Chapter 16

16.
“Music for the Royal Fireworks: Suite HWV 351: 5. Menuet I-II: Handel”

It was night and the city smelled of wet embers. XinSi was at the opera for the third time that week as he had become most infatuated with a young singer whose name is not important. In classic Chinese Opera all the roles are played by men, and this boy, the one XinSi came to see, hadn’t quite mastered his powers of illusion. XinSi found it charming. He had also become somewhat fanatic over the art of Chinese Opera itself. He was given a tour of a training facility where young boys went to learn their craft. The process was brutal, like training for an army. But he liked the concept of little soldiers of opera, footman of art and tradition. It gave him a very different attitude towards his European training, which in comparison was like a walk in the park.

It had rained while he was in the theatre. It was a spring shower, the kind that had a habit of dousing the city in a most whimsical way. The humidity alone caused the dye he had put in his hair to run in a streak down the back of his shirt, but it didn’t matter since on that night he was wearing black and had taken to keeping a rag under his robe for occasions such as these. He wiped his neck clean, watching as a slew of umbrellas popped up, one by one like bubbles on the surface of a pond. He smiled when he thought this, it was such an eastern metaphor, he liked that his instincts were changing.

He polished the steam from his round tinted glasses, revealing his round blue eyes--in his attempt to blend, they were the one feature that sold him out every time--and lit a cigarette.

When he saw her, he raised a hand and gave a little wave. It was evident she was unsure if it was him, and rightfully so, the last time they met he had blonde hair and wore western clothes.

BaiLan looked away. If it was Max, and he had undergone some kind of ridiculous self-transformation, she wanted no part of it. But in seconds he was at her side. His neck was dirty and he smelled of cigarette smoke.

“Miss Bai, so lovely to see you again.”

Some how the boy had learned Mandarin. She looked around for someone to save her but she had come to the opera alone, it was part of her new strategic plan for fighting her insomnia and no one knew about it. Being recognized made her nervous. She adjusted the veil on her hat so that it obscured her face. “Max Schmied, isn’t it? What have you done to yourself?”

If Max was embarrassed by her question, his face didn’t reveal it. “I was sick of sticking out like a sore thumb. I find it easier to blend this way. Oh, and the name’s XinSi.” Max winked at her.

“Charming. I must be going.”

But of course he followed her. He must have been taking lessons from Charlie.

“I got the name off a jar of pickled chicken feet. Isn’t that wunderbar?”

“Wunderbar.”

“In fact, I’ve begun a collection of pickled curiosities. Pig snouts, octopus tentacles, the Chinese will pickle anything, don’t you find?”

“I never really think about it.”

The pair fell into a stroll, and it became increasingly more unlikely that XinSi planned to shove off anytime soon. A mist had drifted in making the rain-washed streets appear as if through a frosted lens. Max took BaiLan’s umbrella and held it aloft.

“You came to see us every night for an entire week when we first got here then you dropped off the face of the earth. I always wondered why. Care to enlighten me?”

BaiLan murdered a blush before it could make its way to her cheeks. “It wasn’t every night.”

“It was. Every night for a whole week, then we came to see you play. You did the Mendelssohn--at the conservatory. He must have given it to you pretty good.”

“Who? Given what to me pretty good?” BaiLan stabbed another blush as it tried to sneak past the carnage of its dead sister.

“Maestro. Maybe he told you, sie stinken.”

“What?”

“That you played poorly.”

“But I didn’t play poorly. In fact he told me I was, über dem Durchschnitt. Well above the rest.”

Max sort of disliked BaiLan at that moment had no problem informing her that “über dem Durchschnitt” was not the compliment she thought it was, but a polite way of telling her, sei stinken, a bit of news she didn’t take very well at all. She snatched her umbrella from his hand and stormed off shouting insults in his direction. Max laughed, rather pleased with himself, and went off to locate his young paramour. And that was pretty much that for two whole months.

By July, Shanghai looked more like Italy than China, Venice to be precise, as the streets were flooded with murky, living water from the rising river. The heat was unbearable. The air was thick and humid, making it hard to move, making it hard to do anything at all.

The orchestra was on hiatus for the summer. Joshua had led them only once. Handel’s Fireworks Music was the choice, not of him, but of the conservatory’s dean who got so excited when suggesting it, Joshua felt it would be ungrateful to deny him. The next season’s program would be in his hands. He had already chosen Fidelio, piano concertos by both Robert and Clara Schumann, and his first work, Symphony #1 in A minor for Hanna, its movements the colors of her dress.

The day BaiLan arrived at the flat, Joshua was alone in the music room rehearsing, which that day, consisted of lying on the piano bench with his feet in a basin of cool water and staring at the ceiling. The knocks seemed part of a dream at first and since he wasn’t expecting anyone, he dismissed them. It was probably for Max anyway, his friends were always coming and going.

Frau Schmetterling answered the door and from his place on the bench he bore auditory witness to the odd exchange that happened below. It was a woman’s voice and it demanded to see Max--just as he thought. XinSi, who was never at home, happened to be there that afternoon lying listlessly in a cold bath. His black hair dye would turn the water purple and Frau Schmetterling was ever telling him to scrub up after himself, an argument that tired Joshua in that it reminded him of how repetitive all their lives had become.

“Max? One moment dear, he’s in the bath.” Yelling. “Max? Max? There’s a young lady here to see you.”

“Who is it?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“What does she look like?”

“Well, she has black hair...”

“What’s her name?”

“What’s your name dear?”

“Max Schmeid.” BaiLan demanded.

“She says her name is Max Schmied. That’s your name.”

“I’ll be right out.”

“Don’t leave a ring around the bathtub, Max. You have to scrub up after yourself. I’m a very old woman.”

Joshua turned his ears from the conversation and watched the afternoon light play on the far wall of the music room. It was diffused through bamboo leaves. He let a hand fall lightly to the piano keys and played four notes in no particular order. The water in his basin had heated up to the temperature of soup, and he would have changed it, but he didn’t want to get caught up in whatever Max had going on downstairs. He dried his feet and moved his body to a chair in the corner. He looked down at his vest. The light now played on him, in his beard, his eyes, so he closed them and dozed off.

The sound of feet on the stairs and yelling in Chinese awoke him. A few minutes must have passed as the light had moved on and now occupied the corner of the room where the Lion sat, string-less in its case, due to the humidity and a fear of warping wood.
She entered first. It was the girl from Jin’s. Joshua remembered her well. How impressed he had been, not by her playing, but by how she seemed to keep herself afloat in what was obviously a sea of inner turmoil, that and her beauty, which he didn’t recall noticing until that very moment. She was indeed beautiful. Her proportions were so pleasing, like a well-crafted instrument, even when she was disheveled, like that day.

She wore a white silk dress that was soiled at the hem, no doubt from trudging through the ungodly sludge that overtook the streets, and she was barefoot having most assuredly left her boots at the door. Her hair, which Joshua had only ever seen up, tucked under a pincushion hat and perfectly styled, hung in a loose pony’s tail at the base of her neck, and she hugged an armful of papers against her chest. She looked like a child, but the fire in her eyes was all-woman and aiming directly at him.

“Good afternoon, Miss Lan,” he mustered.

“It’s Miss Bai, Maestro,” Max corrected, “The Chinese invert names so that the family name comes before the given name. It’s a sign of the importance with which they regard their ancestry--”

BaiLan threw the content of her arms to the floor where it landed with a thud between Joshua’s bare feet.

“What’s this?” Joshua retrieved the stack of papers. His eyes scanned them for an explanation. It was music.

“It’s Mendelssohn.”

“Yes. Mendelssohn,” BaiLan said. Then she turned to Max.

With a flip of her pony’s tail she began speaking to him in a clipped and obviously irritated tone, gesturing towards Joshua with frequency. He may not have learned a word of Chinese, but he knew he had done something wrong. Max listened with one hand to his chin and when she was done, turned to face Maestro.

“Well?” He asked.

“Miss Bai is upset.”

“Obviously. Care to tell me what part I play in her grief?”

“She says you insulted her. That on the night of the concert you told her playing was above average and she knows now that you were only being polite. She feels you broke some sort of sacred musician’s code and that you dishonored her whole family by lying.”

“Is that all?”

BaiLan launched into another monologue before Max could answer. When she was done she sat down, facing away from them on the piano bench and crossed her legs.

“No. She says that if you are an honorable man you will make it up to her by teaching her the Mendelssohn and making her a brilliant cellist.”

Joshua smiled and rose to his feet. “Tell Miss…”

“Bai.”

“Miss Bai that I’m not taking on private students at the moment. That I’m terribly busy.”

Max hesitated.

“Go on. Tell her.”

Max repeated what Joshua had said and BaiLan turned on him with contempt in her eyes.

“Tell her I’m a sick man.”

“She says you don’t look sick.”

“Tell her my ailment is of the heart and the mind.”

“She says those are more lies and excuses. She wants to know if you care about honor.”

“Tell her I care about very little.”

“She wants to know how you can play music if you care about very little?”

“From memory.”

“She wants to know why you are so sad.”

“Does she? Tell her.”

“Maestro?”

“Tell her why I’m so sad.”

Max relayed the story in brief. While out the window, Joshua watched as a rickshaw dislodged itself from a water rat.

“She says she’s sorry.”

“Tell her, so am I.”

BaiLan sat quietly for a moment, then rose from the piano bench. She joined Joshua by the window and looked deeply into his eyes. She spoke softly to him and when she was finished she gave a slight bow and left the room.

“What did she say?”

“The beauty of the sentiment won’t translate. In essence, that you must honor your wife’s memory but that you mustn’t die with her.”

“And?”

“And that she’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with her cello to begin lessons.”

Joshua watched as her plucky little form sloshed away down the street as if it were incased in a bubble. He thought if all that had come to pass had never happened, if he were young and unmarried, if he had never met Hanna, he just might have fallen in love with her for that. Still, there was no going back and even though a small sliver of him did fall in love with her on that day, he knew he had no choice but to starve it out of existence. Besides, he didn’t want a student. He was far too busy.

The next afternoon was hotter than the last. Joshua was back on the piano bench with his feet in the basin, but he wasn’t at all relaxed. He knew Miss Bai would be coming back and the prospect sending her away made him uncomfortable so he gave the job to Max. The knocks came on schedule and Max was ready to receive her. After a quick exchange he heard the door close and crept to the window to make sure she was leaving. He knew immediately he shouldn’t have looked.

BaiLan, in a pale yellow dress, her hair held in place by a wide ivory comb, had sailed her cello to his door. She had fashioned a boat of sorts, a floating airtight platform, with a rope tied to one end so she could pull it along behind her through the flooded streets. The thought of her having to negotiate her way home in the sweltering heat through that filthy water was too much to bear, so in a moment of weakness, he called out to her.

“Miss Bai! Miss BaiLan!”

She looked up, squinting in the bright sun.

Joshua waved and gestured for her to come back. The girl smiled. There could be worse things then teaching her Mendelssohn, how long could it possibly take? A few days?
The ground rose as she approached their door and she dragged the cello’s little ark up through the mud with some difficulty. Joshua ran down the stairs to her aid. As he helped her in, Max came out of the bathroom wearing one of Frau Schmetterling’s robes.
“Get dressed, Max. Then help Miss Bai get her cello upstairs, will you?”

“I had one foot in the bath.”

“Now you have both feet behind the piano.”

Fifteen minutes later, BaiLan was sitting in a chair with her cello before her and Max was at the piano still wearing the robe. Joshua sat across from them with his feet in the basin, his head back and his eyes closed.

“Play,” he ordered.

But BaiLan just stared.

“She wants to know if you are going to join us on the violin,” Max asked.

“No. Now play.”

“She doesn’t understand how the piece can be played without a violin.”

Joshua rolled his eyes. “Tell her if she wants to learn, she shouldn’t question.”

“She says she’s never done it without a violin and--”

Joshua stood up and stormed over to BaiLan’s music stand with wet feet.

“The cello comes in here. The violin doesn’t come in until here. When you can play all that perfectly, then I will take out my violin and play with you. Not until then.”
Max translated. Joshua sat and put his feet back in the lukewarm water. He closed his eyes. BaiLan cautiously began, and Max picked up his cue. After five notes he stopped them.

“Wieder!”

So they began again. This time he stopped them after four notes.

“Wieder!”

BaiLan took a deep breath. She found it secretly amusing that he thought he could get to her with this little technique. Didn’t he know she was Chinese? Didn’t he know that as a girl, her teachers would cane her for missing a note? And she wasn’t even missing notes. It was as if he were mocking her, so after indulging his egotistical farce for ten or so minutes, she put down her bow.

“Why did she stop?”

“She thinks you’re making fun of her. She says she drilled like this as a child and that all her notes are correct.”

Joshua stared at BaiLan, and after a moment, “tell her to play it flat.”

“She wants to know why.”

“Ask her if she always questions her teachers.”

BaiLan and Joshua had locked eyes. Max seemed to disappear, the conversation was now between the two of them directly with pauses, like sound traveling from can to can by way of string.

“In China the teachers strive towards perfection. They don’t have their students play things wrong for their own amusement.”

“You came here to learn. Play it flat or go.”

“But why?”

“Because I don’t think you can.”

“I can, I just don’t see the point.”

“The point is I want you to know what it feels like be wrong. To play flat, sharp, sloppy, to miss a note, to miss ten notes, this,” Joshua took the music from her stand and held it aloft, “is only one half of what music is. It’s the rest of it that I’m interested in. You. You’re insecurities and your flaws, what you love, what you hate, what you want. We know what makes me a miserable bastard, but what touches you, BaiLan? What keeps you up at night?”

He knew. Somehow, perhaps psychically, he knew about her insomnia. It was this that prompted her to take up her bow and timidly play the first stanza flat as a pancake.

“Wieder. And louder this time, let the whole street hear how incorrect you can be.”
Joshua had decided as soon as she walked into the house to make BaiLan his student based purely on the fact that she had trudged her cello through liquid waste to see him. But hearing her relish playing out of key filled him with a devilish sort of pleasure that elevated her instantly to status of star pupil. She showed up every day to play Mendelssohn with them and by the end of the month Joshua allowed her to move past the first twenty notes and picked up his violin to join them.