“Good! Then he’ll be able to give me absolution!”
“You have no fear of the Lord!”
“I’m more afraid of your spicy meatballs!”
“So, Dave,” Koesler, who was beginning to develop a nervous stomach, interrupted, “what are you going to play in your concert?” Experience had taught that his efforts at peacemaking could be little more than stopgap measures.
Dave smiled at the thought. “Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert.”
“See?” Anna said. “All the old-timers. Dear, you’re going to make everybody think you never heard of the twentieth century.”
“There she goes again!” Dave countered. “An art student—and not a very good one at that—and she wants to be my program director!”
“Leave my art alone!”
“Why not? Everyone else has. But tell me, my lovely, whom would you have on the program?”
“Somebody. Anybody. At least from this century. Stravinsky maybe.”
“Good! Excellent! Superb! Then we could be certain that if someone fired a cannon during the concert, no one would get hurt.”
“Okay. All right, Andre Previn. Stick to your ‘masters’ and see where it gets you.”
“A few more people. Maybe a full house, my pet!”
“And the usual negative reviews. Ridley Groendal is not going to like that program.”
“Ridley Groendal can go to hell!”
“Forgive him, Father!”
“Forgive me, Father.”
Koesler shook his head.
Anna rose in a huff and went to the sink to scrape dishes and stack them in the dishwasher. Though it was a little noisy, it enabled Palmer and Koesler to talk without interruption.
“She’s wrong, you know,” Palmer said. “God knows I understand the atonals as well as anybody. And I like a lot of them. But we’ve got to face it: The general public has resisted them. With the Symphony, we’ll tuck one or another of them in among the classics, hoping that the audience will come to hear, say, Mozart, and learn to like Cage. But, to date, it hasn’t really worked; they’ll give Beethoven a standing ovation and sit on their hands for Prokofiev.”
“And you don’t fear Rid?”
Palmer shrugged. “I never feared Rid. I alternate between not understanding him, pitying him, and despising him.”
“An odd mixture.”
Palmer rose and motioned Koesler to follow him into the living room where the kitchen sounds would be muted and they could talk more comfortably. “I suppose. But that’s the way it worked out.”
“Care to explain?”
Palmer registered doubt. “Rid’s in your parish now. The two of you talk from time to time?”
“Yes, but I’m not the type to betray a confidence. You know that.”
“God, yes. I know that. Well, I pity the man because he’s a shell. There’s no substance. Performers, the artists know that. The trouble with Rid is he thinks he knows everything. He doesn’t. Nobody does. But, there he is, maybe the premier critic in America, certainly the most influential—or at least he was when he was with the Herald.
“He passes himself off as the expert in theater, music, and literature. And what does he know? Jargon! Outside of artsy phrases, he doesn’t know any more than the average patron of the arts. And he’s insecure.”
Koesler lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“Oh, he’s insecure, all right. Like insecure people, he has to name-drop. Like, ‘When I was talking to Lennie last . . .’ or ‘Pinky prefers the pizzicato played this way . . .’
“No, Ridley never really knew what he was talking or writing about. What he knows is how to intimidate people. People in middle and upper management. That’s where his power lies. But when he acts the critic, he just plain doesn’t know his rear end from a hole in the ground.
“So, part of me pities him.” Palmer stopped to light his pipe.
Koesler took up the slack. “You pity Rid, but you also mentioned you don’t understand him?”
Palmer puffed several times to kindle the tobacco. “I don’t understand why he hates me. I haven’t done anything to him.”
“There was that time when we were all kids . . .”Koesler well knew how unforgetting and unforgiving Ridley could be.
“You mean the eighth-grade concert?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You really think it could be that! I’ve thought about it many, many times. It’s the only conflict we ever had. But it was so childish. And so many years ago. It seems impossible. If memory serves, all I did was pay him back for what he did to me. A couple of adolescent tricks. Do you think that could be it?”
“It’s possible.” Actually, Koesler was certain it was so.
“I suppose you’re right. Yeah, it’s the only thing. But, so many years ago . . . so long ago . . . and such an insignificant incident . . . it seems incredible.” Palmer puffed, contemplatively.
“One man’s insignificant is another man’s mountain.” Koesler regretted the words no sooner than they left his lips; he sounded like a pop-psych guru. Fortunately, Palmer seemed still deep in thought. Koesler picked up another thread. “And your hatred for him?”
“Huh! Oh, well, that’s the clearest of all. He’s ruined my career quite singlehandedly. I won’t go into chapter and verse, but he’s gone out of his way to screw me at every turn. And he’s been good at it. As I said, he has a knack for influencing the powers that be. And he’s certainly done it where I’m concerned.” Palmer puffed for a few moments. “I can’t help thinking every once in a while what my life would have been if not for Ridley Groendal. By this time—God!—I would have had my own organization . . . a guest soloist . . .” He was lost in reverie.
Not for the world would Koesler have suggested that Palmer might well have contributed to his own limitations. As his career sank ever more inextricably into the DSO, his temperament and behavior had deteriorated in tempo.
At Symphony parties to which Palmer had invited him, Koesler sometimes overheard other orchestra members complaining about Dave—picayune things, such as when it was Palmer’s responsibility to turn pages, he would flip a page just far enough so he could read the music, forcing his partner to complete the chore. Little things—but sometimes the rabbit punches were life’s most difficult afflictions.
Anna came in with coffee.
“So,” Koesler summed up, “pity, bewilderment, and hate. An odd combination.”
“Oh, good grief!” Anna exclaimed. “You’ve been talking about that Groendal person again.”
Koesler was not surprised that Anna was familiar with Dave’s feelings toward Ridley.
“Yes,” Palmer said, “Groendal once more.”
He set the pipe in an ashtray, where the dottle smoldered. “Funny thing, if I ever stopped feeling pity—for even one brief second . . .”
“You’d what?” Anna prompted.
“I’d . . . I’d kill him. Yes, I really would.”
“Dave!” Anna exclaimed. “That’s a sin! Now you really are going to have to ask for absolution!”
“Instead of that, I think I’ll play something.” Palmer tried to create the impression that his threat had not been serious. But Father Koesler wondered.
Palmer picked up his violin, tuned it, and began the gentle opening theme from Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony.
For Koesler, the beauty of the music more than made up for Anna’s spaghetti and meatballs. As he listened, he could not help but reflect on Dave’s threat. That completed the circle of all three men who had been so crippled by Ridley’s revenge. Three men who, otherwise, were essentially nonviolent. Yet, in Koesler’s hearing, all three had threatened to kill Ridley Groendal.
That left Jane Condon, now Jane Cahill, and her daughter, Valerie Cahill, now Valerie Walsh, as the only victims who had not threatened to kill Groendal—at least not in Koesler’s hearing.