Winter Journey

Opus Postum

e adjusted the seat because it was a little low. Though half an hour ago he'd left it just right. No, now it's too high. And it's a little wobbly, see? Damn. Now. No. Yes. He took the handkerchief out of the pocket of his tailcoat and dried the palms of his hands. While he was at it he passed the handkerchief over the spotless keys, as if they were wet from the sweat of other disconcerts. He adjusted his cuffs. Every part of me hurts. My throat is dry, my blood prickles and my heart is about to explode for all kinds of reasons. 1 don't want my hands to shake. To his right, the mortal chill of the audience. He didn't want to look again in case he really hadn't been disoriented when he sneaked a peek at the first rows while taking a bow. Of course he had. Otherwise, he should stop right now. A woman coughed. A man coughed, far away and hard, which reminded him how huge the hall was. It's nothing, to my right there's nothing going on, nothing. Just ice, the enemy, death. The seat, back, just a little.

High up in the back balcony, hours away from the stage, a woman with honey-and-amber eyes was suffering, hidden by the shadow of the hall, because Pere Bros had been wiping the fear from his hands for four minutes, and the crowd that filled the Auditori and silently watched all of his movements was starting to get nervous.

Pere Bros adjusted his cuffs for the second time. To his right, he felt the absurd and suicidal attraction of nothing, but he resisted it. Then, two fat drops of sweat slid down his forehead and suddenly clouded his vision, and the honey-and-amber eyes in the balcony filled with tears for poor Pere. They don't realize he's suffering, they don't realize this is torture for him. Bros had to take his handkerchief out again and wipe his eyes. Then, with an infinite effort, he covered his face with his hands, conjured up the absurd vision he'd had while taking his bow, and could think only of death. He took a couple of breaths and began with the first mysterious chords of the 960, and a wave of panic passed through the audience. What's he doing, why is he beginning with the last one? The program says… The guy's nuts, why is he doing the program backwards? And the amber eyes listened attentively to the intimate meditation on death, one of life's most thrilling sonatas, with words by Wesselenyi that she didn't know, an intimate meditation on death, written by a man who did his crying in B-flat major.

Forty-two minutes and thirteen seconds later, no one in the Auditori was asking why he'd begun at the end. Rather, they were keeping their souls open, waiting, waiting. When the last note had faded away and Pere Bros was holding his hands outstretched above the keyboard, like a demiurge demonstrating his miraculous powers, he achieved ten, fifteen long seconds of silence, for the first and last time in his career. Then he relaxed his posture, lowered his hands, exhausted, and the audience began to applaud. Pere Bros got up, glanced towards the chill on his right, and yes, he saw him again, in the front row, wearing those stylish little spectacles, with his broad forehead and curly hair, dressed inappropriately, in seat number seven, in the silence of the dead and looking right at him, watching from the infinite how people were applauding enthusiastically and no doubt accusing him of not having been up to it. Cold sweat. Pere Bros left the stage to the sounds of public approbation. While he was returning to center stage and bowing his head to acknowledge the applause, it occurred to him that Schubert in the flesh looked just like the portrait on the first page of Voyage d'hiver, the detailed and unreliable biography published by Gaston Laforgue at the beginning of the twentieth century. As he made the required exit, he thought of Laforgue's argument that the three 1828 sonatas, the so-called posthumous ones, were written in a frenzy of vanity when Schubert learned that Beethoven had just died and the way was now open before him. His hands sweating, as if he were at the keyboard, he went out again and the applause got louder. I can't play anymore. 1 want Schubert to go away. They should get him out of the Auditori. 1 can't play in front of him, for God's sake. And he bowed. Then he thought of that day at the Graben in Vienna, with a cup of very hot chocolate in front of him, when dear Zoltan Wesselenyi said, What frenzy, Peter? Schubert left sketches, drafts, doubts, corrections and many questions about the three sonatas: that's no frenzy. (Wesselenyi had scalded his tongue because the chocolate was still steaming. My Zoltan, always so dreamy, so sad.) Schubert knew what he was doing, Peter, and he knew he was meditating on his own death. Especially in the D.96o.

"Fabulous, my boy. But you're a son of a bitch," spit Pardo as he pushed him onto the stage for another bow.

When he came back the audience was still applauding, but he made a motion to the stage manager to shut the door, he wasn't going back out.

"1 don't want to play any more matinees."

"We only have the one on December thirteenth. And it's sold out. What are you complaining about?"

"I'm going to my dressing room," he said, as if this were the complaint.

"You have visitors. Madame Grossman."

"1 don't want to see anybody."

"Madame Grossman."

"Nobody."

"And why the hell did you change the order of the program?"

"When the concert is over 1 want a taxi at the door."

"No way. After the concert you have Madame Grossman and an interview."

"No, 1 have a taxi."

"Like 1 said, you're a son of a bitch."

The andante sostenuto of the 96o is death from out of the fog of the Danube, at first far away and then terribly close, and Pere Bros achieved just one moment of tension during the three minutes of exposition, in a very gradual crescendo, impossible to maintain for anyone without hands of gold and fingers tipped with diamonds. And when the theme was repeated, the silence he achieved was so intense that he could hear the wood on the walls of the hall breathing. For that reason, and only for that reason, he did nothing but smile at Pardo and head for his dressing room, followed by his offended agent. He shut the door in his face. Me, without me he has no voice, no memory, no schedule!

Pere Bros poured himself a glass of Veuve Ambal as if this were just one more recital, no problem. But he couldn't keep from weeping. He went over to the upright piano and passed his hands lovingly over the keyboard. He took another sip, sat down at the instrument and raised the lid, utterly dejected. Then he saw the package that had arrived just before he went on stage. Urgent, airmail, from Vienna. He ripped it open. Beautiful, the way the book had turned out. On the cover, the Franciscan church in Vienna where Fischer had played the organ for thirty-three years. And a dedication from Zoltan: "To Pere Bros, who gave me the greatest joy of my life by telling me that he still considered exemplary, twenty-five years later, my version of the D.96o. From someone who was not brave enough to pursue the inhuman career of solo performance. May the beloved figure of Schubert and the gigantic figure of Fischer protect us. Your friend, Zoltan Wesselenyi."

He took another sip of the champagne and looked back, way back.

Zoltan Wesselenyi was playing B-flat, A, D-flat, B, C on the old piano in the archives where he spent all his time since he'd gotten sad. He repeated Fischer's theme and went over to the window. Outside, a sudden, strange, Mediterranean downpour fell from the Vienna sky.

"What's that?"

"The central theme."

"Didn't you say Fischer died in 1828?"

In response, the musicologist pointed to the papers. They were yellowed by time, but perfectly conserved. The scores were neat, done in a careful hand. It was strange music, lovingly written. Bros was amazed at how how Fischer, starting with that unusual little theme, had constructed a sarabande in G major. Or maybe in…

"It doesn't have a key. What's it in?"

"I don't know. It's not tonal. Or modal."

"That's impossible."

"No. That's how it is."

"It's beautiful."

"It's brilliant. And 1 can't stop wondering how he could write like this at the time of Mozart and Beethoven."

The development of the theme was made up of two sections of sixteen measures, each consisting of four phrases of sarabande two measures long, all based on the impossible theme. It was impeccable, masterful.

The two friends were silent for a long time, listening to the out-of-tune sound of the rain. Some drops from the squall were dripping on a metal object that had been left on the floor and making an insistent pinging in C sharp. It was irritating.

"This is really something," Bros said after a half hour of reading the seven variations.

"I'm going to publish it right away. This Fischer, without even trying, walks over Brahms and Wagner, goes beyond Mahler and stands before Schonberg. He wants to transform music before its possibilities are even exhausted."

"But he doesn't release it until he's dying."

"He must have been afraid of how people would react."

"He didn't destroy it, though." Pere Bros looked his friend in the eye. "And what if this is a fake? Have you thought that it might be a fraud?"

"That's the first thing 1 thought of, and I've had everything analyzed. The paper and the ink are from then, there's no doubt about it."

"Will you let me play it?"

When, after sundown, he took leave of his friend, he confessed that he was still moved by the memory of the D.96o he'd played at the Konservatorium, and he added in a lower voice and into his ear, My dear Zoltan, why did you give up performing when you're the best? Hmm? Why, when you're my compass?

He hugged him hard, as if he wanted his embrace to explain many other things. Wesselenyi broke free, smiled and said, Look, things happen. And to change the subject he promised that when the book on Fischer came out, he'd send it to him by special delivery wherever he was. If in return he'd read it and comment on it.

Pere Bros poured himself another glass of Veuve Ambal. Someone was knocking impatiently at the dressing room door. He paid no attention. He played B-flat, A, D-flat, B, C over and over on the upright. Three years had gone by since that find in the Vienna Archives, but he knew the theme and the development by heart. Then the door burst open. Pardo, red in the face and making heroic efforts not to explode, closed it behind him.

"What's the game? Madame Grossman says that… asks me to tell you she'd give anything to be able to play like you." Energetically, "She's excited and we have to take advantage of it."

"Tell her I've given my life to be able to play like me."

"No, no, no. No." Being reasonable was giving him a headache. "1'm trying to get her to double our fee for anything in France. Watch what you're doing and be nice to her."

"Get her out of here. Oh, and I'm not going out for the second part."

Pardo looked at how much was left in the bottle, took the glass out of his hands and said in a neutral voice:

"You said that ten times already. Okay, you've messed with me enough. Everybody has stage fright sometimes.

"But we all have a limit. And today 1 reached mine."

"You played beautifully."

"1 died beautifully." He wanted to say that he was sad. He wanted to shout it. But not at Pardo. He wanted to go to Vienna and say, It's over, Zoltan, no more traveling, no more thinking about what might have been; I've finally chosen between music and you. And you've won, in spite of your indifference, in spite of all the hours of work and practice that I'm thowing away, in spite of the sweet praise and applause and honors. That's what he wanted to say, more or less. And he wanted him to say, Oh, good, Peter.

"Why did you play the last sonata first?" burst out Pardo.

"I don't know. It just occurred to me. As if it were an ending. I was very…" His voice changed a little. "Schubert was in the first row. Seat seven."

When he heard this, Pardo gave him back the glass.

"It's better for you to drink. But not too much. Remember that Madame Grossman is outside with a friend of hers. This is important: double the fee. We can put off the reporter until tomorrow."

"I said I'm quitting."

"Having a full schedule this spring depends on little things like, for example, not seeing ghosts, not walking out of recitals in the middle, smiling at Madame Grossman and listening politely to her compliments."

"You can tell her to stuff them up her ass."

"If you don't go out for the second part, I know I'll have a heart attack."

They looked at one another for twenty seconds, long enough for both of them to remember the years of poverty, of endless traveling, of arguments, of earnings, of the days of happiness and tears that bound them together. Pardo pointed to the door and said in an encouraging voice, Shall 1 ask her to come in?

Pere Bros turned away contemptuously and Pardo, pale with rage, left the dressing room, closed the door, smiled broadly at the two impatient women and described, in Dantean terms, the sudden stomach problems suffered by poor Bros-who, meanwhile, was pouring himself more champagne in the dressing room. His hand was shaking. It had been shaking for thirty-eight years, since when he was nine and beginning with Srta. Trullols, until he was forty-seven and raising a full glass of Veuve Ambal. He drank to his health, to all the hours of practicing to be always perfect, inhuman, warm, human, brilliant, forceful, convincing, intense, subtle, tender, impeccable; always, always, always, always. So many hours with his nose to the grindstone, for nothing, now that he was saying Enough in a little room with a mirror surrounded by a thousand light bulbs, in the middle of a recital. So many hours of practicing and being afraid of Schubert. Get him out of here, he said softly to the encouraging glass. Kick him out. It's not right!

The intermission was ending, and Pardo came into the dressing room silently, sat down and waited for some kind of violent reaction. But Bros didn't even look at him; he just sat and drank. So Pardo decided to go on the attack.

"So all of a sudden you can't deal with stage fright?"

"You don't have to live with it; 1 do." Raising his voice, "Did you see Schubert?"

"There's no Schubert in the hall! 1 went and looked, 1 swear."

"He probably went out to the lobby to smoke a cigar. 1 can't go out if he's listening to me."

"You can't just turn your back on music!"

"I'm not turning my back on music. Just on performing."

"Listen, we can talk tomorrow about quitting, and we'll do whatever you say… But today… You have to finish the recital. And then, Madame Grossman."

"No."

"And you're going to quit like this, in the middle of a concert?"

"Yes. I don't even enjoy practicing because I'm thinking about how awful the concert's going to be. 1 can't stand so much stress. I've never been able to deal with so much stress."

"You've always gotten through things. Always!" Begging, "Isn't that guarantee enough?"

"1 make music to be happy. Playing in public stopped making me happy a long time ago. And today…"

"Who says music is supposed to make you happy?" Pardo interrupted him, enraged. "It doesn't make me happy either, and 1 put up with it."

Bros looked at his face: Pardo wasn't being funny. He watched his agent, who hated champagne, pour himself a glass and he understood why he was doing it.

"Don't worry, I'm not trying to get drunk. I'm making this decision with a clear head."

Pardo realized that this crisis was different from the others and decided not to use the curses and insults he had on hand. He pretended to take a sip of champagne and put down the glass. Since Bros was just looking at him in silence, he began to enumerate: First, you don't know how to do anything else than perform.

"I can rest. 1 can give lessons."

"Second, you don't have any fucking idea how to give lessons. You've never earned your living by giving lessons; you've never had enough patience to give lessons."

While Pardo was going on to number three, Bros thought that that wasn't true, for a few weeks he'd given lessons to his neighbor, a very sweet girl, very… 1 don't know, very.

"Are you sure it doesn't bother you when 1 practice?"

"No! We like it. When you…, my mother and 1… we even stop talking, so we can hear better. And we love to talk." In a lower voice, "What 1 don't like is when you're away."

"But then it's quiet. This time I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks."

"Don't go."

"What?"

"No, 1…"

The girl looked right at him, with her bright amber eyes, beautiful, and wondered why he wasn't even aware she existed, a man so… so…

"Don't worry. When 1 get back we'll do some extra classes."

"No, that's not what 1 meant. It's…"

"You have talent. But you should look for a better teacher. Somebody organized, who knows how to give lessons. I'm very…"

"1 want to be… study with you. Only you. Always."

His only student. One day when he was feeling very weak and very alone he told her how he suffered before every concert. And she, with those eyes, understood him in silence and didn't dare to take his hand. They were strange, those lessons, irregular but intense sessions that went on for almost three years. They ended when he changed apartments and stopped thinking about the girl and the lessons. Until today. What was her name?

Then the bell rang and Pardo stood up, very tense, having gotten to number five, which had to do with professional responsibility and our long friendship and you can't do this without jeopardizing the whole thing and if you'd gotten married you'd be a lot more stable. He gave up on the speech and said in a neutral tone:

"The first bell. You should…"

Pere Bros made a gesture that could have meant anything. Pardo decided that maybe it meant Fine, l give up, l agree. So Bros wouldn't feel pressured, he left him alone in the dressing room.

Pere Bros knew the number of the Musikwissenschaftzentrum by heart from the many, many times he'd opened his address book, spent a few minutes thinking, 1 don't have any right to interfere, but now that he's lost Anna, L., and the many times he'd dialled the number and hung up before the secretary answered and said, What can 1 do for you, Herr Bros.

"I want to talk with Herr Wesselenyi. It's urgent."

He wasn't there and she was very sorry. But because it was urgent, she gave him the number of his cell phone and Pere found him somewhere in Vienna, sounding a little distracted: Hey; Peter, what do you want, and he said, No, nothing, just thanks for the book about Fischer. I've only been able to flip through it, but you can tell it's amazing. And he stopped talking to let Wesselenyi express some interest. But he did nothing more than ask the conventional question.

"1 can't play," Pere Bros confessed, finally. "And 1 can't not play." After an uncomfortable silence, "1 think about you a lot. I'm sad, Zoltan."

it made him feel very bad that Wessenlenyi kept his distance and he thought, Why are you always so cold, Zoltan. To get a reaction from him, he said, "1 haven't slept in six months because I'm so upset and 1 need some rest. And you told me…"

Zoltan's answer disarmed him: he asked if they could talk some other time, which made Pere desperate because his friend didn't realize it was now or never. He tried to make him react. "You told me, if music keeps you from being happy, quit music."

"Listen, we'll talk about this, all right?"

Pere searched desperately for a gambit that would keep the conversation going. He found it. "I've seen Schubert."

"Schubert?"

The hesitation that Pere noticed was too long. So long that he felt humiliated and had to say something.

"Fine, fine," he said in a cutting tone, perhaps of surrender.

"Call me some other time, all right?"

"1 love you, Zoltan. With all my heart. Remember that."

He hung up so as not to feel the disappointment of the cold response, and thought, Life is a bitch. The man 1 love is always a thousand miles from my hotel and my desire and he doesn't even know how l long for him. He finished the glass of champagne and waited for the second bell, seemingly resigned.

When the second bell rang, Pardo was saying good-bye to Madame Grossman. When he was free, he went back to the dressing room prepared to drag Bros out if he had to. The room was empty, as if Bros had decided to run away. Pardo felt scared and was seized by a premonition as strong as a battery of heart attacks, which made him even more scared, and he left the dressing room ready to hunt down the pianist and kill him or else to fall on his knees in front of somebody and say he was sorry about whatever they said he should be sorry about. When the third bell rang, he heard applause in the hall. That was odd. He went to the door and opened it a little, to the disapproval of the stage manager, and looked out. People were still rushing in, wondering what the hurry was. Pere Bros was already there, bowing with his eyes shut. Pardo, calmer now, thought that maybe he needed a vacation. And with things moving and one more crisis behind him, he went into a corner with his cell phone because he had to finalize the date for Bros, that nut, to play a recital at the Vatican.

What's going on? thought Amber Eyes. B-flat, A, D-flat, B, C. That's not Schubert. Two seconds later, when the sarabande began, there was a rustle in the hall, accompanied by 1 told you he was crazy, completely nuts; and an offended If I'd known this was going to be modern 1 wouldn't have come, this is a trick; and Do you recognize this, because in the program it says… Hey, I'm here to listen to the three Schubert sonatas from 1828! In the back balcony, Amber Eyes was afraid because the angry man who was saying that Bros was crazy was probably right. Crazy from so much pressure, that only she knew about, her sweet secret, if only she could help him. Whistling broke out on one side of the front balcony, but the polite contingent of the audience managed to silence the protest. Bros was on the second variation, with Wessenlenyi's book open like a score. Then Pardo, who was on the phone ruling out dates and times with Monsignor Walzer, a shadowy and obscure Vatican bishop, became aware of the music he'd been listening to for some time, and his heart lurched because what that son of a bitch Bros was playing wasn't Schubert by any stretch of the imagination. His swearing scandalized his Vatican interlocutor, who was simply trying to make sure he had a pianist for a private recital in the Santa Clara salon. Yes, you can count on that, Monsignor.

The first variation: he'd never heard anything like it, ever. It's not a harmonic development of the theme; it's certainly not a main melody that modulates towards distant tonalities. It's… Mein Gott, I would never have thought anyone could make music like this. The harmonic patterns of the melodic theme and the melodic patterns of the harmony are woven together. How strange. There's no tonic, no relationship between major and minor, just music floating in the air. Mein Gott. What ugly and strange perfection. But… and my sonatas? Why doesn't he play the first sonata from 1828?

Second variation: the knowlegeable members of the audience were exchanging even more worried glances, and a deep, clear voice from the thirteenth row could be heard saying, 1 don't know what this guy's playing, but it's bullshit.

Third variation: three people get up. Rows four and eight. They stand there for a few seconds to express their disapproval of this lack of respect for Schubert. This bold move prompts seven or eight other people to stand up, in various places in the hall. For a few seconds it looks as if the representatives of a majestic parliament are voting in the traditional way. But Pere Bros wasn't counting the votes because he was deeply involved with the fourth variation, a movement that imitated four voices, almost a minuet. And many of the representatives called for silence and asked the other members of the chamber to refrain from rowdiness and listen, because it was beautiful. It wasn't Schubert, true, but it was beautiful.

By the fifth variation, the board of the Auditori was meeting in room 2A of the lobby with Bros's agent to talk about what the hell you can do when these things happen. Thus they came to the seventh variation, fairly short, very pianistic, a recapitulation, very showy and, yes, it was something you just had to listen to.

"Does anybody know what this is?"

"No idea. But it's very nice."

"1 once heard something like this by Berio."

"No, come on. Ligeti. It's Ligeti, but 1 don't know what."

"Pardo, isn't there anything you can do about this?"

"What do you want me to do? Go out on stage and drag him off?"

"You think it's Ligeti?"

"Yeah, or somebody like that."

"I'm going to sue him. For breach of contract."

"Are you okay, Pardo? Here, hold him up… Call a doctor,

right away."

"Christ, what a day."

Ligeti or somebody like that, or whoever it was, went right from the last variation to a repetition of the theme, almost like a shy and delicate joke, and the story ended as it had begun. And at the end, the five notes of the theme, naked, sad, and silence.

Pere Bros got up, pale from audacity and exertion. But it was a thousand times easier to play something that wasn't Schubert in front of Schubert. Now he could look right at him. All of a sudden he realized that Schubert, in seat seven, was on his feet and applauding enthusiastically. The audience, though, was silent. Franz Schubert smiled while continuing to applaud and Bros noticed that he had a tooth missing. Still no sound from the audience. All of a sudden, from the back balcony, far away, there was amber clapping, energetic and sweet at the same time, as if that person, whoever it was, wanted to express sympathy with the invisible and silent Schubert, or with Fischer's daring, or perhaps with the mad painist. Little by little more applause broke out until, like a shower that turns into a downpour, the entire audince was on its feet. Pere Bros held up the book, with the name Fischer in big letters, made sure that Schubert was still applauding, and left the stage for the last time without looking back.