Sight Reading (8 page)

“This is my daughter, Jessie.” Nicholas couldn't help sounding proud. “Jessie, this is my friend Yoni. Say hello.”

Jessie affected not to have heard him.

“Won't you say hello to Yoni?”

She would not. She had noticed something on the floor—a trampled pen cap at the foot of Yoni's desk—and squatted to pick it up.

“Please put that in the bin, love. It would be awfully nice if you could say hello.”

She looked up. “I had a Popsicle,” she told Yoni in her little alien voice.

“I suspected as much,” Yoni confided. “Telltale purple around your mouth.” To Nicholas he said, “Popsicles for breakfast?”

“It's almost ten,” Nicholas said. He knew he was too indulgent. But now that he had her back, he felt near horror at himself—for having let his daughter out of his sight all those weeks.

“I see how she looks like you,” Yoni said. “Like Hazel, too. You must be delighted to have them back again.”

Yes, he was delighted, thrilled to bits—though really he and Hazel had barely had a free moment together. Each day she headed off to this office or that school, finding swimming pools and day care centers, her agenda book filled with addresses and abbreviated directions; for herself she'd sniffed out a course at Harvard Extension. Her sketch pad, Nicholas noticed, had been abandoned, wedged between a bookend and the side of the wall. More than once it had seemed there was something she wanted to tell him, that she was about to say to him—but then, just when he was bracing himself for something worrisome, she hadn't said anything at all.

“Do you play a musical instrument, Jessie?”

“I go to Marching Band.”

Nicholas explained that Hazel had found a music class in town. “Yesterday was Jessie's first time. I'm told she played the tambourine and the maracas brilliantly.”

“With such esteemed parentage,” Yoni said, “I'm sure she's a natural.” He sounded sarcastic. Perhaps it had to do with the faculty newsletter announcing that Nicholas had won the Brillman-Stoughton Prize.

“I do my dancing,” Jessie explained, going up on tiptoe, arms raised, to skip around the room. Nicholas laughed. The truth was, she had never shown much interest in music. Not that this bothered him. She would surely turn out to have her own talents.

“Maybe when you grow up you'll play in a band,” Yoni told her. “Have you heard of Tubby the Tuba?”

Jessie shook her head.

“No!” Yoni opened his eyes wide. “We'll have to remedy that. Maybe
you'll
play the tuba.”

“Just so long as
you're
not her teacher!” Nicholas said with a laugh.

“Well, now, why would you say that?” Yoni looked surprised.

“You're stern, Yoni. I hear you with the students.” More than once Nicholas had witnessed Yoni berating someone in an exaggerated, nearly comic way. Apparently it was an act he was known for on campus. “It's a wonder they don't break down and cry.”

“I sound stern,” Yoni said now, “but I would never hurt anyone.”

In fact, Nicholas had begun to view Yoni's droll imploring of students as an expression of his own frustration—not with the students but with his own professional disappointments. At the jazz club a few weeks ago, Yoni had mentioned, very briefly, that he'd not gotten the faculty grant he'd applied for (while Nicholas, without even requesting one, had been handed three thousand dollars in “summer development funds”).

Or perhaps it had to do with something more painful, like his wounded hand. Though Nicholas had grown used to the deformed thumb and missing half-finger (no longer even saw them as strange, really), it still happened sometimes that he recalled Yoni's words,
a stupid accident
, and the eerie feeling would overcome him, almost like remorse—or perhaps it was just that he had been reminded of something, though he didn't quite know what.

This feeling, a deep piercing sadness, was strong enough that Nicholas had decided not to ignore it. Instead he was using it. For the sadness was somehow intrinsic, he had realized, to his new piece, the Scottish one. He had already sketched out other sections, and in the third movement things had darkened, a sense of something lurking underneath—a Loch Ness monster of sorts, Nicholas had come to think, something you may have seen or just imagined. To tease it out, he was trying to re-create the eerie feeling, the one he had become attuned to, this brief strong wash of darkness.

“It's just my manner,” Yoni said now. As if hearing Nicholas's thoughts, he added, “You know, Nicholas, there's a reason we Israelis are called sabras.” He hunched down a bit toward Jessie. “Do you know what that means, Jessie?”

She shook her head.

“Well, it comes from a kind of cactus—”

“I have a cactus! At Gran and Pop's.”

Yoni stood up and said to the air, “The prickly pear cactus. It's not just the land we're from. My people, we're—” He looked back at Jessie and in a boisterous voice said, “Prickly.
I'm
prickly.” He grinned, the lines reaching from his eyes to the tops of his cheeks.

“No, you're not!” Jessie squealed.

“Yes, I am!” Yoni said. “Rough on the outside, sweet on the inside.” And then, in a wondering way, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he said to Nicholas, “The opposite of you, perhaps?”

“I wouldn't know,” Nicholas said, taking umbrage at the suggestion. He had certainly never thought of himself that way.

“
I'm
prickly!” Jessie announced.

“Well, prickly,” Nicholas said, “it's time we got a move on.” Yoni's musing irked him. He picked up Jessie's bag of toys and slung it over his shoulder. “Thanks for letting us stop by.” But he wished he hadn't, really.

“WHAT I WANT YOU TO
learn,” Conrad Lesser said that first day, leaning back in a wooden swivel chair so that his flaplike ears seemed even larger, “more than anything else that you learn in this class, is
how to love music
.”

Remy and the others nodded reverently. The class was small; besides Remy there was a pretty brunette named Barb; a Russian boy called Mischa; twin sisters named Penelope and Pauline; and a timid blond boy (the youngest in the class) who said his name so softly, no one caught it. Each of them had been assigned a new piece to learn by heart, and Remy could tell that each of them was terrified.

The blond boy was asked to go first. He had been assigned Korngold's Violin Concerto in D Major, and as he began to play, with a definite flair but also somehow too slick, Remy recalled some of the musical friends she had known who flew from continent to continent to compete in contests and had this same, overly polished air. Mrs. Lepik had forbidden Remy to follow that path; she said it was bad to always be in the spotlight, that competitions narrowed one's creative field, that by playing the same carefully perfected pieces over and over, one's playing became mannered. Remy supposed this was what had happened with the blond boy, who seemed to have modeled his playing on Jascha Heifetz; his bowing and slides, his very stance, were recognizable, almost a pose. Lesser told him to stop.

“It's very clear which recording you've been listening to,” Lesser said. “A marvelous one. But what you're doing now is an imitation. A copy. If this were a math exam, you wouldn't copy, would you?”

The boy shook his head.

“Do you know why it's wrong to copy?” Lesser didn't wait for an answer. “Not just because it's unoriginal. It's that it's
insincere
.”

The boy said something too soft for anyone to understand.

“We must always, every one of us, play
from the heart
. In fact, please sit down. Let's hear from one of your colleagues.” He motioned for Remy to stand.

She could feel her heart beating as she came forward. All week she had practiced Lalo's
Symphonie espangnole
, really too much to learn (and by memory!) in just a few days. Her neck hurt from playing without a shoulder pad, and her fingertips were sore from having to press hard on the new gut strings; though her E string was still steel and the G wrapped in aluminum, the other two were fully lamb's gut and heavier than what she was used to. But the pain was her reminder to do what Lesser had said:
step outside of herself,
think of the entire piece, not just her part, not just herself.

Determined that Lesser not stop her as he had at the audition, she focused on the “initial gesture”—and to her surprise he allowed her to continue. Remy liked the sound of the new gut strings, more intense than before. But as she came to the second page, Lesser waved his hand for her to stop. Stepping forward, he said, “Please let me see your instrument.”

Remy carefully handed him her violin. Her parents had bought it for her when she was fifteen, a used Otto Erdesz of a soft tan color, the burnished maple of its back a light-and-dark feathered pattern; if you peered through the f-holes you could find the small white label,
Joannes Baptista Guadagnini,
in delicate, flowing script. Remy still treated it like a new gift, always wiping it carefully with her chamois cloth as Mrs. Lepik had taught her, making sure never to leave the faintest trace of rosin on it. She wondered if Conrad Lesser was going to criticize the brand of strings she had purchased.

But what he did, to her shock, was turn each of the pegs just the slightest bit, so that the instrument was out of tune.

Then he handed it back and asked her to begin from where he had stopped her.

“But it's not in tune—”

“Begin, please.”

As Remy began to play, she quickly heard which strings were sharp and which were flat, and automatically began to correct for the differences, grateful for her responsive fingertips. As confusing as it was to have to accommodate this way, it was also oddly exhilarating to instinctively make the infinitesimal changes necessary to stay in tune. Before she knew it, she had arrived at the end of the movement.

The other students applauded, as did Conrad Lesser, and Remy had to smile.

“My dear,” Lesser said, probably because he couldn't recall Remy's name, “may you never have to perform on an instrument as mistuned as that. But I hope you noted—that all of you noted”—he turned to the class—“the energy our young colleague generated just now. The electricity born of fright. Or rather, the electricity that results when we
overcome
fright.”

Remy laughed nervously.

“Your goal for this summer,” Lesser told her, “is a very basic one. I want you to play fearlessly. By that I mean with abandon. To move past your fear and free yourself—free up your playing. Do you follow? I want you, my dear, to feel limitless.”

“Okay,” Remy said meekly, and everyone laughed.

“Listen to that,” Lesser told them. “We limit ourselves every day without even knowing it, simply by doing what we always do, falling into patterns, not pushing ourselves further. But every one of you has expressive reserves you've not yet discovered. Your dear colleague here has just discovered some of her own, by facing a mistuned violin. I want to help each of you find those reserves, so that you can tap them and go further, and give more, than you ever have before.”

BY THE END OF THEIR
first lesson, Conrad Lesser had determined what each student's goal would be. Just as Remy was to learn to feel “limitless,” the boy who played like Heifetz was to become “sincere.” For the twins, who tended to play with a terse, tight vibrato, it was to “soften your touch.” For the Russian boy it was to use more contrasting sounds in order to “expand your expressive vocabulary.” Today's class had focused, so far, on Barb, the pretty girl who was also best in the class. With Barb, Conrad Lesser was focusing on the finest of fine-tuning, helping her work out fingering that better matched passages of the piano accompaniment, and that might bring out the ethnic and period qualities inherent in the music. Her goal for the summer was to become more “nuanced.”

Yet even she looked worn out from the past half hour of Lesser's scrutiny. “Good, very good,” he said, dismissing her. “It's difficult to sustain this level of effort, I know. That's why after you've worked hard and long at this level of intensity . . . then what must you do?” He did not wait for an answer. “You must
relax
.”

He turned to address the class. “This goes for all of you. What we're doing here takes incredible concentration. Physical stamina and psychological strength. When we learn how to focus, we must also learn how to release.”

“You mean like take a long bubble bath?” Barb asked.

“Take a bath if that helps. But I want you growing, increasing your skills and your strength. What each of you needs,” he said, “is a hobby.”

Remy grunted. A hobby! As if any one of them had the time.

“Preferably something aerobic or gymnastic,” Lesser continued. “As I said, our work requires that we be fit physically as well as mentally. Do any of you exercise?”

Everyone sort of stared down at their feet, except for one of the twins, who said, “I like jogging.”

“Jogging, excellent. How often do you do that?”

“Once a week at least. I want to do it more, but I don't always have time.”

“For this class, you will go jogging three times a week. And what about you?” he asked her sister.

“I hate jogging.”

“Even better. The two of you need some time apart. What sort of sport do you like to do?”

“None. I hate sports.”

Conrad Lesser nodded, eyes squinting, big ears bobbing as he contemplated.

The Russian boy had raised his hand. He said, “I would like to roller-skate.”

“Skating, excellent! You will tell Lise your shoe size and we will buy you a pair of skates.” He nodded to his worried-looking assistant.