Chapter 13

13.
“Lieder Ohne Worte, Op. 19: No. 6 In G Minor, Andante Sostenuto: Mendelssohn”

On the subject of Felix Mendelssohn, BaiLan became quite shy. Though he had been dead some sixty-two years by the time she graced the world with her presence, she felt an undeniable pull to the Jewish born German composer as if they were some how connected by the cosmos and intertwined like lonely lost radio waves traveling through space. For a girl such as she, a girl with her feet firmly placed on terra firma, which was exactly where a fantasy such as this one belonged, in the great beyond. If she kept it far away, floating through a vacuum, only visible with the help of a large telescope, she herself wouldn’t have to face it, therefore, giving it little to no chance of embarrassing her or making her seem one of any number of negative superlatives that she would have tagged onto some sad soul with a similar affliction.

Her affliction officially began when she was a child of four or five. Her mother, a casual pianist at best, spent years trying to conquer the Song Without Words, not all of it mind you, just the bit she found in a book put together for ballet classes entitled Grand Jeté. The Mendelssohn, (Op.19 #6) was sandwiched in between a watered down Tchaikovsky and an edited Chopin. BaiLan was obsessed with it. A rambunctious child, she had few moments of repose, but if her mother ever wanted her to be still, all she would have to do was sit at the piano and play. LanLan, as she was called before she developed the consternation to resist, would lie flat on her back beneath the family’s white baby grand and let the music form images in the space between her and the underside of the piano, a perfect little universe so well crafted it was almost visible, like a cloud of innocence gently corrupted by the longing the piece inspired.

The notes played by her mother’s hands, were a window into a sublime heartache, so softly cutting, it made her long for something elusive and indescribable. Some days, when she emerged from under the piano, she would appear moody and quiet, perhaps angry at the world for not yielding immediately what she wanted to wring from the trees, capture in the light, and feel in the raised hairs on her arm. After the music there was only blandness, a flat and colorless world that hid possibility elsewhere, down a shadowed street, behind a curtained window, in the exciting and secret live of others; as a child she yearned for it. Wanderlust ignited, she might have followed it too, till an anchor was rested against the gentle curves of her young form.

The cello was a gift from her father meant to keep her in place. The girl was obviously musical, and he felt a cumbersome instrument would do her good, slow her down a bit. But it did more than that; it pinned her to her life like a specimen on a dissecting board. Things were no longer between BaiLan and the world, but filtered first through her cello. It became her ship, her translator, her blanket. It was big and bold, low, smoky and wise. It was male, it was animal, it was Amazon, it was everything she could fathom yet not put into words. It was at home with Dvorak, Faure, Saint-Saens, or in those days, Bach and Haydn, but happiest, she knew, with Mendelssohn.

One day after emerging from under the piano, she asked her mother to see a picture of the man who wrote the Song Without Words. She was six at the time. They went to the library, and within the pages of a dusty tome, saw him for the very first time. Roman nose, sad gray-green eyes, thin face, she etched his image on the inner lining of her memory. When she was older she would go back to the library, steal that very picture from that very book and frame it. It lived by her bed for years. When she was alone she would stare at it and imagine a gray-green meadow consumed by a longing for spring. She would see him there, waiting for her.

But alas poor Felix, he would wait forever as the years turned LanLan the dreamer into BaiLan the pragmatist. She was she exiled from the garden and made aware of her nakedness by time, teachers, and so called maturity, until what remained was created in classrooms, mirrors, expectations, and what was forged under the piano lay dormant in some dusty back catalogue probably growing mushrooms, colonies of them, like universes.

All of this was forgotten on purpose, but the one thing that makes it relevant--well, one of the one things that makes it relevant--is that BaiLan still blushed when faced with Mendelssohn. Something about having had his picture by her bed as a child was a source of cheek reddening humiliation. The other thing that will eventually make it even more relevant or in the very least soaked with pathos, is that Joshua was the spitting image of a young Mendelssohn. Had he not had a beard, BaiLan might not have even been able to look at him. But let the radiuses converge when they may. Let fortune and humiliation intermingle, as is usually the case in such situations, all in their own time.

First, the trio of LauAn, YangMee and BaiLan had to choose a piece to perform at their recital. To BaiLan it was as clear as day what they should choose, but she wouldn’t dare suggest Mendelssohn. In fact, she went out of her way not to mention him. She let LauAn and YangMee go at it as she sat back in her chair and sipped cold tea with a bored, slightly glazed look on her face. They debated for an hour over Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert. BaiLan contributed a yawn. When she was finally forced into the conversation she suggested Dvorák then asked if there were any more biscuits.

“She wants to do the Romantics!” LauAn, the group’s violinist, pushed back her chair and left the room in a huff. When she came back she had a plate full of broken biscuits in one hand and a Mendelssohn piano trio in the other. “I can’t find Dvorák.” She tossed the music on the piano bench beside YangMee who rolled her eyes and ate a biscuit.

“Well can you find me some jam?” she asked.

And thus it was decided--in BaiLan’s mind by the spirit of Mendelssohn--that they do the Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49: I. Molto Allegro Agitato. Four weeks of rehearsal, every day for five hours in the morning, three in the afternoon and individual practice at night. It wasn’t an easy piece, but BaiLan was over the moon about it. On the way home from their first rehearsal she practically cracked a smile.

But the weeks would be hard on her. Playing Mendelssohn was a challenge for BaiLan, not that it was too difficult—in her opinion the piece is easiest on the cello--but that it was too intimate. She had to work very hard to fight off her feelings and play cleanly and well. This was easiest to do during practice with the girls but when she went home, when she was alone with him, her instrument between her legs, she found it hard not to get carried away to the meadow.

Things only got worse the closer it got to the recital. A storm was brewing inside her so she armed herself with walls of pragmatism that she put up day after day, it was exhausting--and then Charlie. After a long night of doing battle with herself in the way a monk might, he had to come along and tell her she needed help. That she needed passion. What she needed was passion removal. How stupid he was, how unable to disengage himself from his shiny, bright western ways. He had been audacious, and to her, that was unforgivable. She didn’t understand how someone could fall, hook, line and sinker for the preachings of such an obnoxious new culture. Especially one that promotes jumping about and saying things like whoopee. So why did it bother her?
She played poorly that day, she kept rushing her part, not waiting for her cues, jumping on YangMee’s piano and Letting LauAn’s violin fall. The girls didn’t say anything, knowing how sensitive BaiLan could be when faced with even the slightest hint of criticism, but she didn’t need them to speak, she knew she was off and it tortured her. She went home after rehearsal that day, and knowing no one to be home, camped out under the piano where, exhausted, she fell asleep.

It was dark when she opened her eyes. The only light was a narrow strip extending from the hallway door to the far wall where it cut the couch in two and turned sharply up to the ceiling. A door opened, the front--she knew the sound--and voices could be heard. It was her father and HongWei. This was not unusual, he often came by when there was extra work to be done. Most of the time the men would lock themselves in Mr. Bai’s office and not emerge till very late. She could hear them now in the hall. BaiLan didn’t see any reason to move. They would have no reason to enter the living room and discover her. So she stayed still and listened, her mind not yet fully disengaged from its dream state.

“I don’t think she’s home, HongWei,” Mr. Bai said.

“Well, where is she then? Is it her practice to stay out so late?”

Late? BaiLan wondered how long her nap had lasted then remembered it was HongWei who was speaking.

“It’s only seven. She’s probably at the conservatory practicing. Friday is the big show.”

BaiLan could hear them hanging up their coats and when things got quite again, “Mr. Bai, may I ask you a question about BaiLan? And will you answer me honestly knowing that what you say could change my intentions?”

BaiLan’s ears perked up. His intentions?

“Go on.”

“I spoke with my parents and they, we, would be very interested to know just how serious BaiLan is about her music career. It is a fine thing to be talented and to have a skill such as hers but when mixed with ambition it becomes, well--she is a little old for the world stage, is she not?”

“The world stage?”

“Before I marry her I need to know that I’m getting a wife first and a cellist second.”

“Ah,” her father could be heard moving down the hall. With all her energy she willed him back to the door so that BaiLan, who was now on her knees poised with anticipation, would be able to hear the rest of this exchange. “BaiLan is a fine musician. She has worked very hard to get to where she is.”

“I don’t doubt her talent, on the contrary I,” but Mr.Bai cut him off.

“That being said, it is my belief that BaiLan will transition well into marriage.”

“And her ambition?”

Mr. Bai looked into the eager eyes of the young man before him. “BaiLan plays for others.”

“Yes?”

“Some musicians play for the audience, for love, for approval, acceptance. Others play to survive because, to them, music is as necessary as air. These are the ones you have to worry about. Luckily, BaiLan is of the former variety. That old cello she practices on, that was mine. I gave it to her when she was a little girl and she plays it because she loves me. Once she loves you, she won’t need it as much. Children will take its place, and life, the way they did for her father.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

“Wives don’t come with guarantees, HongWei. The sooner you learn that the sooner--”

Mr. Bai’s office door slammed shut so suddenly it was like a hard slap across BaiLan’s face. She got to her feet and holding back tears, removed one shoe and then the other so she wouldn’t be heard on the stairs and drifted up toward her room in a cloud.
She sat on the bed and held her stomach, which had begun to flip and churn. Her father’s words ringing in her ears, she felt like an ethereal creature who, in punishment, is turned human and made violently aware of the imperfections of its physical form. BaiLan who always saw herself as special, gifted, meant for something more, had caught her first glimpse into the double mirror. Not the single that shows you your reflection--a lie--but the mirror beside it that shows you what others see. How warped she found herself. How like a talentless workhorse, following a carrot of acceptance and love, willing to conform to duty. Her own father pitied her. She could hear it in his voice.

She looked at her cello. She couldn’t play, not now. It might invite HongWei to want to speak to her, to ask her questions she didn’t want to have to answer. She was restless. She should have gone to the conservatory and practiced but to be faced with more of her own mediocrity was more than she could bear. Still, she had to get out of the house, clear her head, so she wrapped up against the cold and tip-toed down the stairs past her father’s office and out into the night.

It was an insane thing to do, going to Charlie’s club, but when two radiuses are on a crash course with one another sometimes fate has to be creative. On the way, through the crystal-cold Shanghai night, BaiLan tried to come up with an excuse for being there, something she could tell Charlie in order to save face. But she was at a loss. She was so full of silent dismay, that she was ready to try anything, even if it meant lying.

In the blinking light of the club’s marquee, which flashed “Jin’s,” BaiLan froze. A few Japanese soldiers stood outside talking and laughing drunkenly. She could hear the music, or what passed for music, making the steamed windows rattle. Was she desperate enough to throw herself into this den of lions? Would she find passion here? She doubted it, then thought of her father’s words about those musicians who needed music like air. Maybe the people in the Jins’s were like that. Maybe that’s why they put up with such stomach turning squalor. She had to know.

Inside, the club was all she expected only worse because it was real. A thick layer of smoke hung in the air and people crowded every corner. A wall of backs huddled around the bar, their pathetic drunken faces reflected in a dirty mirror that angled down behind booze bottles and the sweating bartender who moved with the grace of a rodent. More Japanese soldiers occupied a few of the back booths. They had girls with them and seemed to be getting quite a kick out of abusing a young Chinese bus boy, tripping him whenever he went past. The floor was scattered with dancers who turned each other around in a way that BaiLan found salacious. And then there was the band, a ramshackle group of failures who, for reasons she would never understand, decided to spend their evenings in the pursuit of noise. Charlie sat at the piano, cigarette dangling, hair wild, clothes all in shambles, banging in the keys with abandon. It wasn’t long before he noticed BaiLan.

But it wasn’t long before everyone noticed her. All in black, pale and beautiful, she stuck out like a nun in a brothel, or a monk in an opium den, however you’d like to put it. Also, at the moment in question, she was giving forth the energy of an assassin. No doubt many of the men at the bar had to cover one eye and look at her twice, first to make sure she wasn’t his wife, then to see whose wife she was and anxiously await the beating she was about to deliver the unlucky sod.

“LanLan!” Charlie screamed over his own cacophony, “You came! Hang on!” He finished the song as she stood there in the middle of the walkway from the bar to the dance floor like a statue, arms crossed, face stone, in everyone’s way. “Take five, everybody.” Charlie said, though BaiLan suspected he was posturing for her, it was obvious the man with the gold tooth on the upright bass was their fearless leader.

“Have a seat, let me get you a drink. Anything you want, on me.”

Charlie led her to a sticky table with a candle and a telephone on it. She perched on the chair and took off her hat setting it on her lap.

“Will I be expected to take messages?”

Charlie looked at her strangely.

“The phone.”

“Oh, no it’s to talk to other tables, if you want to, you know…”

“It was a joke, Charlie.”

He smiled and pulled up a chair next to her, making a meal out of the scrap she had thrown him, which was pure Charlie. “Come on, let me get you a drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“How about some water then?”

“I wouldn’t drink the water here if you paid me.”

“Tea? It’s boiled.”

“Fine. Tea, if you insist on me consuming a beverage.”

“It’s what the cool cats do.”

BaiLan held her tongue. Charlie couldn’t be her enemy tonight. He was her last hope. Her guide into a strange new world that could possibly reveal the answers she sought. But while she sipped her tea from a dirty cup and watched Charlie and his friends play, those answers still eluded her. It wasn’t that she didn’t find any merit within the music they played--after an hour or so of really listening she was able to grasp the appeal of jazz--but the doors she was hoping to fling open stayed tightly closed. She decided to leave--it was late after all--and was making her way towards the door when Charlie intercepted her.

“Leaving so soon, LanLan? We’re just getting started.”

“I have rehearsal in the morning, Charlie. But thank you. Your playing was very good,” she complimented, and tried to duck out.

“One more set. Stay for one more set. I play a vicious solo that you simply must hear. Please? Let me get you a plum wine.”

“I don’t drink.”

From the stage one of the musicians called for him.

“LanLan, please stay. Just give me a minute, I have to deal with something. Really, the next set is gonna be crazy baby time. Get this lady a plum wine,” he yelled to the bartender. “Stay?” And without waiting for her answer he was off, bounding toward the stage.

BaiLan rolled her eyes. One more song, she told herself, then she would leave. A man in a business suit handed her the glass of wine and she reluctantly made her way back to her table.

The place was beginning to fill up. More soldiers, more painted women, and all manner of foreigners packed the place, living like there was no tomorrow. The little telephones began lighting up, including hers, and when answered, would spark waves of laughter from here and there around the room. BaiLan remained stone-faced, sipping nervously at her wine, praying for the band to start so she could slip away unnoticed and catch a cab home in time to make up a believable story to her parents.

After an eternity, Charlie came out and took the center microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, there has been slight change of plans to tonight’s repertoire. We usually do this during the day, but a good friend of mine, a musical connoisseur, has assured me these boys are the tops and they’d like to have an audition here. You can let us know if we should hire them or not? What do you think of that?”

The crowd’s reaction was a vocal representation of what was going through BaiLan’s head.

“Bring on the band,” someone yelled. And the rest of the room was an unenthusiastic mix of hoots, hollers and boos. She would end up being here all night if she wasn’t careful. This counted as one song. She would sit through it, but Charlie lost her after that.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, all the way from Berlin, Max Schmied and Maestro Joshua Streng.”

The boy came out first. He had a head of shockingly white blonde hair and was as skinny as a rail. Behind him was a bearded man with intense eyes, all in black, wearing a long overcoat and carrying a violin. The room fell quiet. Someone, one of the Japanese soldiers yelled, “Play something good, refugee, or I’ll shoot you in the heart!” This was followed by a nervous titter of laughter that once again dissolved into silence.

The men whispered to each other and took their places. BaiLan looked around for an anchor, someone to explain to her what was going on, but Charlie was off in a corner talking quietly to a man with a scar along the side of his face, both of them with their fingers to their lips staring intently at the stage.

The older man raised his violin, and with a nod to the boy, it began. How can one describe music with words? Well there were no words, internally or externally, not for a good long while. BaiLan, always frightfully aware of herself in relation to the rest of the world, got lost in it immediately and her mouth hung open in an expression of pure horror. This piece, it was familiar, she knew it. It dropped directly into her world and was as out of place in the dingy little club as she was, more so, because of its brilliance. It was like being hit, she would think in retrospect, like planets colliding, radiuses merging, for this was the nexus moment, the one that made all other moments before fade and pale. This man, with his familiar music and his familiar face, was what she had come here to find. As he played, so easily, so carelessly, as if he were simply extending his hand and welcoming the sounds fourth, she finally understood with ultimate clarity the flutterings of her own tired heart. All of this she knew within the first stanza, and elated, managed to make it through the next six minutes of virtuosity, muscles clenched, heart pounding, on the verge of tears, as she watched the life she knew slip down some filthy Shanghai drain. For here, though she had no way of knowing how, lay her destiny.

He played with a wild abandon, as if he were alone on a deserted island, invoking nature to do his bidding. All the doors were thrown open, all pretenses shattered, she had found her Mendelssohn in Jin’s gliding through Saint-Saens. That’s who it was, he played it by heart as if he himself had written it, yet he didn’t overtake the piano, he played with it as if they were one and when it was over, when it reached its mind boggling conclusion, he lowered his bow and nodded twice, once to her (or so she imagined) and once to the young pianist, then left the stage as though he was never there.

The crowd erupted after that. Even the soldiers applauded, everyone was on their feet and the band took their cue to begin again while the mood was good. People flooded the dance floor as a changed BaiLan looked for him. She had to say something, she had to at least thank him for making her trip worthwhile, but she got lost in the crowd. The man in the business suit who had handed her the wine, seemed to think that by accepting it she was accepting him and was all over her to dance. She searched the room for Charlie and saw him at the piano, cigarette dangling, playing a frenetic solo, probably half drunk by now. She forced her way past her potential dance partner toward the corner of the room where she had seen the man with the scar, but he was gone too. It seemed they were all gone, and when a bottle smashed behind her ushering in the beginnings of a dance floor brawl, she turned on her heal and made her way out to the street.

She was breathing heavily and welcomed the night air to cool her. It was so late, she knew better than to walk home alone, but the street was empty now and she knew a cab would be hard to find. So she waited, shivering, for a rickshaw to pass when a shock of blond hair emerged from the alley beside the club. It was the boy, and behind him, the man with the scar and her Maestro.

BaiLan froze, suddenly shy. What would she say to him? Would he even understand her? There were many languages in Shanghai but the one used on the street where foreigners were concerned was a crass form of pigeon English that she tended to avoid. In a moment of near madness she considered going back into the club and dragging Charlie out by his ear to translate for her, but there wasn’t time. She would have to try. Maybe the scared man spoke Chinese. And with her bravery mounting the farther away they moved, she gathered her strength and clipped up behind them.

“Excuse me,” she ventured once in Chinese and then once in English the words sounding strange on her lips.

The boy turned first. “Well, hello. Can we help you, miss?” He purred.

The other men stopped and turned and she felt the violinist’s eyes on her for the first time.

“I like…” She couldn’t find the words and continued in Chinese. “I just wanted to say that you both played beautifully tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Anton nodded. “She’s thanking you, boys,” he said, just to confuse matters, in Russian. Anton could speak German but only when he was sober, which was rarely.
Max translated for Joshua who smiled.

“Tell her thank you. Can someone tell her thank you? Danke. Danke.”

“Very good play.” BaiLan attempted and extended a hand to Joshua who took it.

“Max, how long till you learn Chinese?” Joshua asked, near himself to blushing.

“We’ve only been here two days, Maestro.”

“Funny that, feels like a lifetime.”

“Let me try,” Anton cut in, and in the worst Chinese she ever heard, asked BaiLan her name.

“Bai LanLan. I cello.”

“She cello!” Max exclaimed once in German then again in Russian. “She’s a cellist. Bai LanLan is a cellist.”

“Very nice, um, Beethoven?” Joshua ventured.

“Mendelssohn!” BaiLan shouted, a little to exuberantly.

“Did you like the Saint-Saens? Saint-Saens? He’s French.”

She was at a loss so Max tried it in English.

“Yes. Saint-Saens, French, very good.” She realized that she still held firmly to his hand and dropped it quickly, embarrassed.

“Well, Bai, we have to get going back to our little death hovel so that Max can sober up. He inadvertently fell in to a bottle of gin earlier and almost ruined our chances of getting the only work in this God forsaken city available to two musical geniuses. So have a great night and we’ll see you in the great beyond.”

BaiLan stared. He was probably talking about music so she nodded politely waiting for him to stop so she could attempt one more muddled question. “You play again?”

“Damn right he will,” Max clapped her on the shoulder and Joshua pulled him back.

“Don’t scare the locals,” and to BaiLan, “Hopefully.”

A rickshaw passed and Anton flagged it down. “Come on, men, your chariot awaits.”

Max stumbled into the street and began singing the German national anthem at the top of his lungs.

BaiLan stood on the curb with Joshua, her eyes low, unable to hide the sadness she felt that he was about to leave, to walk out of her life before he had entered it, possibly forever. She vowed to start learning German the very next day; she vowed silently to see him again.

“Hey you brutes, give the girl the wagon.” He stepped into the street and talked the boy and the Russian out of the rickshaw, then offered a hand to BaiLan who daintily took it and ascended, nodding demurely and whispering the only words in German she did know.

“Auf Wiedersehen.”

Joshua’s eyes widened in surprise then fell into a sad little grin beneath his beard. She wondered why he was so sad and why she was drawn to it.

“Auf Wiedersehen, mein liebes,” he said, and swiftly vanished into the night as the rickshaw carried her home.

As the cold air hit her face, BaiLan, who sat there more unraveled than she had ever been in her short life, began the all too human process of weaving herself back together. The music was a memory now, the club, a fading scent that would linger on her coat, for perhaps a day, maybe two. But this dream from which she slowly woke could never consume her, she was far too reasonable, and there was far too much at stake. Her speaking to him alone had been unacceptable. If anyone found out, her shame would be worse than it already was. Still, the ghost that had been long haunting her had finally showed his face and had frightened her to the core. She felt shaken, as if an earthquake had ravished her. Her body and mind responded in kind, rushing out to rescue the survivors, bury the dead and rebuild the city. But no matter what she did, her very landscape had been altered and this fact would determine all choices from this point forward.

Later that night she would reach down into the narrow crevice between her wall and her bed, allowing her fingers to locate a small, dusty, framed picture of Felix Mendelssohn stolen from the Shanghai library so many years before. It would shamelessly return to its old post on her nightstand and for the first time in months, and with him as her sentinel, BaiLan would sleep soundly.