Читать книгу The Ann Ireland Library - Ann Ireland - Страница 10

Fashion masks are the latest things. Girls glue plastic butterflies and dollar store insects onto theirs; boys add superhero stickers. Toby left his at home, wrapped over the gooseneck lamp: forget breathing through gauze. The epidemic has spiked: orange alert due to a rogue infector who jaunted about asymptomatic but is now known to be sixteen years old, female. She swept through the transit system coating handrails with viral sweat and is now quarantined at East General, surrounded by medics decked out in chemical suit regalia, busy draining fluid off her brain. It’s a horror, Jasper says, but we must keep things in perspective. This is nothing compared to the polio outbreaks of the 1950s.

Toby shows up at the Conservatory for his master class, striding past a warning sign posted on the front door (do not enter if you suffer from any of the following symptoms …), marches down the corridor feeling a prickly dryness in his eyes. It’s a massive Victorian building, solid but creaky with age. A second poster curled at the edges diagrams the progress of fundraising for the reno — stuck, it seems, at two and a half million. An open door reveals a class of students working at electronic keyboards with headphones clamped to their ears. Everyone seems better dressed than they used to be in the old days.

Toby used to practically live in this place and knew all the office staff by name. He speeds past the glass doors, not in a mood to be recognized. Retaining focus before a performance is crucial; what used to come so naturally now takes a studied effort.

Master class runs in room 108, and he spots Tess hovering at its entrance, directing traffic and checking names off the list. Her glasses are set low over her nose, and she waves at Toby. “You’re up third,” she tells him. “Make it snappy. We’re ready to roll.”

She’s always been bossy, and he slips by her, ignoring the pump of disinfectant lotion sitting on a table. Last thing he needs is to slime up his hands and watch them pucker dry; playing requires a degree of moisture. He sits to one side of the room, guitar case tucked between his knees. Did Tess look at him with just a hint of concern? For all she knows, Toby might be out on a day pass, about to start speaking in tongues or to noodle through some incoherent improv.

He has done these things in public, or so he has been told.

Musicians make their way into the studio, nodding at each other in muted recognition. Several cast a glance at Toby, wondering who he might be.

Toby stares back with his blank game face. He spoke not a word to Jasper about this performance; he’s headed for a makeup class with Guitar Choir, story goes. A small lie to prevent a familiar anxious look from crowding his lover’s face.

He reaches to touch the crease at the side of his nose, dabbing enough sweat to moisten his fingertips. Nerves turn skin to parchment. This jittery anticipation is so familiar, something he’s missed and even craved without realizing it. He feels fully alive on this hard chair, coiled energy, all he can do not to bob his knees up and down.

A couple of dozen folding chairs contain participants and observers. Up front is a music stand plus a footstool and two more chairs — one for Conti, the other for the performer. Most, if not all the other musicians, will be senior students from the Glenn Gould Professional School or the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music. Behind, a Steinway baby grand perches like a raven, wings aloft. Overhead ventilation ducts create a distracting racket, but if you switch them off, airs turns to gravy.

Conti isn’t immediately recognizable as he strides in, guitar case plastered with airline stickers. He seems smaller than last night and rounder, his features less distinctive. Conti hasn’t bothered to shave, which gives him a sleepy look. He removes his leather jacket and tosses it onto the piano lid, zipper skidding across its buffed surface. Tess grimaces, knowing there will be complaints, for the guitar isn’t seen as a serious instrument by certain members of the Conservatory faculty — too troubadour or folksy, hint of the coffee house or plantation. Conti makes a joke that no one understands, though they titter nervously, two dozen young men and a couple of women. Tess strolls over to confer about the program, and after a moment Conti glances up. His eyes find Toby’s and he nods.

Has he been warned, and if so — how? Others turn to look: Toby must be somebody, but who?

Focus. Don’t let them unsettle you.

Setup for a master class is simple: the student’s name is called and he performs a piece of his choosing. This is followed by a half-hour public class where the guest artist offers critique and suggestions, and, with luck, praise. Toby’s performed in many such classes. He understands that it is possible to temporarily fool the body, and that to appear outwardly calm is to invoke inner calm. He sits very still in his chair with no nervous throat clearings, no last-minute sandpapering of nails.

First up is a skinny kid wearing a shirt buttoned to the neck. He passes Conti a score, then jumps into a piece by a modern Brazilian composer without waiting for the audience to settle down. Conti perches on the edge of his chair, feet planted firmly on the floor, watching the boy’s hands intently.

There is a smattering of applause when the kid finishes, then Conti launches in, first by acknowledging the student’s phrasing and dynamic range. “But left hand is so tight, like a claw. You must be strong, yet one hundred percent flexible, like the octopus.”

He demonstrates a relaxation exercise, first clutching a ball, then letting it drop without changing position of the hand.

The next performer is built like a football player, muscles popping under his shirt. He lowers himself stiffly onto the chair as if still smarting from last night’s workout and announces that he will perform Conti’s own transcription of a Granados piano work.

The maestro smiles, enjoying this display of flattery.

The youth plays with his sausage fingers, mouth twisting into tortured expressions as he moves through the tricky piece, his body at odds with the delicate, even nuanced sounds that rise from his instrument.

Pretty damn good, Toby thinks, but not scary good. What he is — what they all are — is very young.

Conti says, “You must isolate the difficult sections.”

The performer nods his shaved head; he’s heard this advice a thousand times.

Conti gets the boy to try the opening section over and over, focusing on the syncopated rhythm while Conti taps out the beat. When the kid fouls up, the teacher reaches over and raps his muscled thigh. “Feel it in your body!”

The boy reddens, loses track of where he is, his old way of playing not yet subsumed to the new. Conti drags his chair even closer so that the two men brush knees, and then, on the seventh or eighth try, the kid nails it.

Relieved applause. Any one of them could be up there.

“Toby Hausner, you’re next,” Tess announces, peering at him over the top of her glasses.

He picks up his guitar and makes his way to the front of the room.

I don’t have to do this, he reminds himself. He could blow them all off and head for the pub across the street, afternoon jazz and a banquet burger. When he was a teenager, he didn’t understand this. He didn’t know there was a choice.

Conti clasps hands over head and yawns loudly. “What will you play for us?”

“Paganini.” Toby passes over the weathered score, an accordion fold-out, six pages long. He will play by memory, as is the custom.

The maestro smiles, lowering his arms. There are deep shadows under his eyes after a sleepless night in an unfamiliar hotel room. “I perform this on my new CD. It is all about touch, yes?” He turns to the audience, making a lesson of the remark. “Your fingers must go like the wind, maybe good wind, maybe bad.”

A sprinkle of nervous laughter greets this witticism; if a person plays exceptionally well here, he might be invited to the guitar festival in Milan where Conti presides as artistic director.

Conti flutters his fingers poetically and adds, “Paganini composes this as a challenge to perform at an important concert. You know he was fantastic guitarist besides fiddle player, and a wild man.”

Toby chooses his moment and takes charge of the stage, waiting for the rustles and throat clearings to subside. Time slows, divides into cells. Toby maps out the first dozen bars in his head, hearing each note ring with precision before he sets hand to fretboard.

Silence.

Now.

No, not yet. Someone is whispering, then a pencil drops and rolls across the floor.

He places his hands over the frets and sound hole, when someone screeches a chair leg.

Toby lowers his hands, flexes, takes another breath, hears nothing but the purr of ventilation, then begins to play.

The piece paws open and it’s alive or dead from the first note. Pure sensation — think of uncircumcised skin or newborn rabbits. Toby snorts at such images. He sneers at any image whatsoever; there can be nothing besides the movement of sound through space and time. Soft and velvety turns brittle with a tilt of the wrist; command of tone has always been his forte. Coming up is the presto section, which must go as fast as humanly possible: hold on to your hat. Paganini was a born show-off. Toby stays inside the silky legato until the last possible moment, then lifts his right hand, making the audience wait until he is good and ready. Pause, then fingers snap across the fretboard, nailing chords and runs. Clear sailing from here to the end of the section, then retrace back to the opening theme.

Except he falters.

His fingers speed on, working via muscle memory, but they have a mind of their own. His actual mind scrambles as it chases his darting hands. Cheekbones tighten, sweat strokes his brow: maestro have pity.

Breathe.

Finally, Conti starts to sing and conduct with one hand, working Toby back into the piece, and within a few seconds he’s found his way and presses on to the end.

But focus lifted for a microsecond, floated overhead, untethered, mind searching for the recognizable world.

Conti asks, “Your name is Hausner?”

“Yes.”

“So hard for German people to achieve true bel canto.”

Toby’s head jerks up. “Is that all you have to tell me?”

The man smiles evenly. He is used to a certain deference. “No,” he says, then adds, “I believe you are really an artist, but —” He holds up a hand. “You are not a hundred percent prepared today.”

Tess chirps from her front row seat. “You should have heard him play when he was a kid.”

Conti studies Toby. “But you are not such a kid now.”

Pry open the lid of his coffee cup and let out a yelp: slashed finger from the ragged edge of plastic. Toby watches with dismay as a sizz of blood appears on the tip of his index finger where skin squeezes frets. Race to the bathroom of Tim Hortons and run cold water over the injured finger for a full ten minutes, the ganglia of nerve endings tying off, retreating. Blood colours the water crimson, then pink, then less pink, until finally it runs clear.

Conti said, “You must over-prepare, then set the piece aside for a week or two.” But who has the luxury of time?

At home Jasper presses the wounded finger to his lips. “Will you still be able to play?”

“Sure,” Toby says.

“Things are moving very quickly with you.”

Toby tugs his finger away. “After years of slow.”

Pained look. “Is that what you call our lives together, Toby? Slow?”

To a romantic there might be something ecstatic in the idea of a breakdown. Toby knows that his shipwreck caused only pain, though he’ll point out that he never heard voices that were not his own, nothing borrowed from radio waves. It was a function of overwork, ecstasy minus key proteins and water.

After the Paris episode, where he was rescued by his worried father, Klaus, and taken home, Toby landed in the halfway house where a man called Jasper worked. Every Monday, Jasper corralled Toby to fill out his PAS, personalized activity schedule, the chart that broke down each day into segments: brush teeth, dress, make bed, attend day program. Toby would grumble at the tedium of it all, yet it was reassuring to tick off tasks of normalcy. The schedule saved him, he will admit on certain days, for it turned out that life skills were just what he was missing. It was the lack of such skills that had landed him in hot water, forgetting to eat, wash, take a crap. He’d fallen into abstraction.