My Heart Laid Bare (42 page)

The previous year, Adolf Hermann had been in a fever over the issue of Henry Ford's much-publicized peace ship,
Oscar II,
which had set sail
for Europe in early December with the goal of paying $1 million to anyone in Europe who could stop the war. This was a proposal so insane, so vainglorious and childish in its assumptions and expectations there was, as Herman acknowledged, a kind of purity about it—“A native American spirituality.” For weeks Darian had to listen to Hermann's commentary on Henry Ford and the
Oscar II
and the absurdity of meddling with such an imperial world power as Germany; yet when the venture failed, and the
Oscar II
merely returned with its $1 million untapped and the great Ford himself sick, it was gloatingly reported by newspapers, with a severe head cold, Professor Hermann sank into a depression. “I might have given aid to the cause instead of belittling it,” he said. “I might have volunteered to go along as a German-speaking American citizen—but now it's too late. Darian, it's too late.”

More distressing, Professor Hermann was growing increasingly eccentric as a piano teacher.

Because of his ranting monologues, when he finally roused himself to teach, it was late; and so the lessons ran later, and later; beginning at midafternoon, they might stretch into evening; and Darian would miss dinner. Sometimes the older man would insist upon Darian playing the “Pathétique” from start to finish, no matter his errors; sometimes he'd slam a fist down on the keyboard and lecture the frightened boy on the spot, when Darian's playing displeased him. For there was a way in which Beethoven's sonatas must be played, and numerous ways in which they must not be played. It was Adolf Hermann's belief that a Teutonic sensibility was required to fully comprehend Beethoven; no Frenchman, for instance, could play Beethoven correctly. So it infuriated Hermann when Darian played Beethoven, or Bach, or Mozart, or Schubert, in a style
not
Teutonic; in any case in a style that differed from Hermann's own, which he demonstrated for Darian. “Are you not ‘Licht'? Are you not one of us, boy, despite your ‘American' birth?” he once cried.

There were days when Darian could do nothing right, and days when
his playing moved the elder man to tears. “So beautiful. So delicate. And the thrumming power beneath. And yet you'll betray me one day, Darian—I know.” And the warm heavy hand cupped Darian's shoulder in fond, clumsy reproach.

It was Darian's belief that a musical composition even by the greatest of composers could be interpreted in any number of ways by any number of performing artists. Depending upon any number of factors: chance, intuition, the hour of the day, the weather, the whim of the performer and the whim, even, of the instrument . . . he'd imagined a composition to be titled “Broken-Stringed Piano & Warped Fiddle.” A technically complex piece, yet it would make listeners laugh! (Though not Adolf Hermann. He wouldn't be quite the ideal listener.) Dreaming in his classes, gazing out whichever windowpanes were in view, Darian theorized that music need not be solemn just because “serious” music has usually been solemn; why couldn't it be as robust, as hearty, as noisy, as rousing as military parade music, or the untrained Baptist choir, or the blacksmith shouting at a horse, or the blacksmith's very bellows? There was a hissing pneumatic sound of the steam radiator in his bedroom that fascinated his ear; and the
drip-drip-drip drip drip-drip-drip
of a faucet, both rhythmic and unpredictable; the slow, then accelerated
tap-tap
of Abraham Licht's fingers on a tabletop that betrayed his private feelings even as his smiling mask of a face hid all. America was a lively symphony of automobile horns, horses' whinnies, roosters' crowing, laundry flapping in the wind; what a stifling tradition to expect that every note of a composition must be played in the same sequence, or at the same tempo, or even in the key in which the composer had written it. “And what of silence, the white margins at the edge of the notes?” Darian wondered, thrilled with his own audacity.

To Professor Hermann, however, there were two ways of playing music: correctly (that's to say, the way he played it) and incorrectly.

So with the “Pathétique.” Darian was to play it at a rapid, even, measured clip; with a thunderous passion as marked; abrupt pianissimo
as marked; a not-overly-slow adagio cantabile; a precisely measured tempo throughout so that the dazzling runs were perfectly executed. It was necessary to maintain absolute evenness of tempo just as the metronome on the Bösendorser kept perfect time with never a hairsbreadth of a variation. Idiosyncratic variations in rhythm and tone were
verboten
though an innocent wrong note now and then didn't greatly matter. (In fact when Professor Hermann played, Darian noticed that he struck any number of wrong notes without pause or embarrassment.)

“Why can't there be more freedom in music, Professor Hermann?” Darian once asked, “—I mean more
play
in the matter of music?” and Professor Hermann said with a snort, “Because music is
not play.
”

These long, exhausting lessons left the older man too weary to see Darian to the door. So Darian let himself out of the dim-lit house after having fetched a bottle of schnapps for Professor Hermann from the sideboard in the parlor. “
Mein Kind
, you've drained all the strength from me,” Hermann said with a wheezing sigh. “It is my pleasure, and my curse.”

A FEW DAYS
before the recital, Darian played for Professor Hermann a new composition, a miniature sonata as he called it, titled “Worship.” (He didn't tell his teacher but the piece was dedicated to his mother.) An eight-minute variation on a theme out of the final movement of the Beethoven sonata, it consisted of muffled chords, single notes struck and held high in the treble and low in the bass while a thin, hesitant, trickling sort of melody, an inversion of Beethoven's, made its way slowly across the keyboard like something overheard. With a bowed head, his chin creased against his chest, Adolf Hermann listened to this without comment; then, with a shrug of his shoulder, commanded Darian to play the piece another time. This, Darian did. The second time through, his fingers were more assured. He felt a thrill of excitement, anticipation. True, the “miniature sonata” didn't follow much of a formal structure; it slipped in and out of the key
of F-sharp minor; and didn't resolve itself but faded out mysteriously into silence, in such a way that a listener might not realize it had ended. At the conclusion of the second playing of “Worship,” Professor Hermann said with a cruel smile, “Darian. A tour de force. An ‘American Pathétique'—ja? Wonderfully compressed and brief—but not brief enough.”

Darian flushed with hurt. He would have risen from the piano and gathered his things and left, but Professor Hermann said quickly that he was only joking—of course. A boy composer shouldn't be so thin-skinned.

“Tell me what has led you to compose such a thing? Such a—bold and experimental piece of music? Will you?”

Darian said tonelessly that he'd written “Worship” the other night, when he'd been unable to sleep; he'd been thinking of the Beethoven sonata almost ceaselessly, and was beginning to feel stage fright about Sunday. In a state of nerves, excitement rather than worry, he'd jotted down this composition for piano which was meant to suggest the singing of a boy and his younger sister in memory of their lost mother. The scene takes place in midsummer at dusk, in the country, at the edge of a vast marsh. Sometimes the boy sings alone, in the bass; sometime the girl sings alone, in the treble. They can't be heard distinctly because of the intervention, through memory, of the Beethoven sonata, and because they're singing across distance and time. A wind is rising. Already it's autumn. Their voices are blown away. Tall grasses are rippling, a stream runs nearby. All these sounds are part of the worship. Because the lost mother is dead, she can't reply; though she tries to reply, hearing her children singing. “Her silence, though, is a special silence,” Darian said. “It isn't just emptiness. It can be heard.” At the piano, he played several full, deep chords; left the keys depressed for a beat of several seconds; then slowly raised them.

Almost, she might be beside me. Even here.

Touching my hair, my neck. Darian, I love you.

There was a commotion out on the street, raised voices and a dog
barking, and Adolf Hermann tensed, looking toward the window. But the danger, if it was danger, passed.

“That, too, could be part of the ‘Worship,'” Darian said. “The dog barking especially—I like that.”

Adolf Hermann shifted his bulk in his chair and declared the lesson finished for the afternoon.

That was all: finished for the afternoon.

He told Darian please to see himself to the door, after fetching for him, from the sideboard, the bottle of schnapps and a fresh glass.

Harmony and disharmony. Assonance and dissonance.

Why not both?: Why not everything?

Darian foresaw that his piano lessons with Adolf Hermann must soon end. But he wouldn't be prepared for the terrible way in which they ended two months later.

On the morning of 4 February 1917, the day after President Woodrow Wilson was to sever diplomatic relations with Germany, and hardly a week after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare in neutral waters, Adolf Hermann would be found hanging by his neck from a beam in the cellar of his house; his face so distorted, it wouldn't appear human but bestial; his reddened eyes bulging from their sockets in a look of astonishment and horror. His suicide would be more a vexation and an outrage than a tragic, or even a pitiable, event, for his landlord and the other tenants of the row houses would be shocked and disgusted by it, and feel little sympathy for the dead man. A neatly written note in German, left on a nearby table, would be torn to bits by the landlord, whose misfortune it was to discover the body.

Why had he torn up the note?—Darian Licht would ask the man, stricken with grief; only to be told that, since the note was “unreadable, in some sort of code,” it might be dangerous.

The rumor was, through Vanderpoel, that Adolf Hermann of Düsseldorf, Germany, had been a secret sympathizer with the German war effort, possibly even a practicing German spy.

“Bravo! Brav-
vo
!”

On the evening of 8 December 1916, in Frick Hall, Adolf Hermann rises to his feet (ironically? sincerely? in a spirit of play? in a gesture of boldness?) to lead the enthusiastic applause for young Darian Licht, who has performed Beethoven's “Pathétique,” or a shortened version of it, with much feeling and precision. If he hasn't struck many wrong notes, if he's maintained a perfect tempo throughout, no one except a very few individuals knows; but everyone agrees he's a brilliant pianist—“And so
young.
”

Adolf Hermann, though invited to the soirée to follow, disappears into the crowd with the alacrity and grace of, not a heavyset middle-aged man in a bulky overcoat, but a cat. Abraham Licht has never appeared at all, so far as Darian knows.

Though he'd sent a card and flowers to Darian at the school, delivered the previous day and signed by both
Your loving Father
and
Your loving sister Millie.

Darian tells himself
I didn't expect them to come of course.

Darian chides himself
How could you imagine, you fool!

Finding himself dazed with fatigue and exhilaration trundled into a motorcar outside the chapel, driven across town to the home of the Joseph Fricks, it's Mrs. Frick who is their hostess, for Mr. Frick is away—“How Joseph would have admired your playing, Darian Licht! His favorite composer is Beethoven.” Darian doesn't hear most of what is said to him; most of what is said to him is repeated, and repeated; how brilliant his “rendition”; how “handsome a figure” at the piano; is his family here?—“How proud they must be.”

An elegant, enormous dining room. A buffet table so long its end can't be seen. Servants in livery, impassive and deft. Glasses of sparkling cham
pagne, cut-glass goblets and silver trays. The mezzo-soprano advances upon Darian to tell him he's brilliant, and a handsome figure at the piano. Women friends of Mrs. Frick cluster near for they've been told (is it true? they don't dare inquire) that the brilliant young pianist is an orphan, a charity pupil at the Academy. But won't he eat?
He must eat. He's far too thin.
Won't he have a glass of champagne? Just one! Darian isn't hungry, Darian's nerves are tight as a piano's strings, he can't stop shivering, swallowing down a glassful of the surprisingly tart liquid that stings his nostrils, he recalls his sister Millie advocating
Champagne! Champagne! for all the ills of the world, from the pocket to the heart to the brain.
In a passionate voice that will tolerate no disagreement the mezzo-soprano praises young Darian Licht as a brilliant pianist in the style of the great Franz Liszt; there's applause; Darian finds himself seated at his hostess's piano, a gorgeous Bechstein that seems to float upon the rich wine-colors of the Indian carpet underfoot, his fingers aren't stiff after the ordeal of the Beethoven sonata but come to life leaping along the keyboard in a merry rendition of “Chirping Crickets” complete with interventions from Bach and certain delicate passages of the “Pathétique” several ladies find so achingly beautiful they begin to feel faint; trailing off into allegro agitato, a whirlwind of notes improvised by Darian on the spot, the giddy confluence of a sixteen-year-old's first taste of champagne and his first Bechstein and his first public applause that quite goes to his head.
Smile and any fool will smile with you!
Father cynically advised and it's true, for Darian Licht has a sweet, shy smile, the ladies are taken with his smile, the way his fair brown flamelike hair glides forward across his brow, part-obscuring one of his eyes, the way he moves his slender, sinuous arms along the keyboard.
Bravo! Brav-vo!