Chapter 26

26.
“Sonata for Violin and Piano in A, Allegretto Poco Mosso: Franck”


If you happened to be standing on the south west corner of Twenty-first Street and Ninth Avenue the day before yesterday, there is a good chance you would have heard a familiar piano sonata by Cesar Franck drifting through the window and out onto the street, it’s notes clinging to the humid air in much the same way a spider clings to the ceiling above your bed. The Van-Der-Waals Force sounds far more musical then Surface Tension, which applies here more readily, and is reserved for creatures much smaller than humans. That is, depending upon one’s perspective. To heavenly beings, the way in which we cling to the earth could be seen in its own way as a similar phenomenon, but a spider has a sort of nimble quality that human’s lack. It was with this nimbleness that the music seemed to hang in the air, unconcerned that at any moment it might spin off into space, or get crushed under the dirty wheels of a speeding taxi.

Igor, who had been consumed with the concepts of perspective had set out on a journey to gain a little of his own. His destination was China, but before making the long trip--first to Berlin, then by boat to Shanghai--there were a few stops that needed to be made and a few gaps that needed to be filled in the story that consumed him. The first, a cluttered but spacious two-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a brick building on twenty-first street, which was, and still is, the New York home of composer Max Schmied.

At ninety years old, Max was the very picture of health, and why shouldn’t he be? He had a team of doctors working around the clock to keep him at his functioning best. He smoked like a chimney but kept a tank of oxygen by the piano holding fast to a belief that it would counteract the effects. For every cigarette he smoked he would prescribe himself seven minutes of oxygen, and since the only time he didn’t have the urge to smoke was when he was playing, he would attach the tube to his nose creating a silhouette that was altogether decrepit, if he did say so himself--and he did to everyone who witnessed it.

His body was that of an ox. According to Max, it was his fragile hive of a mind that was succumbing to the cruelty of Father Time who he accused of taking a slingshot to the light bulbs on the once splendid Broadway marquee that was his brain. Lucky for Max, that marquee ran the length of Forty-second Street and reached not a few stories high. It would take Dennis the Menace himself years to vandalize it to any significant degree, but to Max, a desperate handyman fresh out of bulbs, the damage was done and the turkey was about to close.

Igor found his lighthearted complaining to be a source of endless entertainment, for the young man and the old had much in common. For example, they both found noisy bodily functions hysterical and could call on any number of them at a seconds notice. Though unrelated, they shared a similar intelligence and the gift of total recall that allowed them to burp any number of great Classical works in an attempt to stump the other. If stumped Igor would blame his youth, if Max got stumped he would blame the slingshot. Another binding factor where Max and Igor were concerned was the fact that they had both been apprentices of Maestro, albeit under vastly different circumstances. The way Max made it sound, Joshua had been a tyrant, liberal with beatings and reprimands, reducing the fragile Max to tears almost daily. It was probably why Max referred to his late master as “The Evil Chinaman” a nickname so vile it paralyzed Igor with a case of the nervous giggles the first time he heard it, at eight. He didn’t understand the anger, being that Maestro had never been violent with him. His mother told him that Uncle Max was prone to fabulist behavior and that he was cross with Maestro for things that had happened years ago.

Igor had his theories, but that’s all they were. He never got a straight answer from his Uncle Max whose only reply to his persistent questions was, “he turned into a Chimichanga,” followed by a little, very racist, very hysterical dance involving a folded piece of paper inserted under his top lip and the obligatory stretching back of the corners of his eyes. A display reserved for Igor and one not to be repeated when Sha-Sha was around, having, as Max put it, “the sense of humor of her mother.”

But this day would be different. Igor had plans for Uncle Max that didn’t involve the hilarity of burping Prokofiev. He wanted to know the one part of the story that Maestro would always leave out, what happened in New York?

Max’s living room was an experiment in color that had been neglected and allowed to fester unsupervised. The only surface that wasn’t striped, adorned with a fleur-de-lis, theatre poster, or sketch courtesy of Tom’s of Finland was the piano, a black shiny Steinway that according to Max was rescued from the General Slocum. Sha-Sha, who stopped visiting Max sometime in the mid-eighties, claimed this lie was created souly so Max could employ the usage of the word Slocum. Igor didn’t mind. He found Max’s stories funny and charming--it was just his way. And as far as Igor was concerned, Max had earned his eccentricities. He was famous and famous people were allowed, even encouraged, to be weird.

In fact, if you happened to be standing in the colorful parlor of Max Schmied, the day before yesterday, or any day when the weather allowed it, you would have noticed a motley looking crew of fans in shiny embroidered show jackets clutching laminated librettos with Sharpies at the ready. They would come to his window to listen to him play, the fresh faced high school students from out on the island, the middle-aged super fans who knew more about his work then he did, the curious tourists who only knew him for his televised hits, and occasionally the nostalgic local who wanted to say they’d heard him play so they could talk about it over dinner to impress friends from out of town.

They would come to listen, but the real reason for the vigil, the attraction that made it an attraction was the “Max factor,” as it came to be known.

Every last one of Max’s internal censors had abandoned him and he was prone to a kind of musical Tourettes Syndrome that took aim at his audience and the world, whatever came into his head or his sphere as he played. His regulars were the butt of many jokes, songs like, Stop Looking at Me Fat Lady, and Barry Has No Life. Some days he would fully engage with crowd, others he would play as if they weren’t there, blaming his silence on “a bad leg.” Of course the days his fans most look forward to were the ones when he played the hits that made him famous, but Max knew better than to give them that more than twice a year. For an entire month he would play the Beethoven Sonata’s interweaving his own familiar melodies to drive the crowd wild. Then he would tell them how pathetic they were and have his male nurse, Hans, offer them shot glasses of Ensure.

“Those idiots keep him alive,” was Sha-sha’s take on the whole situation, “someone ought to take a hose to them.”

When Igor entered the parlor that day he was greeted by Max’s biggest fan, Barry, whose face ruddy was forever pressed against the wrought iron bars of the small window closest to his piano.

“Hi, Igor!” Barry waved, encouraging a chorus of salutations from fans less in the know.

Igor greeted them and tossed his backpack and jacket on the couch. Max was already at the piano with his oxygen tube hooked firmly behind both ears like a transparent tapeworm sucking the life out of him through his nose.

“Franck, Piano Sonata in A,” Max croaked at the boy who quickly took the Lion from its case and began to play along. When they were done there was a sprinkling of applause followed by shouts of requests that Max shot down with vitriol. “Close the curtains, Iggy, the God damned show’s over.”

Igor did as he was told leaving the pair in the dark save for the flicker of Max’s cigarette lighter. Igor switched on a lamp and Max’s glossy eyes landed on the violin and bow that Igor held with one long-fingered hand.

“Is she dead?”

Igor smiled. He knew that Max was referring to his mother, the long time owner of the Stainer.

“No, she gave it to me.”

“Why? Giving isn’t in her nature, does she need a kidney or something?” Max’s accent still held the softest hint of German.

“Do you think it’s safe to smoke with that thing on your face, Uncle Max?” Igor took the cigarette from his hand and didn’t return it till the oxygen tank was turned tightly off.

Max laughed. “That’s how I’m gonna go, Iggy. I’m going to blow myself up. With any luck I’ll take Barry with me.”

“You want an eternity with Barry?”

Max lifted his frail shell of a body into his favorite smoking chair, they were all smoking chairs, and let his arms fall to rest at his sides like dead fish.

“Everybody needs to be adored by somebody,” and after a moment, “so…”

“What?” Igor plopped on the couch and lit a cigarette of his own.

“The Lion.”

“I don’t think I’ll tell you,” he teased sensing an opportunity for historical blackmail.

“It’s to be games then, is it? Do I have to guess?”

“You can guess.”

“She finally realized that you are better than her and the shame was too much to bear. She’s drinking the Kool-aid as we speak.”

“Nope, no Kool-aid.”

“You stole it?”

“I have an idea, you tell me what happened between you and Maestro and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Max leaned forward in his chair in an attempt to seem threatening, “you little shit. I won’t be blackmailed.”

Igor smiled and kicked his feet like an excited child.

“You stole it. You borrowed it in an attempt to blackmail me,” Igor tightened his lips, “you--you little shit.”

“I’m not going home, Max. After I leave here I have one more stop then I’m heading to the airport. I won’t be back for months. The Lion and I are going on a little trip.”

“To Shanghai?” all the playfulness left his voice as it dawned on the both of them that this might very well be their last meeting.

“By way of Berlin. I’ll be taking a slow boat to China.”

Max let the musical reference slip by unacknowledged. He lit another cigarette off the butt of the one he had just smoked down to its filter, and with a microscopic change of posture, slipped into flawless Mandarin as if it were nothing more than a silk robe.

Igor had never heard Max speak Mandarin though he assumed he could, and Igor’s was conversational at best. Still, he tried to follow along as he could sense that for Max, this was a story that existed in one singular language, like the prayer of a prairie dog to a star.

“Your grandfather,” he began, “was a pompous ass. And he was the only one who didn’t know it. You know all the stories, Iggy, you have heard them from his lips a thousand times and in each and every one Joshua was no doubt the star, the troubles romantic, the warrior prince. I loved him more than I have ever loved another person in my entire life. He was my father, my world, so you understand why I had to get away from him. When the war was over I went to San Francisco and quickly bored by it, slowly made my way eastward. I had built quite a little career for myself by the time he showed up on my doorstep. God, I was happy to see him, but happy in the way one might be if a relative were to come back from the dead, ecstatic at first, but then disturbed. His presence put a monkey wrench in the natural flow of things. I had already mourned him you see, so it was odd having him back. Odd to once again assume the role of second fiddle to the glorious Joshua Streng. Thing was, there was no Joshua Streng, not anymore. If there were people who knew who he was they weren’t in NY, most of them sadly, were probably as dead as Frau Schmetterling. This hurt Joshua. I had a blossoming career, and he was the aging violinist who lived with me. He didn’t speak English, which was a trial, having to translate everything for him (he didn’t want to learn, Igor) happy enough to be a burden on me as if I owed him something deep and private--this bond we shared. I was tired of it. Tired of his obsession with China, he spoke Mandarin in those days. People on the street thought he was crazy, a white man speaking Mandarin. It may as well have been tongues. I admit I was young and callous, but I wanted to move past the war. Joshua couldn’t. Then there was the constant talk of the girl, your grandmother, BaiLan. He never felt right about leaving her. And it was all he talked about. I can’t stress enough that it was the only conversation he wanted to have. He was like a broken record--obsessed. I would try to get him to work but when he did compose his pieces featured the erhu. My man down on Tin Pan Alley would have thought I was insane if I brought him that stuff. The only job I could get him was playing violin in the pit and that was not going to happen, as you could imagine. I was afraid to even suggest it to him in fear that he would bite my head off. I supported him for two years before losing it. Then that show came along.”

Max stopped and played an ominous chord progression on an invisible piano. Family lore had it that Joshua spent the first part of the fifties in New York with Max during the years he allegedly wrote Timbre on the Wind an early, initially ill fated, musical whose poster hung proudly over Max’s toilet. But then for some reason he left and went back to China.

“I was commissioned to write it but had about ten projects on my plate at the time so I told Joshua to do it. It was an ultimatum, do it or get a job. It was easy, just a musical, a love story with sappy ballads, and waltzes he could have lifted directly from Strauss. But what did he do? He got intellectual about it. He toiled over that silly piece of fluff till it shone with the twisted irony of a butter knife half hanging out of someone’s jugular vein. And it took him forever, what was supposed to only be a re-write became a lengthy hike through his dark corners of his soul. He tore down entire acts, changed characters and settings. He begged me to help him rehash the lyrics when the writer refused to let him do the whole show in German. It was a catastrophe and I was the one they blamed. Finally, over a year late, the show opened to lukewarm reviews and closed a week later. Joshua was distraught. He blamed everyone but himself for the failure (especially me) and went back to sulking, more introverted than ever. In those years, I traveled a lot. I kept our apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and would pay the bills dutifully every month with no help or even a word from him, as if it was expected. I didn’t mind. I was doing well for myself. At thirty-nine years old, I was well into the second swell of my career. I supported him as if he was an aging parent and he wasn’t even old. But did he care? Did he appreciate it? Of course not, never once did I get so much as a thank you from your Maestro, then one day I came home from a lengthy trip to Miami and found him gone. Back to China, the end of the world, his true home, was what his note said. It may as well have said, went out for milk. It was brief and callous; another testament to his selfishness.”

Max was winded by this point making it easy for Igor to interrupt, “And this is the source of the bad blood?” was what he meant to ask, though his pigeon Mandarin could be more accurately translated into, “This is where comes from the dirty fluid?” Max understood and continued in English.

“No, Igor. I understood. I loved him. Through it all I understood his pain. I even envied his sensitivity. It all went wrong for Maestro on that November day in Berlin. I don’t think he ever recovered from that, or if he did he was forever changed. The dirty fluid came ten years later when a small production company down on Forty-fifth Street mounted a revival production of Timbre on the Wind. The same people who had panned it in ’53 hailed it as a masterpiece in ’62. I got all the credit. His name was on it with mine as co-writer, but back then no one knew the name Joshua Streng from Adam. That minor detail fell away. I tried to get word to him but by then China was not a friendly place. He had built the perfect wall around himself, a vast communist country in which to hide, untouchable.”

Max lit another cigarette, rose from his chair and shuffled towards a cabinet adorned in glittering green and purple argyle. He had lost all grace in large movement but his fingers worked the tiny lock with the nimbleness usually reserved for insects.

“He sent me one letter when he was in China. Its date is July 1958. Your mother brought what was left of him back here in, oh, ’72?”

Max supported himself with one hand and extended a folded pack of papers to Igor held between his thumb and ring finger. His pointer and middle were comfortably hugging a cigarette.

“Perhaps this will give you a little of the perspective you’ve been searching for.”

Igor took the letter and turned it over in his hand. Then sensing the inevitable awkward goodbye, Max opened the curtains revealing Barry and the two or three other fans still hanging around outside his window. They were about to get the thrill of a lifetime.

As Igor looked on, Max played a slow montage of songs from Timbre on the Wind, his most famous work, the one he would be remembered for, a musical he had nothing to do with.