“Thank me for what?”
“For the whip you brought her.”
“Brought her?”
“What you give to her husband belongs also to her.”
On most of the tray tables in tourist class dinner is being served, a combination of Japanese and Western food. “Wait,” she says as Manfred pulls her from her seat, “I’m hungry.” “Don’t worry,” he says, “up there wonderful food is waiting.” And he leads her down the aisle, opens a curtain and escorts her into business class, redolent with alcohol fumes, where the inebriated conductor, in stocking feet and short pants, greets her cheerfully and introduces her to his wife, a loud and pretty American, also rather tipsy, who gives the harpist a big hug. It turns out that the maestro’s wife is more excited by the idea of the whip than the whip itself. For the gift of a whip to an orchestral conductor is not merely, in her opinion, an amusing stroke of brilliance, but a call to action. So she intends to show the whip to conservative conductors who are wary, like her husband, of postmodern, experimental music. A whip, not a waving baton, can prod the unwilling, among players and conductors both. She points to the young composer Van den Broek — cocooned in a blanket, like a corpse shipped home from the battlefield — and says to Noga, “Here, for example, you have a talented young man who gave the world original, melancholy arabesques, but everyone, my husband most of all, is still plotting how to cut some of its eight little minutes.”
Amused by her remarks, Dennis and Herman don’t try to justify themselves, and Manfred hands his friend a glass of wine, vacating his seat so she can sit down and sample the luxuries of business class. She is excited to be included in such lofty company and sips a little wine, but is reluctant to try the food, and still standing in the aisle, she turns to the conductor to plead the case for her harp. Will it be possible to find another harpist, without whom Debussy cannot demonstrate his genius in Japan?
“Why, dear Venus, do you worry so? If we don’t play the Debussy in Japan, we’ll play it when we get back to Europe.”
“That’s true, Maestro,” she says, her voice quavering. “I know we’ll play it in Europe, but it’s important to me to also play the piece in a distant land for a foreign people with an ancient culture. Remember too, Maestro, that for three months in Israel I didn’t touch a string, and when I returned, you all made me so happy with a piece you chose not only for the Japanese but for me as well. Because as we all know, La Mer is not only ‘the sea’ but ‘the mother,’ and no doubt a Symbolist composer like Debussy was aware of this and also intended to make a connection between the two. So this piece will connect me with my mother, who chose to stay alone in Jerusalem, a complicated city that gets more so all the time…”
Unexpected tears flood her eyes, and the conductor’s wife offers her a paper napkin, seizing the moment to speak for her husband.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find you a partner, but it will have to be an experienced player. There’s only one rehearsal before the concert.”
And the maestro, with a loving smile, confirms his wife’s words.
Now, in the presence of his colleagues, Manfred unabashedly throws an affectionate arm around his friend, and she knows that her tears arouse not only his compassion but his lust, and again he urges her to sit in his seat and eat his meal. But she declines, saying she has a seat of her own.
Meanwhile, the captain’s voice is on the loudspeaker, announcing that at this very moment the plane is passing over the North Pole, and everyone is invited to take in the view and preserve it in their memory.
But to remember what, and how?
For in September the North Pole is no longer lit by full sunlight but by a hazy, weak sun stuck at the horizon, neither rising nor setting. The barren, frozen land at the top of the world is wrapped in a dark twilight that blurs the view. In strangely fearful silence the passengers are riveted at the windows, searching for a marker, a structure, a flag or just a pole, to engrave the sight in memory.
Manfred gives Noga his window seat so she too can get a good look at the crown of the world. Her eyes aren’t focused on the earth but at the sun, which sits on the horizon like an overripe orange. Might the planet Noga be found nearby? Her father would tell her to look for it just before sunset or sunrise, but who knows what sunrise and sunset are here?
“Maybe the planet… Venus… is out there,” she whispers to the flutist.
“Where?” he asks. He turns to the flight attendant and requests permission to enter the cockpit — perhaps from there it will be possible to locate Venus. They gingerly step into the darkened cockpit, cradled in polar twilight, and amid greenish dials and glowing levers they are welcomed by little bows and the soothing smiles of angular eyes.
The two pilots ferrying a European orchestra to the Far East are accustomed to such requests, and they rotate the phosphorescent radar to locate the desired planet, and direct the attention of the two musicians to a solitary disk glimmering on the horizon, loyal to the sun that stubbornly stays put twenty-four hours a day.
“Venus,” say the two young pilots, pronouncing the sweet name of the ancient goddess. After the sun leaves the North Pole to allow a long night to spread its wings, this planet will vanish as well.
Fifty-One
WHILE THEY WERE on the plane from Europe, Osaka was struck by a mild earthquake, the airport was closed, and they circled in the air for an extra hour before receiving permission to land.
The night that blackened the world after they passed the North Pole did not last long, and before landing in Osaka the sun had fully risen. After clearing passport control, the players of the large instruments were asked to retrieve them and check that they had weathered the flight safely. Escorted to a large hangar that reminded Noga of the faux hospital at the port of Ashdod, the musicians descended on their instruments, banging the drums and plucking the big strings. Noga at her harp happily executed long, liquid glissandi that delighted the baggage handlers, who gathered around her and thanked her with friendly bows.
The musicians were then transported in three buses to Kyoto, the city of temples, where rooms awaited them at the handsome guesthouse of Doshisha University. Two musicians would occupy each room, and since Noga did not wish to validate her relationship with Manfred, she quickly suggested to the sturdy grandmother Pirke Wisser, her neighbor on the plane, that they share a room. The contrabassist hesitantly agreed, warning the Israeli with Dutch candor that she was likely to snore. “That’s all right,” replied Noga. “My parents, who slept their whole lives in a narrow double bed, taught me that snoring bothers only someone who doesn’t like the snorer, and I like you a lot.”
The hosts decided to impress their guests right away with a visit to the Temple of the Golden Pavilion on the shore of Mirror Lake. Despite their fatigue from the long flight, and the pole that confused day and night, most of the musicians accepted the offer, and at a soft, radiant afternoon hour they embarked on the tour, accompanied by Dutch-speaking Japanese guides, who divided the orchestra members into five small groups, to enable each one to ask questions without trying the patience of their companions.
The orchestra was first taken for a view of the golden temple from afar, to marvel at its holy reflection in the waters of the lake. The sight is spectacular yet intimate. The solitude of the temple on the edge of the lake, the harmony of its three-tiered structure, the radiance of the gold leaf that covers its walls, the gentle shingled roofs shading the balconies that surround each story, convey the warm humanity of a private villa converted long ago to a Zen Buddhist temple. Although the pavilion is familiar from photographs, its living, organic presence, in a thick green grove with a botanical garden, arrests the visitor. Indeed, explains the guide of Noga’s group, its official name is Rokuon-ji, or Deer Garden Temple. It was built in the fourteenth century, and survived a devastating civil war in the fifteenth, only to be burned down in the mid-twentieth century by a monk who lost his mind, and reconstructed thereafter.