The Soloist (6 page)

My earlier suspicions about the courthouse actually being an incubator for bureaucrats proved resoundingly true. I gave the clerk my name and she handed me a pamphlet about jury duty, then brushed me aside to take the name of the next person in line. After half an hour, when everyone had checked in, I returned to her desk and asked whom I should speak to about being excused from duty. She said that I was supposed to do this before I checked in; because I had now checked in, I had to serve for the rest of the day. I asked how I was supposed to have known to give her my excuse and she pointed to the jury-duty pamphlet, the one she’d handed me immediately before checking me in. Before I could gather my wits enough to protest the obvious problem with this system she informed me that if I got called to a trial I would have a chance to speak to the judge and he or she could excuse me. Other than that, I would just have to wait out the day.

So I waited. I counted floor tiles, I read two-year-old magazines about aquarium care, I discovered sections of the newspaper I never knew existed, but mostly I avoided making eye contact with anyone. I didn’t want to get drawn into any of the conversations I was overhearing around me, such as whether or not an Armenian jewelry-store owner was justified in shooting a black child barely thirteen years old who tried to rob the store wielding a toy gun; how uninspiring the candidates for the upcoming local elections were; and why Proposition 126 would be the death of Los Angeles. I didn’t even know what Proposition 126 was. We broke for lunch, then returned again in two hours. By four o’clock I thought I would lose my mind from the boredom, but then my name, along with seventy-four others, was called and we were told to report to Department 135.

As we entered and took seats in the gallery I was struck by
how unimpressive the courtroom was. The judge’s bench looked as if it was made of cheap veneer paneling, the American flag in the corner was on a flimsy stand and some of the ceiling panels were slightly ajar. The whole atmosphere reminded me of a junior high school auditorium rather than a hall of justice. The custodian instructed sixteen of us to sit in the jury box.

We had to stand for the judge’s entrance—a distasteful ritual, I thought, in light of what you read every day about lawyers. Judge Davis stood over six feet tall and must have weighed at least three hundred pounds. He had short white hair, several chins and a wide mouth with downturned edges. I was immediately reminded of a magazine article about people who look like their pets; in it was a photo of a large man holding his English bulldog. Judge Davis could easily have joined the two of them in the picture without spoiling the effect. He cleared his throat loudly and called the court to order, introducing the case as
The State of California
vs.
Philip Weber
. The charge was second-degree murder. “This charge,” he warned us, “is not to be taken as evidence of guilt. It is an accusation, not a declaration; all of you are to presume that the defendant is innocent until proven otherwise.”

I couldn’t believe it: Martin the encyclopedic violin teacher had told me, along with many other things that I hadn’t asked to know, that the chances of my being selected for a big trial were infinitesimal. I should have guessed right then and there that I would somehow end up on a murder trial.

Instinctively I looked for the place where I thought the accused murderer would have to sit once the trial started, and realized to my horror and fascination that he was already sitting there. He was a young man, in his early twenties or so,
pale and thin, and he had an enigmatic smile on his face. He sat straight, with his head erect and shoulders relaxed, watching the judge but seeming oblivious to the rest of us.

He didn’t look like a murderer at all; he looked like a missionary from Salt Lake City. I became curious to know what he had done. Was it a brutal, shocking murder—did he stab his parents in their bed?—or would it turn out that he was driving too fast and had been involved in a fatal traffic accident?

My wondering was interrupted when Judge Davis leaned forward onto his elbows and delivered a stern lecture on the importance of jury duty, how seriously we should view our responsibility, and how little patience he had for people who tried to evade that solemn responsibility with frivolous excuses. His voice coming down from that platform had a sobering effect. I think everyone in the courtroom sat up straighter when he spoke. After his speech he riffled through some papers on his desk—he had gigantic, fumbling hands—then looked us over the way I imagine Marine drill instructors examine fresh recruits.

“This case may take time,” he said warily. “Is that going to cause undue hardship for anyone?”

At first no one moved, then I heard a few people shift in their seats, and finally one woman coughed politely.

“Let’s start with you,” Judge Davis said, settling back into his chair and looking at her closely. “Who are you, ma’am?”

“I’m Janice Parks.”

“What’s the problem?”

She said that her husband worked the night shift at a piping factory and would have a fit if she wasn’t home to cook an early dinner for him before going to work. Judge Davis clearly did not think much of her excuse; he turned
slightly purple and boomed, “Do you understand it’s your duty to serve, Mrs. Parks?”

“Yes, but—”

“Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do, Mrs. Parks?”

“I … I guess so, maybe,” she stammered.

“How would you feel if you were accused of something serious, and were arrested for it, but when it came time to pick a jury all the ordinary people, your neighbors, weren’t willing to do it because they had to cook dinner on time. What would you feel then?”

She didn’t respond. “Not being able to cook dinner doesn’t sound like undue hardship to me,” Judge Davis snapped, dismissing her excuse with a wave of his thick hand, then he asked, “Who else? Who else feels they cannot serve? Raise your hands.”

An older man writhed painfully in his seat and raised his hand. “Who are you? What’s the problem?” the judge asked again. The poor old gentleman winced and said he had just thrown his back out the day before, which made it impossible for him to sit for long periods of time. Judge Davis seemed unimpressed, but when the man produced a note from his doctor in support of his claim, he was allowed to go. Another man said he couldn’t deal with the testimony if it was going to be about murder; he was dismissed. A woman had plane tickets out of the country that she had purchased months before; she was also permitted to leave. A self-employed man, a screenwriter, described the extreme financial hardships jury duty would put him through, but when Judge Davis asked him to prove that he was currently working on a project that absolutely could not be delayed, the man said angrily, “All right, all right. Forget I mentioned it.”

The more this went on, the more I felt my resolve weaken. Not only was my excuse of having to oversee a graduate recital fraudulent, but I was beginning to think that jury duty might be a good idea. It would force me to keep away from the cello for at least ten days, which would be the longest I’d gone without practicing for many years, perhaps even since I had first started playing. I’d tried before to take vacations from music, but my resistance always broke down after two or, at most, three days. Since I’d already handed in the semester grades, I was finished with teaching until September. There was only the Korean boy, and his lessons were at night anyway. By five o’clock no one was offering excuses anymore, so Judge Davis adjourned the court for the day, reminding us to be punctual the next morning, and then, after banging his gavel impressively, squeezed himself through a narrow door behind his desk to his chambers.

That night I tried to work out a lesson plan for the Korean boy for our first few weeks. It was a bittersweet task; the thought of passing on to him the knowledge I’d received from my teacher both excited and depressed me. It would have been different if I had felt more warmly toward him, if only he were more expressive or more clearly enthusiastic about studying with me. But he didn’t seem to need or want my knowledge or approval. If I was going to share everything with a student, and eventually be surpassed by him, at least it should be someone I liked. At the same time, I wanted to transcend that feeling and make the most of the opportunity to teach him. It was partially for his sake, because I knew my having been a child performer would make me especially qualified to guide him, but also for my own sake. Kyung-hee was a rare case, and I knew that it would be deeply satisfying as a teacher to have the
sort of communication that becomes possible with an exceptionally talented young person.

I went through my old cedar chest and dug out my notebooks and sheet music from my years in Germany; I hadn’t looked at them since I was a teenager. Going through those materials made me think of my old teacher, his dark house and the smell of his pipe tobacco. “Herr Professor,” as I called him, always smoked a pipe during our lessons, and had Frau Schmidt, his housekeeper, bring him coffee in a tall iron pot that was hopelessly dented and blackened from use.

One day von Kempen and I were in his house on Ederstausee, a large reservoir near Kassel, when he suddenly broke off the lesson to take me for a walk in his garden. He wanted me to see a flower that had bloomed just that morning; he had been trying to create a new variety of rose, and this was the first hybrid of its type. Because of a youthful equestrian accident, von Kempen had a badly crippled knee and could not walk without a cane. He had quite a collection of walking sticks from around the world; one, my favorite, even had a fencing sword hidden in it. When he taught, though, and had to get up for anything, he preferred to use his cello for support. I used to shiver at the sight of him hobbling around the studio with that ancient cello under his arm, but now I find that image strangely attractive.

That afternoon, using the cello as a crutch, he took me out into the garden to see the new rose. When he pointed it out to me I tried to seem interested, but he sensed my impatience. He asked what I was thinking at that very moment and I answered honestly that I wanted to finish the piece we were working on. He coughed disapprovingly and ordered me to put my eye right up to the flower so that my whole field of view was consumed by the brilliant orange-red petals.

As I did so he said, “Herr Sundheimer, look at all that color! And the pollen dust, which attracts a certain kind of bee that carries it to the other flowers and fertilizes them. Imagine the complexity of it, the perfection of the design! Isn’t it amazing that God produces such things? Herr Sundheimer, right now you are looking at something that has never existed before today, not in all the time since the beginning of the universe. When it fades, it will never exist again—it is absolutely unique in the world. Doesn’t it now seem more precious than when you first noticed it?”

“Yes, Herr Professor.”

“Yes,” von Kempen said, “and that is the way to approach music. Every piece, every time you play it, is unique and irreplaceable. You should open your ears and heart to every phrase, every note, and squeeze every drop of beauty you can from it. Take nothing for granted!” The maestro loved cigarettes almost as much as his pipe, and particularly enjoyed them while sitting outdoors in his garden. He removed one from a handsome silver case, lit it and puffed happily for a while, then handed me a pair of nail clippers from his pocket and told me to cut the flower at the stem. When I had done so he threaded it through the buttonhole of my jacket. “There you are,” he said. “With all that uniqueness concentrated in one suit of clothes, you ought to have the lesson of your life!” and he led me back inside.

I couldn’t possibly have re-created such moments with my college students; had I tried to do so, I would only have made a fool of myself and embarrassed them. It was a matter partially of their age, and partially of musicianship. You have to be either very young or uncontrollably musical not to find such expressions of sentiment maudlin. When I was a student I was both very young and very musical, which allowed my
otherwise reserved teacher to express himself with abandon.

Strangely enough, in spite of our close relationship and the unrestrained warmth he showed toward me at all times, I never came to feel entirely at ease around him. I was not afraid of him, and certainly didn’t dislike him, but I think that his advanced age, his old-fashioned manners and obscure dialect, and perhaps the fact that we worked together in a foreign country kept me from ever feeling completely natural in his company, and from being able to adequately return the candor and affection he showed me. How I wish I could see him now, even if for only an hour! As an example of my awkwardness, one afternoon during our lesson I realized I had to go to the bathroom, but I felt embarrassed to interrupt the lesson for this reason. I watched the minute hand on his old grandfather clock creep toward the hour, debating wildly whether to blurt out my problem or try to wait until the end of the lesson. The worse my discomfort grew, the more embarrassing the situation became. The longer I waited, the more convinced I was that he would sense the urgency in my voice and think me an idiot. After an eternity of silent agony, with only three minutes to go before the hour, I could stand it no longer. I wet my pants but kept playing, hoping he wouldn’t notice. When the clock rang four o’clock, von Kempen—who never kept me overtime out of kindness to my mother, who always waited for me downstairs—stood and bowed as was his habit at the end of lessons. I returned the bow, holding the cello in front of me, and kept it in front of me all the way out to our car, where at last I burst into tears of shame. Instead of being sympathetic, my mother was furious.

When I went to Germany to study with him, von Kempen was grateful for the opportunity, and it showed in his whole bearing toward me. At that point in his life he had not concertized for twenty years after having made a firm decision to commit himself entirely to teaching. I, on the other hand, was teaching only to fill in the gaps until I could get back on the stage. I had mixed feelings about taking on a student who would require so much attention, especially one with so little personal charm. I worried that teaching him might drain me and extinguish my last hopes for coming to life again as a performer.