The Soloist (10 page)

I heard some noise out in the gallery and saw that the old Japanese woman was crying. Two young women were comforting her. Her husband sat stoically, staring straight ahead at the witness. His eyes looked moist, but he didn’t dab them or even budge. At this moment I regretted that I had decided to participate in the trial. The sight of that old couple, having to hear about the brutal death of their son through a whispered translation, was almost too sad to bear. Meanwhile the defendant had a strangely compassionate expression on his face; he was looking at the witness as if he felt sorry for him for having to remember something so awful. He didn’t appear to feel any responsibility or connection to what was being said.

After pausing to allow the witness to pull himself together, Mr. Graham asked gently, “What happened next, Mr. Ellis?”

“I jumped up and tackled him to the ground. By then he had hit Okakura four or five times. I kept holding Philip
down, and Louise, one of the other members, ran into the kitchen to call the police.”

Mr. Graham asked the clerk to bring exhibit number one into the courtroom. The clerk left the room and returned in a moment with a heavy oak pole, about four feet long and flattened at one end like an oar. There were dark stains at the flat end, and I felt queasy as I looked at it.

“Was this the stick that Philip Weber used to kill Mr. Okakura?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Graham brought the stick over to the jury box and asked each of us to hold it to get a sense of how heavy it was. And it was heavy. Touching it was a genuinely nauseating experience.

After he’d returned the stick to the custodian, Mr. Graham resumed his examination of the witness. “Mr. Ellis, after you had tackled him to the ground, what was Philip like while you were holding him down? Was he struggling? Was he talking to you?”

An expression of disgust passed over the witness’s face as he looked again at the defendant, who appeared to be listening closely.

“He was telling me, very matter-of-fact-like, that he was enlightened, and that now he was the Zen master. That if I wanted, I could be his first student.”

The defendant looked as if he was about to stand up and say something, but Ms. Doppelt whispered something to him in time to prevent it. A detached, bland look returned to his face, which made me wonder if the public defender was actually encouraging him to look insane.

When we broke for lunch I decided to walk down the street to an Italian restaurant I’d seen that morning. Though it was packed, the hostess was able to seat me right away at the last open table. Not two minutes after I sat down, Maria-Teresa walked in. She had worn a simple black dress to court that day, and looked stunning in it. I saw the hostess explaining to her that there would probably be a ten-minute wait. Maria-Teresa frowned and glanced at her watch, then looked up and happened to see me.

Out of sheer nervous habit I looked down at my menu and pretended I hadn’t seen her, but then it occurred to me how foolish that was—not only because it was unfriendly, but because I would have been thrilled if she joined me. When I looked back up, though, she was already turning to leave the restaurant. More out of anger with myself than anything else, I called out her name, pretended to have just noticed her, and invited her to share my table. She told me later that this gesture, along with what she’d heard about me during the voir dire, gave her the impression that I must be an easygoing but quietly confident man. She was right about my being quiet.

At first we made small talk about the voir dire and some of the people who were dismissed. She was so attractive that I was afraid of appearing to stare at her. I was used to being able to watch women for long stretches of time—students of mine playing the cello during lessons—without there being any self-consciousness about it. Sometimes I would get a bit lost in watching them play rather than listening.

So I spent a good deal of the hour with Maria-Teresa reminding myself not to let my eyes get stuck on either her magnificent face or her chest, which her dress did not entirely
cover. She said she was enjoying getting away from her job for a while because “dispatching isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” to which I responded that I wasn’t aware it had a favorable reputation.

“I was joking. Christ!” she said, laughing out loud.

She was not an intellectual by any means, but she wasn’t dumb. Her appearance certainly added to the impression that she was worldly—the shadows under her eyes, the black dress and that smoky voice. “So you’re a cello player, right? I should try to learn something about classical music. When I hear it I imagine guys in starched collars who all look like Freud standing around in a castle with their monocles on, clicking their heels and bowing. You know what I mean?”

“
All
classical music makes you think of that?” I asked her.

“Mm, not all of it. I have one classical tape that I like, come to think of it. The sound track to
Amadeus
. I got it after seeing the movie. I’ll bet that makes you sick, huh?”

Musical ignorance usually depresses me, but her conversation was so impossibly trite it was charming. At least she could identify the sound track as classical music; hordes of people exist out there who think that the music was written for the film. These are the same people who refer to Bach’s monumental toccata for organ as the theme song from
Rollerball
, or who giggle when they hear the
William Tell
overture played in a concert hall.

“Maybe you could tell me some other good composers to listen to,” she said. “I want to hear more, but I don’t know where to start.”

I asked her which of the Mozart pieces she liked especially. She confessed that she hadn’t listened to the tape carefully enough to recall a specific song. “Which makes me think of a question,” she said, drowning her salad with French dressing.

“You know classical music inside and out, right? So what’s your favorite piece? Of all those symphonies and sonatas, which do you think is the best?”

“That’s an impossible question! There’s so much of it, and so much of it is indescribably beautiful. Just the music for cello alone—”

“OK, so let’s whittle it down. What’s your favorite cello piece?”

“Even that isn’t fair! You can’t compare, say, the baroque masterpieces with the romantic ones because they’re entirely different kinds of music.”

“Oh, all right, all right, what’s
one
of your favorites, then? It doesn’t have to be your absolute favorite. Is Mozart up there on your list?”

“Oh, of course. He’d be up there on any list. But the composer whose work I personally enjoy most is Bach—Johann Sebastian, that is, not his sons. Do you like him?”

“He’s one of those guys with a wig, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’ve probably heard some, but I couldn’t hum it for you. Let me ask you something, though. Certain kinds of music charge you up, other kinds make you feel depressed, and some make you feel really calm. What’s the feeling you get from Bach? Sometimes if I’m switching stations on the radio I hit a classical station, and most of it sounds so … so dry, I guess, that I wonder. Do you really get turned on by that stuff, or is it more of a cultural-appreciation thing—you know, something that you do because it’s good for you? It’s a stupid question, I suppose.”

“No, it isn’t at all. But it’s a hard thing to put into words. When you ask what I feel like when I hear music, my first instinct would be to answer by playing something rather than
saying anything about it. To me it ‘feels’ just like it sounds. But I think I can give you an example. My teacher in Germany had said he wanted a memorial concert at his favorite church instead of a traditional funeral service. Since he didn’t say what he wanted played, the executor of his estate asked me to choose the program. Obviously it couldn’t be cheerful music, but at the same time you wouldn’t want something bleak or depressing. I chose a few choral preludes by Bach, finishing up with one called
Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein
. It means ‘When in the hour of utmost need.’ Bach wrote it just a few weeks before he died, after an eye operation that didn’t work. Since he couldn’t see at all, he had to dictate the piece to his son-in-law. He wrote it knowing he was dying; the troubles of the world couldn’t affect him anymore. There isn’t a trace of suffering in the music; his mind heard only perfection and harmony. My teacher loved Bach, and had just passed out of a hard life, so I thought that would be just right.”

To my surprise and mortification, I felt my throat start to tighten, and realized I had to change the subject before making a fool of myself in front of Maria-Teresa.

Before we left the restaurant I promised to lend her a tape of music that I thought she might like if she enjoyed the
Amadeus
sound track. When the check came I felt a pang of indecision; force of habit suggested that I offer to pay for both of us, but I was afraid that the circumstances might make this seem inappropriate. In the end I didn’t have to decide because Maria-Teresa picked up the bill and asked if I would mind if we put it on her credit card, since she had forgotten to bring cash with her. I said I didn’t mind, and gave her the correct change for my portion of the bill.

We walked together back to the courthouse, talking about
the drought. Living in Southern California gives you so much material for small talk; you have your choice among brush-fires, mud slides, earthquakes, smog alerts, droughts and freeway shootings, and those are only the obvious ones. Maria-Teresa said that she didn’t have a garden, but coveted long showers and couldn’t seem to keep within her monthly water ration. “And that’s with only me living in the house most of the time,” she added. This comment surprised me, and once again I could feel my cheeks redden, because I knew from her voir dire that she was married.

In the first cross-examination of the trial the defense attorney seemed determined not to let us forget how bizarre the activities of the Zen retreat were.

“Mr. Ellis,” Ms. Doppelt began, “I’d like to start by asking about the stick.” There was an edge to her voice, as if she were questioning an anxious college student about a fatal hazing accident. “Could you tell us something about it? Why did Mr. Okakura have it in his hands that day?”

The witness fidgeted a bit and answered that the stick was called a kyosaku, and was a traditional object used by nearly all Zen teachers.

“And how is it used?” the lawyer asked, using her finger to return a stray lock of hair to its proper place behind her ear.

“Zen teachers use it, um … to try to help you, if you’re getting drowsy, or if your mind is wandering.”

“OK—but how is it used?” she prodded. “Isn’t it true the teacher hits you with it?”

The monk fidgeted again in his chair. “Yeah, on the back. But he doesn’t do it for no reason—it’s done out of kindness, to help you.”

“Kindness?” she asked sarcastically. “How hard does he apply this kindness usually?”

“Not hard. It’s like a slap—it’s bracing. You look forward to it, especially if your back is aching from sitting for a long time.”

“Did Mr. Okakura ever use the stick on Philip?”

“Yes. He used it on everyone.”

A knowing look passed over Ms. Doppelt’s face. “Didn’t he use it on Philip,” she asked in a slightly louder voice than before, “just before Philip went hysterical that afternoon?”

“Well, not right before … It was, oh … several minutes at least.”

Ms. Doppelt nodded but looked unconvinced. “Mr. Ellis,” she said acidly, “you didn’t tell us about that in your testimony earlier.”

“Yes, I did!” he protested. “I said Mr. Okakura signaled Philip to be quiet! A slap with the kyosaku is the signal we always use. Everybody in Zen knows about it; it didn’t come out of nowhere.”

“I see,” Ms. Doppelt said. “Mr. Okakura hit him with the stick to make him quiet down. A few minutes after that, Philip suddenly started screaming that he was a Buddha and that he’d solved his puzzle. Did it occur to you at all—at any point during all this—that maybe this young man was in trouble?”

The monk looked upset by the question, shaking his head angrily and answering, “It might seem that way, but the thing is … crying, laughing, even hallucinating happen a lot during these retreats. He was acting strangely, but not so strangely that any of us could have seen he would do something like what he did.”

“Mr. Ellis,” the lawyer asked with a look of incredulity on
her face, “aren’t you aware that inappropriate laughing, crying and hallucinating are also not uncommon during psychotic episodes?”

“I’m not an expert on that, no.” The witness brushed his hands across his thigh. He appeared to be trying to press out a wrinkle in his pants.

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Ellis, but for heaven’s sake … All right, let’s move on to the puzzle, then—the one that Mr. Okakura assigned to Philip. Could you tell us what that puzzle was?”

The monk actually blushed, then answered, “It’s hard to do it out of context like this. Koans aren’t logical, so sometimes they seem … you would think they make no sense at all, or sound strange. They’re meant to make you see the limitations of your reason.”