Madame Sousatzka (3 page)

Over the years she had saved a little money and was able eventually to put down a deposit on the three-storeyed letting-house off the Bayswater Road. She changed her name from Süsskatz — it was an obvious mutation — and nailed a brass plate to the door, with the simple inscription, MADAME SOUSATZKA. The change of name doubled the number of her pupils amongst those who sought a foreign caché and gradually her reputation as a teacher grew. She now specialized in prodigies. Marcus would be her tenth current pupil, and the eldest.

It was past three o'clock. Madame Sousatzka had a horror of unpunctuality. It was another fault she had forgiven in Boris. She went over to the window and looked across the square. Mrs Crominski and Marcus were standing against the railings in the centre of the square, looking up at the house. It wasn't the isolated castle Marcus had envisaged. It wasn't in any way different from any of the other houses in the square. It had its equal share of dry rot, damp, bitumen-patched walls; like the others, it shivered on a diminishing leasehold. It was like any other Victorian house that had three years to run and hopelessly faced a full-repair clause. But Marcus was not put out by its appearance. The excitement of seeing Madame Sousatzka again completely overshadowed his concern for how she lived. He tugged at his mother's sleeve and held on to it,
because he didn't want her holding his hand, and they crossed over to the house.

Madame Sousatzka welcomed them both equally and she sat them down in the studio. Mrs Crominski made a quick evaluation of the room's furnishings and decided that her imagined estimate of Madame Sousatzka's way of life was grossly exaggerated. She felt a lot better.

‘First of all,' Madame Sousatzka was saying, ‘it is necessary to forget everything. Everything you learn by your teacher, it is necessary to forget. We start from beginning.'

‘Everything?' Mrs Crominski gasped. ‘Is impossible. After six years with very fine teacher he should start from the beginning?' This certainly wasn't Crominski economics.

Madame Sousatzka decided she might as well nip Mrs Crominski's participation in the bud. ‘Also,' she went on, ‘in the lessons, no mothers. This is by me a rule, a strict rule. Not only for you, Mrs Crominski,' she smiled at her. ‘All the mothers must suffer a little.'

‘You are talking to a woman who knows,' Mrs Crominski warmed to her. ‘About suffering I know plenty.'

Madame Sousatzka didn't want to make an issue of it. ‘I would like the boy twice in a week,' she said. ‘I am very busy,' Mrs Crominski gave a heave of understanding, ‘so only time I am able to give lesson is now, three o'clock punctual Friday, and Saturday ten o'clock. Also punctual.' Mrs Crominski heaved again. ‘Very close, I know,' Madame Sousatzka went on, ‘but each lesson very different. Each lesson we make progress.'

‘Is very long way from Stamford Hill,' Mrs Crominski said. ‘Also I am not allowed to stay in the lesson. Adds up every week to four journeys, to bring and to take.'

Marcus stared at his mother's brown hat. Not that he needed a bait for his anger. Not only was Madame Sousatzka going to give him one free lesson a week, but two, and here was his mother finding fault. He looked apologetically at Madame Sousatzka. He realized suddenly that recently he had spent a lot of time apologizing to people on his mother's behalf.

‘I have solution to problem,' Madame Sousatzka said. She'd worked it all out beforehand. ‘Friday night, Marcus stay here in 132 Vauxhall Mansions.' She announced the address as if it were a stately home. ‘I have a room. Very nice little room. You will see, Mrs Crominski. Later, I show you. I give him supper and breakfast. After the lesson, Saturday, you come to bring him.'

Now Mrs Crominski was herself a generous woman. And she naturally suspected generosity in other people. Apart from that, the prospect of Marcus staying away from home for even a single night disturbed her. He had never been away from her, but her friends had often mentioned that Marcus was in danger of becoming a mother's boy. Perhaps not a bad thing it would be. ‘Is all right that I telephone, every Friday night?' she asked humbly. ‘Simply to talk to him,' she said.

Marcus had expected that his mother would refuse to entertain Madame Sousatzka's suggestion. He was so happy with her timid acquiescence that he tried not to look at her brown hat again. He knew well how it would hurt him.

‘This week, of course,' Madame Sousatzka said, ‘he goes home. We begin next week the two lessons.' She wanted to make some concession in return for Mrs Crominski's agreement. Mrs Crominski was glad for the respite.

‘I wait outside now, for the lesson,' she said standing up. She was being painfully obedient and Marcus felt his love for her killing him. Tonight, on their way home, he'd tell her all about his lesson; he'd hold her hand, he'd kiss her good-night. ‘But you must, you must,' he said to himself, knowing how fickle were his self-made promises.

‘Come,' said Madame Sousatzka, ‘I show you the room for Marcus.'

Marcus was not curious about his room. The thought of two lessons a week, a bed, a breakfast and supper with Madame Sousatzka was already too exciting for him. He felt suddenly that the house and Madame Sousatzka belonged to him; that he had never at any time of his life not known her. He sat down at the piano with a sense of ownership. He was surprised to find a metal elevation on
the loud pedal that facilitated its use for a short-legged player. He'd never seen one like it before. The stool was very low — Madame Sousatzka's last pupil must have been a dwarf — but he found he could twiddle it to a more suitable height. He wound the knobs on full, rising above the keyboard until his feet dangled helplessly above the pedals. And he thought that if ever he could accommodate that stool-height, he would be fully grown. He didn't hear Madame Sousatzka come in, but he suddenly felt her standing behind him. She turned the knobs and he felt himself descending.

‘This height I think is for you,' she said. ‘Is comfortable?'

At last he was alone with her, and frightened. ‘Yes,' he said, knowing that he would have said ‘yes' anyhow.

‘Now we will make a beginning,' she said, sitting beside him. ‘We will start with the scale. C Major.'

‘Which hand?' Marcus asked her. He was staring at the keyboard, afraid to look at her.

‘Only one hand you have,' she said. ‘The right and the left, they are one hand. They cannot work on their own. You understand, my darrlink?'

Marcus trembled. He didn't understand it at all. He could make a circular movement on his stomach with one hand, and pat his head with the other, both at the same time. It was a favourite pastime during geography lessons. He was tempted to prove to her that she was wrong. But he suspected that there was some truth in her theory as far as being a pianist was concerned. He lifted his hands to the keys. She put her hands over his.

‘You must forget everything you have learnt. You want to play for me only with the hands? The hands are nothing, my darrlink. I want in the hands the whole body. When you begin to play, you start in the belly. You must feel it swell, and then the chest, and at last the head, rising, rising.' She paused, her eyes shut, smiling a little. ‘You are now at the top of the mountain, Marcus, you relax, you stretch out the hands, and it begins to play.' Madame Sousatzka opened her eyes and relaxed her body, exhausted, her shoulders drooping, her hands limp in her lap. ‘You understand?' she said after a while. ‘We will try
again.' She put her hand on the top of his head, and pressed down. ‘Now we will climb the mountain together,' she said, ‘rise and push away my hand.'

Marcus lifted his inner body, stretching high, until he could no longer feel her hand on his head. His hands rose involuntarily and without any trembling, he started to play. After one round of the scale, he stopped.

‘Go on, go on,' she begged, ‘to a scale there is no beginning and no end, a scale is a circle that turns around for ever. Pianissimo,' she whispered on the third time round. He took his hands from the keys. ‘Pianissimo, my elephant,' she beamed at him. ‘But you must remember, you will not bring the pianissimo from the fingers. Nothing you will bring from the fingers. Nothing,' she thundered, closing Marcus's little fist in her ringed hand, obliterating it in her grasp. ‘Nothing,' she repeated. ‘They don't know how to do, and who will tell them, these ten poor little worms!'

Marcus felt suddenly sick and he swallowed.

‘And where,' said Madame Sousatzka, pointing to his throat, ‘and where has the swallow gone, my darrlink? Down, down, down,' she gulped like a novitiate mermaid, ‘and it is here,' she prodded his abdomen triumphantly, ‘it is from here that the message will come to the fingers. Open the belly,' she cried, ‘let it get through. The poor message. It struggles!' Madame Sousatzka let fall a home-made tear. ‘Open, breathe, expand, drop shoulder, it comes, it comes,' she screamed, surprised as a successful spiritualist. ‘Let it out, let it out!' At this point she released her grasp on Marcus's hand so that his fingers were free.

This system, in which the abdomen was the seat of piano technique, and the anatomical route by which it reached the fingers, was known as the Sousatzka Method, and cost £1 12s. 11d. an hour. And what's more, she didn't take anybody. Not Madame Sousatzka. Her love and respect for music was unquestionable and she was consequently discriminate in her services. Her pupils were talented, some terrifyingly so; all were children, and most of poor parents. Few of them paid. The price was a mere formality. You had to be worthy of Madame Sousatzka's dedication.

After the lesson, Madame Sousatzka put her hands on Marcus's shoulders. ‘One day,' she said, ‘my Marcus will be the great pianist. Sousatzka will make him. Sousatzka knows. But first, you must be free. Free inside you. Free from all the L.R.A.M.s and all the A.R.C.M.s and the diplomas and the honourable mentions. You will see, my darrlink. But you must work. Only the piano is important for you. The piano and Sousatzka.' She went to the door and called Mrs Crominski into the room.

‘You enjoyed it, Marcus?' she said as soon as she came in. ‘A long lesson you had, but only scales. No pieces.' Marcus was scowling at her hat again.

‘For pieces there is time,' Madame Sousatzka said. ‘Plenty time. Sousatzka will make your son the great pianist, Mrs Crominski. She does not teach the piano, she teaches to breathe, to love, to suffer, to live, to die, even.'

‘All this she teaches for nothing,' Mrs Crominski marvelled at her generosity.

On their way home, Mrs Crominski pumped Marcus about the lesson. But he was silent. He kept his hands in his pockets, and when they had to cross a road, he hung on to her sleeve. He decided that he would never again make any promises to himself unless he could fulfil them on the spot.

When he went to bed that night, he didn't turn his pillow over, but he hid his embroidered name with his hand. He hadn't told her about the lesson; he hadn't held her hand; he hadn't even kissed her good-night. He tossed from side to side, his mind restless and torn. ‘Tomorrow,' he said to himself, ‘tomorrow, I will. Yes, I will. I must, I must.'

The following Friday, Mrs Crominski packed two little parcels for Marcus to take with him.

‘Here, Marcus,' she said, pointing to one of them, ‘is pyjamas. Clean pyjamas. Also slippers, dressing-gown, and tooth brush. Don't forget the teeth. I won't be there to remind you.'

Marcus smiled at her. Without any forethought, he was able to throw his arms round her and hug her. He had rare moments like this one and he regretted that they were so infrequent. ‘Tomorrow night, Momma,' he said, ‘I'll be back here. And then you can remind me. What's in that other parcel?'

Mrs Crominski hesitated. ‘Now, is not much, Marcus, but you take it. Is just a little something to eat,' she pressed on quickly, ‘perhaps you will be hungry. With strangers you never know.'

‘But I'll have supper and breakfast there, Madame Sousatzka said so.'

‘And tea? What about tea? These refugees, Marcus, they are different. Tea they don't have. Believe me, you will be grateful at five o'clock for something. Tomorrow you will say how you enjoy it.'

Marcus took it from her and at the same time wondered how he could conceal it. She was putting on her hat and coat. ‘Tonight I will talk to you on the telephone.'

‘There's no need to ring me up, Momma. Nothing can happen to me. You're going to take me there and you're going to call for me.'

‘Only good-night I should say to you,' she said peevishly. She put the two parcels into her leather bag. She didn't trust Marcus to carry them. She would hand them over at Madame Sousatzka's.

When they arrived at Vauxhall Mansions, Marcus
stretched out his hand for the parcels. But Mrs Crominski wanted to deliver him right inside the house.

‘But Momma,' Marcus said, ‘you can watch me go up the steps. You know I've arrived safely.' For some reason, he wanted to keep Madame Sousatzka and her house to himself.

Mrs Crominski handed over the two parcels. She watched him go up the steps and was disturbed to see the door opened even before he had time to press the bell. She looked at the closed front door for a long time and she felt that it was Marcus who had shut it on her. It was then that she realized that tonight, for the first time, she would be alone in the house. She wanted to stay in Marcus's vicinity until the following morning, but the district frightened her. With its large pillared houses and wide-open streets, it was foreign to her and she feared for Marcus's safety. She began to regret the meeting with Madame Sousatzka and felt that no good would come of the partnership. She felt a sudden longing for Marcus's old teacher, Mr Lawrence, with all the safe letters after his name. But Mr Lawrence himself had said that there was little more he could teach Marcus. She wondered if Marcus would ever feel the burden of his talent as much as she did.