Chapter 16 Wunderkind-1

SHE CAME into the living room, her music satchel plopping against her winter-stockinged legs and her other arm weighted down with school books, and stood for a moment listening to the sounds from the studio. a violin. Then Mister Bilderbach called out to her in his chunky, guttural tones: "That you, Bienchen?" As she jerked off her mittens she saw that her fingers were twitching to the motions of the fugue she had practiced that morning. "Yes," she answered. "Its me;" "I," the voice corrected. "Just a moment." She could hear Mister Lafkowitz talking -- his words spun out in a silky, unintelligible hum. A voice almost like a womans, she thought, compared to Mister Bilderbachs. Restlessness scattered her attention. Perrichon before putting them on the table. She sat down on the sofa and began to take her music from the satchel. Again she saw her hands -- the quivering tendons that stretched down from her knuckles, the sore finger tip capped with curled, dingy tape. The sight sharpened the fear that had begun to torment her for the past few months.

Noiselessly she mumbled a few phrases of encouragement to herself. A good lesson -- a good lesson -- like it used to be -- Her lips closed as she heard the stolid sound of Mister Bilderbachs footsteps across the floor of the studio and the creaking of the door as it slid open. For a moment she had the peculiar feeling that during most of the fifteen years of her life she had been looking at the face and shoulders that jutted from behind the door, in a silence disturbed only by the muted, blank plucking of a violin string. Mister Bilderbach. Her teacher, Mr. Bilderbach. The quick eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses; the light, thin hair and the narrow face beneath; the lips full and loose shut and the lower one pink and shining from the bites of his teeth ; the forked veins in his temples throbbing plainly enough to be observed across the room.

"Arent you a little early?" he asked, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece that had pointed to five minutes of twelve for a month. "Josefs in here. Were running over a little sonatino by someone he knows." "Good," she said, trying to smile. "Ill listen." She could see her fingers sinking powerless into a blur of piano keys. She felt tired -- felt that if he looked at her much longer her hands might tremble. He stood uncertain, halfway in the room. Sharply his teeth pushed down on his bright, swollen lips. "Hungry, Bienchen?" he asked. "Theres some apple cake Anna made, and milk."

"Ill wait till afterwards," she said. "Thanks." "After you finish with a very fine lesson -- eh?" His smile seemed to crumble at the corners. There was a sound from behind him in the studio and Mister Lafkowitz pushed at the other panel of the door and stood beside him. "Frances?" he said, smiling. "And how is the work coming now?" Without meaning to, Mister Lafkowitz always made her feel clumsy and overgrown. He was such a small man himself, with a weary look when he was not holding his violin. His eyebrows curved high above his sallow, Jewish face as though asking a question, but the lids of his eyes drowed languorous and indifferent. Today he seemed distracted. She watched him come into the room for no apparent purpose, holding his pearl-tipped bow in his still fingers, slowly gliding the white horsehair through a chalky piece of rosin . His eyes were sharp bright slits today and the linen handkerchief that flowed down from his collar darkened the shadows beneath them.

"I gather you are doing a lot now," smiled Mister Lafkowitz, although she had not yet answered the question. She looked at Mister Bilderbach. He turned away. His heavy shoulders pushed the door open wide so that the late afternoon sun came through the window of the studio and shafted yellow over the dusty living room. Behind her teacher she could see the sanoquat long pi , the window, and the bust of Brahms. "No," she said to Mister Lafkowitz, "I'm doing terribly." Her thin fingers flipped at the pages of her music. "I dont know whats the matter," she said, looking at Mister Bilderbachs stooped muscular back that stood tense and listening.

Mister Lafkowitz smiled. "There are times, I suppose, when one --" A harsh chord sounded from the piano. "Dont you think wed better get on with this?" asked Mister Bilderbach. "Immediately," said Mister Lafkowitz, giving the bow one more scrape before starting toward the door. She could see him pick up his violin from the top of the piano. He caught her eye and lowered the instrument "Youve seen the picture of Heime ?" Her fingers curled tight over the sharp corner of the satchel. "What picture?" "One of Heime in the Musical Courier there on the table. Inside the top cover."

The sonatina began. Discordant yet somehow simple. Empty but with a sharp-cut style of its own. She reached for the magazine and opened it. There Heime was -- in the left-hand corner. Holding his violin with his fingers hooked down over the strings for a pizzicato. With his dark serge knickers strapped neatly beneath his knees, a sweater and rolled collar. It was a bad picture. Although it was snapped in profile his eyes were cut around toward the photographer and his finger looked as though it would pluck the wrong string. He seemed suffering to turn around toward the picture-taking apparatus. He was thinner -- his stomach did not poke out now -- but he hadn't changed much in six months.

Heime Israelsky, talented young violinist, snapped while at work in his teachers studio on Riverside Drive. Young Master Israelsky, who will soon celebrate his fifteenth birthday, has been invited to play the Beethoven Concerto with -- That morning, after she had practiced from six until eight, her dad had made her sit down at the table with the family for breakfast. She hated breakfast; it gave her a sick feeling afterwards. her twenty cents lunch money and munch them during school -- bringing up little morsels from the pocket under cover of her handkerchief, stopping dead when the silver paper rattled. But this morning her dad had put a fried egg on her plate and she had known that if it burst -- so that the slimy yellow oozed over the white -- she would cry. And that had happened. The same feeling was upon her now. Gingerly she laid the magazine back on the table and closed her eyes.

The music in the studio seemed to be urging violently and clumsily for something that was not to be had. After a moment her thoughts drew back from Heime and the concerto and the picture -- and hovered around the lesson once more. the sofa until she could see plainly into the studio -- the two of them playing, peering at the notations on the piano, lustfully drawing out all that was there. She could not forget the memory of Mister Bilderbachs face as he had stared at her a moment ago. Her hands, still twitching unconsciously to the motions of the fugue, closed over her bony knees. Tired, she was. away feeling like the one that often came to her just before she dropped off to sleep on the nights when she had over-practiced. Like those weary half-dreams that buzzed and carried her out into their own whirligig space.

A Wunderkind -- a Wunderkind -- a Wunderkind. The syllables would come out rolling in the deep German way, roar against her ears and then fall to a murmur. Along with the faces circling, swelling out in distortion, diminishing to pale blobs - - Mister Bilderbach, Mrs. Bilderbach, Heime, Mister Lafkowitz. Around and around in a circle revolving to the guttural Wunderkind. Mister Bilderbach looming large in the middle of the circle, his face urging -- with the others around him. Phrases of music seeing crazily. Notes she had been practicing falling over each other like a handful of marbles dropped downstairs. Bach, Debussy, Prokofieff, Brahms -- timed grotesquely to the far off throb of her tired body and the buzzing circle.

Sometimes -- when she had not worked more than three hours or had stayed out from high school -- the dreams were not so confused. The music soared clearly in her mind and quick, precise little memories would come back -- clear as the sissy "Age of Innocence" picture Heime had given her after their joint concert was over. A Wunderkind -- a Wunderkind. That was what Mister Bilderbach had called her when, at twelve, she first came to him. Older pupils had repeated the word. Not that he had ever said the word to her. "Bienchen --" (She had a plain American name but he never used it except when her mistakes were enormous.) "Bienchen," he would say, "I know it must be Terrible. Carrying around all the time a head that thick. Poor Bienchen --" Mister Bilderbachs father had been a Dutch violinist. His mother was from Prague. He had been born in this country and had spent his youth in Germany. So many times she wished she had not been born and brought up in just Cincinnati. say cheese in German? Mister Bilderbach, what is Dutch for I dont understand you? The first day she came to the studio. After she played the whole Second Hungarian Rhapsody from memory. The room graying with twilight. His face as he leaned over the piano. "Now we begin all over," he said that first day. "It -- playing music -- is more than cleverness. If a twelve-year-old girls fingers cover so many keys to a second -- that means nothing." He tapped his broad chest and his forehead with his stubby hand. "Here and here. You are old enough to understand that." He lighted a cigarette and gently blew the first exhalation above her head. "And work -- work -- work -- . We will start now with these Bach Inventions and these little Schumann pieces." His hands moved again -- this time to jerk the cord of the lamp behind her and point to the music. "I will show you how I wish this practiced. Listen carefully now." She had been at the piano for almost three hours and was very tired. His deep voice sounded as though it had been straying inside her for a long time. She wanted to reach out and touch his muscle-flexed finger that pointed out the phrases, wanted to feel the gleaming gold band ring and the strong hairy back of his hand. She had lessons Tuesday after school and on Saturday afternoons. Often she stayed, when the Saturday lesson was finished, for dinner, and then spent the night and took the streetcar home the next morning. Mrs. Bilderbach liked her in her calm, almost dumb way. She was much different from her husband. She was quiet and fat and slow. When she wasn't in the kitchen, cooking the rich dishes that both of them loved, she seemed to spend all her time in their bed upstairs, reading magazines or just looking with a half-smile at nothing. When they had married in Germany she had been a lieder singer. She didnt sing anymore (she said it was her throat). When he would call her in from the kitchen to listen to a pupil she would always smile and say that it was gut, very gut. When Frances was thirteen it came to her one day that the Bilderbachs had no children. It seemed strange. Once she had been back in the kitchen with Mrs. Bilderbach when he had come striding in from the studio, tense with anger at some pupil who had annoyed him. His wife stood stirring the thick soup until his hand grown out and rested on her shoulder. Then she turned -- stood placid -- while he folded his arms about her and buried his sharp face in the white, nerveless flesh of her neck. They stood that way without moving. And then his face jerked back suddenly, the anger diminished to a quiet inexpressiveness, and he had returned to the studio. After she had started with Mister Bilderbach and didnt have time to see anything of the people at high school, Heime had been the only friend of her own age. He was Mister Lafkowitzs pupil and would come with him to Mister Bilderbachs on evenings when she would be there. They would listen to their teachers playing. And often they themselves went over chamber music together -- Mozart sonatas or Bloch. A Wunderkind -- a Wunderkind. Heime was a Wunderkind. He and she, then. Heime had been playing the violin since he was four. He didnt have to go to school; Mister Lafkowitzs brother, who was crippled, used to teach him geometry and European history and French verbs in the afternoon. a technique as any violinist in Cincinnati -- everyone said so. But playing the violin must be easier than the piano. She knew it must be. Heime always seemed to smell of corduroy pants and the food he had eaten and rosin. Half the time, too, his hands were dirty around the knuckles and the cuffs of his shirts peeped out dingily from the sleeves of his sweater. She always watched his hands when he played -- thin only at the joints with the hard little blobs of flesh bulging over the short-cut nails and the babyish-looking crease that showed so plainly in his bowing wrist. In the dreams, as when she was awake, she could remember the concert only in a blur. She had not known it was unsuccessful for her until months after. True, the papers had praised Heime more than her. she. When they stood together on the stage he came only to her shoulders. And that made a difference with people, she knew. Also, there was the matter of the sonata they played together. The Bloch.