having any of that in his classroom, especially since he'd done the right thing by taking him on Schaedel's recommendation. He'd studied his
Counterpoint
and written positive comments in the margins, circled harmonisations and syncopations and ticked them, scribbling,
Ausgezeichnet! Sehr gut!!
He'd even rung him the previous evening, so he wouldn't miss his weekly lesson. The mother had answered the phone, and she seemed a decent sort of person.

‘Yes, Mrs Hergert? I wonder if I could speak to Erwin?'

‘Regarding?'

‘Composition studies.'

‘Oh, you would be Herr Professor Knorr. I've heard so much about you …' (although she hadn't heard a thing, asking Erwin who this Knorr had studied with, which orchestras had played his work and if he was a teacher because he couldn't make it in the real world). ‘Erwin told me you wrote an opera,' Madge said, holding the phone close to her mouth.

‘Yes, about Napoleon's death.'

‘How wonderful. Is it to be performed soon?'

‘Perhaps,' Knorr explained, without mentioning a particular year, decade or century; failing to explain how it had only been put on by an amateur operatic society and how, even then, every critic in Hamburg thought it smelt like a piece of rotten sausage.

‘Mrs Hergert,' Knorr said, ‘I have a class that Erwin could join.'

‘Herr Professor …'

‘If he's interested.'

‘Believe me, he is.'

Back in Knorr's class the next morning, Erwin stared at his new teacher and said, ‘We, my mother and I, had a grocery store.'

Knorr had no idea what he meant. Maybe he was being clever. By now all of the other boys were watching and listening. Knorr waved his pencil at them and said, ‘Back to work.'

Erwin pretended to write again. After a few moments he thought, This is silly, I'm meant to be the beginner. He looked at the other students' work and noticed that they were barely halfway through. So he put down his pencil. He looked up at Knorr and met his eyes. ‘Ah, the kangaroo is finished,' his teacher said.

A few boys looked up and laughed.

The kangaroo? Erwin thought. Are you trying to be funny? ‘Kangaroos are …' He didn't know the German for marsupials. ‘Marsupials,' he said in English.

Knorr stared at him. ‘In German, please!'

He shrugged. ‘Marsupials.'

Knorr was starting to wonder whether he should've made that call. He opened his desk drawer, took out a piece of chalk and held it up, looking at Erwin. Erwin stood up, walked down the few steps to the front and took the chalk. Then, without even referring to his exercise book, he filled in the harmonies over the ground bass. After a few bars Knorr stopped him. ‘Leave some for the others,' he said, as if harmony was like birthday cake.

Erwin stood back and looked at his work. Fine, he thought. The other students studied it too, but in the same way a school cleaner would study a board full of quadratic equations.

At last Knorr lifted his head from his desk. He sat back, played with his beard again and said, ‘Very exotic.'

‘Not really,' Erwin replied. ‘These chords, here, would sound a bit jazzy but … Beethoven's dead, isn't he?'

‘But his music's not.'

‘But if he was alive, this is what he'd be doing.'

‘Nonsense,' Knorr barked, standing up, picking up a duster and rubbing out the jazz chords. ‘These are about effect … flashy noise. We are here to learn harmony, structure, principles. It's been good enough for a hundred other …' His face went red and he said, ‘The rules!'

‘What rules?'

‘The rules! That is why you asked to study with me, isn't it? To learn the rules.'

Not really, Erwin thought. You were the only choice. Is there someone else?

‘Listen,' Erwin said, and he walked over to an upright piano. He started to play his harmonisations, jazz chords and all, and several of the students smiled and nodded at each other. ‘I haven't done anything to the structure,' Erwin explained. ‘Just because you change a chord doesn't mean – '

‘Did I ask you to play that piano?' Knorr interrupted, loudly.

Erwin stopped. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and saw his mother looking at him, her hands on her hips. ‘No,' he replied.

‘Well, Mr Hergert, sit down.'

Erwin returned to his seat as Knorr and the other students watched him. All this over a flattened ninth, he thought. What have I got myself into? The boy in front of him, a well-built, dark-haired sixteen- or seventeen-year-old, dared to turn around and smile at him. Erwin almost rolled his eyes, settling on a lifted eyebrow that he covered with his hand.

‘Alfred Keil,' Knorr said, angrily, picking out the boy for fraternising. ‘Maybe you could show us how
you
went about it.'

Alfred Keil stood up, walked down the steps and took the chalk from Knorr. Then, referring to his exercise book, he started to write on the board. He pressed hard and the chalk snapped. He managed a seventh that passed into the sub-dominant F and then added a few fat, flavourless chords under a melody that twisted around the staff.

‘Parallel fifths,' Knorr called out. Alfred corrected them.

What's wrong with a parallel fifth, Erwin thought.

‘Wrong, your A minor should be a C major chord.'

Erwin squirmed. It could be either, he almost whispered.

Knorr stood up and took the chalk from him. ‘No, here, see, this would sound like a dirge … and here, third inversion, arpeggios, broken chords … come on, where's your imagination?'

Erwin almost choked on the word.

‘And here, is this note in a space, or on the line? Be clear.'

‘It's a C.'

‘You can't tell.'

‘And here, look at Mr Hergert's hand, even worse. Are these notes or ticks? Is this a stem?'

‘Have you seen Bach's scores?' Erwin asked.

‘Of course I have,' the teacher replied.

‘They're unreadable.'

‘Bach could afford to be unreadable. You can't, Mr Hergert.'

‘You think quick, you write quick,' Erwin said, hearing his mother's voice telling him to stop.

Knorr stepped forward and nearly fell from the raised platform. ‘I am here to teach you the proper way, Mr Hergert.'

‘The rules?'

‘Exactly.'

Like Gershwin, Ellington and everyone else worth listening to, Erwin thought. All of the people who hadn't written operas about Napoleon. He tried, but couldn't stop himself. ‘Alfred's harmonies are perfectly okay,' he said. Then he felt himself standing, walking down the steps, patting Alfred on the back and sitting at the piano. He played his harmonies loud, fast and clear, saying, ‘See, what's wrong with that?'

Knorr was staring at him, fuming. After a few moments he lifted his hand and said, ‘Out!'

Erwin shrugged. He returned to his seat, gathered his books and said, ‘I could teach this class.' The old man didn't move, unable to think of what to say or do. His hand hung heavily in the air, shaking, as the other boys pretended to finish their work.

A few minutes later Erwin was sitting in a big, brown armchair in the student common room, reading, occasionally looking up to scan the faces of students as they came and went. He was looking for Luise, wondering if she'd be with a group of girls – voice students with their hair done up in buns, their faces made up, their dresses longer, grander, more French, more
diva
. Or with a boy – a tall, brooding medical student (apparently musicians didn't marry musicians – that was the same as asking to be poor). He wondered if she'd be glad to see him, or would it be, Sorry, who are you? Of course, the Australian from down the hall, my new
accompanist
.

Instead there was Schaedel, coming in from the rain, dropping his music and swearing.

Erwin got up to help him. ‘Good afternoon, Professor.'

‘Ivan.'

‘Mum said to thank you, for Professor Knorr.'

He looked up. ‘
Mum
said?'

‘
I
said.'

‘That's better. Ready for your lesson?'

‘Yes.'

Schaedel stopped to think. He looked at his watch. ‘Shouldn't you be with Knorr now?'

‘Yes.'

He looked puzzled.

‘He asked me to leave,' Erwin said, and as he helped gather the music, he explained. ‘Mum's gonna kill me,' he concluded, as they stood up.

Schaedel held Erwin's elbow. ‘Well, it's good to see some spirit in there somewhere.'

‘You're not angry then?'

‘No. He's no friend of mine. Everyone thinks he's a miserable old bastard. Don't worry, I just wish I could've been there to see it.'

And with that he squeezed Erwin's shoulder, turned and scampered off down the hall.

Erwin sat down and started reading his book again. He'd borrowed it from Sülldorf library on a visit with his mother the previous Saturday. We should read for an hour a day, and speak to everyone we meet, she'd reminded him. Her eyes had lit up, and she'd handed him a copy of
Grettir's Saga
, an Icelandic adventure story she'd first read to him when he was four or five. She smiled as she remembered sitting on the end of his bed, spitting the words with excitement, her hands knocking over the lamp, stopping mid-sentence to say, ‘These were real men. They lived and died for one reason.'

‘What was that?' Erwin had asked.

‘Their tribe … their blood … their race.'

He'd read this, and other sagas, over and over again, finding solace in a world of blue-eyed Vikings dressed in wolfskins – the tribes of Berserks, Thorir Long-chin, Geirmund Swarthyskin and Halfdan the Black. He'd stay up half the night reading about longboats, orgies and battles where arms and legs were hacked off by swords the size of ploughs, where Olvir the Babyman severed heads and hung them from birch trees in dark, ancient forests. Grettir allowed him to escape from the tedium of stacking groceries, of high school maths and football. Grettir, he supposed, was the closest he'd ever get to a real father. Madge had made that very clear, often stopping as she read aloud to say something like, ‘If only Grettir had lived in the Valley.'

‘They used to drink piss,' Alfred Keil said in broken English as he stood in front of Erwin, looking at a picture of Hrolf of Ar.

‘Sorry?' Erwin asked.

‘The Vikings. They ate mushrooms … how do you say … up in the clouds?'

‘To hallucinate?'

‘Yes. And because it didn't break down in the body, they'd piss it out and drink it again.'

‘I didn't know that,' Erwin said.

Alfred sat down on a table beside him. ‘They don't put that in the history books.' He extended his hand. ‘Alfred Keil.'

‘Erwin Hergert.'

They shook.

‘Great performance,' Alfred said. ‘On behalf of Professor Herr Snot-Knorr's composition class, I'd like to thank you.'

‘Snot-Knorr?'

‘He was a corporal in the Great War, like Hitler. But he hasn't done as well since then. Except for
Napoleon Victorious
!
'

‘My mum told me.'

‘Everyone calls it
Napoleon Disastrous
!
He tells us he keeps sending it to the Berlin Opera, but
they're stuck in the past
.'