Us Conductors (13 page)

FOR HALLOWEEN I WENT
to Schillinger’s and we carved squash. He was spending much of his time in Cleveland, preparing the first major work for space-control theremin and orchestra. The country didn’t know yet the trouble it was in; despite Wall Street’s calamity, this concerto was due to premiere in Cleveland in November, with a repeat performance in New York. Schillinger named his piece the
Airphonic Suite
. He carved an intricate happy face into the orange flesh of the squash. It was grotesque in its happiness. “What is that thing?” Frances asked him.

“It is the face of bliss,” he said.

The other squash depicted a cat. Frances and I had designed it on paper. I held a ruler while she applied the knife, tongue hooked in the corner of her mouth, her red hair in a bun. There was a certain tension in the air. Schillinger had wanted to perform the theremin solo at the suite’s premiere. The director of the Cleveland Orchestra preferred to have the inventor, which is to say myself, play the solo. When the director rang me I had no idea of Schillinger’s desire—he had been in Cleveland, shivering over his pierogies. By the time he and I spoke, the composer and the soloist, it was too late; the contracts had been signed.

“I could play it badly,” I suggested.

“Play it badly in Cleveland,” he agreed, “but not in New York.”

Rehearsals kept me in Cleveland for several weeks. Instead of billeting in Schillinger’s rented cottage, the director put me in a hotel across the road from Terminal Tower, which was under construction. Every morning I would divide the curtains and look up at the skyscraper. Every morning it seemed taller. All this time I had been living in America, running my masters’ errands, and this tower had been getting taller.

At the orchestra’s first rehearsal, with loudspeakers wedged between the double bassists, I activated the theremin’s coils.
DZEEEEOOOoo
, it said. There was an immediate brassy bang from the far side of the room. A French horn player had fainted. Her instrument lay on the floor, mouthpiece tilted toward the ceiling. My theremin meekly warbled. I switched it off. We gave her smelling salts.

People began to tell me I seemed distracted. I lost track of sheet music. I neglected to exit elevators. Cars honked as I stood at the corner of the street, forgetting to cross. “What’s wrong with you?” Schillinger asked one day, after I brought a rehearsal to a standstill.

“I’m preoccupied.”

“Preoccupied with what?”

“With Clara Reisenberg,” I admitted.

“She’s eighteen years old and she’s miles away,” he said. “Go dancing with someone else tonight. Clear your cloudy damn head.”

I introduced myself to a secretary at the symphony, asked her out on a date, and forgot where we had agreed to meet.

On the train back to New York I resolved to try to keep my head clear. You were a dance partner, an eighteen-year-old girl. You were a diversion, and there was important work to attend to. I remembered Katia in New Jersey. Ten thousand waiting trees passed on the other side of the window.

Arriving in Manhattan, New York seemed more or less the same as when I had left it. A depression does not show itself instantly. The banks had not been replaced with soup kitchens. The clock towers had not stopped. But there were more men sitting in the streets, on stoops and curbs, even on that icy Tuesday. Like in the days after the Revolution settled, in Leningrad, weather seemed less important. People walked in the rain. They shivered in the sun. They scanned newsstands’ newspaper headlines with fragile faces, awaiting disaster.

At the Plaza Hotel, they told me you had rung. I saw your name in the receptionist’s neat hand, and it was as if I had been topped up to full strength. This inky blot was enough—wherever you were, you had wondered too. My question had lost its urgency. I did not call. I folded your name and put it in my pocket. I went back to work. I attended my meetings; I performed Schillinger’s suite for a rapturous Manhattan crowd. I found other diversions. And when finally I dialled your number, feigning indifference, lying to myself, almost a month had passed.

“Where’ve you been hiding?” you said. Then you told me there was no time for dancing. You were going away with family, for a month.

“What are you doing on New Year’s?” I asked.

“Haven’t decided,” you said. “Trying to find either the biggest bash or the smallest.”

FOR NEW YEAR
’
S EVE
a few of the studio regulars rented a hall in Brooklyn, hired a band to play Chopin and Ellington. Maybe it seemed as though the market was bouncing back—maybe Schillinger’s friends just wanted to celebrate his airphonic success, the calling cards that had been left backstage by Steinways and Rockefellers. Maybe I wanted to see you.

We set up picnic tables and spotlights, a baby grand. I looped lanterns across the ceiling struts: lights that came on only when there were people underneath. We prepared baskets of snowballs, on ice, and bowls of chocolate coins. Then all at once the crowd was arriving: raucous, celebrating, tossing flowers onto our centrepieces of piled screws. The lights went on and off. Music flew out in a jumble. We started to sing, already hoarse. During the chorus of “Someone to Watch Over Me,” George Gershwin himself arrived, wearing a torn suit. Frances Schillinger kissed his cheeks.

“You’re the inventor,” Gershwin said. He had brought a bottle of real cognac and a plate of devilled eggs. The devilled eggs, he declared, he had made himself.

We toasted tomorrows. We got drunk. Gershwin asked me about Russia.

“Is the sky any different?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

We swallowed devilled eggs. I taught Gershwin to dance the quickstep. I taught Frances to dance the quickstep. Schillinger wrested the piano from its player and plinked out some Sousa. We bleated along with the brass. We ate doughnuts,
blini
, barbecued frankfurters, poured frothy beer from a bootleg keg. We traded shoes. Bugs and Missy Rusk showed up, and they brought friends, but there was only a mild stir from the white crowd. We had met at a place in Harlem; he was a piano mover and she was a maid; now we passed each other the barbecue tongs. Bugs had brought me an anagram poem, neat block letters on a square of paper.

SWING YER HEART
NEW YEAR
’
S RIGHT

“Couldn’t get ‘New Year’s night’ to work,” he said. “I tried for hours.” They were the first Negros I had ever supped with, danced beside. They were earnest and hilarious at the same time.

I told him, “Nothing is more unjust than an anagram.”

During every second of that stupid party, I was watching the door yawn open, watching the black night outside, watching and waiting for the girl I was trying not to wait for. My heart was swinging. When finally you appeared, I was so delighted that I couldn’t bring myself to say so. You had come with two girlfriends. You had braided little leaves in your hair. I stayed in my corner, talking to whomever was in front of me, glancing across the hall to see if you were having fun. Glancing at those leaves in your hair. At last I touched your elbow as a waltz came on.

“Might I?” I asked.

“You might,” you said.

We waltzed. You didn’t care about my compliments. You murmured the words as we stepped and unstepped to the song. Around us there were bowls of punch, women in fur, men with
flushed faces pouring drinks.
Each of these drinks is lawless
, I thought. I wanted to reach up and pull the light green leaves down across your eyes. Even in our slowest steps you were secretly quick: it was in your looking, your mouth that could not conceal your thoughts. You asked, “Are you used to a different New Year’s?”

“What do you mean?”

“From Russia,” you said.

“We celebrated on another day.”

“And does it feel the same?”

I loved the sharpened curiosity in your voice. This was not an exchange of metaphors. You wanted to know if it felt different, the old Russian New Year.

“I don’t remember,” I said honestly.

“I think it probably felt the same.” You seemed about to lay your chin on my shoulder but then you did not; you craned your neck to rest it on your own shoulder, looking out into the room. “New Year’s is so arbitrary. It’s what makes it nice. A party just because we want it. A date that’s special because we say it is.”

“An invention,” I said.

“Like the automobile,” you agreed. “Like the cotton gin.”

“Like the waltz.”

“Like the waltz,” you said, and straightaway the song ended. Those leaves were in your hair. Abruptly, you looked at your watch and cursed and said, “Oh we need to dash.”

I was caught completely off guard. “Why?”

“My friend Sadie—she wants to meet this …” You shook your head. “It’s a long story.” You rubbed your lips. You called to your girlfriends and soon you were gathering your coats. You glanced at me over your shoulder. Then you all went out into the night, to catch a cab.

Ten minutes later, you came back. You were alone. You found me beside a platter of potato chips.

“You’ll ruin your figure,” you said.

“You came back,” I said.

“I did. And you didn’t go anywhere.”

“I stayed,” I said.

“What were you doing?”

I drew a breath. “I was inventing a new calendar.”

AT MIDNIGHT SCHILLINGER CLIMBED
up on the piano bench and held aloft his pocket watch. He bellowed for quiet.

“It’s only 11:52!” shouted Rosalyn, one of my new pupils, in a green dress. The band was still playing.

“Not by my time!” Schillinger yelled. “Twelve! Eleven!”

A commotion rippled through the hall.

“Ten! Nine!”

It was not until “Eight!” that we agreed to abide by his chronology.

“Seven!” you answered.

“Six!” I yelled. I found I was so happy, shouting numbers.

“Five!

   Four!

      Three!

         Two!

            One!”

And then it was the new year. Bells rang, streamers flew, champagne popped, lovers veered toward each other. I looked at you and you were scrutinizing me with your forceful brown eyes. I felt a wisp of something rising up through my chest. I bent toward your face. In that instant someone hit me in the
back of the head with a snowball. Our heads clonked together and the world humbly shattered and a laugh knocked from your lips. I wheeled. I was searching for the culprit. There was no culprit, just a party, a hall of thronging movement and a dozen whizzing snowballs that I had helped prepare.

When I turned back to you, you were smiling still, ear to ear, loosened.

“Happy New Year, Leon.”

“Happy New Year,” I said.

You looked over at where George Gershwin was pretending to cross-country ski.

“Which new year do you want?” I said.

“All of them,” you replied. “Why not?”