Dissonance (18 page)

‘Mr Hergert,' Knorr said, offering up his chalk. ‘Shall we see what you've come up with?'

Erwin stood up and approached the blackboard. He could hear his mother's voice: ‘Listen, learn what you can, bite your tongue … so what if you disagree?' He started copying his accompaniment onto the yellow staves that had been painted onto the board: strong, straight stems and coloured-in heads like a six-year-old might draw. He carefully placed his sharps and flats on lines and in spaces; he lined up the bass and treble notes and made his slurs perfectly parabolic.

‘Much better,' Knorr said, looking from the board to the other students, smiling, catching Erwin's eye and nodding in approval. ‘Now we can follow what you mean.'

You could've before, Erwin thought. He remembered doing theory exercises for Father O'Gorman and Carter, and he couldn't recall them having a problem with anything he'd done.

He looked at Alfred, who put his hands together and gave him a sort of silent clap.

Then he wrote in his markings:
Easygoingly but very clingingly
,
Running like the wind
,
Like a contented child
,
Crashing like thunder
.

Knorr looked at him strangely. ‘What are those?' he asked.

Erwin couldn't see the problem. ‘Markings, for the singer, and pianist.'

Knorr shook his head. ‘“Like a contented child”?'

Some of the students started laughing and Knorr quietened them. ‘Mr Hergert,' he asked, ‘are you aware of the standard Italian markings?'

‘Of course.'

‘“Like a contented child”, that would be …?'

‘Cantabile.'

‘“Crashing like thunder”?'

‘Martellato.'

Knorr shrugged. ‘So, why not use these?'

‘My markings are much clearer. People won't have to go and look things up.'

‘But a good musician would know these terms.'

‘They might not.'

‘If they'd listened to their teachers, they would!'

‘But we don't speak Italian …'

‘Mr Hergert, let's not start again.'

Erwin stopped. Madge was whispering to him. He picked up a duster, rubbed out his markings and substituted the Italian.

‘Fine,' Knorr said, eventually. ‘We're getting somewhere with you, Erwin … slowly. This is a competent setting, if not a bit … erratic.'

‘Erratic?' Erwin asked.

‘Seven key changes in twelve bars … five time signatures.'

‘But I thought that's what you wanted.'

‘Within reason. Too much of this would tire a pianist out, not to mention how long it would take to rehearse, and memorise. No, far better to keep it simple.'

Erwin went to speak but stopped himself. ‘I'll bear that in mind.'

‘Good. Now, Mr Gardiner?'

Mr Gardiner was a tall Englishman with metal-framed specs. He wore a woollen vest and a striped tie that stopped short of a potbelly the size of a coconut. As he came down the steps Knorr looked at him and thought, Where do we get these people from? Gardiner wiped off the board, took the chalk from Erwin and looked at his notes. Erwin returned to his spot against the wall. Gardiner started to write down his vocal melody. ‘For a baritone,' he said, drawing a bass clef, pushing too hard and shattering the chalk. He bent down to pick it up but the pieces were too small. So he stood up and looked at Knorr. ‘Do you have another piece?' he asked.

Knorr noisily opened his drawer and gave him one. ‘Please, faster,' he said.

Gardiner continued. The notes for the voice were random – C to E flat, F sharp to B natural – until all twelve notes of the chromatic scale were used up.

‘What's this?' Knorr asked.

‘A tone row,' Gardiner replied. ‘See, here, the original, and the inversion. If I can just finish it and show you …'

‘Rub it out.'

Gardiner was taken back. ‘Pardon?'

‘Rub it out! Mr Gardiner, I am not a mathematics teacher. I do not subscribe to the idea of chance. Notes are not random, they are chosen to convey emotion. Rub it out!'

‘But I thought it wasn't the pitch so much as – '

‘Rub it out!'

Gardiner picked up the duster and started rubbing out his melody.

‘Where did you get this idea?' Knorr asked.

‘I heard Schoenberg's
Chamber Symphony
.'

‘Mr Schoenberg is not welcome in my classroom. His music is a fad, my boy. In ten years' time no one will remember him.'

Erwin stared at his teacher. He longed to say what he was thinking but Madge was there, again.

‘This is machine music,' Knorr continued. ‘Bang bang, like a metal press. It comes from the head, not the heart.'

‘It's quite challenging,' Gardiner said.

‘Like a quadratic equation. But who pays to hear a quadratic equation?'

‘Perhaps if – '

‘Enough of this nonsense. Go back to your seat and give me a melody; something happy. Something to cheer me up after … Schoenberg.'

‘He's a Jew,' one of the boys said, just loud enough to be heard.

Knorr sat up. ‘Who said that?'

A younger boy raised his hand. ‘It was me, Herr Professor.'

‘What's that got to do with his music?' Knorr asked.

‘It's Jewish music.'

‘What is Jewish music? Music is music. You, young man, will not bring politics into my classroom. Understood?'

‘But it's against the law – '

‘Understood?'

A long pause. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now …' Knorr stopped to think. He stood up, leaning forward on his table. ‘Ah, damn, it's no good, I've lost my train of thought.' He gathered some keys, a handkerchief and his lollies and put them in his pocket. Then he turned and walked from the room, slowly closing the door behind him.

The small boy looked across the room at Gardiner and said, ‘See, look what you've done. We didn't get our turn.'

Alfred stood up. ‘Game postponed until a later date. Thank you for coming, gentlemen, class is dismissed.' He got up, walked to the back of the room and opened the door. ‘Come along,' he half-sang.

I must say one thing, Grandma, travel broadens the mind. Things are learnt, and unlearnt, on a daily basis
.

And as if to prove this, he drew a staff across the stage and transcribed Gardiner's atonal melody note for note.

Madge's business had taken off. There were now so many pupils in her intermediate class that she'd had to split the group: non-Jews in her room, Jews in Erwin's room. She didn't have the heart to turn anyone, or their money, away. And it hadn't cost her any more – she'd even borrowed a saw from the landlord to cut the blackboard in half.

So now she would go from one room to the other, setting an exercise and leaving them, returning after a few minutes to check on progress. ‘Sein, to be – Ich bin, I am.'

‘Ich bin, I am.'

Erwin and Luise were practising more Schubert. After a while Erwin stopped and said, ‘You didn't tell me about Alfred.'

‘Alfred?'

‘Keil.'

She shrugged. ‘Tell you what?'

‘That you went out with him.'

‘I never went out with Alfred.'

‘He said you did.'

‘No. I think he's referring to the time I met him at Aschenbach's, in town. He walked me to the S-Bahn and asked if he could buy me a coffee. That's all. He told you we went out together?'

‘Yes.'

‘Creepy little thing.' She shuddered. ‘And what else did he tell you?'

‘That's all.'

She shook her head. ‘Wait until I talk to him.'

‘I am the most bravest,' a voice squeaked from a distant room.

‘No,' Madge hollered. ‘There's no need to qualify your adjectives.'

When Erwin and Luise had finished practising he walked her home, down the thirty feet of hallway to apartment 2E. On the way they got distracted and sat at the top of the stairs. They could still hear Madge's voice. ‘Er ist, he is …'

Luise held her music tightly in her arms. ‘Ich bin,' she called down the stairs.

‘Ich bin, du bist,' Erwin added, and soon they were conjugating verbs at the top of their voices. Then Luise said, ‘I think your mother is more German than we are.'

Erwin smiled. ‘When she wants to be.'

‘Why's that?'

‘My dad was German, and she hated him, so back then all of this was … terrible. But then when she got the idea of coming here … “Oh, my son and I are going to
Germany
!”'

‘Why did she hate your dad?' Luise asked.

Erwin stopped to think. He couldn't come up with a single good reason. ‘I don't know. He used to live in the shed.'

She tilted her head as a way of asking for more.

He told her about it: Jo at the back door, listening, looking in, asking after his son, taking water from the barrel and returning his dishes; his galvanised-iron bedroom; Shirley and Declan, the cancer, the stretcher and the ambulance.

She put down her music and put both of his hands in hers. ‘Your dad?' she asked. ‘Didn't you miss him?'

Erwin could see his dad's head, slumped on the pillow.

‘Sometimes,' he replied, slowly. ‘But Mum knew what he was like.'

They could hear her voice. ‘Wir sind, we are …'

‘And what was he like?' Luise asked.

Erwin shook his head. He took a deep breath. ‘I have to practise for Professor Schaedel,' he said. Then he stood up. ‘I'll see you soon.'

Chapter Three

Over the next few weeks Hamburg warmed up. Mud dried to dust and the summer's leaves turned to a dandruff that settled in deep drains. Short-sleeve shirts smelling of mothballs were salvaged from tallboys and worn as a sign of winter gone (although it wasn't). The guesthouse on Bramweg started setting out its tables and chairs along the footpath and one shop owner even put down his awning to stop the sun coming in his front window.

Alfred and Erwin had sketched two scenes of their
Crime and Punishment
. Alfred had provided a melody to suit his words and Erwin had found the harmonies – not conventional harmonies, but something discordant, chords that sat uncomfortably under Raskolnikov's whispers and thoughts. Erwin could hear the orchestra in his head – every grace note from the oboes, every pizzicato and whisper from the timpani. Whenever Alfred expressed concern he'd explain how no one was interested in simple, satisfying sounds any more, how the world of serious music was always sniffing out the next big thing.

They'd taken a rehearsal room at the conservatorium and spread their notes and manuscripts out across the floor. Erwin would find a section he'd sketched and sit at the piano and play it. Then he'd try to sing the parts, enlisting Alfred in a duet or abridged chorus. And sometimes they'd hear it coming to life. Alfred would stop and say, ‘That's it! That's just how I imagined it.' Then Erwin would say, ‘What if we have some movement in the voice, like this,' and he'd demonstrate, taking a melody with jumps of seconds and thirds and replacing it with intervals of ninths, elevenths and flattened thirteenths.

‘Perhaps … play it again,' Alfred would say.

And through this process of idea and modification, collaboration and compromise, they were actually coming up with a score, a roughly scribbled, crossed out and corrected manuscript that they thought might work on stage.

At one point during this process Alfred said, ‘I'd like to get a few singers, to try this out.'

‘What about your old girlfriend?' Erwin replied.

‘No, not her, she's too highly strung.'

Erwin smiled. ‘That's funny, she said something similar about you.'

‘What?'

‘I'm joking. You know, she said you two never went out.'

Alfred was sitting at the piano, playing with a melody. ‘She would.'

‘She said – '

‘You want to watch her, Erwin, she's a schemer.'

Erwin was intrigued. ‘How's that?'

‘It doesn't matter.' And then he changed his mind. ‘Ask her about that night on the Jungfern bridge. And the time I went to her apartment.'

‘She didn't mention that.'

‘No doubt.' Alfred met and captured Erwin's eyes for a moment. ‘I could find a better singer than her anyway.'

‘You ought to hear her Schubert.'

‘Anyone can sing Schubert.'

‘She was the best singer the other night.'

Erwin was referring to a concert that Knorr had arranged the previous week. He'd made his students finish the Goethe settings and then distributed them to some of the singing students. He'd booked the main hall for a cold, wet Tuesday night and then told his whole class to bring their friends and parents to hear their works performed.

Erwin and Madge were there, beside Alfred and his parents, Knorr, Schaedel and an audience of about forty shivering, pale-faced relatives. The singing students came out, bowed, stood on a black cross and sang the pieces they'd been given, sometimes accompanied by Schaedel and sometimes by first- and second-year piano students. Luise sang a setting by Gardiner that almost got a standing ovation (due to the fact that he had half his apartment building in the audience) and then they worked through a succession of soprano, alto and tenor songs, sung competently, if not always inspiringly, by the teenaged students.

Then came time for Erwin's piece. He'd never seen the singer before. She was a short, fat girl who took a full minute to walk from the wings to the black cross. Madge's mouth was gaping as she watched. ‘Who's that?' she whispered to Erwin.

‘I don't know.'

Then the girl began. Although the accompaniment was well written, and the voice part moving and colourful, she seemed unable to pitch the notes, hold them for their proper duration, come in at the right spot or even tell the difference between the verse and chorus. Despite all this she just kept singing, flapping her hands around like a pair of pigeons, pouting, smiling and even doing a little pirouette as she constantly fought for breath. After a while the pianist looked at her and frowned, trying to get her attention to tell her she was singing the parts out of sequence. Luckily he improvised and kept up with her, turning pages in a frenzy as he tried to work out where she was.

Erwin sank into his seat. He cupped his head in his hands and sighed so loud most of the front row looked at him.

‘This is a disgrace,' Madge said, having sung the piece for her son when he was fine-tuning it at home. She looked at Knorr and realised that Erwin had been right about him.

‘What sort of man is he?' she asked, trying to catch his eyes.

‘A failed composer.'

But Knorr was just watching the performance, smiling, unaware that there was a problem.

After the concert, as Knorr stood surrounded by parents and students, Madge went up to him and asked, in her best Barossa Deutsch, ‘Why did you choose that girl for my son's song?'

‘They're all students,' he replied. ‘They're learning.'

‘Rubbish. She was atrocious.'

‘Which girl?' one woman asked.

‘The fat one,' Madge replied.

The woman looked her over from head to toe. ‘Fat?'

‘Yes, and hopeless.'

‘My daughter's only just begun.'

Madge stared at the woman. ‘Well, Erwin hasn't.' Then she looked back at Knorr. ‘You did it on purpose.'

‘Mrs Hergert – '

‘You're a nasty little man. You're jealous of
real
talent.'

‘Mum, let's just go,' Erwin said. He took her arm but she shook him free. She wasn't finished. ‘We'll see whose name is remembered in fifty years,' she growled.

As they walked home, down brown, foggy streets, Madge said to her son, ‘You don't need him.'

‘You said I did.'

‘I was wrong. You can stop now, if you'd like.'

Erwin shrugged. ‘I don't think he'd have me back anyway.'

‘Good riddance; I should've listened to you. These people are small; they look after their own.'

‘I don't think it's that,' Erwin replied. ‘It's because I spoke my mind. You're not meant to do that. You're meant to know your place.'

Madge smiled at him. ‘I suppose … it's not a family trait.'

And he grinned back. He reached out and held his ­mother's hand. ‘It doesn't matter,' he said. ‘I wasn't learning anything from him; nothing I didn't learn years ago from Father O'Gorman, or Mr Carter.'

‘Good,' Madge concluded. ‘That will give you more time for practice. And your little opera.'

‘It's not
little
,' he said, putting his arm around her waist.

‘Your masterpiece then.'

Back in the rehearsal room, Alfred was looking at Erwin, and smiling. ‘That was quite a performance,' he said.

‘He deserved it,' Erwin explained. ‘Do you really think it was a coincidence that I got Fatty?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘No. But it's all for the best. You can't learn from people like Knorr. They only water you down, until you're like them. You should find someone else.'

‘Who?'

‘Anyone.'

Alfred was remembering. ‘I really thought that girl's mother was going to slap your mum.'

Erwin almost laughed. ‘Very few people have taken her on. Anyway, she was right, and she was right to speak her mind. That's something I should do more often.'

‘Gets you nowhere.'

‘It does.'

‘You've gotta get along with people.'

‘The German way?'

Erwin picked up a pencil and started transcribing a bass line. ‘She can read people,' he whispered.

‘And she can hold a grudge, like you.'

‘Like me? How's that?'

Nothing was clear. Erwin had worked that much out about people. What you saw was just skin and tissue. The real stuff, the drama (pulsing to a loud, heavy-handed Schubert accompaniment) was brewing, simmering and cooking in the half pound of warm, pink mutton in people's heads; a billion electrical impulses jumping over synapses, retrieving and assembling information, warping it, producing hate, anger and tremors, convincing people to desert their children, invent light globes, make war and eat uncooked fish. The brain made about as much sense as a piano; a box full of strings and hammers, clunking away, taking the abstract and making it real. Really, if you thought about it, it made as much sense as sex, or climbing mountains, or believing in a god who was indifferent to the world he'd created.

By mid afternoon they'd had enough. They sorted their papers, packed them in satchels and headed home. They passed through an old market that was all cobblestones and horse shit, and stopped to taste grapes that were as grey as the weather. Clouds had returned, bringing a light breeze that squeezed itself down narrow alleyways, concentrating in a maze of jutting buildings, misaligned intersections and buttresses built high onto the sides of old homes.

‘And how are the piano lessons going?' Alfred asked, as they sat between the pigeon shit on a concrete slab.

‘Do you know what they say about Schaedel?' Erwin asked.

‘Of course.' Alfred looked at his friend. ‘No … he hasn't, has he?'

Erwin shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘Well?'

‘I was standing at the urinal the other day, and he comes up behind me and starts talking to me.'

(‘Have you found out about those china apes yet?'

‘No, Professor …')

‘And then he just stands there, watching. Is that usual over here?'

Alfred shook his head. ‘Maybe if he was pissing too.'

‘And then the other day, at my lesson, he was wearing this Japanese kimono.'

‘Just the kimono?'

‘Well, I didn't ask. Next thing, he's sitting on a rug on the floor, and he says, Come and sit down.'

Alfred couldn't believe what he was hearing. ‘Nothing was showing?'

‘I didn't look. He put on a record, with a harmonium playing, and he said, I have a harmonium.'

(‘It's a nice sound, a churchy sound, Professor.'

‘Exactly. Do you know something – it's my favourite instrument. Much better than the piano. Would you like to see my harmonium?')

‘And then, guess what?' Erwin asked, almost whispering.

‘What?'

‘He says, If you come to my place, I'll show you.'

Alfred's eyes glowed. He leaned forward, took Erwin's arm and said, ‘You're the chosen one.'

‘Rubbish.'

‘I've never heard of Schaedel giving a lesson in a kimono.'

‘He probably does it all the time.'

‘So, how do you feel about older men?'

Erwin shook his head. ‘He's just eccentric.'

A pair of girls walked past and Alfred smiled at them. As he watched them go he said, ‘You need to make it clear. You need to talk to him. He won't stop there.'

‘And what would he think if … I was wrong?'

But then there was the bit that Erwin left out. How Schaedel had moved next to him, and sat with his legs crossed so that his leg touched Erwin's; how he opened the Mendelssohn score and put it in Erwin's lap, so that he had to lean over to point things out; how he went through the score, but spent most of his time looking at Erwin, close, a few inches from his face, talking quietly and eventually saying, ‘If you want, I'll get dressed.' How he went into a small, adjoining room, no bigger than a pantry or broom cupboard, and left the door wide open as he changed. So that Erwin had to get up, and go to the piano, to avoid seeing anything.

‘Maybe he's Scandinavian,' Erwin suggested. ‘They're meant to be … forward.'

‘Forward?' Alfred laughed. ‘Schaedel's as German as the Brandenburg Gate.'

‘His wife's not unattractive,' Erwin observed. He still wasn't telling the whole story. How Schaedel returned to him, at the piano, and said, ‘Another day perhaps?'

‘Pardon?'

‘My harmonium. I also have a page of original score, in Brahms' own hand.'

‘I have to be home by four, for practice.'

‘Of course. Let's go through the Mendelssohn then.'

Alfred stood up. ‘I have my boys tonight,' he said. ‘Do you want to come?'

‘I'd have to ask Mum.'

‘Seven o'clock.'

He took out a pen and scribbled the address on Erwin's hand. Then he kissed it twice, smiled and said, ‘I'll show you my harmonium.'

‘You'd never leave now, would you?' Luise asked, as she ­pedalled slowly up an incline, riding along a narrow street that followed the Zoll canal.

‘It depends,' Erwin replied, standing up and dropping his weight onto the pedals.

They stopped to rest. A young boy, eight or nine, wearing clogs and long pants that were up past his ankles, stood with his hands in his pockets watching a group of men lay and hammer large wooden beams for the ceiling of a new house. The boy waved and called up to one of the builders. ‘Dad, Mum's ready for lunch.' The man, balancing on a single beam, ignored him.

‘The opportunities are all here,' Luise explained. ‘Germany's the centre of the music world.'

Erwin took a drink from a bottle from the pack on his back. They had been riding around the inner harbour for nearly an hour and he was tired. They'd ridden from Sülldorf to Blankenese, caught the ferry to town (sitting with their borrowed bikes on the upper deck) and started their Great Expedition. They'd explored the docks, a maze of streets, lanes and alleyways that honeycombed their way to the Elbe. And then Free Port, crawling with navvies wearing canvas pants and linen vests. Giant cranes picked up nets full of wheat bags and machines with holes where pipes would be bolted on. There were dray carts fetching their loads and trains pulling empty freight wagons soon to be loaded with tyres and lettuces. The freight sheds were full of small wooden boats and Fiats, ski poles and canned beetroot. It all reminded Erwin of Port Adelaide on a cold, foggy morning on what seemed a lifetime ago.