Читать книгу The Ann Ireland Library - Ann Ireland - Страница 25

Luke has leaked the whole business to the media and sponsors, which means the phone has been ringing off the hook all afternoon. The first call caught Jasper off guard: Is the institute, a nonprofit organization that depends on the goodwill of government grants, attempting to jettison its highly respected volunteer president because of some personal vendetta?

How the hell did that version get out there? Jasper stares at each staff member passing by his desk — who is the traitor?

Jasper’s gym crony, Al, emails to say he watched a clip of Jasper on the midday cable news. Al tells him that he sounded calm and articulate, but “For God’s sake, flip your collar down.”

What Jasper is, is careful. Careful not to say that Luke is a chronic liar disguised in the mien of backslapping loyalist. No one would care if it weren’t for the virus. The institute is the location of choice for extended rehab.

Write everything down and record each phone conversation. It’s key to keep each member of the board onside and informed before Luke sways them. The institute must not be allowed to capsize because of one errant member. Presidents come and go, but Jasper has been here since the beginning. The fur is flying: Jasper must confess to a certain heated excitement. Not so long ago he and Luke were the best of friends. Luke would sidle up before meetings and flatter his executive director with his easy confidence, pretending to defer on matters of institute policy. There were those long shared lunches at May’s where Luke would order lychee nut martinis and pledge that together he and Jasper would lift the institute to “a whole new level.” He was a man of vision and optimism, just what the old joint needed. Or so he convinced Jasper.

Salon B in the mezzanine of the Fine Arts Building streams autumnal light from a bank of windows. Before entering the cavernous room, Toby must show his conference tag to prove he’s paid up. Luthiers have set up booths to display cutaway models of internal bracing systems next to finished guitars waiting to be taken through their paces. A television monitor shows the artisan tramping through a forest in search of just the right tree to be felled and milled, voice-over with overlay of peeping birds and the crunch of boots on rough trail. Placards contain endorsements by famous guitarists. Other booths display custom stands and stools and other props. One stand folds ingeniously and fits in your pocket; another is guaranteed to prevent back strain. The usual Mel Bay mini-store of sheet music takes up the back corner.

Toby makes his way toward XTract Music, a small publishing company run by judge Jon Smyth that specializes in transcriptions from other instruments and Jon’s own eccentric compositions.

“One of our bright young men,” Jon hails Toby with enthusiasm, for his booth has seen little action during the competition.

The two musicians slap palms, and Jon hustles him onto a chair. “Fresh from the printer,” he says, offering a thin folder. “I’ve sampled Dowland, though you might not recognize the old boy. The trick is finding a meter and sticking to it.” He drops the score into Toby’s waiting hands.

Toby gives the piece a quick scan: Jon uses conventional notation with a hodge-podge of time signatures.

“Perfect encore piece,” Jon says, hovering. “Bravura, yet compact at three and a half minutes.”

Toby taps his toe on the floor as written notes translate to sound in his head. Perfect pitch arrived at birth, but rhythm comes from the heart’s own beat.

“Give it a go, will you?”

Toby smiles. “Sure.”

“Horace!” Jon barks at the luthier hunched over half asleep in a neighbouring booth. “Lend the man one of your gut buckets.”

Horace Manners, who builds concert-level guitars and Celtic harps, wakes up with a snap and gestures toward Toby. “Take your pick.”

Silky smooth grain, spruce top with a yew body made from timber milled on Horace’s property near Lake Simcoe — waiting list for an instrument at least five years. Toby grabs one off the stand. A guitar’s not a newborn. You can bash it around a little. It improves the sound.

Horace winces. Toby grins, but he does remove his zippered jacket and drape it over the back of the chair. He’s the prince of sight-readers. Give him anything and he’ll rip it off the first time, not just correct notes but phrasing, expression, the whole nine yards.

This guitar, redolent of seasoned wood and coats of meticulously applied polish, nestles against his body, a perfect fit. He inhales, and the instrument breathes with him. Run his hands over the smooth neck, then try a chromatic scale: boomy bass notes, brand-new strings too crisp. It takes at least a year to break in a new instrument.

Toby launches into the skittish piece.

The trick is not to over-think, just enter the bloody thing, one eye out for the next corner. First few bars conjure up a tilted version of Dowland’s famous “Lady Beatrice’s Jump,” but isn’t that a Latin beat starting in the bass? The instrument is loud and full-voiced, crafted to reach the far corners of a concert hall without amplification.

A small group gathers around the booth as the music erupts. Enter Javier, then a couple of other luthiers emerging from their booths, followed by students from the local conservatory, all pressing in to hear the world premiere of “Dowland’s Backbite.”

Toby nails the complicated patterns, the zigzag of counter-rhythms and nasty transitions, his jaw tight and shoulders hunched, bronco rider taming the beast.

When he finishes, giving the final chord ample time to ring, he lowers his hands.

Someone says, “Holy shit.”

There is a smattering of applause and even laughter.

Jon Smyth’s eyes burrow in on him. “I know you.”

Toby recoils. This is not what he expects.

“I remember this bloke.” He points at Toby, then glances around at the gathered crowd.

Toby squeezes the guitar into his chest — body armour.

“Paris,” Jon announces. “You went off the rails. But first you ambushed everyone in the semis. After hearing you play, I nearly packed it in.” He’s extending a hand, and Toby understands he’s meant to shake it. “I offer you this work for your repertoire.”

Toby remembers to smile — a dragonfly lighting up at this moment, wings shot with gold. He’s always known this about himself, that he’d rise higher, faster, translucent.

The composer must have sat at this window looking down at the bustle of St. Lawrence Boulevard, working at this beat-up desk, really just a table with a drawer. The room is small but bright, and Leopold Hirsch was already feeling the effects of the osteoarthritis that crippled him in later life. His last couple of decades before dying of emphysema were spent back in Europe where he scraped by thanks to earlier achievements. Didn’t he conduct a regional orchestra in the Netherlands?

Toby is alone in the museum room except for Lucy, who cranes her neck to read the titles on the top row of the bookshelf. He runs his hand over the bumpy surface of the table despite a sign that warns: do not touch. But he is here to touch, to inhale, to enter the life of this man.

Leopold Hirsch, born 1900, lived in this third-floor apartment with his family for close to twenty years. The notebook splayed under glass was fashioned by the composer, heavy paper sewn roughly into leather covers, and it’s clear by its concave shape that he must have carried it around in his back pocket. There’s a scattershot of notes pencilled on hand-drawn staff lines, the stems unanchored to note heads, flags tiny as commas. This is the man’s mind in action, untethered, the actual record of his musical thoughts as they tumbled out. The label describes the journal as being “preliminary fragments” of what became “Triptych for Guitar and Orchestra” — here, a gleam in its creator’s eye.

Toby can feel the weight of the man’s arm as Hirsch leaned over the desk, while elsewhere in the flat his wife cooked up a batch of sauerkraut as she ducked between roughhousing children: “Shhh, your father is working.”

Toby’s head jerks up.

Did someone speak?

Just Lucy who is still on tiptoe, reading. “They’re all in Polish or German,” she says. “Beautiful bindings. He must have brought his library with him on the steamer. And look, Toby, this toy is handcrafted. Do you think Hirsch made it for one of his children?” She holds up a small wooden tugboat painted red and black.

Toby hears but doesn’t listen. His heart has tapped open. He’s fallen back into time and can smell the long-vanished bakery below with its old-country sweet buns, and when he pulls at the sleeves of his jacket, it’s the ratty suit coat that Leopold Hirsch wears in the photograph above the desk. Another richer fragrance of pipe tobacco permeates the room after all these years. Hirsch got his favourite brand shipped to him from overseas, except during the war years when he lost track of most of his relatives, some of whom moved here for weeks or months, crowded into the bedrooms, rolling cots up the narrow staircase.

The room is a blur. Toby tastes salt, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he stands helpless and watery, half drowning in his own fluid.

Lucy notices and quickly reaches to touch his hair. “It is your great luck to feel deeply. Which is why you play like you do.”

The book of études was composed earlier, back in Europe when Hirsch was still a student at the conservatory, but the gorgeous “Triptych” was formed in this room. The work begins with that lush romantic melody, and you think you’re in for a good time, then it kicks open and you don’t know where the hell you are.

Lucy drops her hand and nods toward the corner. “Do you suppose there’s a real guitar in there?” she asks. A battered instrument case leans against the wall. “Or is it just for show?”

Toby says, “One way to find out.” He strides across the room. Leaning to snap open the case, he suddenly stops himself. He doesn’t want to know. If this case is empty, a sham, better that it stay shut. He rises to his feet and backs off.

“While he was beavering away at his scores, his wife was peeling potatoes and caring for the mob of children,” Lucy says. She slips into the hallway where the walls are decorated with photographs and framed programs going back to the late 1920s.

Swiping his face with his sleeve, Toby composes himself — what an odd turn of phrase.

“These must be his parents,” Lucy calls back. “Fine old gent with heroic sideburns. His mother looks like an unforgiving creature, sucked-in cheeks. Mind you, photography was a big deal in those days.”

When Toby doesn’t speak, she pokes her head back into the studio. “His mother’s family was in the shipping business back in Poland.” She stares for a moment when he doesn’t respond.

Toby practised for four hours this morning. His hands are supple as heated putty.

Hirsch wrote that music came to him as dictation from a mystical source. He studied the kabbalah and other texts and even met Krishnamurti one summer.

“They held salons for artists and musicians on the last Thursday of each month,” Lucy says, returning to the hallway. “Here’s a tiny drawing by Paul-Émile Borduas that must be worth something. Madame Hirsch, quote, ‘cooked massive stews for the hungry children and artists.’ I bet she did.”

Leopold might be out in the park with the children when sound came to him, sidelong, like the cranked-up music box of the ice-cream vendor or pretzel sellers. He could work anywhere at any time, because, as he famously wrote, music emanates from the world around us, from trees and sky to machine noise and the whirr of telephone wires. To receive these sounds, Hirsch trained his ears and mind to enter a state he termed the Receptive Cone.

Toby has experienced it in himself, a sensation both glorious and unnerving. He feels the enchantment grow in him now, so close to the master.

Lucy cries with delight. She’s found the nursery. Reluctantly, he leaves the studio with its moist smell of tobacco and old books. Lucy stands in the middle of a room with a sloped ceiling and a mitred window that looks onto a brick-and-glass building that wouldn’t have been there in Hirsch’s day. A rough-hewn cradle sits on the floor, plaster doll tucked under its miniature quilt. She picks up a pint-sized hairbrush from a shelf and slowly whisks it across her forearm, then lowers herself onto the rustic bed, perching next to a teddy bear, minus most of its fur.

“The little ones are so dear,” Lucy says, glancing up at Toby as if waiting for him to echo her sentiment.

When he doesn’t respond, she appears almost cross, an expression Toby recognizes: Jasper gets this way when he thinks Toby should act more interested in what is going on around him.

Lucy asks, “Do you know who else lived here?”

“Relatives from the old country.”

“Polish and Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms, escaping their ghettos before the Nazis blew through.”

A cold snake enters Toby’s gut. He knows this change in tone. Usually, it comes from old people. To this point they’ve been cordial, but once they discover he’s got measurable cc’s of German blood in his veins, he’s implicated in the crimes of the century.

Lucy rises slowly from the bed and wanders over to the flip-top desk where she lifts a piece of sky from a jigsaw puzzle and ticks it against her teeth. “Think of the terror that made them leave and how difficult it was to land here with just the clothes on their backs.”

“My sympathies are with the ones who didn’t escape,” Toby says.

“Quite so.”

“I contain the whole range of human feelings,” he adds, unable to mask the defensive tone.

She runs her minesweeper eyes over him, then sets the puzzle piece down. “Of course.”

Why does he feel accused of something?

Leopold Hirsch tiptoed in at dawn to gaze at his sleeping children, three girls curled up on the one bed, and he listened to the raspy chest from the littlest child who would later die of pneumonia. It can be a curse to hear too much.

They step out of the haunted room into the corridor. This part of the hallway is decorated with faded manuscripts displayed behind glass, most too spotty and stained to recognize, though isn’t that the opening fragment to the adagio?

“Bathroom,” Lucy says, stating the obvious as she peers into the adjoining doorway.

A rusty streak blisters the surface of the claw-foot tub that rests on four chunks of wood, and there’s a distinct whiff of drains. Sitting on the pedestal sink is a sponge so crusty you know it hasn’t touched water in decades. That step stool must be for little Laura, pictured in the photos down the hall.

As Toby pulls back into the corridor, music starts up, gypsy violin drenched in melancholy, but when he glances around, he spots a speaker tacked in the corner where he’d hoped to see an old gent in a frayed suit, sawing away.

Hirsch adopted folk music in his compositions, wove old tunes into sophisticated new world caprices and sonatas. The violin crests and hangs in on a long fermata — and that’s when Toby hears footsteps climbing the narrow staircase. So far they’ve been the only visitors to the museum. Leopold Hirsch is a little-known figure on this side of the Atlantic. The steps pause on the landing, and through the sound of music they pick up the gasp of heavy breathing.

A stout man in his sixties pulls himself up the final flight of stairs. He wears a suit of timeless cut with shiny shoes. “Welcome, welcome,” he pants, sweat pooling on his brow. “Tell me, fine people, where are you coming from?”

“Toronto,” they chorus.

“Excellent.” He slips a pad and pencil from his pocket and writes this fact down. Toby notes his badge: the leopold hirsch society.

“You have been born there also?” the man asks.

Eastern European accent, Toby judges. “That’s right,” he says, watching as this, too, is written on the small pad.

“And you, madam?” Before Lucy can respond, the man begins to cough violently, and the visitors step hastily out of range.

This is how it begins: a propelled spray of saliva, an enclosed space.

“Pardon me, friends,” he says when he’s recovered. Then he turns to Lucy, pencil poised.

“Born in Calgary,” she says.

“And you enjoy our exhibition? Is interesting and provocative, yes?”

“Very,” Lucy assures him.

“We have restored this house for the enjoyment of musicians and followers of Dr. Hirsch. Maybe you would like to join our society. The dues are modest.” He stares at them in the gloom of the hallway. “Perhaps you have relatives in Poland or some special interest?” When there is no immediate response, he peers at Lucy’s badge. “Ah, a guitarist from the competition! Such an honour. I have been waiting for you people to come and visit our modest museum, but you are the first.” He flushes with evident pleasure and turns to Toby. “You, sir, are also one of the talented musicians?”

“I hope so.”

“Then you must follow me to Special Collections,” the volunteer insists. “An area where we allow only certain people, scholars and professional artists.” He beckons them toward the stairs, talking excitably. “We will begin with early letters sent back to his father. Perhaps you don’t know that Hirsch’s father was an eminent psychoanalyst with no less than Dr. Freud as his teacher.” He pauses, noting that the pair of musicians isn’t following. “So now we descend to the ground floor, to the special library.”

“We’ll be stuck there for hours,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear, seeing alarm cross his face. He’s got to get back to the dorm and practise. Time presses in.

Lucy swings her purse over one shoulder and says crisply, “I’m afraid we must dash back to the university.” She touches Toby’s arm in a wifely way.

The man seems hurt. “You must be interested in seeing these precious items — letters in his own hand to famous artists, original manuscripts, concert programs … and many personal articles.”

“I’m very sorry,” Lucy says.

“Perhaps we can come back,” Toby says brightly.

“Yes!” Lucy chimes in. “We’ll return once this is all over.”

The man’s shoulders sink, and when he speaks, it is in a resigned voice. “Yes, when it is over.”

Toby feels Lucy’s sharp tug on his sleeve. “Time to fly,” she says, foot planted on the top stair.

“Go then,” the man says, flattening himself against the wall. “A woman must never be kept waiting.”

It is the same heavy-handed courtliness that Klaus employs with what he terms “the fair sex.” Suddenly, Toby can’t get out of there fast enough. He pushes past both of them, hastening down the stairs and out the door to the bustling sidewalk where it is midday and women clip down the busy street in high heels, chattering into their cellphones.

What would Dr. Hirsch make of this new generation of urban sounds? No doubt he would incorporate the ring tones, gypsy violin, even the pneumatic drill upending pavement across the street into some aural tapestry that would first cause laughter from his puzzled audience, then worship.

“Were we very rude?” Lucy asks, joining him on the sidewalk. “I knew he’d suck us into an archival tunnel, make us examine every shoelace and grocery list.”

“Imagine reading his letters …” Toby says.

She looks at him sharply. “You read German?”

He doesn’t. Klaus tried to implant the language in his sons’ minds, but they resisted, scorning his marzipan rewards for the correct conjugations of verbs. All that remains are a few common words and a handful of nursery rhymes.

They glance up as a shadow passes: a blimp coasts across the sky, trailing a banner that advertises a common analgesic tablet. At the same time a taxi blares its horn, mimicking the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth while a kid strides past, earphones leaking hip-hop beats.

Lucy squints at him, using her hand as a visor. “Toby Hausner,” she says, “you’ve fallen for that piffle about the Receptive Cone.”

The dorm foyer buzzes with a fresh batch of conventioneers. The army cadets have disappeared, replaced by members of an international human rights organization. Delegates in jeans, saris, and suits line up before the gowned table to receive their registration kits. With jet-lagged ardour they pump hands and clap one another on the back while Lucy threads through the crowd, muttering apologies.

When she reaches the elevator that will whisk her up into the women’s wing, she calls back to Toby, “Come by at six for cocktails.”

He lifts an arm to protest. Cocktails! He must work until the sun sets and until his hands plead for mercy.

Moments later he slips into his cell. The guitar case lies across the cot, lid propped open. Somewhere far below the Metro rumbles.

Toby begins playing the trio with his fretting hand planted in seventh position, when of course he should have begun back in second, allowing for the cathedral-bell chime and a smooth transition. He worked this out months ago. Seventh position, he quickly discovers, leads to instant crisis and an open string thunking — so much for the cathedral chime.

He scrambles in his suitcase to find sheet music he hasn’t looked at in weeks; mistakes pop up at surprising times, when memory is most confident.

Never play a mistake twice, for it will burn new neural channels. Play it correctly five or six times before pressing on. That’s how you compose new memory, the one you want to live with.

The bully boys have won, and it’s a dark day for the institute.

President Luke lets out his belt a notch and can’t stop himself from smirking. He has the nerve, once the board meeting is over, to walk Jasper to the door, slip that hairless arm around his waist, and say, “We’re counting on you, as ever.”

That Jasper will hand in his official resignation by Monday.

Just twenty minutes earlier Jasper presented an itemized list of Luke’s activities to the executive while they stared fixedly at their agenda sheets.

“The office can’t continue to function like this,” he explained. “I’m afraid it’s Luke or me. You must decide.”

And so they decided.

And still they won’t look at him, for Jasper has become contaminated, like those poor souls in D Wing across the street, breathing through thrice-filtered air.