Unspeakable Things (10 page)

For fifteen years, the wives served the Tolstoi Quartet. And for fifteen years, neither the musicians nor their wives questioned that arrangement. The wives of the men were the handmaidens of their music. They cooked the meals, served cakes when the Quartet practiced at home, kept quiet and behaved in an exemplary fashion. The men were clean, well fed, laundered, and their tuxedos and shirts were always spotless. “But,” added the cellist, “it was our fault. We simply didn’t realize.”

“Yes,” concurred the second violinist. “We should have seen it coming. It seems that they were jealous.” There was a thoughtful, regretful silence.

“Jealous!” That dark word cast a somber C minor shadow over the narrative. Herbert’s heart set up an answering vibrato. Dark wood, an ache like Pernambuco—the wood of a cello bow. His breast ached with the word and the overtones resonated throughout his body.

“Yes,” echoed the cellist, “jealous.” The word scraped in the air harshly.

During these fifteen years, the wives slept on the rugs beside their marital beds. For, of course, the musical instruments were in the beds, lying on the connubial pillow, beside their owners, where, all night, the men caressed their instruments and both man and instrument cried out in ecstasy.

“But we thought they had accepted it,” explained the first violinist. “We thought they understood. After all, they said they loved music when we married them.”

“Well,” said the second violinist, “my Gudrun did.” “And my Ludmilla also,” said the violist. “Not really.” The cellist sighed, being realistic. “
Ja,
that is correct,” the men agreed in unison. There was a four-measure rest in the conversation as they contemplated this phenomenon. For the wives finally came to resent their sleeping places on the floor.

One morning, Gudrun and Ludmilla got together to discuss the situation. Gudrun had arthritis, and she no longer wanted to hunker down on the carpet while the violin slept on her fine feather bed, the high one with the big pillows, between the sheets she had embroidered. And Ludmilla also was having problems sleeping; the throaty whimpers of the viola, expressing ecstasy in the middle of the night, disturbed her. And then they spoke to Olga and to Inge.

“This is too much,” the four wives agreed. Olga, it turned out, wanted to smash the belly of the violoncello, which sang with such pleasure its part in the Brahms quintet each time its owner laid his cheek against its smooth wood. And Inge was jealous of the second violin.

One day, while the men were deep in a rehearsal of the Mozart Quartet in F Major, the four women decided for the first time to enter the room. “It is enough!” said Olga.

The four men played on, oblivious. “Do you hear?” demanded Inge. “It is enough, we say.”

“Shh, my darling,” her husband replied mildly, not taking his eyes from his score. “It must wait till we are finished.”

Gudrun spoke for all four women. “No. It can’t wait another moment.”

Alarmed by this, the four men put down their bows and turned their mild, astonished faces toward their wives. “But darlings, we are rehearsing,” protested the first violinist.

“We don’t care about your rehearsals. We are fed up!” the women shouted.

“Tonight we play in the concert hall; tomorrow we talk,” suggested the cellist reasonably.

“To hell with the concert hall!” shouted Olga boldly. “Yes,” said the other wives, emboldened. “To hell with music. To hell with the Tolstoi Quartet. We want to lie in our own beds!”

The men were astonished by this outcry, so astonished that the violoncello gave a small involuntary scrape of the open G string. “Forgive me,” the cellist said to the instrument. “What is it you wish, my darlings?” he continued, turning to the women, who stood, arms akimbo, hair flying out straight from their heads, glaring at their husbands.

“We want to lie in our own beds,” repeated the women. “Where we belong,” Inge added.

“But, my pets, you know this cannot be,” protested the viola player.

“We know no such thing,” said Gudrun grimly.

The instruments began to whimper, but the men stroked their smooth sides. “Shh.” They turned to the women where they stood blocking the light. “But haven’t you been happy? Haven’t we all been happy together? Don’t we exist to serve music?”

“No!” said the wives together. “We hate music.” At that they took up a little chant and began to prance around the room, shouting, “To hell with music. To hell with music!”

The four men looked at one another. They could not imagine such a thing. “But…,” expostulated the viola player. For fifteen years, they had all lived happily together—the players, their instruments, and the wives.

“You can suppose, my dear Herr Doktor,” confided the first violinist, leaning forward into Herbert’s gaze, “how surprised we were.”

“We must continue our rehearsal,” the first violinist had finally interjected. “Dearest women, we will discuss all this later. But for now, we must rehearse, for we have our concert tonight. Please.” He turned to the other players with iron in his voice. “Gentlemen, measure number one ninety-nine.” At the authority in his voice, the wives subsided, and the four men picked up their instruments and resumed, albeit a bit shakily, where they had left off. “Don’t forget the mezzo forte,” reminded the violinist, and they continued the rehearsal.

“But it didn’t go so well,” recalled the violist. “And the concert that night, it didn’t go so well, either,” added the cellist. “No, we didn’t play well. And I broke a string,” he recalled. The instruments were peevish and bad-tempered and the men a little off. “It happens,” the violinist said to Herbert. “But I remember this night particularly.”

After the concert, the men returned to their homes. Their beds were turned down as usual, and after kissing and polishing and again kissing their instruments, they all slept. The instruments lay in the beds and the wives lay meekly on the rugs beside the beds. All seemed to have been forgotten, and soon this episode receded in everyone’s memory.

But the wives stopped going to the concerts. Where before they had occupied a box of their own in the concert hall, chatting among themselves companionably at intermissions, and, during the performances, knitting endless sweaters, even sweaters for the instrument cases, now they no longer attended. All of Vienna wondered what had happened. But it was supposed that perhaps they were tired of hearing the Beethoven late quartets after fifteen years of faithful attendance. Or perhaps, so used were they to exquisite rehearsals of the works at home, they did not need to be present at the lesser fare for the public. Or maybe, more simply, there was more work to be done at home as the Tolstoi String Quartet became more famous.

And at night, after the concerts, it was different, too. “Good night, my dear friends,” each man would call to the others, as they parted at the street corner in front of their houses. “Good night.” But upon their return, the musicians found no warm supper, no clean towels waiting for them. All was silent. At night, when they entered the bedrooms and prepared to wipe down their instruments, they found their wives, already undressed, stretched out on the beds. “But my darling,” each musician protested to his wife. Without a word, but with a look—oh, a look that carried far more than words—the women got out of bed, naked, and stretched themselves upon the carpet beside the beds, where they would, with cold, passionless eyes, observe the men’s caressing of the musical instruments.

“Turn off the light, Ludmilla,” protested the violist. “It is not decent.” But Ludmilla would not; she would watch and watch and say nothing. The musicians laid their instruments upon their pillows and turned off the lights themselves.

And then Olga, or Inge, or Ludmilla, or Gudrun would whisper into the darkness, but in a sforzando, “I hate music!”

“Shh, my little one,” replied the husbands, stroking the bellies of their waiting, faithful instruments. “You do not know what you are saying.”

“I hate music, I tell you.”

The musicians could not respond; they merely grazed the soft curves of the stringed instruments beside them gently with their lips, and the instruments shuddered with a slight ping of the open G string.

“Furthermore,” added the wives, “I hate
your
music!”

The men did not respond to these provocations, but their enjoyment of their instruments at night was slightly curtailed. No longer did the instruments sing out with joy; they sang in furtive whispers now.

“I want to sleep in the bed,” the wives whined all night long. The men could hear them turning over on the floor restlessly. “I want the bed! Listen to me,” they complained. Where before the men went to sleep listening to the strains of the Brahms or Schubert they had just finished playing, now their concentration was disturbed.

“Ach, there is dust here under the bed.” The wives thrashed. “Why did I never see it before? Why must I lie here on the floor looking at dust while she—the musical instrument—gets to sleep on the pillow? On my mother’s sheets. Does she think I am just her maid, hmm?”

The violins, viola, and violoncello said nothing to this unfair attack as the men pressed their cheeks to the smooth necks of the instruments and curled their fingers around them. But the next morning, at the rehearsal, it was hard to feel their customary joy.

Somewhere in the recesses of the first violinist’s flat, four discontented women threw pots around the kitchen, and the sounds of quarrels and complicity filled the air.

“Again,” commanded the first violinist in rehearsal. He had been distracted. “The first movement again.”

“But why?” The second violinist questioned.

“Silence.”

All four men laid their instruments aside. Never in the history of the Tolstoi Quartet had the authority and decision of the first violinist been questioned. “Because…,” the chief finally stuttered. “Because…” He could find no reason. Silently, he took off his glasses and wiped them, laying them on the music stand. All the men looked at one another. “My friends…,” began the first violinist with difficulty. “Oh, my friends…”

“Oh mein Gott!”
the second violinist cried aloud in an agony of remorse and shame. “Forgive me! Forgive me,” “Shh,” said the cellist, laying a restraining hand on his knee. “It is normal,” added the viola player soothingly. “We begin again.”

And then, as if the interruption had never happened, the four men took up their instruments and played the first movement from the top. But the heart had gone out of them, and the instruments sounded dispirited.

“My friends…” The first violinist sighed as the four men put down their bows, and before they could turn the page and essay the second movement. “Nothing is normal,” muttered the cellist. He looked at his watch. It was almost time for lunch, that savory mixture of soups, dumplings, breads, and apple strudel that sustained the men through long rehearsals. “Maybe we should stop for the day.” The four men took out their cloths of red velvet and rubbed down their instruments, which lay inert and silent as little children. For they, too, were depressed at their rendition of the first movement. “It is nothing. We will play it again after lunch,” the men promised one another. But the instruments did not gleam with their usual luster, not even after their rubdowns.

Laying the instruments in their cases, the men did not shut the lids, but left everything as it was, the bows on the music stands, the pages of musical notes still gesturing wildly to them, and headed for the kitchen, where, as usual, they would sit down and eat amid the cheerfulness of scented steam.

As they trooped in single file, the men rubbed their hands in anticipation. “Here we are, my darlings!” sang out the first violinist, as he had every lunchtime for fifteen years. But silence greeted them. The kitchen was tidy and cold. No pots bubbling merrily on the stove. And the enamel kitchen table was unadorned. No tablecloth, no deep white bowls awaiting soup and gratitude. Nothing. The kitchen stood bare and clean and cheerless. Bewildered, the four men looked at one another. What was this? What was this terrible void?

“Where are you, my little dumplings?” the men sang out, as if playing a little game of hide-and-seek. They tiptoed around the room, into the pantry. “Where are you, our little mice? Our dearest ones? Our little strudels? Our sweet little legs of lamb?”

But there was no answer. Clasping their hands in front of them, the men coaxed. “Come out, come out, little darlings. Are you hiding from us, silly ones? Oh, come here our succulent pork chops, our sugar buns.”

Again, nothing but cold silence greeted them. “Now, my dearest ones, be reasonable,” said the first violinist, trying a sterner note. “You know it is lunchtime. And we must eat. This is enough of joking.” Still no answer. The men looked at one another. Their eyes widened and they began to feel frightened. “Come now, our
Lebkuchen,
this has gone on long enough.” The cold kitchen gave no answer, and the instruments, waiting in the parlor, were silent also. A vacancy filled the house.

S
oon all of Vienna knew the wives had gone. But where? That was a mystery. The men continued to practice as before, to give their concerts, and to travel together, sharing rooms. They could be seen walking together as a single body, each carrying an instrument, as if nothing had happened. Only—at night—some joy had gone from their sleeping. Although they lay freely now with their instruments, although beautiful music resounded at full voice from the bedrooms, there was something missing. It did not have the same sweetness, perhaps, as the piano sobs in the muffled nights attended by their wives.

And yet they would have said, if asked, that they were now happy. They could play music freely; they could rehearse until the small hours of the night—no one to complain or shout “I hate music!” at embarrassing intervals.

Only, there was the problem of food. Musicians, like everyone else, must eat. Or maybe they must eat even more. “For after all,” as the violist used to remind his wife at mealtimes, “I must eat for two.” Although some of the good women of Vienna, the same women who swooned over the men and their music in the grand concert hall, left casseroles at the violinist’s door, and although sometimes there would be found a large tureen of good chicken soup, there were many times when the men were obliged to live only on Sacher-Torte and
Apfelstrudel
purchased from the Café Mozart or the Hotel Sacher or one of the establishments that produced good strong coffee and cake. “Man does not live by cake alone,” reminded the cellist jokingly. The men grew nervous and thin.

“Gentlemen, something is missing,” the cellist announced gravely as, after a nearly spirited rendition of the third movement of a Brahms quartet during rehearsal, the men sat back for a moment and returned their instruments to their cases. Without music, the apartment was suspiciously quiet, and each man sighed, remembering the good meals that had awaited them so often at moments like this in the past. “Ach, how I miss Gudrun,” said the second violinist. “And Inge,” said the first violinist. “And I, too, my sweet little Ludi,” added the violist. “And Olga,” the cellist said. The men sighed, and their instruments shifted restlessly, twanging a bit awkwardly as they did so.

“Yes.” The violist sighed. “We must face this. Gentlemen”—he leaned forward portentously—“we are getting stale.”

“We are getting old,” whispered the second violinist. “Old!” Could it be true? Startled, the four men looked at one another in wonder. Yes, these dear faces were now lined. They all wore spectacles now to read the music. Hair, formerly tumultuous and passionate, was now almost white, thinning, and in the case of the cellist, it had gone completely. Their kindly faces were wrinkled, especially at the smile lines. How had this happened? Four ardent young men had, in the course of years, grown old.

“But we have always made beautiful music together,” said the first violinist. “Yes…And we will make more beautiful music.” The men smiled fondly at their instruments and patted them. “Don’t worry, my darlings, you will stay young forever.” The instruments preened, but the men looked at one another again.

Their final concert of the season was approaching, and only a few months were left to prepare it. As if one person, the Quartet regarded one another. “Yes…,” whispered the second violinist, already reading the thoughts of the chief. “Yes…”

“Gentlemen, it is time for the Tolstoi Quartet to change. We must show the world that we are young and alive, that we have not grown tired and stale. The public demands this,” declared the first violinist.

“Music demands this,” stated the violist boldly.

The first violinist leaned forward, impulsively snatching the score of the Schubert quartet they had been playing—a score that, by the way, he knew by heart—off the music stand. Fishing in his violin case, he brought out the program of the season’s concerts. “Gentlemen, we must change. We must be flexible. We must grow.” He waved the program before the men, the program that announced that for its final concert of the season, the Tolstoi Quartet would present the works of Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, and Schubert. “We must change! We must become avant-garde!”

At first, it was difficult, preparing this new secret concert for the public. For one thing, new music was unfamiliar to the musicians’ ears. The instruments shrieked and groaned and protested each note. “Come, my darlings, sing!” exhorted the men to their instruments, and the stringed instruments tried to oblige. In secret, the men had obtained, by dint of many hours in the coffeehouses and dank halls of the conservatory, scores from the new composers—there was one called Schoenberg, there was the upstart Stravinsky, and, of course, already known but heartily disliked, Alban Berg and his music.

From the windows of the little apartment on Strëverstrasse issued forth squawks and shrieks and dissonances that caused even the birds to fly away from adjacent gardens. Eager women, bosoms heaving, hesitated at the front door. Then, clasping their throats and muttering some sort of quick prayer, they turned on their heels, casseroles still in hand, and left.

The practicing continued. The men sawed away at the instruments, trying to make sense of the strange notes. Sometimes they had to stop and wipe their eyes, they were laughing so hard. “I confess, I am bewildered,” declared the first violinist one day, putting down his bow in the middle of the phrase.

“The first violinist bewildered?” At this, all four men looked at one another. Their laughter was an even stranger sound than the music itself, so unused had they become to it, that even a pigeon pecking bread crumbs in front of the sidewalk flew off in alarm.

Soon all of Vienna knew that the musicians of the Tolstoi Quartet, whose wives had left them, were planning a sort of comeback. Or else they had gone quite mad with grief. The postman no longer left letters for them, so strange were the sounds coming from the flat. The gas man, the maid—all stopped coming. Only the Sacher Hotel sent its delivery boy still, a young kid who had no choice but to leave cakes upon the doorstep. Meanwhile, inside, the men practiced this strange new music. The instruments cried aloud in pain.

At night, the men polished their instruments with renewed tenderness, so that even the musical instruments were forced to realize they would not lose anything by cooperating with their masters; no, indeed, they were doubly loved for their willingness to accede to the new positions the men put them in, the contortions of the men’s hands upon their necks and bodies, the strange quivering sounds they uttered from their polished bellies. It was not altogether disagreeable, shivering to Stravinsky, or resonating, perhaps, to a musical sound they had not felt before. The instruments, too, were growing younger, more modern in their outlook. But secretly, all eight of them, men and instruments, still loved their dear old Brahms and Schubert most of all. It was necessary, perhaps, to be able to play Schoenberg, although they all doubted it. Nevertheless, the thought of change—of a second youth perhaps—encouraged them.

The concert itself began badly. As the men took their seats onstage and once again, discreetly, tuned their instruments, there was a sudden interruption. A group of latecomers entered the concert hall from the back and proceeded loudly down the aisle.

The audience turned away from the stage to follow the procession as it moved down the aisle and into the front row, which had been kept empty with a large
RESERVED
notice until that moment. The group entered the row but did not sit down. The audience shuffled impatiently, annoyed. The members of the Tolstoi Quartet froze at their instruments, bows in hand, their heads turned, incredulous. “It’s my Ludmilla,” whispered the violist. “My Olga.” “My Inge.” “My Gudrun,” the others said in turn.

The wives, their hair marcelled, inclined their heads toward their husbands. Their cavaliers in military uniforms affixed monocles to their eyes and took the wives, hands tenderly. The most distinguished, who was the most decorated, turned on his heel and faced the waiting audience. “Heil Hitler.” The audience rose to its feet. “Heil Hitler.”

The leader turned to the musicians onstage and fixed them with his monocled eye. But the Quartet did not move. The musicians sat in silence, waiting. Under their hands, the silky feel of the instruments. Not even a twang of an open G.

The officers took the arms of the wives, and all those in the front row seated themselves. A sigh filled the hall, the bumping of chair backs, and then coughing, lots of coughing.

“Let us play,” said the first violinist quietly to the others. The musicians looked at him in silence; the audience subsided, a large creaky animal. The first violinist drew his bow across the strings. The second violinist entered. Notes quavered in the dusty air of the theater; then the viola came in, and finally the violoncello. The members of the Tolstoi Quartet breathed in unison.

All through the Alban Berg quartet, the audience sat silent, waiting for it to end. There was uneasy applause when it did, and the audience settled back. For now that the “new music” was over, they would be able to relax into their beloved Mozart, perhaps, or Brahms. Enough excitement for one night: they hoped for a little rest.

The first violinist barely gave the other members of the Quartet time to acknowledge the reaction to the Berg. He raised his instrument to his chin, his bow to the strings, and nodded to the others. The instruments wailed and gnashed and cried their way through Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and finally, for the last was the worst, the Schoenberg. Strange sounds pierced the air, and glass fell from the chandeliers throughout the hall.

Indignant rustles rose from the audience. Husbands had been unable to snore peacefully beside their wives throughout this concert. Disturbed, they sprang to their feet. “Can’t one even get a good night’s sleep in Vienna anymore?” one asked. Casting an angry glance at the stage, they left in haste, dragging their horrified—though fascinated—women with them.

The Tolstoi Quartet played on, forgoing the customary intermission. As they played, defiant sounds bubbled in their chests, and their musical instruments laughed dissonantly. The fabric in the velvet curtains gave way and shredded under the impact of strange sounds. The cushioned seats in the house burst open and the stuffing hung out in limp, exhausted trails. The famous concert hall was a wreck.

The Quartet did not hear the genteel screams of dismay, did not see the hands clapped to ears, the hats pulled down. They did not notice the general stampede toward the large outward-swinging doors of the concert hall, the outrage as the Viennese rushed toward the exits and into the streets, running away from new music.

The four officers in the front row sprang to their feet. “Stop this,” commanded the senior one. “I command you to stop this noise immediately.”

The powdered faces of Gudrun, Inge, Ludmilla, and Olga cracked in dismay, and their lip rouge ran from the corners of their mouths. They looked haggard. “Stop,” whispered the women. But the Tolstoi Quartet played on. There was no stopping them. The officers took the women by their arms and firmly raised them to their feet. “Oh!” The four women’s mouths crumpled.

“Come, my dears.” They were dragged from their seats into the aisle, through the hall, and out the door. The women turned back in dismay, looking at the Tolstoi Quartet. But the musicians played, triumph and rebellion rising from the musical instruments that fiddled and scraped and scratched and twanged.

The Tolstoi Quartet played until finally, mercifully, a lone stagehand noticed that they were still there and lowered the tattered curtain. He clapped his hands over his ears as he did this. But it was too late. By the time the curtain, in shreds, was fully lowered, the man was deaf.

The Tolstoi Quartet played till the end of the final movement and put down their bows after the last flourish. They looked at one another, pleased. Alone on the darkened stage, they could still hear glass falling from shattered windows.

“Now, gentlemen,” the first violinist whispered in satisfaction, “it is time for an encore.”

Eine kleine Nachtmusik
filled the now-empty concert hall, the notes falling like sunlight after a hurricane. The men played gravely; the notes were a poultice. They played in harmony, breathing as one man. Warm notes filled the cavities of their chests. The hall restored itself; even the draperies seemed to take on a new sheen. The instruments relaxed under the caressing hands of their owners. The strains of the Mozart soothed. And when it was finished, that music, the men looked deeply into one another’s eyes. “Oh, my friends,” they whispered in unison. “Oh, my children.” They kissed their instruments reverently.

They left the empty stage. The final notes of Mozart hung in the air and blessed them as they walked home.

“Don’t tell me any more,” Herbert said. He already knew the end of the story. The early-morning sunlight had given way to noon as light crept into the front section of the Automat on Forty-second Street, the usual bustle of day. Steam rose from the cafeteria, the yeasty smells of gravy and mashed potatoes. Herbert pulled his scarf closer to his body. Near the entry, Helen, the waitress, seemed to pause in her cleaning, and the counter boy and she stood silently together, wreathed in pale light. That winter New York noon light sang like an organ even within the dim cafeteria. The weak coffee had long ago grown cold. Herbert sighed. He looked at all four men, the question in his eyes. But perhaps it was no longer a question.

“Yes.” The four men looked down, cradling their hands in the folds of their coats. “Next morning they took our fingers,” said the second violinist.

“They wanted our hands,” the first violinist said. “They wanted to take our hands. The whole hand. The fingering hand. But at the last minute, our wives prevailed.”

The morning after the concert, a large black police van drove to the little flats of the Tolstoi Quartet. The musicians were allowed to take their musical instruments with them, but nothing else. The men were questioned gently, but there were no real questions, and no real answers to the questions. It was to be only a partial execution. Their hands were forced in front of them. At the last moment, a woman’s voice cried “No. Not the hand.”