Nothing mattered much except playing the music as it must be played, bringing out the thing that must be in her, practicing, practicing, playing so that Mister Bilderbach's face lost some of its urging look. Putting the thing into her music that Myra Hess had, and Yehudi Menuhin – even Heime!
What had begun to happen to her four months ago? The notes began springing out with a glib, dead intonation. Adolescence, she thought. Some kids played with promise – and worked and worked until, like her, the least little thing would start them crying, and worn out with trying to get the thing across – the longing thing they felt – something queer began to happen – But not she! She was like Heime. She had to be. She -
Once it was there for sure. And you didn't lose things like that. A Wunderkind… A Wunderkind… Of her he said it, rolling the words in the sure, deep German way. And in the dreams even deeper, more certain than ever. With his face looming out at her, and the longing phrases of music mixed in with the zooming, circling round, round, round – A Wunderkind. A Wunderkind… This afternoon Mister Bilderbach did not show Mister Lafkowitz to the front door, as he usually did. He stayed at the piano, softly pressing a solitary note. Listening, Frances watches the violinist wind his scarf about his pale throat.
"A good picture of Heime," she said, picking up her music. "I got a letter from him a couple of months ago – telling about hearing Schnabel and Huberman and about Carnegie Hall and things to eat at the Russian Tea Room."
To put off going into the studio a moment longer she waited until Mister Lafkowitz was ready to leave and then stood behind him as he opened the door. The frosty cold outside cut into the room. It was growing late and the air was seeped with the pale yellow of winter twilight. When the door swung to on its hinges, the house seemed darker and more silent than ever before she had known it to be.
As she went into the studio Mister Bilderbach got up from the piano and silently watched her settle herself at the keyboard.
"Well, Bienchen," he said, "this afternoon we are going to begin all over. Start from scratch. Forget the last few months."
He looked as though he were trying to act a part in a movie. His solid body swayed from toe to heel, he rubbed his hands together, and even smiled in a satisfied, movie way. Then suddenly he thrust this manner brusquely aside. His heavy shoulders slouched and he began to run through the stack of music she had brought in. "The Bach – no, not yet," he murmured. "The Beethoven? Yes, the Variation Sonata. Opus. 26."
The keys of the piano hemmed her in – stiff and white and dead-seeming.
"Wait a minute," he said. He stood in the curve of the piano, elbows propped, and looked at her. "Today I expect something from you. Now this sonata – it's the first Beethoven sonata you ever worked on. Every note is under control – technically – you have nothing to cope with but the music. Only music now. That's all you think about."
He rustled through the pages of her volume until he found the place. Then he pulled his teaching chair halfway across the room, turned it around and seated himself, straddling the back with his legs.
For some reason, she knew, this position of his usually had a good effect on her performance. But today she felt that she would notice him from the corner of her eye and be disturbed. His back was stiffly tilted, his legs looked tense. The heavy volume before him seemed to balance dangerously on the chair back. "Now we begin," he said with a peremptory dart of his eyes in her direction.
Her hands rounded over the keys and then sank down. The first notes were too loud, the other phrases followed dryly.
Arrestingly his hand rose up from the score. "Wait! Think a minute what you're playing. How is this beginning marked?"
"An-andante."
"All right. Don't drag it into an adagio then. And play deeply into the keys. Don't snatch it off shallowly that way. A graceful, deep-toned andante -"
She tried again. Her hands seemed separate from the music that was in her.
"Listen," he interrupted. "Which of these variations dominates the whole?"
"The dirge," she answered.
"Then prepare for that. This is an andante – but it's not salon stuff as you just played it. Start out softly, piano, and make it swell out just before the arpeggio. Make it warm and dramatic. And down here – where it's marked dolce make the counter melody sing out. You know all that. We've gone over all that side of it before. Now play it. Feel it as Beethoven wrote it down. Feel that tragedy and restraint."
She could not stop looking at his hands. They seemed to rest tentatively on the music, ready to fly up as a stop signal as soon as she would begin, the gleaming flash of his ring calling her to halt. "Mister Bilderbach – maybe if I – if you let me play on through the first variation without stopping I could do better."
"I won't interrupt," he said.
Her pale face leaned over too close to the keys. She played through the first part, and, obeying a nod from him, began the second. There were no flaws that jarred on her, but the phrases shaped from her fingers before she had put into them the meaning that she felt.
When she had finished he looked up from the music and began to speak with dull bluntness: "I hardly heard those harmonic fillings in the right hand. And incidentally, this part was supposed to take on intensity, develop the foreshadowings that were supposed to be inherent in the first part. Go on with the next one, though."
She wanted to start it with subdued viciousness and progress to a feeling of deep, swollen sorrow. Her mind told her that. But her hands seemed to gum in the keys like limp macaroni and she could not imagine the music as it should be.
When the last note had stopped vibrating, he closed the book and deliberately got up from the chair. He was moving his lower jaw from side to side – and between his open lips she could glimpse the pink healthy lane to his throat and his strong, smoke-yellowed teeth. He laid the Beethoven gingerly on top of the rest of her music and propped his elbows on the smooth, black piano top once more. "No," he said simply, looking at her.
Her mouth began to quiver. "I can't help it. I -"
Suddenly he strained his lips into a smile. "Listen, Bienchen," he began in a new, forced voice. "You still play the Harmonious Blacksmith, don't you? I told you not to drop it from your repertoire."
"Yes," she said. "I practice it now and then."
His voice was the one he used for children. "It was among the first things we worked on together – remember. So strongly you used to play it – like a real blacksmith's daughter. You see, Bienchen, I know you so well – as if you were my own girl. I know what you have – I've heard you play so many things beautifully. You used to -"
He stopped in confusion and inhaled from his pulpy stub of cigarette. The smoke drowsed out from his pink lips and clung in a gray mist around her lank hair and childish forehead.
"Make it happy and simple," he said, switching on the lamp behind her and stepping back from the piano.
For a moment he stood just inside the bright circle the light made. Then impulsively he squatted down to the floor. "Vigorous," he said.
She could not stop looking at him, sitting on one heel with the other foot resting squarely before him for balance, the muscles of his strong thighs straining under the cloth of his trousers, his back straight, his elbows staunchly propped on his knees. "Simply now," he repeated with a gesture of his fleshy hands. "Think of the blacksmith – working out in the sunshine all day. Working easily and undisturbed."