Body & Soul (18 page)

The wind had picked up. It blew through the tunnel of the arcade with a hollow moan, pulling at the sleeves of his army-surplus jacket. He heard the Lexington Avenue express screeching to a stop down below. As the people came up the stairs, he got to his feet and went out with them. Dodging buses, cars, cabs, and a speeding, rattling newspaper truck, he crossed over to the southeast corner. A small crowd had gathered near the spot where he'd once shined shoes.

His mother, standing on a box, her back to the wall, was addressing the crowd. She held a thick bundle of leaflets under her arm and passed them out as she spoke. He saw her great jaw moving, and the flash of her teeth, but in the wind he could not hear what she was saying until he elbowed his way in.

"...being bled by corruption. Oh sure, the building inspectors, the fire inspectors, the cops, the sanitation workers, we all know about that. You'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know about that." Her face was blotched in various shades of red, and her eyes bulged. She spoke in a strong voice and threw some spittle. "But City Hall gets away with murder. The mayor is a jumped-up crook. Here are the facts, here are the names, the dates, and the places of just a few of the recent outrages." She offered the sheets of paper. A couple of people took them, one man without even looking as he strode past, but most did not. Some pages blew loose and rose in ever-ascending arcs out over the avenue. "Kickbacks from asphalt dealers. Illegal bids from favored service companies. Payoffs from gambling and prostitution direct to the mayor's office. It's all here." It began to rain. A cloudburst, sudden and heavy. People moved away. "Tampering with voting machines in four districts, and that's from the
Herald Tribune,
" she shouted. "Judges bought and paid for, all over this city. Contracts auctioned off in the political clubs. It's all here." She held out leaflets, but the people were gone, and those moving by with their coat collars turned up were almost running. She was wet, her hair plastered down and water running over her face. She held out a limp leaflet to Claude. "It's all here. Take it."

Claude moved forward. "It's me."

She looked at him, but she didn't see him. It was like the moment before she had turned on the man at the Hack Bureau. "Unless the people act to stop—"

"It's me!" he shouted. "It's me!"

She looked at him, and then very quickly to the left and the right. She stepped down from the box and picked it up. "You take the flag."

There was a small, cheap American flag beside her, leaning against the wall. The gold paint on the pointed arrow on top of the dowel had started to run. He picked up the flag. "What's this? Where'd you get this?"

"City ordinance," she said. "You need a flag."

She mumbled to herself as they walked through the rain. He offered
to take the leaflets, but she pulled them against her breast. Her behavior had grown increasingly strange over the past few months, but now, at this particular moment, he was calmed by the sight of her—a big, strong woman completely absorbed in her crazed mission, doomed to failure, and yet powerful in her single-mindedness. She seemed indestructible.

"Benzedrine," said Mr. Weisfeld. "I talked to Mr. Kaminsky, the pharmacist at Whelan's. That's what's in some of those inhalers. So if you put all of it in your coffee and drink it down like that, it can stop your heart. Just like that your heart stops. It was an accident."

"But why did he do it? Why did he drink it?"

"He thought it would wake him up. Benzedrine is a stimulant. He had a bad heart, probably."

Claude had been terribly worried for days about running away from the scene. He'd hidden in the back room for a while, convinced that the police were looking for him, perhaps in concert with the FBI (Mr. Burdick knew all about him). So filled with guilt and mounting dread that he couldn't practice, couldn't sleep, and could barely eat, he'd finally gone to Weisfeld and confessed.

"Look," Weisfeld said now, as they sat at the counter sorting out cellophane packets of guitar strings. "I called them, I talked to them."

"Who?"

"The Eighty-third Precinct. The police. Sergeant Boyle, a nice man, very understanding. They don't need to talk to you. They're not looking for you. I explained you got scared and just ran. You know what he said? He said in your shoes he would have done the same thing. A dead person is scary."

Claude felt a flush of relief, as if constricted valves hidden away deep in his body had suddenly opened all at once and he was back to sweet normalcy. "I wasn't scared of him."

"They said he was a drug addict."

"It wasn't him. He was just dead and it wasn't scary like in the movies when they—he just stopped," Claude said, interrupting himself. "Like a puppet, and you cut all the strings, and it falls. It was later, when I was watching from the door, everything got weird. I don't know."

Weisfeld nodded. "You had a shock. It was so fast it took you a little while to catch up with it. I know about this." He paused, tilted his head
back, and closed his eyes. "Somebody dies. We want to think it means something. We insist that it means something. But essentially it doesn't. It's meaningless, a meaningless mystery. You put it well. The strings are cut. That's it. The end."

"He was right in the middle of saying something."

"Deathbed speeches in novels. The soprano bares her soul and collapses on the divan. Citizen Kane and his Rosebud. That's what we want, I guess. Some message, some meaning expressed in the last moments. What better time for it all to make sense than at the end? But it doesn't make sense." He opened his eyes. "The last moments are the same as any other moments. There is no special wisdom." He looked at Claude with a faint smile. "That's what you saw in the Automat."

"When I try to remember what it felt like—it got sort of dark—it was me that did it, it was really me. The weird feeling."

"Sure," Weisfeld said.

"So he's just dead and that's all there is to it."

"Correct."

"He shouldn't have put that stuff in his coffee." In a moment of daring, Claude said, "You've seen people die."

"Oh, yes. Quite a few. But we'll talk about that another time. What did your mother say?"

"I was going to tell her. I started to, but she was mad about something. She's acting awfully strange. She doesn't seem to hear when you tell her something, like she's listening to something else."

"That's interesting." He stroked his mustache. "Give me a for instance."

He had not seen Mr. Fredericks for some months when he received a letter of invitation (mailed to him in care of Weisfeld's Music Store) for the evening of the fifteenth. He had never received a letter before. A large square envelope of heavy cream-colored paper, and inside a single sheet of paper, folded once, on which Fredericks had written with a thick-nibbed pen. Claude was to wear his best suit and wait outside the shop, where he would be picked up at seven o'clock for "an evening of adventure."

The boy posted himself fifteen minutes early, standing with his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in his excitement. The columns of the elevated obscured his view of the avenue, so that the cars and taxis emerged suddenly, lights blazing, to
rush past. Mr. Bergman closed and locked the gates of his pawn shop, shaking them to make sure they were secure. An old man bent over with asthma, he sometimes came in to gossip with Weisfeld or to get an opinion on an instrument.

"So what's this?" he said when he saw Claude. "It can't be a funeral this time of day. Maybe the Stork Club?"

"I don't know where I'm going."

"But fancy, whatever it is."

"They're taking me someplace."

Wheezing, the old man glanced up at the windows above the music store, where Weisfeld lived in an apartment Claude had never seen. "Aaron?"

"No. One of my other teachers."

"Aaron should get out more. He's still young enough. It's not healthy." He walked away.

From the darkness under the el a white cat streaked onto the sidewalk and disappeared into a pile of crates in front of D'Agostino's Fruits and Vegetables.

The car was suddenly there at the curb. For all its size—wide, tall, with enormous headlights and a massive grille topped by a Winged Victory—it had arrived without a sound. The chauffeur emerged, came around the front of the car, and touched the brim of his cap.

"Good evening, Master Rawlings."

"It's you."

"Yes. I do the driving, usually." He reached out and opened the rear door of the car. Claude entered, and the moment it closed behind him with a soft click he was enveloped in silence, the scent of leather, tobacco, and perfume. The compartment was so large it felt like a room. Mr. Fredericks and the woman from the balcony sat deep in the rear seat. They were dressed in identical clothes, something like the tuxedos of the men in the Automat, but simpler. Fredericks nodded and Claude sat on an upholstered bench, facing them.

"Claude," Fredericks said, "this is my dear friend Anson Roeg. She is a writer." His arm was extended across the back of the seat, and he lowered his hand to touch her shoulder. "This is Claude Rawlings, my dear, the best pupil I've ever had.
Un enfant, mais quant a la musique il a une connaissance extraordinaire.
"

Claude felt a flush of pleasure at Fredericks's praise. As the woman leaned forward, her long pale face came into the light, serene and
beautiful. He thought, as she reached out, that she wanted to shake hands, and so he moved forward and reached out himself, but she cocked her wrist upward and presented her palm. He automatically followed her gesture and their hands came together, palm to palm, finger to finger.

"We are the same size," she said, then broke contact and leaned back. At that moment he felt the car begin to move. Her hand had been soft, the gesture itself abruptly intimate.

"I'm delighted you could come," Fredericks said. "I've missed you. My eight o'clock is now a certain Mr. Du Pont, who plays like a typist. It's no way to start the day, I can tell you."

"That exercise for jumps really works," Claude said. "I wanted to tell you."

"What exercise is that?" she asked.

"Take any two-part counterpoint from Bach," the boy said, "and play it in octaves, in both hands."

"At the original tempo," Fredericks added. "You are continuing theory and harmony with Mr. Weisfeld, I presume? Give him my regards."

"Composition too," Claude said.

"Ah, composition. Yes, of course."

Bars of light drifted across the ceiling of the compartment, sometimes angling down briefly to catch one or the other of them in the back seat. Claude looked out the window and realized they were driving down Fifth Avenue. "Where are we going?"

"Carnegie Hall," Fredericks answered.

On Fifty-seventh Street they joined a line of limousines and taxicabs, moving forward bit by bit until they pulled to the curb in front of the hall. The driver got out.

"Well, I know Wolff is good," Anson Roeg said, "but what about the music? Is he going to play anything?"

"The 'Hammerklavier,'" Fredericks said.

The door opened and suddenly it was bright and noisy. Claude hopped onto the sidewalk. People streamed out of the night toward the broad steps, ticket scalpers shouted, small groups of elegantly dressed men and women gathered at the columns, looking out through the floodlit air at the converging crowd. Anson Roeg stepped from the car, followed by Mr. Fredericks, who said something to the driver and then walked quickly, almost running, to the entrance. Claude was instantly
aware of people looking at Fredericks, their faces turning to watch him. A large woman in a cape and tiara nudged her companion. Someone waved. Two or three people even started to approach him, but he was too swift, making directly for the central doors. Roeg was right behind him. Startled, Claude ran after them, not catching up until he was inside, past the ticket taker, who nodded as he went by.

A tremendous din. People laughing and calling to each other. Some of the women very shrill, excited, almost screaming. It was uncomfortably warm and close. The crowd seemed to part just enough to let Fredericks through. He was still moving fast, up the stairs, past the usher with a wave of his hand. Claude snatched the offered program and followed them into the shadowed calm of the box.

"Shut the door," Fredericks said, whipping the handkerchief from his sleeve and touching his brow. Claude obeyed.

There were four chairs. Fredericks took one in the rear. "You two sit in the front."

Claude sensed an instant of hesitation in Anson Roeg. He waited until she picked a chair, and then sat down in the other. He placed his hands on the red velvet banister and took a deep breath. His heart was beating so hard he could feel the pulse under his chin. Roeg, very close by his side, emanated the scent of lemon and tobacco.

The stage was empty except for a long, black, highly polished grand piano. In contrast to the darkness of the stage, the orchestra was filled with color and movement, row upon row of women in bright costumes of every hue and texture, the pale blue dazzle of jewelry, the white flash of arms and necks. It was like some huge impressionist painting sprinkled with the black points of the men in their tuxedos, still as ink in the larger swirl of color.

"Where did you get that suit?" Roeg asked, leaning her head even closer.

Claude could not remember for a moment. "Bloomingdale's."

"I like it," she said. "Do you like it?"

"I guess. I just asked the guy for a suit. It was in the basement and they didn't have very many. He picked it out."

"I see." She nodded. "
Trouve.
"

Claude thought of checking the label, but decided not to risk it. "That's it.
Trouvé,
" he said.

The house lights dimmed and the crowd noises imploded into tense silence. From stage left—opposite the box in which Claude sat—a
figure emerged and strode to the piano, making no acknowledgment of the great wave of applause that greeted him. Lank blond hair fell to his shoulders and his eyes glittered with unnatural intensity. He sat, sweeping back the tails of his coat, and regarded the keyboard. A single muted feminine cough from somewhere in the auditorium hung briefly in the air. Victor Wolff swayed gently on the bench for several moments, raised his hands into the air like talons, pounced, and the first great chords of the sonata filled the hall.