“And then our grandfathers died, and our fathers suddenly stood there lost,” said her grace, waving her bony arms. “As if burdened by a curse, people started to play in a historically faithful manner — the slightest whim of the composer, however absurd, was maintained, even transcription errors in the first edition were celebrated as being ingenious and accepted!”
“God forbid,” the great-aunts murmured, and Levadski was on the verge of making the sign of the cross. The caviar canapé tasted good because it looked like a glade filled with enlarged bark beetle eggs.
“Perfection became an obsession,” the old lady whispered, lowering her eyes. “No faith was placed in chance, in a person’s own nature …”
“And music itself,” groaned the great-aunts, “as fleeting and unique as it is! A spider’s web in flight!” And then slightly tearfully to Levadski, “Although it is only possible to harness the music if you let it fly!”
“Our grandfathers were still able to do that,” the powdered lady sighed at the stuccoed ceiling of the buffet hall, “then our fathers were conceived.”
“I remember,” one of the great-aunts recollected, “my — our — father, praising an interpreter by calling his style harsh!”
“Delightful!” her sister said, pinching Levadski’s hollow cheek, “now everything has changed!”
At another table a conversation was going on about the interpreter’s behavior towards the composer’s authority. “Passive recipient or generous servant of the composer — that is the question!
” “Willing servant, no question, willing servant!
” The ladies smiled into their glasses, as if they hoped to find a witty turn of phrase at the bottom. The gentlemen, on the other hand, dished them out and drank to the bottom. People patted each other on the padded shoulders of their tailcoats, raising particles of dust that glowed gold in the light of the crystal chandeliers.
A gentleman with sideburns and a red face, leaning on a bistro table, declared: “Not every grand piano and pianist can do justice to the Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106! (Inquisitive raising of plucked eyebrows.) Let us consider the well-known moment before the entrance of the reprise of the first movement!”
“Oh yes!” a blushing Fräulein in respectable school-teacher-blue interjected. “Beethoven’s Érard grand piano has very little in common with the tone and variety of our grand pianos.”
“The sound of the orchestra of his time,” a richly bejeweled matron with an unhealthy palor growled, “can hardly be compared to that of today, either.”
“An Érard grand piano and a Steinweg! Ha!” laughed a bent old little lady with a diamond tiara, “chicken broth and goulash soup!”
“I have a fortepiano at home that is in sore need of attention at the moment,” a faded diva remarked. “Its tone is like a cembalo, I should add …”
“Oh, if you could just play a musical instrument with a sense of humor,” interrupted a corpulent woman of indeterminate age, “you only need think of Beethoven’s Kind, willst du ruhig schlafen! It’s hilarious!” (Long thoughtful pause, disappearance of the fat lady behind a curtain.)
“Well,” the gentleman with the sideburns said, enlivened, “to speak of an amusing experience, I once attended a concert in a small castle during which a virtuoso interrupted his playing to throw two groaning pieces of fire-wood out into the snow. He killed two birds with one stone: the terrible racket in the fireplace and the coach-man who was unfortunate enough to be doing his business beneath the very castle window.”
One of Levadski’s great-aunts was the first to disengage herself from the general state of shock. “What annoys me most are the lower middle classes in the hall who, in the silence of the general pause before the minuet, slide around on their chairs, cough and clean their pince-nez, totally oblivious to the reason why there is a general pause … (Waiting, a concerned glance towards Levadski.) What for? In order to create a state of motionless silence (a finger solemnly raised along with lacquered red fingernail), before the minuet deliciously and consolingly pours forth over the great lament.”
“How anybody can be that unreceptive to music!” out-raged, giving a curt nod in the direction of where the lower middle classes were mingling. “How should they know that the silence that follows the final chord is more important than the sound that goes before it? Instead of celebrating the silence for a while, they race each other to the cloakroom.”
“It would be best if people like that didn’t turn up here in the first place,” the man with the sideburns suggested.
“That lot,” laughed the fat lady who had reappeared, “can’t even tell the difference between Beethoven’s pianissimo misterioso and dolce!”
“What is the difference?” the man with the sideburns asked innocently.
“You are having me on, my dear sir,” the fat woman smiled. “Dolce is warm gentleness. Pianissimo misterioso is a shudder of amazement. Oh, if I only think of the teasing finale of his variations!” she chirped, “of the sweeping polonaise, of the impetuous Rondo alla ingharese …”
“Warm gentleness and a shudder of amazement,” the man with the whiskers repeated thoughtfully, “I would like to be drinking what you are!”
“Wasn’t that amusing?” the sisters sighed on the way to the organ balcony. “What could be more intellectually stimulating than company like that!”
At the bottom of his heart Levadski felt pity for his great-aunts. Years later, however, it was driven out by understanding and deep sympathy. The pathetic sparkle and the paltry entertainment to which the old women desperately clung could be likened to a sparsely populated lake, where a mollusk counts as half a fish. In spite of everything, it had been intellectually stimulating company, Levadski realized when he was older, intellectually stimulating by virtue of the presence of the music itself.
V
MORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY LEVADSKI’S MOTHER SPOKE of her yearning for honest country air, which in her opinion only still existed in Galicia. “Galicia just happens to be in Poland,” she said, “and the war has been over for years.” What spoke most in favor of a return was that Levadski had long since reached school age. “We are going back,” she announced to her aunts one evening in spring. With a bow and a kiss of the hand Levadski said farewell to the old ladies. When he turned around again on the stairs to wave, he saw that the sisters had already closed the French doors. He imagined hearing heartrending sobbing behind them, a dull thud, as if a heavy velvet curtain along with the iron curtain rod itself had fallen to the ground.
At the age of eight, Levadski was sent to school in his homeland, which now belonged to the Second Polish Republic. In honor of this day a tough goose from the market was slaughtered and a broth made from its bones. Levadski made a pipe out of its gristly throat. Every morning, on Saturdays too, Levadski carted his heavy bag to school — which consisted of a single room — in the neighboring village. He had to learn Polish, which he did not find difficult as the son of a Little Russian.
“Be happy,” his mother said cheerfully, “be happy, my son, for the more languages you speak, the more human you will be!” The language of birds would have sufficed for Levadski. Even as an elementary school pupil he could have sworn that the language of birds was universal, that the only difference lay in the voices of the respective birds, and that the magpie could understand the crow, just as the blackbird could understand the duck. “What about ducks who live in a different country?” Levadski’s mother asked provocatively.