Nemesis Page 4

  Still that look. Thick-lashed eyes blinking behind the round eyeglasses. “I-I’d like that very much, Mr. Christensen, b-but tonight I’m—”

  Playing coy? Or truly shy? Intimidated?

  “Unless of course you were simply being polite? Courteous to one of your elders? A sort of jeunesse oblige?”

  “Oh, n-no, Mr.—”

  “It’s hardly a secret that young composers are more intrigued by the pablum of Philip Glass et al. than by the ‘strenuous neoclassicism of Rolfe Christensen’”—smiling a crooked dimpled smile, flushed face radiating good humor and resignation in equal measure—“but I try not to be discouraged. After all, our only judge is posterity.”

  “Oh, but I t-truly admire your work, Mr.—”

  “Do please call me Rolfe, will you, Brendan? My tutorial students at the Conservatory, my favored students, always call me Rolfe.”

  “… Rolfe.”

  The response was hardly more than a murmur, coquettish-shy but immediate.

  Thus Brendan Bauer went of his own free will with Rolfe Christensen to his stately red-brick Georgian home on Little-brook Road, and admired with unfeigned sincerity the house and its eighteenth-century furnishings, and seemed virtually struck into silence by the handsome A-frame addition at the rear made of walnut, fieldstone, and pigmented glass, the elder composer’s music studio containing a splendid Steinway concert grand and thousands of dollars’ worth of stereo equipment, records, tapes, compact discs, and the like; a white lamb’s-wool rug from Peru; Ming vases, Etruscan figures, a couch and chairs in kidskin; a liquor cabinet and a wet bar; ingeniously recessed lighting that suggested a stage; and an entire wall of framed photographs, citations, plaques, and mementos. Though saying in his soft stammering voice that, really, he would have to go home soon, Brendan accepted a glass of aquavit from his host, which he claimed he’d never before tasted and found rather … overpowering. Indeed he made a show of coughing, wiping at his eyes, gasping. “It’s like an acetylene torch going up my nostrils and into my sk-sk-skull.”

  Christensen, who had taken off his sport coat and loosened his tie, regarded his young visitor with a look of frank fond interest and said, screwing up one side of his face into a genial wink, “Really, Brendan! And do you know what an acetylene torch feels like going up your nostrils and into your sk-sk-skull?”

  But Brendan Bauer was still coughing and gasping, and the little joke passed unnoticed.

  Brendan went to examine the wall of memorabilia, artlessly wide-eyed, exclaiming. “Is this Leonard Bernstein with you, Mr. Christensen? Is this … P-Poulenc? And … President Reagan? Mrs. Reagan? And w-who is …?”

  Brendan Bauer, drawn to Rolfe Christensen’s display of Rolfe Christensen as a moth to a flame; or, indeed, as many another young ambitious musician, male, had been drawn to the same wall, the same dazzling display. Very likely thinking, with the crude ingenuousness of youth, There someday go I.

  This pair of tight buttocks from Omaha, or was it Oklahoma City, or Boise, or Missoula—more recently from a Catholic seminary in St. Louis—in an ill-fitting cheap brown suit that looked as if it had been bought off the rack at Sears. Oddly coarse brown hair growing over his shirt collar, a slightly pimply skin, a suggestion of buck teeth—beautiful buck teeth—beautiful eyes too behind the round owlish plastic-framed glasses, grammar school circa 1951: charming. Brendan Bauer was precisely the type Rolfe Christensen found himself attracted to, not the big husky sort of fellow (like Christensen himself) but the skinny sparrow-boned sort, muscle that might be hard and lean but no larger, in the upper arm for instance, than an apple. There was something too in the fact that he wore glasses, such boys always wore glasses, and once the glasses were taken from them they blinked in that strangely trusting way of myopia.…

  Electrical cord is, on the whole, gentler than rope: leaves fewer abrasive red marks.

  Consider the old French proverb, Tears too can be a lubricant.

  Not stealthily, but quietly, and with a measure of grace, despite the pulse and throb of alcohol in his veins and the mounting excitement, so familiar, yet exotic, in his groin, Rolfe Christensen came up behind his young visitor and laid a warm heavy hand on his shoulder, the unexpected weight of which caused the young visitor to stiffen for a moment but not (did he fear the gesture might be perceived as impolite?) to edge away.

  “Yes, that’s Lenny Bernstein and me, 1973, the world premiere of my ‘Suite for Orchestra’ at Lincoln Center; Lenny is a third-rate composer himself but a first-rate interpreter of others’ work.… Yes that’s the late Poulenc—dear Francis! le voleur suprême—we were lunching at his château in Touraine the very year of his death, 1963. Along with Ned Rorem, I was the only American composer Poulenc admired: an ambiguous honor, isn’t it? … Of course I’m very, very fond of Ned, I don’t consider the rivalry between us quite so pitiless as he does, in fact this is Ned and me—Ned looking rather striking, indeed—the occasion was a luncheon at his place on Nantucket. Isn’t it a deliciously provoking thing Ned is doing, excluding me from his diary entirely! Fearing a libel suit, perhaps. Fearing who knows what. As if Rolfe Christensen doesn’t exist.… Yes, this was taken in the White House, one of those large public occasions honoring American ‘artists.’ You glance around and your heart sinks, seeing the others. Of course the Reagans are absolutely tone-deaf, he is such a vulgarian, but d’you know I rather liked the man: I did vote for him, both times.… This was taken at the Pulitzer Prize ceremony—again, a somewhat diminished occasion when I discovered who the other winners were—but I do look rather trim, don’t I, a bit younger then.… This commemorates my belated induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters—the old gent shaking my hand is none other than Milton Babbitt, one of the chancellors of that august society—everyone congratulated me, expected me to grovel with gratitude when in fact I was inwardly seething: Rolfe Christensen had to wait until the age of fifty-four to be elected to the society when I should have been elected at the age of thirty-four, or younger; I will never forgive them, the spiteful egomaniac bastards.… And here, at Tanglewood, Aaron Copland presenting me with a ‘promising young composer’ award, a long time ago, when we were still on speaking terms.… And here, at the Aspen Music Festival in 1967, Virgil Thomson and me.… And here, at the Spoleto Festival, Gian Carlo Menotti and me.… And here—”

  It was a familiar litany but by no means an unpleasant one, for Rolfe Christensen even in his sixtieth year remained fascinated by the history of Rolfe Christensen, particularly when recounted for youth’s rapt ear.

  Six feet of electrical cord twined like a drowsy household snake in a cavity behind the liquor cabinet.

  As Proust said, Without nervous disorder there can be no great art.

  Christensen never employed force for rarely was there need JUST DON’T PROVOKE ME DON’T MAKE ME ANGRY; thus the evidence of blood-speckled or -stained sheets (or, the previous winter in London, in the Mayfair flat, so puzzlingly, stained stairs after a fifteen-hour visit by an importunate young man) was always an astonishment JUST DON’T PLAY GAMES: I WARN YOU.

  It was ten-thirty, and it was eleven o’clock, and Rolfe Christensen provided his young visitor with food, drink, conversation—a happy interlude of Bavarian chocolates, chocolate-covered truffles, richly salted Brazil nuts, Scotch on the rocks for both—though Brendan Bauer, seemingly unaccustomed to such quantities of alcohol, showed by his sleepy puffy eyes and slack cherry-red mouth that he was nearing a state of what’s called inebriation. Several times the young man murmured in his charming stammery voice that he really should go home, and several times Christensen assured him yes, soon, he’d play the tape for him and drive him home soon, yes.

  Rolfe Christensen, too restless to remain seated, paced about the studio, eyes aglow, face flushed, chattering … chattering. Now and then he stooped over the piano and played chords, joyous excited crashing chords. He was smoking one of his fragrant cigars, a fine Havana blend, gripping the cigar tight betwe
en his teeth, smiling around the cigar, exhaling smoke in luxurious curving tusks. Brendan Bauer, silly boy, began to choke and gasp, and Christensen flailed his arms about to wave the smoke away. “You haven’t ever had a cigar, Brendan? Would you like to try one of mine?”

  Brendan was sitting in one of the low kidskin chairs, his thin knees awkwardly raised and his head and torso thrown back, a disadvantageous position. He smiled wanly. Wiped at his eyes. Shook his head to clear it. “N-no, thank you, Mr. Chris—I mean Rolfe. M-m-maybe some other time—” His voice faltered in a suppressed spasm of coughing.

  Rolfe Christensen stood gazing down at him with a little curl of a smile. “So you believe, Brendan, Bren dan, that there will be an ‘other time’?”

  The young man stared up as if perplexed.

  There is a point at which coyness and audacity converge, and this point young Bauer was quickly approaching. He shook his head again, like a puppy, and giggled, and said, “… time is it? … should be g-g-going …”

  “And where, dear Bren dan, do you think you should be g-g-going?”

  Another perplexed look.

  Gently, Christensen chided the young man for wanting to go home without having heard the “Adagio.” “Or have you forgotten? It was the ostensible purpose of your visit, after all.”

  Now Brendan tried to rouse himself, looking a bit chagrined, guilty. Saying quickly, “Oh I d-d-do want to hear your composition, Rolfe,” smiling, clumsily lying, “I didn’t forget.”

  Rolfe Christensen smiled down at the young man around the cigar clamped between his teeth. “Didn’t you!”

  There followed then, at about midnight, the playing of a tape of Christensen’s 1972 composition, “Adagio for Piano and Strings,” op. 26, since the piece was only eighteen minutes long and structurally intricate, the composer played it a second time. During these highly charged thirty-six minutes Christensen continued to pace about the room, observing his young guest, who was seemingly trying to impress him by following the score, frowning, nodding, tapping his foot, trying to keep his eyes open and his mouth from going soft and slack. An opportunistic young man, yet transparent in his motives: Christensen recalled himself at that age, seeking out elder composers, Aaron Copland, William Schuman, to flatter and impress. No doubt this Bauer secretly imagined himself a genius, a Mozartian prodigy perhaps—he looked as if he were about twenty years old, possibly younger. Possibly virginal.

  Earlier in the evening young Bauer had mentioned to Christensen (and Nicholas Reickmann) that coming to Forest Park was the “fulfillment of a lifetime” for him; the opportunity to work with a composer of the stature of Rolfe Christensen was “the answer to my prayers”; in fact, coming to Forest Park was a milestone in his life since this was his first time in the East, his first time, almost, east of the Mississippi River. Saying “first time in the East” he’d lowered his eyes, seemingly blushing, as if the words were a signal in code.

  Later, as the party was nearing its close, Christensen had said to him, “So: this is your first time east of the Mississippi?” and Brendan had laughed as if embarrassed and said, “Oh, al-al-almost.”

  Which left the matter tantalizingly ambiguous.

  Just don’t make me angry Bren dan. Don’t play the cock-tease Bren dan.

  Down the evolutionary slope Rolfe Christensen descended, and what relief in it, and joy, and anger too—a mysterious surge of anger, a pinch and a pulse in the groin. In the blood-swollen fruit of the groin. For he was bored, bored nearly to madness, by being forever the gentleman, the genius, the aristocrat from “an old and revered New England family”; weary of plaudits of his “long and distinguished and much-honored career” sounding in his ears like a ceaseless Gregorian chant even as he knew well that others withheld their praise. He was weary of casting his pearls before swine; indeed, he was furious, for what did Rolfe Christensen care of his music colleagues’ judgment at Forest Park or elsewhere? What did he care of the judgment of his fellow composers, devoured by envy and spite as they surely were, the contemptible sons of bitches? What did he care about the ignorant, indifferent, slothful audiences that season after season trooped into music halls to hear Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, the New World symphony, the Nutcracker suite, anything and everything by Mozart no matter how facile, anything and everything by Liszt no matter how turgid, anything and everything that was of the past and not “modern,” and then, most infuriating of all, the fatuous young musicians, the generations of new composers coolly ignoring Rolfe Christensen but idolizing claptrap by Philip Glass, John Cage, Terry Riley, entranced by serial music, synthesizer music, anything that was considered “experimental.” And here, astonishingly, was one of those young composers in Christensen’s very house; in his very music studio; slouched semidrunkenly in the low-slung chair, musical score on his lap, pretending to be listening with painstaking scrutiny to one of the most challenging and beautiful of twentieth-century American compositions … the callow little hypocrite.

  Bren dan. Bren dan Bau er.

  Don’t provoke.

  Now Christensen was perspiring, now the bulldog began to push his way forward, panting in anticipation: the hot flushed skin, the small damp red eyes, the snout, and the folds of flesh bracketing the snout … and the lower jaw protruding.

  The “Adagio” came to its exquisitely irresolute conclusion for the second time. A dramatic silence followed.

  After a seemingly respectful moment Brendan Bauer said, clearing his throat, “Very i-i-interesting, Mr. Christensen, very fine”—as Christensen stood a few feet behind him, staring at the back of his head, meaty breath quickened, cigar clamped between his teeth—“it sort of reminded me, that brief phrase in the second movement, of a theme of Poulenc’s … Dialogues? And certain of the straight triads near the end … Fauré? And back through Fauré maybe to … Chopin?”

  There was a long, painful pause, a beat of several seconds. As if unable to comprehend what he’d heard, Christensen remained motionless, staring at the back of his young visitor’s head. Then, the cigar still clamped between his teeth, he said, calmly, though shivering, “You are trying to provoke me, Bren dan, aren’t you. You conniving little cunt.”

  Brendan Bauer turned a stricken, dead-white face to the man who was standing close behind him, smiling down at him, twin tusks of smoke curving up around his head: a man not immediately recognizable as Rolfe Christensen the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer. And again there was a pause. Profound, paralyzing silence.

  5

  We are the creation of some famous maker, in his way a Stradivarius, who is no longer there to mend us. In clumsy hands we cannot give forth new sounds and we stifle within ourselves all those things which no one will ever draw from us.… These rather pessimistic and alarming words, from a letter of Frédéric Chopin to his friend Fontana in 1848, had imprinted themselves on Maggie Blackburn’s consciousness when she first read them as a young girl, in an early stage of that extreme vulnerability to others that constitutes, for some, the essence of the romantic predicament; since meeting Calvin Gould, with whom she believed herself in love, however distantly, she found in them an added piquancy.

  In clumsy hands … we stifle within … things which no one will ever draw from us.

  Is this a tragic dilemma? Maggie wondered quite seriously. Or is it, in its way, nothing more than a simple fact of life? A fact which, if one were mature, one would accept with the same equanimity with which one accepted one’s hair and eye color, bone structure, genetic destiny—assuming of course that one accepted these things with equanimity.

  Sunday following Saturday: the aftermath of a party, thus susceptible to melancholy, fatigue, a futile reimagining of how things might have gone. From prior experience Maggie knew that such days were dangerous unless navigated briskly and without sentiment. This she meant to do.

  “Above all,” she instructed herself, “no self-pity.”

  Burying Sweetpea was the day’s first task. The night before, she had wrapped the can
ary in a linen napkin and laid her on a kitchen shelf; now she carried her outside, into the rear yard, to bury her beneath a rosebush. During the night Sweetpea had stiffened, and her body, near weightless, was now decidedly cold; she looked ornamental, a work of artifice. Maggie’s eyes flooded with tears even as she recognized that the death was a small one, as deaths go, and would readily be forgotten. She did not want to think that anyone might be to blame and refused to allow herself the resentful luxury of puzzling out how or why the window of her study had been left open, who the intruder might be.

  Of course, she had a good idea. But it was pointless to think along such lines, wasn’t it.

  On one of her visits to the nursing home, Maggie’s father had eyed her with a bitter sort of envy, mumbling, “Walk out of here don’t you and … drive away … forget,” losing track of what he meant to say even as he spoke. He’d meant that Maggie had the freedom to walk out of his life and to forget him even as he could never walk out of it himself, still less forget; and though the accusation was unfair, Maggie had been struck by its possibility. And by the revelation that the person closest to her of all living human beings in terms of blood relations saw her as coolly independent and unsentimental.

  Sweetpea’s grave was shallow, a token sort of grave, made in the dry crumbly earth with a few swipes of a kitchen spoon. Laying the dazzling-white linen shroud inside, Maggie had to resist the impulse to unwrap it another time and see if the bird really was there.

  Back inside the house, the solitary male was singing. He’d begun at dawn, or before. Never in the two years Maggie had had the canary pair had the male sung so urgently and so persistently, alone now, flitting from perch to perch in his smart bamboo cage.

  The canary’s singing hadn’t woken Maggie, she’d already been awake. A night of intermittent sleep, confusing dreams. She’d been jarred into full consciousness by the thought that, if Calvin Gould were miraculously unmarried, a free man, it would hardly mean that he might reciprocate her feeling for him; or even that he might put himself into the intimate position of becoming aware of that feeling.