“Excuse me, sir, may I have a few words with you?”
He opens his eyes.
“I wanted to tell you that although I respect your concern, you are going too far. Now you are not only making things harder for Christine, but for the entire orchestra.”
He tenses but doesn’t interrupt.
“Millions of pregnant women,” she says, raising her voice, “travel, fly, go about in the world, and nothing happens to them.”
“It takes all kinds,” he says offhandedly.
“After all, our Christine will not be asked to climb mountains in Japan, or dance in discotheques. On the plane she will rest. Others will lift and wheel her harp, so she will only need to put her fingers on the strings and play.”
“I know,” he snaps, “but still.”
“In general,” she insists, “the female womb is far stronger and steadier than men imagine, and pregnancies have survived wars, poverty and famine, even concentration camps.”
Now he is irate, but remains calm.
“Yes, I also sometimes pay attention to what goes on in the world, but Christine is not in good health and not young, and it was not easy for us to get pregnant.”
Although Noga is rebuffed at every turn, she believes that the fate of the sea is in her hands alone.
“You should also know, sir,” she says, sitting down next to him on the bench, “that in our orchestra there are women who have given birth to children and have a lot of experience, and we have a violinist and an oboist who are grandmothers and were present at the births of many babies.”
With an ironic gesture he salutes the mothers and grandmothers, but does not yield.
“I have respect for them all, but what can they do if she starts to bleed, or if to save the pregnancy she has to stay in bed for a long time, and in a strange and foreign country?”
“Why strange? Maybe foreign in culture and language, but otherwise everything in Japan is modern and rational, often more so than here in the West.”
“You have been there?”
“No, but everyone knows that about Japan. Besides, Christine will not be alone. We will all be with her, look after her.”
His patience runs out.
“But there will be visits to temples and flights to Hiroshima and other cities. Christine is a fragile woman and not young, and this pregnancy is important and precious for us. We cannot take chances.”
But Noga won’t give up. She has not played a concert for three months, and she is desperate to perform in front of an audience.
“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me your name?”
“Saharan.”
“May I ask where you are from? Where you were born?”
“In Iran, in—”
“Tehran?” She tries to be helpful.
“No, in a place you never heard of.”
“Then please,” she implores, “please, sir, trust me. I personally pledge to be with Christine at every moment of the trip. You were at the rehearsal, and perhaps you noticed the dialogue between the two of us, two harpists who have not only a professional partnership but also a human one, so it’s natural for me to take personal responsibility for her well-being.”
“Who are you, anyway?” He tries to get to the root of her stubbornness.
“What do you mean, who am I?”
“Am I allowed to ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“You speak with such confidence — how many children have you given birth to?”
“How many children?” She smiles uneasily and gets up from the bench. “How is that relevant?”
“Why not? After all, you are asking me to trust you.”
She shudders.
“I haven’t yet given birth, but…”
And to her surprise, he is not surprised, as if he anticipated her answer, but instead of puncturing her arrogance, he studies her with interest and asks gently, “Why? Because you couldn’t?”
“No. I could, but I didn’t want to.”
Now he won’t let go, as if her promise to watch over his partner’s pregnancy has exposed her to the same blunt challenge voiced by Elazar, the eternal extra, at their first meeting, though now in a foreign language: “How do you know you could, if you didn’t want to?”
“I know… I know.” She holds on to the scene that is disintegrating in her hands. “If I want to, I can have a child.”
“Of course, and we shall all pray for his health,” he graciously promises, in his name and in the name of his partner, who at the moment is being badgered by her bosses. “Meanwhile, until your wish for a child is awakened, respect our wishes, for we need our child, and no music has the right to stand in the way.”
As he speaks, his fist springs open and flakes of tobacco scatter like sand. Since he is loath to kneel down before her and pick them up, he stands and brushes them aside with the toe of his shoe. And to indicate that the conversation is over, he strides to the end of the corridor, opens wide a small window, lights a fresh cigarette and expels the smoke into the world.
Forty-Eight
BEFORE THEIR DEPARTURE, the orchestra played a farewell concert for the residents of Arnhem, with tickets for sale at a token price. As a replacement harpist had not yet been found, a frantic request was dispatched to Kyoto to find a musician who could assume the part of second harp in the work by Debussy, but since no reply had arrived, the orchestra held an urgent rehearsal of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, the “Great,” a piece they’d played dozens of times, so if necessary they could plug the gaping hole in the program. Noga’s trip, and that of her harp, was assured, but it was not clear whether she would have the chance to perform. Will she be reduced to a mere extra in Japan too? She asks Herman to take from his drawer the score for the Sacred and Profane Dances for harp and string orchestra, hoping a way might be found to compensate her with a public performance of this work.
On the morning of the concert Noga tried to decide what to wear onstage. Should it be the black silk dress, whose hem nearly reached the floor but which left her neck, shoulders and arms bare, or should she go with a delicate black pantsuit, purchased in Israel, which she felt accentuated her slenderness and flexibility? She was tilting toward the elegant black silk, befitting the formality of a concert to which notables had been invited. But her shoulders seemed bulky to her compared with the younger women players’, so she combined the two outfits: to hide her shoulders and arms, she will wear the jacket of the pantsuit over the long silk dress.
But is the black of the two outfits the same black? She didn’t feel herself competent to judge this, so she enlisted her landlady, a great admirer of her tenant, to view the combination and render an opinion. And the landlady, whom Noga had invited to the concert, was adamant. Even if the Dutch black does not clash with the Israeli black, Noga must wear only the long dress and leave her shoulders and arms exposed. Yes, she too noticed that they had thickened a bit during her vacation in Israel, possibly the result of hearty meals and juicy fruit, yet at the same time, perhaps from the desert sun, they have a rosy golden sheen not easily acquired in the Netherlands. So why conceal an attractive body that will blend with the beauty of the harp?
It was impossible to exclude Christine from the farewell concert, despite the anger directed at her, and she too turned up that evening in a long black dress, albeit of slightly threadbare wool. The appearance of the two harpists in their long dresses encouraged interest in a complex piece of music.
During the intermission Noga asked the conductor if there had been an answer from Japan. “Not yet,” said the maestro, but with cheerful optimism promised that the entire Japanese army had been deployed to find a substitute. “We will not give up the sea after we polished every one of its waves.” Indeed, the Debussy was received with surprising warmth and enthusiasm at the farewell concert, even though it was not an audience of the usual music lovers, but of municipal workers and members of trade organizations, including transit employees and industrial workers, plus excited high school kids and German students from across the border. And since the printed program, distributed free at the door, explained why La Mer had been selected for the Japanese tour, the Dutch were flattered that such a large and strong nation as Japan, whose technology had conquered the world, was in need of inspiration from a small, modest people in a spiritual and artistic contest with a cruel sea.