The Gravedigger’S Daughter (57 page)

Made your bed now lie in it
.

Made your bed your bed
.
Now lie in it, you!

The coarse, crude voices of her childhood. The old voices of wisdom.

On the third floor of the house in the sparely furnished attic space that had become Hazel’s private space she hid away like a wounded animal. At this distance she could not hear if the young couple resumed their practice. She could not hear when the girl left. She could not hear if Zack left with her. If he’d called out to her on his way out of the house, she had not heard. If the girl called out to her in that warm penetrating voice
Goodbye Mrs
.
Gallagher!
she had not heard.

Never what you’ve told yourself
.
Never escaped from him
.
Pa was too smart, and too quick
.
Pa was too damned strong
. Aimed the shotgun at your scrawny girl-chest and pulled the trigger.
And that was it
.
And afterward turning from what lay bleeding and mangled on the bedroom floor like a hunk of butchered meat triumphant his enemies would not subdue and humiliate him another time he reloaded the shotgun that like the console model Motorola radio was one of the astonishing purchases of his American experience awkwardly he turned both barrels on himself and fired and in the aftermath of that terrible blast there was only silence for no witness remained
.

Laugh at death
.
Why not
and yet he could not bring himself to laugh.

The earth’s soil was steeped in blood. He knew, before he’d met Frieda Bruegger. He knew of the Nazi death camps, the Final Solution. Seemed already to know what he might spend years learning.
Laugh at death
was not possible this side of death.

How airy, how ephemeral and trivial music seemed, of all human efforts! Fading into silence even as it’s performed. And you had to work so very hard to perform it, and very likely you would fail in any case.

Revolted by his own vanity. His ridiculous ambition. He would be exposed, on a brightly lighted stage. Like a trained monkey he would perform. Before a panel of “international judges.” He would desecrate music, in the display of his own vanity. As if pianists were racehorses to be pitted against one another, that others might wager on them. There would be a “cash prize” of course.

Six days before they were scheduled to fly to San Francisco he informed the adults who surrounded Zacharias Jones: he wasn’t going.

What a commotion! Through the day the telephone rang, Gallagher was the one to answer.

The young pianist refused to listen to his piano teacher. Refused to listen to other musicians at the Conservatory. Refused to listen even to his stepfather whom he adored who pleaded with him, begged and cajoled and bartered: “This can be your last competition, Zack. If you feel so strongly.”

The young pianist’s mother did not plead with him, however. She knew to keep her distance. Perhaps she was too upset, she avoided speaking with anyone. Oh, the boy knew how to wound his mother! If Hazel had tried to plead with him as Gallagher did, he’d have laughed in her face.

Fuck you
.
Go play yourself
.
Think I’m your fucking trained monkey
,
well I am not
.

In this way three days passed. Zack hid away, he was beginning to be ashamed. His decision was coming to seem to him like mere cowardice. The moral revulsion in his soul was coming to seem like mere nerves, stage fright. His face was inflamed. His bowels now spat liquid shit in a scalding cascade. He could not bear his exhausted reflection in any mirror. He could not even speak with Frieda, who had begun by being sympathetic with him but was now not so certain. He had not meant to draw attention to himself. He had meant to remove himself from attention. He had been reading the Hebrew Bible:
All is vanity
. He had been reading Schopenhauer:
Death is a sleep in which individuality is forgotten
. He had meant to withdraw himself from the possibility of acclaim and “success” as much as from the possibility of public failure. Now, he was beginning to reconsider his decision. He had tossed something very precious into the dirt, now he must pick it up and wash it off. Maybe it would be better to kill himself after all…

Or he might run away, disappear across the border into Canada.

The Conservatory had not yet notified the organizers of the competition, that Zacharias Jones had decided to drop out. And now he was reconsidering his decision. And there was Gallagher to speak reasonably saying that nobody expected him to win, the honor was in qualifying. “Look, you’ve been playing the Beethoven sonata here for months, so play it out there. What’s the difference, essentially? There is no difference. Except Beethoven composed his music to be heard, right? He kept the ‘Appassionata’ from being published prematurely because he didn’t believe that the world was ready for it yet, but we’re ready for it, kid. So play your heart out. And for Christ’s sake stop moping.”

Taken by surprise, Zack laughed. As usual, Dad was right.

In San Francisco the streets shone wetly. So steep, as in an ancient cataclysm. The air was harshly pure, blown inland from the fog-obscured ocean.

And the fog! Outside the windows of their twentieth-floor suite in the San Francisco Pacific Hotel the world had collapsed to a few feet.

The world had collapsed to a gleaming piano keyboard.

“The breath of God.”

It was so. There could be no other explanation. That he’d become at the age of seventeen a young pianist named
Zacharias Jones
, his thumbnail-sized photograph in the glossy program of the 1974 San Francisco International Piano Competition. And she’d become
Hazel Gallagher
.

In their hotel suite, a dozen red roses awaited. A cellophane-wrapped wicker basket stuffed with gourmet foods, bottles of white and red wine. They would have laughed wildly together like conspirators except they’d grown wary of each other in recent months. The son had aimed at the mother’s heart, he’d struck a deep stunning blow.

Unknowing, Gallagher had become the mediator between them. He had not the slightest awareness of the tension between mother and son. Nudging Hazel, when they heard Zack whistling in his adjoining hotel room, “Listen! That’s a good sign.”

Hazel did not know if it was a good sign. She, too, had become strangely happy in San Francisco, in the fog. It was a city of wetly gleaming near-vertical streets and quaintly clamorous “trams.” It was a city utterly new to her and Zack. It had a posthumous feel to it, a sense of calm. The breath of God had blown them here, as whimsically as elsewhere.

Downstairs in the hotel gift shop, Hazel bought a deck of cards.

Alone in the suite she tore the cellophane from the deck and rapidly shuffled the cards and slapped them out onto a glass-topped table facing a window, for a game of solitaire.

So happy, to be alone! Gallagher had badly wanted her to come with him and Zack, to the luncheon honoring the pianists. But Hazel remained behind. On the plane, she’d seen two teenaged girls, sisters, playing double solitaire.

So happy
.
Not to be Hazel Jones
.

“Hazel? Why the hell are you wearing black?”

It was a new dress of softly clinging jersey, graceful folds of cloth at the bodice. Long-sleeved, long-waisted. The skirt fell to mid-calf. She would wear black satin pumps with it. The October night was cool, she would wrap herself in an elegant black wool shawl.

“Shouldn’t I? I thought…”

“No, Hazel. It’s a gorgeous dress but too damned funereal for the occasion. You know how Zack interprets things. Especially coming from you. A little more color, Hazel. Please!”

Gallagher seemed so serious, Hazel gave in. She would wear a cream-colored suit in light wool, with a crimson silk scarf, one of Thaddeus Gallagher’s more practical gifts, tied around her neck. It was all a masquerade.

Outside the tall windows, the fog had cleared. San Francisco emerged at dusk, a city of stalagmites glittering with lights to the horizon. So beautiful! Hazel wondered if she might be forgiven, remaining in the room. Her heart clenched in terror at the prospect of what lay ahead.

“Hey Dad? Come help.”

Zack was having trouble with his black tie. He’d been in and out of his own room, lingering in their bedroom. He had not been very comfortable that day, Gallagher had said. At the luncheon, and afterward. The other pianists were older, more experienced. Several exuded “personality.” Zack had a tendency to withdraw, to appear sullen. He had showered now for the second time that day and he had combed his hair with compulsive neatness. His blemished forehead was mostly hidden by wings of fawn-colored hair. His angular young face shone with a kind of panicked merriment.

The men were required to wear black tie. Starched white cotton dress shirts with studs, elaborate French cuffs. Gallagher helped Zack with both the necktie and the French cuffs.

“Chin up, kid. A tux is a ridiculous invention but we do look good. Dames fall for us.” Gallagher snorted with laughter at his feeble joke.

Through a mirror Hazel observed. She could not help but feel that the little family was headed for an execution and yet: which one of them was to be executed?

Gallagher fussed with Zack’s tie, undoing it entirely and trying again. Almost, you would see that the two were related: middle-aged father with a high bald dome of head, adolescent son nearly his height, frowning as the damned tie was being adjusted for him. Hazel guessed that Gallagher had to restrain himself from wetly kissing the tip of Zack’s nose in a clown’s blessing.

The more edgy Gallagher was, the more jocular, antic. At least he wasn’t doubling up with gastric pains, vomiting into a toilet as he’d done at his father’s house. In semi-secrecy (Hazel knew, without having seen) he’d unlocked the minibar in the parlor and taken a swig or two of Johnnie Walker Black Label Whiskey.

It was believed to be contrary to nature, that a man might love another man’s son as if he were his own son. Yet Gallagher loved Zack in this way, Gallagher had triumphed.

Of five pianists scheduled to perform that evening in the concert hall of the San Francisco Arts Center, Zacharias Jones was the third. Next day the remaining eight pianists would perform. The announcement of the first, second, third prize winners would be made after the last pianist played that evening. The Gallaghers were relieved that Zack would play so soon, the ordeal for him would be more quickly over. But Gallagher worried that the judges would be more inclined to favor pianists who played last.

“Still, it doesn’t matter,” Gallagher told Hazel, stroking his chin distractedly, “how Zack does. We’ve said this.”

Their seats were in the third row, on the aisle. They had a clear, unimpeded view of the keyboard and the pianists’ flying hands. As they listened to the first two pianists perform, Gallagher gripped Hazel’s hand tightly, leaning heavily against her. He was breathing quickly and shallowly and his breath smelled of a lurid mixture of whiskey and Listerine mouthwash.

After each of the performances, Gallagher applauded with enthusiasm. He’d been a performer himself. Hazel’s arms were leaden, her mouth dry. She’d heard hardly a note of music, she had not wanted to realize how talented her son’s rivals were.

Abruptly then Zack’s name was announced. He moved onto the stage with surprising readiness, even managing to smile toward the audience. He could see nothing but blinding lights and these lights made him appear even younger than he was, contrasting with the preceding pianist who’d been in his early thirties. At the piano, Zack seated himself and leaned forward and began playing the familiar opening notes of the Beethoven sonata without preamble. Though Hazel had seen Zack perform in numerous recitals it was always something of a shock to her, how abruptly these performances began. And, once begun, they must be executed in their entirety.

There were only three subtly contrasting movements to the intricate sonata, that would pass with unnerving swiftness. Ever more swiftly Zack seemed to be playing it, than at home. So many months in preparation, less than a half-hour in performance! It was madness.

Gallagher was leaning so heavily against Hazel, she worried he would crush her. But she dared not push him away.

She was in a state of suspended panic. She could not breathe, her heart had begun to pound so rapidly. She had told herself repeatedly, Zack could not possibly win in this competition, the honor was in simply qualifying. Yet she feared he would make a mistake, he would blunder in some way, he would humiliate himself, he would fail. She knew that he would not, she had absolute faith in him, yet she was in dread of a catastrophe. Vivid crystalline notes exploded in the air with hurtful volume yet seemed almost immediately to fade, then to swell, and to fade again out of her hearing. She was becoming faint, she’d been holding her breath unconsciously. Gallagher’s hand was so very heavy on her knee, his fingers so tight squeezing hers she felt he would break the bones. The music that had been familiar to her for months had become suddenly unfamiliar, unnerving. She could not recall what it was, where it was headed. There was something deranged, demonic about the sonata. The swiftness with which the pianist’s fingers leapt about the keyboard…Hazel’s eyes filled with moisture, she could not force herself to watch. Could not imagine why such a tortuous spectacle was meant to be pleasurable, “entertaining.” It was sheerly hell, she hated it. Only during the slower passages, which were passages of exquisite beauty, could Hazel relax and breathe normally. Only during the slower passages when the demonic intensity had ceased. Truly this was beautiful, and heartrending. In recent weeks Zack’s interpretation of the “Appassionata” had begun to shift. There was less immediate warmth to his playing now, more precision, percussion, a kind of restrained fury. The rapid, harshly struck notes tore at her nerves. Zack’s piano teacher had not liked the newer direction in which Zack had been moving, nor had Gallagher. Hazel could hear it now, the fury. Almost, there was a disdain for the fact of the sonata itself. There was disdain for the showy act of “performance.” Hazel saw that Zack’s jaws were tight-clenched, his lower face was contorted. A patch of oily moisture gleamed on his forehead. Hazel looked away, flinching. She saw that others in the audience were staring at the pianist, fascinated. Rows of rapt listeners. The hall had five hundred seats in the orchestra and balcony, and appeared to be full. It was a musical audience, familiar with the pieces the pianists would perform. Many were pianists themselves, piano teachers. There was a contingent of supporters from the Conservatory, Frieda Bruegger among them: Hazel sought out the girl’s face but could not find it. Here and there in the elegantly appointed concert hall with its plush seats and mosaic wall tiles were faces you would not expect to see in such a setting. Very likely they were relatives of the performers, ill-at-ease among the other, more knowledgeable listeners. A crack of memory opened, sharp as a sliver of glass. Herschel telling her that their parents had once sung arias to each other, long ago in Europe. In Munich, it would have been. In what Anna Schwart had called the Old Country.

Blurred with distance as with time, their faces hovered at the rear of the concert hall. The Schwarts!

They were stunned, disbelieving. They were immensely proud.

We always had faith in you Rebecca
.

No
.
You didn’t
.

We always loved you Rebecca
.

No
.
I don’t think so
.

It was hard for us to speak
.
I did not trust this new language
.
And your father, you know what Pa was like…

Do I!

Pa loved you Rebecca
.
Used to say he loved you most, you were most like him
.

Hazel’s face was a brittle doll-face, covered in cracks. She was desperate to hide it, that no one would see. Tears gushing from her eyes. She managed to cover part of her face, with one hand. Seeing the neglected and overgrown cemetery. Always the cemetery was close behind her eyelids, she had only to shut her eyes to see it. There, grave markers were toppled over in the grass, cracked and broken. Some of the graves had been vandalized. The names of the dead had been worn away. No matter how carefully engraved into the stone the names of the dead had vanished. Hazel smiled to see it: the earth was a place of anonymous graves, every grave was unknown.

She opened her eyes that were flooded with tears. On the stage, the pianist was completing the final, turbulent movement of the Beethoven sonata. All of his young life was being channeled into this moment. He was playing his heart out, that was clear. Hazel’s face must have shone with happiness, that had been strained and hard for so long. There came the final chord, and the pedal holding. And the pedal released. At once, the audience erupted into applause.

With childlike eagerness the pianist bounded from his seat to bow to the audience. His young, vulnerable face gleamed with perspiration. There was something glaring and fanatic in his eyes. Yet he was smiling, a somewhat dazed smile, he bowed as if stricken with humility like sudden pain. By this time Gallagher was on his feet, lifting his hands to applaud with the rest.

“Hazel, he did it! Our son.”

There should be some reason why she survived
.

She knew. She knew this fact. Yet she did not know what the reason was, even now.

So restless!

It was 2:46
A
.
M
. Though exhausted she could not sleep. Though spent with emotion she could not sleep. Her eyes burned as if she’d rubbed them in sand.

Beside her Gallagher slept, heavily. In sleep he was childlike, strangely docile. Leaning his hot, humid body against her, nudging her like a blind creature ravenous for affection. Yet his breathing was so loud, labored. Sounds in his throat like wet gravel being shoveled, scraped. In such breathing she foresaw his death: then, she would know how deeply she loved this man, she who could not articulate that love now.

She was one whose childhood language has been taken from her, no other language can speak the heart.

Must get out! Slipped from the bed, left the darkened bedroom and the sleeping man. Insomnia drove her like red ants swarming over her naked body.

In fact, she wasn’t naked: she was wearing a nightgown. Sexy-silky champagne-colored nightgown with a lace bodice, a gift from Gallagher.

In the parlor she switched on a lamp. Now it was 2:48
A
.
M
. By such slow degrees a life might be lived. It was five hours since Zack had played the “Appassionata.” At the reception afterward the girl with the blunt beautiful face had embraced Hazel as if they were old friends, or kin. Hazel had held herself stiff not daring to embrace the girl back.

Zack had gone away with her. Her, and others. He’d asked Gallagher and his mother please not to wait up for him, they’d promised they would not.