Noga corrects him: “It’s easy to give up Jerusalem, but Tel Aviv is too expensive.”
While she enjoys some of her favorite foods, she entertains the woman proprietor, who has sat down beside her, with tales of her adventures as an extra.
“And you didn’t play for three months?”
“Only once, for just a few minutes — in the desert, by a historic mountain covered with ruins.”
That night she phones Jerusalem, but there is no answer. She calls Honi to ask about their mother. He knows nothing, hasn’t called her since they parted the night before. “If she insists on Jerusalem, she should enjoy it however she likes,” he snaps. “You and I have done our part.”
The next day she works for hours at the music library, organizing all the parts in the piece. She makes sure no instrument is left out, carefully marks the cues and phrases for each one. At twilight she returns to the orchestra’s office, carrying in her arms a sizable bundle of scores, and sees the weary musicians get off the bus that has brought them home from Germany and help each other unload instruments from the truck that followed. She watches from afar as her harp is slowly wheeled to the storeroom, but does not yet approach it. Everyone is glad she is back. The aged flutist overflows with affection and calls over a tall, pale woman with hard eyes and a bitter smile. This is Christine, her understudy. Belgian, from Antwerp, French by tongue and temperament, awkward in English and Dutch.
“Your harp, it has a strong sound,” she informs the Israeli. “I tried to play it gently.”
“Thank you,” says Noga, extending her hand to the woman, whose belly, under a light pastel sweater, signals early pregnancy.
“And what is happening with your mother?” asks the harpist who took her place in the Mozart.
“Yes, what did she decide?” chimes Manfred.
Other musicians, despite their fatigue and eagerness to get home, want to know what an old mother in faraway Jerusalem has decided.
These Dutch people have no other worries, Noga thinks, chuckling to herself. Their wars ended seventy years ago, and they glow with self-satisfaction. They knew when to give up their colonies in Southeast Asia and have been spared the new wave of terrorism. The euro is stable, their economy is strong, and unemployment is low — so all they have left to worry about is my mother.
“She decided to stay in Jerusalem,” she tells the musicians gathered around her, “which I expected all along.”
In the evening there is still no answer in Jerusalem, and the daughter leaves a voicemail message: “Where’s the new heiress?” She immediately phones her brother, who spoke with the mother in the afternoon, and reports that now she’s complaining that because of the experiment they imposed on her, she barely saw her daughter in those three months. From now on, will she have to meet her only in films?
Her mother calls that night. Yes, she’s been spending time in town, with friends in cafés, going to movies, but the Uriah story has stayed with her. “Your visit, Nogaleh, still hovers over me like a dream. You were in Israel for three months and I barely saw you. I did learn from you to wander at night from bed to bed, but my sleep is hardly sound.
Noga tells her about the change in repertoire, the trip to Japan and about The Sea of Debussy, which in French sounds identical to la mère, the mother. “So in Japan,” she consoles her mother, “I’ll be playing you on my harp.”
“At least that,” sighs the mother, ending the conversation.
Forty-Six
IN THE MORNING SHE GOES to the music library, where she finds a score of Debussy’s Sacred and Profane Dances. She makes a photocopy and gives it to Herman, who says not a word and places it in a drawer. In the evening, the orchestra members gather at the concert hall for a briefing about the trip to Kyoto. In fluent English, the cultural attaché of the Japanese embassy in The Hague provides information about their lodging near Doshisha University in Kyoto, and shows impressive slides of the auditorium and the temples of the holy city and environs. Four concerts are scheduled for orchestra subscribers, and three more are planned in two southern cities — Kumamoto and Hiroshima. Finally, since the musical director has not yet arrived, the administrative director of the Arnhem orchestra goes over the specifics of the repertoire, which will include Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; a rotation of Haydn symphonies 26, 92 and 94; the Melancholy Arabesques by Van den Broek, for it is important to include a contemporary Dutch composition; and, of course, as requested by the Japanese, the orchestra will perform La Mer. The Japanese pianist who broke her arm playing tennis in Berlin has recovered, and will make her own way to Japan, where there will be two rehearsals of the Emperor, a piece both she and the orchestra know well. The orchestra has also played the Haydn works in recent years, so four rehearsals in the coming week should suffice. The focus will be on Debussy and the Arabesques, which is a complex and difficult piece, but is fortunately only eight minutes long.
The principal conductor and musical director, Dennis van Zwol, strides into the room, straight from the airport, and is greeted with polite applause. He is a bald, chubby man of about sixty, with blue, froglike eyes, a strict and erudite musician whose ample sense of humor softens his pedantic demeanor. He ascends the stage in jeans and a red sweater and sits down beside Herman, surveying his musicians with amusement. When he spots the harpist, he waves to her warmly. So, she whispers to herself, why not, he’s friendly, likes a good joke, and they say he also loves receiving gifts.
The next morning the rehearsals begin. There are no parts for the harp in the Haydn symphonies, so she sits in the hall and watches. After a short break, some of the strings leave the stage, and their places are taken by percussionists, including a few playing strange instruments. The conductor calls for a young composer, a man of around thirty with a ponytail, to take his place on the podium, to lead the first encounter with his provocative cacophony.
Van Zwol chooses to sit next to Noga in the auditorium and inquires about her vacation.
Blushing, she insists on repeating what she said to Herman: “It was not exactly a vacation.”
“Then what was it?”
“Something complicated and surprising. I myself still don’t understand what it was.”
“And your mother?”
“She decided to stay in Jerusalem.”
“And you are satisfied with her choice?”
The question reflects an unexpected sensitivity, and she tries to offer an appropriate response.
“From this distance, what good would my worrying do her?”
The conductor nods sympathetically, and she elaborates.
“My father died nine months ago. He and my mother were inseparable, dependent on one another, and who knows if they enjoyed that or whether their devotion had become oppressive. I think the sudden freedom my father granted my mother is exciting for her, and she may be afraid to curtail that freedom with the rules and activities of a retirement home.”
Van Zwol nods gravely even as he winces at the wild sounds emanating from the stage, which are interrupted by the tapping of the baton as the young composer attempts to explain to the players ideas that gave birth to his music. Although it is Van Zwol who will conduct this piece in concert, he does not intervene, in order to give the musicians the chance to experience the new composition through the passion of the composer himself.
He meanwhile drums with his fingers on his knee a different, hidden melody that enters his mind. And she again says to herself, Really, why not?