Dissonance (17 page)

Erwin turned to face him. ‘But don't you think I can do it?'

‘I do. You're very good. But you'd need to be very lucky.'

Erwin shook his head. ‘No. Mum says you make your own luck. It's all determination, hard work.'

‘Your mum said?'

‘I'd have more regrets if I didn't try.'

Schaedel's face glowed. ‘Good.'

‘Why not have a go?'

‘Why not?'

‘Teaching six-year-olds would still be better than designing bridges.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I like music.'

Schaedel placed his hand on Erwin's shoulder. ‘Good,' he said, almost musically. ‘That's it.'

‘What?' Erwin asked.

‘Your first lesson. And your most valuable.
I like music.
Which means if none of these people come to hear you, it doesn't matter, does it?'

Erwin paused again. ‘I can't see why – '

‘But if … if! I've seen a bit of life, my boy, and let me tell you, it doesn't always turn out as you'd like.'

Or as Mum would like, Erwin thought, slowly realising, seeing the photo on top of Schaedel's piano, hearing his father singing from his shed, smelling the flowers in his brother's garden, feeling the rain wetting his trousers as his mother drove him home in their truck.

‘At least music is … reliable,' he said at last.

‘How's that?' Schaedel asked.

‘The black dots, they'll mean the same thing tomorrow, and the next day.'

‘Yes, but that's the only certainty in music,' Schaedel replied. ‘That, and the fact that vocal students will always overestimate their own talent.'

As they walked back towards the conservatorium, Erwin noticed a billboard promoting that week's
Stürmer
. It was covered with a caricature of a curly-haired, hook-nosed Jew holding a German child and attempting to eat it like an apple. He laughed and said, ‘They were burning Mendelssohn's music.'

‘Who were?' Schaedel asked.

‘The Brownshirts.'

‘They were the ones who used to sit at the back of the room at school, picking their nose, drawing their teachers with big … how do you say?'

‘Tits?' Erwin ventured.

Schaedel's face lit up. ‘Tits!'

They walked another block and then Erwin said, ‘So should I be playing Mendelssohn?'

Schaedel shook his head. ‘Of course. This silliness has gone on for too long. Do you know, Frederick the Great passed a law saying that when Jews married they had to buy the faulty china from the Royal China Factory in Berlin. You know, to get rid of it. So Moses Mendelssohn, Felix's grandfather, bought twenty life-size china apes. Can you believe it? I can just see Felix, clunking away beside one of these … things.'

Erwin clutched his satchel and asked, ‘And whatever happened to them?'

‘I don't know. That can be your homework. Find out what happened to Moses Mendelssohn's china apes.'

Erwin wasn't sure if he was serious. ‘What about the music?'

‘Don't worry about that. You could sight read it. I'd really like to know what happened to those apes.'

Erwin was in no rush to get home. He was sitting in the park near Bramweg, feeling the sun warm the tip of his nose and ears, thinking about his first piano lesson. Point one, the piano is only a box of strings and hammers, hopes, fears and probably disappointments. Two, his mother had given him this box and promised him everything he'd ever need could be found inside it. Three, his mother wasn't always right. So what was in the box? Schaedel seemed to be telling him, Open it and you'll find out. That it's empty? Except for dust, wooden parts, an iron frame and noise.

Madge. Magda. Trying to pretend she was German every time they went into a shop together. ‘Schwarzbrot, bitte' – looking at Erwin – ‘How do you say … dates?' As the shopkeeper looked at her, smiling, ‘Would that be a date loaf, Madam?'

He remembered his dad, lying in his bedroom, silent, barely moving, as a doctor arrived and went into him, taking his blood pressure and drawing something into a syringe; as he looked through a crack in the door and saw him attempting to lift his head, but slumping back into the pillow; as the doctor said, ‘This should take care of the pain,' and searched for a vein.

The door closed and twenty minutes later it reopened, and his mum and the doctor emerged. ‘Erwin, come and sit down,' she said to him.

Erwin looked at the doctor. ‘What did you give him?' he asked.

‘Morphine,' the small man replied.

‘Erwin, come and sit next to me, on the sofa.'

But they'd left the door open, and he could see his dad, his head slumped and twisted where they'd propped him up with a pillow. His mouth was open but his eyes were closed. ‘Shot-a-tee,' he seemed to whisper, but his lips were dry, turned in, still.

‘You killed him,' Erwin said, looking at the doctor, although he now knew he should've been looking at his mum.

‘He's given up the fight, son,' the doctor said.

‘It was a nasty cancer, Erwin.'

‘You killed him.'

‘Erwin!'

Erwin ran from the room, from the house, from God's Hill Road. He ran to a cave in the granite hills above their property. His mother and the doctor were calling, but he wouldn't return. An hour later he watched as an ambulance arrived and two men took his dad away, covered in a sheet, on a canvas stretcher. He saw his mum crying, and holding a hanky to her nose, and knew she didn't mean it.

The next afternoon he came down, went into his dad's shed and lay on his bed. He pretended to be dead. Clenching his fists, he said, ‘I'm gonna stay with you, Dad, in here,' but there was nothing but the sound of a distant rosella.

‘Shot-a-tee …'

‘Dad?'

So, his dad was in the beechwood box too. Along with everything else he'd ever loved, hoped for or dreamt about. Schaedel said he could open the box, but Madge had other ideas.

‘Snotty sends his regards.'

Erwin looked up and Alfred was sitting next to him, smiling. ‘You go home this way?' he asked.

‘No, I've got my boys tonight,' Alfred replied.

‘Your boys?'

‘Didn't I tell you? I'm a HJ leader.'

Erwin was taken back. ‘
Hitler Jugend
?'

‘Yes. We're going on a night hike. Want to come?'

‘I've gotta get home.'

Alfred smiled. ‘Let me guess, you're helping Luise?'

Erwin grinned. ‘Luise … who's this Luise?'

‘You tell me.'

‘Someone already has, yeah?'

‘The con's a small place.'

‘Do you know her?'

‘No … a little … I went out with her once.'

Erwin was playing with the latch on his satchel. ‘And … what happened?'

‘Once, that was enough, but you two will probably have many happy years together.'

‘I'm just helping her.'

‘For now. Then one thing leads to another …' He leaned over and tried to kiss Erwin.

‘Get off!'

‘Then marriage, and children.'

‘It's not like that.'

Alfred sat back. ‘It's good to see our two countries coming together.'

‘Why did you break up?'

His friend looked at him as if to say, Come on, get serious.

‘Why?'

‘I wouldn't want to sour things.'

‘Why?'

‘If you're going to have a family you'll need a job. What about a composition teacher? I hear Snot-Knorr's running out of ideas.'

They laughed. ‘Has he ever had one?' Erwin asked.

‘I am Napoleon,' Alfred sang. ‘The Victor, the Master of Europe.'

‘Why did you break up?' Erwin insisted.

‘I'm not telling. I want to give you every chance.'

‘I'm just playing for her recital.'

Alfred leaned towards him and whispered, ‘The good thing is, as far as I know, she's still a virgin.'

Erwin shook his head. ‘She's singing
The Wanderer
.'

Alfred smiled. ‘Well, you better get in quick.'

‘Listen, I forgot.' Erwin opened his satchel and took out a pile of manuscript paper with voice and piano accompaniment sketched hastily in pencil. The words and notes ran over two or three staves, crossed out, corrected, circled with adjoining arrows and even written at right angles in a messy palimpsest. He put the papers in Alfred's hands and said, ‘What do you think of this?'

Alfred studied the score. Then he started singing his own words, set to music by Erwin during a break in practice. As he sang he waved his left hand about, becoming louder, more expressive, more intense. Two old women walked past and stared at him strangely.

‘I'm Raskolnikov,' he told them, smiling. ‘Do I sound ­convincing?'

But they ignored him, walking on.

‘It's just an idea, a sketch,' Erwin explained. ‘I'm full of Schubert right now, so it probably sounds like him. But the text is very good.'

‘It's rubbish … but the music's wonderful.'

‘No. Words written by musicians are best. I liked your little peasant chorus, and how you've got a baritone offstage, singing the words of his conscience.'

‘Corny.'

‘No. It might have been, but the way you've done it …'

There was a long pause while Alfred continued studying the music. Then he said, ‘I could never write music like this – even the piano part. Mine's all block chords.'

Erwin was silent.

‘Don't you want to disagree?' Alfred said.

‘Well, you're not a pianist, are you?'

‘I try.'

Erwin paused. ‘I'm sure you'll get there,' he said, eventually. ‘These are just some ideas.'

And Alfred could hear them – being played by an orchestra and sung by a cast of professional musicians. Then he heard his own music – clunk, cluck, clunk. ‘Damn you, Hergert,' he said. ‘This is good.'

‘No, it's not.'

‘It is.'

Erwin could almost hear Alfred's mind ticking over. He knew what was coming next.

‘Maybe you should write the music,' Alfred dared.

‘But it's your opera.'

‘My words but … I just want it to be good.'

‘But isn't that why you're studying composition?'

Alfred took a while to think. ‘You can teach me better than Snot,' he said.

‘I can't.'

‘You can. Then, in a few years, I can write my big opera.'

Erwin looked at the music in Alfred's hands. ‘I don't know if I've got time to write an opera.'

‘You're not planning on going back to Australia, are you?'

Erwin shrugged. ‘I suppose not.'

When he entered Hans Knorr's next class, Erwin's head was bowed and he sat by himself against the wall. Knorr, leaning over his desk, sulking, watched him enter and sit down. He waited until he made eye contact before looking at his notes and mumbling, ‘What today then?'

When everyone had arrived he wrote a few lines of Goethe on the blackboard and said, ‘Twenty minutes, gentlemen. A setting for voice and piano please. The key here is variation,' and he leaned over his desk. ‘Major, minor, tempo, crescendo, diminuendo – drama, that's what you're doing. Like life!'

Whose life, Erwin thought. Yours? Sitting hunched over your table, grumbling at undergraduates all day, trying to convince them you're some sort of genius.

He looked at Alfred, who was already busy. Then he took a clean sheet of manuscript and began. To make it interesting he used a different key every few bars. His written indications had the music
running like the wind
and
slowing by degrees
,
loudening lots
and
crashing like thunder
; he had one melody singing
like a contented child
until it became a lullaby that moved
easygoingly but very clingingly
. Then he was finished. It had taken him four or five minutes. He looked around the room and the others were still scribbling. So he took another piece of manuscript, turned it over, and started writing.

… Grandma, I'm bored again. This time in Herr Professor Snot-Knorr's composition class. He is a slow, wheezing dinosaur who sits at his desk flicking through scores for no apparent reason. Sometimes he'll look up, and look at you, and say, ‘What, are you finished?'

‘Yes, Herr Professor.'

‘Properly! Properly!'

Then he'll return to his papers. Other people's music. Stuff he didn't have the talent to write. How the Germans produced Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn I don't know. Even the pianists are mediocre. I came here expecting to find German students gifted and musical, but the English are the only ones with any talent. I can't tell the difference between a good Adelaide pianist and a Fritz. Mother even agrees with me.

Germany has not been everything I expected. Germans are impatient, and can be very spiteful. They hate the Jews. They boycott their shops and shave their beards for public entertainment. But they do all of this in groups. Before we left I'd heard that German boys played war-games in the streets of their towns. Apparently there was blood and broken bones. But where? I was amazed to find them the greatest sissies I've ever seen …

Erwin looked up. Knorr was staring at him. ‘Finished, Mr Hergert?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Accidentals, key signatures, markings?'

‘Yes.'

‘And is it readable this time?'

‘It is.'

Knorr opened a tin of sweets and took one out. He looked at it from a variety of angles and then slowly placed it in his mouth and returned to his papers.

They even made the Jews scrub our street with buckets of soapy water. Imagine this happening in Murray Street? Grandma, we shouldn't think of ourselves as backward. Now Mum says, Blue eyes are one thing, but this! She says it's probably different in Scandinavia. She's planning for us to visit Holland, Norway, Denmark and maybe even Finland. She says we can follow in the steps of Grettir – a pair of Berserks at Haramarsey …