Body & Soul (36 page)

Anson Roeg got out first, followed by Claude and then Fredericks, who stretched his arms and took a couple of deep breaths before going inside.

Mrs. Chatfield and her assistants greeted Fredericks effusively and led the way to the green room, where Popkin and a number of others immediately surrounded him. Claude felt Anson Roeg take his elbow and lead him to an empty area in the corner. Couch, table, a few chairs. They sat down.

"He'll get rid of them in a few minutes," she said, retrieving a silver case from her purse. She withdrew a small brown cigar and held out a silver lighter to Claude. He accepted it and took a moment to figure out how it worked. Flashbulbs were going off. Claude lit her cigar.

"Thank you," she said, and took back the lighter. She leaned back on the couch and sent a thin plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling.

"Is it always like this?" Claude asked.

"This is nothing," she said calmly.

Eventually a buzzer sounded and the room began to clear. Fredericks came over, with Popkin at his elbow. "So you do the Brahms now. That is, what, fifteen minutes?"

"Very close," said Popkin. "You will get two buzzes, then you come." He reached out and caught a young man in a white coat by the sleeve, never taking his eyes off Fredericks. "You would like something? Coffee? Tea? Perhaps the lady? Something?"

"A pitcher of water and three glasses," said Fredericks.

Popkin nodded to the young man, who went to get it. "Fine," he said. "I see you out there." He caught Claude's eye. "You do good."

Claude didn't know if it was a prediction or an instruction, but he thanked him anyway and reflexively touched the wooden cross on his chest, under his shirt.

Finally they were alone, sitting three around the table with their glasses of water before them. Fredericks folded one leg over the other as, very faintly, they heard the beginning of the Brahms.

"You know that stock he talked me into," Fredericks said, "the pet-food company? It went down four points."

Anson Roeg tapped some ash into the ashtray. "People must have heard you bought it."

"Exactly." He gave a small laugh. "If I want it to go up, I should sell."

Claude started to run down the Mozart in his head, repeating the first phrase several times. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the sense memory of playing the music, of the sound of it, the feel of the keys, the changing positions of his hands. He was a hundred bars in
when suddenly he lost the thread. His eyes snapped open. He stood up and began to pace, humming to himself to find the place where he'd stumbled.

"Claude," Fredericks said, "sit down."

"What?"

"Come back and sit down."

Claude obeyed, noticing that Anson Roeg was rummaging in her bag again. What was that? A deck of cards?

"Stop thinking about the music," Fredericks said. "Do not think about the music before you go on. It's too late. There is nothing to be gained, and it will only make you nervous."

Anson Roeg was shuffling the cards.

"Do you know how to play gin?" Fredericks asked.

"Yes." Al had taught him.

"Fine. We play a half cent a point. You may deal, my dear."

"I'm two dollars up on paper," Roeg reminded him.

"I know. Now make a column for Claude."

And so they played gin rummy, in silence except for the odd remark. While Claude was shuffling—the soft sound curiously reassuring—someone opened the door, peeked in, and closed it quickly. Claude dealt.

When the buzzer sounded Fredericks said, "Wait a minute. Let's play this out, we're close." He threw down a four of hearts. Roeg picked it up, rearranged her hand, and discarded a seven of clubs.

Claude picked up the seven. "Knock for two," he said, placing the fan of his hand on the table, upside down so they could see it.

"A club run?" Fredericks laid down his cards. "But you sloughed the jack!"

The young man in the white jacket opened the door, stepped in, and held it open. "Gentlemen," he said.

Fredericks and Claude stood up.

"I'll be in the wings," Anson Roeg said. "I have to tally up the score."

Fredericks and Claude followed the young man down a corridor.

"Why did you slough the jack?" Fredericks asked.

"Well, the queen was dead."

"It was?"

"The second or third discard," Claude said. "Really. I should have remembered that."

It was bright at the end of the corridor. They paused for a moment.
The stage was flooded with sunlight, angling in from over the top of the hill. The orchestra, and Popkin, were in shirtsleeves.

"Off with your jacket, Claude." Fredericks removed his own and dropped it to the floor without looking. Claude did the same. Then they walked onstage.

Claude glanced briefly at the audience—what seemed like thousands of people making sharp movements that he eventually recognized as clapping—and then found the piano. With a kind of tunnel vision he stared at the instrument, which grew larger as he approached. It filled his consciousness as he sat down, and then, almost with a click, he saw Popkin, Fredericks, the orchestra, and Eva staring at the floor. His ears opened as the applause faded. He took a deep, sighing breath and the music started, instantly there, like some enormous flower blossoming out of nothing in a nanosecond, big as a house. The air was thick with music.

After the staccato chords of the tutti, after the heartbeat rest of silence, when he and Fredericks laid in their double trills as one, together shaped the grace notes and announced the unison E-flat with the same firm touch, after the bar and a half of descending sixteenths flowing like grains of sand in an hourglass, Claude removed his hands from the keyboard and listened to Fredericks play the next eleven bars. It was clear, spirited, and apparently effortless. Claude found himself playing the response, an octave below, with willful concentration, consciously controlling the sense of euphoria he felt building in his breast. It was launched, it was loose, it was free, and they would play right through to the end, a great sailing ship running with the wind.

Trading off with Fredericks, he felt almost outside himself, listening to the magic flow, the shift of colors, hearing the pulse, watching his hands do their amazing work. As he shaped the music in his mind and played it, he felt Fredericks shaping and playing right along with him, their souls joined in harmonious enterprise, like two old friends who can talk without words, who can communicate a thought even before it has fully emerged, because the same thought is nascent in the other. Claude knew he was on the stage, at the piano in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, but at the same time he was somewhere else, somewhere he could not describe even to himself—nor did he have the faintest urge to, so heavenly did it seem. Watch it! Watch it! Listen! Concentrate! Here it comes. Here it is.
This!

***

They took their bows facing full into the sun. Claude watched Fredericks from the corner of his eye and copied his movements. The applause from the benches and the hillside sounded like heavy rain, and he could hear the orchestra behind him tapping their music stands. Popkin embraced Fredericks, and then Claude, and the two pianists went into the wings.

Anson Roeg stood with a towel in each hand. She gave one to Fredericks and tossed the other to Claude. "You're drenched," she said to Fredericks. "It must be a hundred degrees out there."

"Thank you, my dear." He wiped his face and neck, and opened a couple of buttons on his shirt. He looked at Claude. "I hardly noticed, it went so well, I thought. How about you?"

"I wish it had gone on forever," Claude said.

"It was exquisite," Roeg said. "There's no other word."

"I wonder if there's a shower in the green room bathroom." Fredericks held the front of his shirt with two fingers and flapped it in and out.

"No," Roeg said. "We'll have to wait till we're back at the inn."

"Well then, let's get through this as fast as we can. I don't like to see people like this."

As they walked down the corridor various people backed up against the walls to let them pass. They were all clapping. Fredericks nodded and waved his hand as he went by. Someone touched Claude on the back and said "Bravo."

More flashbulbs as they entered the green room. People thrusting programs to be signed. Claude followed Fredericks's lead and scribbled his signature on a dozen or so.

"Where's Popkin?" Fredericks asked.

"He's coming," Roeg said.

The short man with the white beard who had asked Claude about the Beethoven stepped out of the crowd and shook hands with Fredericks. They put their heads together and talked for a moment, but Claude could hear only the end of the conversation, when Fredericks invited the man to come back to the inn with them.

Suddenly Popkin was there, his dewlapped cheeks flushed, his eyes bright. "Wonderful," he said to Fredericks. "A joy! I've never heard it better. I hope the children did not get in your way."

"They did well," Fredericks said. "My thanks, and tell them I said so."

"Here is the wunderkind!" Popkin hugged Claude. "Very good, very good. He helps me also prepare the orchestra. But you played like an angel!"

"Thank you, sir." Claude repressed the urge to wiggle free, and was finally released. "And I'll remember about the octopus."

"Time to go," said Roeg.

They made their way slowly through the crowd, signing a few more programs, and went out the rear door. A small crowd applauded as they emerged, and opened up before them as they went to the Rolls.

Suddenly an astonishingly loud, high-pitched whistle cut through the air. Claude turned his head to see Eva, twenty yards away, removing her fingers from the corners of her mouth. She stood on the bottom step of an orange school bus. She put one hand on the door frame, jutted her hip in a little vamp, and blew him a kiss. Blushing and laughing at the same time, Claude returned the gesture. Eva smiled and disappeared.

"Mystery solved," Roeg whispered to him as they entered the Rolls.

It was blessedly quiet inside the enormous automobile. Claude and the gentleman with the white beard sat on the jump seats.

"Claude," Fredericks said, "this is my manager, Otto Levits."

"Sir," Claude said as they shook hands.

"Perhaps if you have a few minutes," Levits said, "after you clean up. I'd like to discuss something with you."

O
N THE SIDEWALK
in front of the music store, Weisfeld looked up at the gray, overcast sky. "It's getting darker. Maybe I'll roll the awning out a couple of feet." He reached for the iron pole.

"Here," Claude said, "let me do it." He took the pole, connected it, and rolled out the awning.

"Good," Weisfeld said. "I just did the windows a couple of days ago." He flipped the sign on the door to read back soon and tried the lock. "So," he said, turning to Claude, "you're sure. You've made up your mind."

"Yes."

"I didn't talk you into anything? It's your life, after all." He put on his beret.

"It's what I want to do. It makes sense." Claude saw the cab coming even before the quick toot of the horn. "Here she comes."

Emma Rawlings pulled up at the curb and they got in the back.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Rawlings," Weisfeld said. "It's nice to see you."

"My pleasure," said Emma. "I'm gonna have to put the flag down, but don't get nervous, because it doesn't count."

"Whatever you say."

"Al couldn't come?" Claude asked.

"Nope. They're welding a boiler at his building, so he has to be there."

She drove west to Madison Avenue and then took a left downtown. The hack stand in front of the office building was empty and she pulled into it. "Just like last time," she said. It began to rain, and people on the sidewalk moved in close to the buildings, edging around each other as they walked. Weisfeld, Emma, and Claude got out of the cab and entered the building.

Going up in the elevator, Emma ignored the operator and asked Weisfeld, "I guess it must feel pretty good, huh?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, you were right about him. The stuff he did up in the country? You were right from ten years ago, practically. It must feel good."

"Hey," Claude said. "I'm standing right here."

"It feels good." Weisfeld nodded with a small smile.

"You deserve it," she said.

Claude was relieved when the operator pulled the gates open.

Nothing had changed. Mr. Larkin's eyes were still clear and blue, and he had not aged at all. Everything in the room was exactly as it had been. Otto Levits rose from his chair at the conference table to be introduced to Emma, and they all took their places.

"Claude," Larkin said, "first of all my congratulations on what I've heard was a brilliant performance."

"Thank you."

Larkin paused to arrange some papers. "We are here, as you know, to formalize the agreement establishing Mr. Levits"—he gave a nod to the bearded man—"as the manager and agent in matters musical for Mr. Rawlings." Another nod. "I understand from Maestro Fredericks, Mr. Weisfeld, and Mr. Levits that a good deal of discussion about Claude's future has taken place, and that there has been, shall we say, a meeting of the minds. Is that your understanding, Claude?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I take it that you have yourself thought long and hard about these matters?"

"Ever since—" Claude stopped himself. "I was going to say ever since the concert, but really, we've been talking about it for a long time." He looked at Weisfeld. "I mean we have, really, thinking back."

"Yes," said Weisfeld.

"Good." Larkin gave an encouraging smile. "It seems to me this might be a good time for Claude to share his thoughts with us, now
that we're all here together. I admit to a certain personal interest. Just very informally, if you will."

The room fell silent. Everyone looked at Claude, even his mother. He resisted the nervous urge to begin talking immediately, and watched the rain on the window for a moment, gathering his thoughts.

"The most important thing to me is music," he said. "And the more music I do, the clearer that is. I want to play and I want to compose. Music will never run out. It'll never disappear. So that's what I want to do with myself." He felt a slight lump in his throat and coughed into his hand. "But I also think," he said, talking a bit faster, "that to become the best musician I can be, I have to do other things besides music. I'd rather go to college, if I can, than to conservatory. I want to read, and find out about stuff, all kinds of stuff." His eyes found Weisfeld's. "It isn't because I think I'd be a freak if I did nothing but play. I don't think I'd be a freak, as a matter of fact. I mean, I know it can happen, but I don't think it would happen to me. But I'm thinking of Ivan, you know, and how much fun it was. Maybe in college there'll be something like that."