The Piano Teacher: A Novel (5 page)

Erika’s mixed joys are the good advanced students, who make an effort. She can wrest all sorts of things from them: Schubert sonatas, Schumann’s
Kreisleriana,
Beethoven sonatas, those high points in the life of a piano student. The work tool, a Bösendorfer, excretes an intricate blend. And next to it stands the teacher’s Bösendorfer, which only Erika can play, unless two students are practicing a piece for two pianos.

After three years, the piano student has to enter the next level; to do so, he must pass an exam. Most of the work for this exam is assigned to Erika; she has to take the idling student engine and step on the gas, slam down hard in order to rev it up. Sometimes the engine doesn’t really catch, it would rather be doing something else, something that has little to do with music—for instance, pouring melodious words into a girl’s ear. Erika doesn’t care for such behavior; she tries to stop it whenever she can. Often, before an exam, Erika sermonizes: Fluffing a note, she says, isn’t as bad as rendering a piece in the wrong spirit, a spirit that does not do justice to it. She is preaching to deaf ears, which have been closed by fear. For many of her students, music means climbing from the depths of the working class to the heights of artistic cleanliness. Later on, they too will become piano teachers. They are afraid that when they play at the examination, their sweaty, fear-filled fingers, driven by a swifter pulse beat, will slip to the wrong keys. Erika can
talk a blue streak about interpretation, but the only thing the students wish to do is play the piece correctly to the end.

Erika likes thinking about Walter Klemmer, a nice-looking blond boy, who lately has been the first to show up in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. A busy beaver, Erika must admit. He is a student at the Engineering Academy, where he is learning all about electricity and its beneficial features. Recently he has been listening to all the music students, from the first hesitant picking and pecking to the final crack of Chopin’s Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands, which is rather unlikely for a student in the final phase of his studies. One day, Erika asks him whether he wouldn’t rather practice Schönberg, instead of lounging around so unproductively. Doesn’t he have any studying to do? No lectures, no drills, nothing? He says he’s on his semester break, which hadn’t occurred to Erika, although she teaches so many students. Vacation at the music academy doesn’t coincide with vacation at the university. Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that’s just fine with the artist.

Erika is surprised: How come you always show up here so early, Herr Klemmer? If a student is working on Schönberg’s 33b, as you are, he can’t possibly be interested in minor frivolities. So why do you listen to the others? The hardworking student lies. He says you can profit from anything and everything, no matter how little it may be. You can learn a lesson from just about anything, says this con man, who has nothing better to do. He claims he can get something from even the least of his brothers, so long as he remains curious and thirsty for knowledge. Except that you have to overcome those minor things in order to get further. A student can’t stay with the losers, otherwise his superiors will interfere.

Besides, the young man likes listening to his teacher perform, even if it’s just singsong, tralala, or the B major scale. Don’t start flattering your old teacher, Herr Klemmer. But he replies that she’s not old, and he’s not “flattering” her. I really mean every word I say, it comes from the bottom of my heart! Sometimes this nice-looking boy asks for a favor, extra homework, he’d like to practice something extra, because he’s over-zealous. He gazes expectantly at his teacher, hoping for a hint, lying in wait for a pointer. His teacher, on her high horse, cuts the young man down to size when she sneers: You still don’t know the Schönberg all that well. The student enjoys being in the hands of such a teacher, even when she looks down at him while holding the reins tightly.

That dashing young man seems to be in love with you, Mother says venomously, in a bad mood, when she happens to call for Erika at the conservatory. She wants to take a walk with Erika, two women, arm in arm, intricately interwoven. The weather plays its part as the women walk. There are a lot of things to see in the shop windows—elegant shoes, pocket-books, hats, jewelry—but Erika should not see them under any circumstances. That is why Mother came to pick her up. Mother takes Erika on a circuitous route, telling her it’s because of the beautiful weather. The parks are blossoming, the roses and tulips are blooming, and the flowers certainly don’t buy their dresses. Mother talks to Erika about natural beauty, which doesn’t require any artificial embellishment. Natural beauty is beautiful on its own, just like you, Erika. Why all the baubles?

The outskirts of the city beckon with warm calls of nature, with fresh hay in the stables. Mother heaves a sigh of relief, she pushes her daughter past the boutiques. Mother is delighted that this stroll has once again cost her no more than some shoe leather. Better to wear worn shoes than to polish the boots of some shop owner.

The population in this part of Vienna is rather long in the tooth. You see lots of old women. Luckily this one old woman, Mother Kohut, has managed to obtain a younger hanger-on, of whom she can be proud, and who will take care of her until death do them part. Only death can separate them, and death is marked as the destination on Erika’s suitcase. Sometimes, a series of murders takes place in this area, a couple of old crones die in their lairs, which are chock full of waste paper. God only knows where their bankbooks are; but the cowardly murderer knows it too, he looked under the mattress. The jewelry, what little there was, is also gone. And the only son, a silverware salesman, gets nothing. Vienna’s slums are a popular area for murder. It’s never hard to figure out where one of those old women lives. Just about every building here has at least one—she’s the laughingstock of the other tenants. And when a man knocks and says he’s the meter reader, but presents no ID card, she lets him in anyway. They’ve been warned often enough, but still they open their hearts and doors, for they are lonesome. That’s what old Frau Kohut tells Fräulein Kohut, trying to discourage her from ever leaving her mother alone.

The other inhabitants here are petty officials and placid clerks. There are few children. The chestnut trees are blooming and the trees in the Prater are blossoming. The grapes are turning green in the Vienna Woods. Unfortunately, the Kohut ladies have to abandon all hope of ever going there for a good look, since they don’t own a car.

However, they often take the trolley to a carefully chosen last stop, where they get out with all the other passengers and cheerfully stride off. Mother and daughter, looking for all the world like Charley Frankenstein’s Wild Aunts, carry rucksacks on their shoulders. Or rather: only the daughter carries a rucksack, which protects Mother’s few belongings, concealing them from curious eyes. Brogue shoes with Solid Soles. Protection
against rain is not forgotten (just read
The Hiker’s Guide).
Forewarned is forearmed. Otherwise you’ll be left out in the cold.

The two women stride along, hale and hearty. They never sing, because, knowing a thing or two about music, they don’t care to violate music by singing. This is like the days of Eichendorff, Mother chirps, the important thing is your spirit, your attitude toward nature! Nature itself is secondary! The two women have the proper spirit, for they are able to delight in nature wherever they catch sight of it. If they stumble upon a rippling brook, they instantly drink fresh water from it. Let’s hope no doe has pissed into it. If they come to a thick tree trunk or dense underbrush, they can take a piss themselves, and the nonpisser stands guard to ward off any impudent peepers.

By taking their hike, the two Kohut women store up energy for a new work week, in which Mother will have little to do, and Erika’s blood will be sucked out by her students. Every evening, Mother asks the same question: Did they give you a hard time? No, it was all right, the frustrated pianist replies; she still has hope, but Mother plucks it apart in her long-winded way. Mother complains about Erika’s lack of ambition. The child has been hearing these wrong notes for more than thirty years now. Feigning hope, the daughter realizes that the only thing she can look forward to is tenure: the title of professor, which she already uses and which is conferred by the president of Austria. In a simple festivity celebrating many years of service. Someday—and it’s not that far off—she’ll retire. Vienna is generous with pensions, but official retirement hits an artistic career like a bolt of lightning. If you’re struck, you feel it. The City of Vienna brutally terminates the transmission of art from one generation to the next. The two woman talk about how greatly they look forward to Erika’s retirement! They have
all sorts of plans for the future. By then, the condominium will be shipshape, and the mortgage paid off. They’ll also have a piece of country property to build on. A cottage, for the two Kohut women and no one else. Plan ahead. It’s better to be an ant than a grasshopper. By then, Mother will be one hundred years old, but still sprightly.

The foliage in the Vienna Woods, ignited by the sunshine, blazes on the slope.

Here and there, spring flowers peek out; mother and daughter pick them and pack them away. Serves the flowers right. Insolence has to be punished, Frau Kohut puts her foot down. The flowers are just right for the round light-green vase from Gmunden, isn’t that so, Erika?

The adolescent girl lives in a sanctuary, where no one is allowed to bother her. She is shielded from influences, and never exposed to temptations. This hands-off policy applies only to pleasure, not work. Mother and grandmother, the female brigade, stand guard, rifle in hand, to protect Erika against the male hunter lurking outside. They may even have to give the intruder a physical warning. The two elderly women, with their dried, sealed vaginas, throw themselves in front of every man, to keep him away from their fawn. The young female should not be bothered by love or pleasure. The vaginal lips of the two old women have turned into siliceous stone. Rattling dryly, their snatches snap like the jaws of a dying stag beetle, but catch nothing. So the two women hold on to the young flesh of their daughter and granddaughter, slowly mangling it, while their shells keep watch to make sure no one else comes along and poisons the young blood. They’ve got spies for miles around to keep an eye on the girl outside the house; these spies come for a cup of coffee and cheerfully reveal everything to
the women in charge of bringing up the child. Their tongues loosened by the homemade cake, the spies report what they saw the precious child doing with a student down by the dam. The child will not be released from her domestic precinct until she turns over a new leaf and swears off that man.

Their farmhouse overlooks a valley, where the spies live, and the spies are in the habit of gazing up at the house through binoculars. They have no intention of putting their own house in order first. Indeed, they completely neglect their house when the vacationers finally come from the city, because it is summer now. A brook trickles through a meadow. A large hazelnut bush abruptly slices off any further view of the brook, which flows invisibly into the meadow belonging to the next farmer. To the left of the house, a mountain meadow climbs high, ending in a forest, part of which is private property, and the rest national. All around, dense pine forests hem in the view; but you can still see what your neighbor is doing, and he can see what you’re doing. Cows trudge along the trail to the pastures. In back, to the left, an open pile of charcoal; and to the right a clearing, and a strawberry patch. Overhead, clouds, birds, including hawks and buzzards.

The hawk mother and the buzzard grandmother order the child, their charge, not to leave the eyrie. They cut off HER life in thick slices, and the neighbors are already snipping away at HER character. Every stratum in which life still stirs, if only slightly, is declared rotten and slashed away. Too much strolling is bad for your studies. Down there, at the weir, young men are splashing around. SHE feels drawn to them. They laugh loudly and duck under. SHE could shine there, among the country bumpkins. She has been trained to shine. She has been drilled, she has been taught that she is the sun, the center of all orbits. She only has to stand still, and the satellites will come and worship her. She knows she is better because that is
what she is always told. But it’s better not to examine her assumption.

Reluctantly, the violin finally moves under her chin, heaved up by an unwilling arm. Outdoors, the sun is smiling, the water beckoning. The sun lures you into undressing in front of others, something the old ladies in the house have ordered her not to do. Her fingers press the painful steel strings down the fingerboard. Mozart’s tormented spirit, moaning and choking, is forced out of the resonator. Mozart’s spirit shrieks from an infernal abode because the violinist feels nothing, but she has to keep enticing the notes. Shrieking and groaning, the notes squirm out of the instrument. SHE does not need to fear criticism, so long as something can be heard, for the sounds indicate that the child has ascended the scale, to reach loftier spheres, while leaving her body down below as a dead frame. The daughter’s physical remains, sloughed off in her ascent, are combed for any traces of male use and then thoroughly shaken. After completing the music, she can slip back into her mortal coils, which have been nicely dried and starched crisp and stiff. Her frame is now unfeeling, and no one has the right to feel it.