Mr. Zimmerman closed the exercise book.
“Again, child.”
Zack, half-shutting his eyes as before, replayed the study, twenty-seven bars of allegretto sixteenth-notes in four flats. The four/four time of the composition never varied. No compositions in the Royal Conservatory of Music Pianoforte Studies ever varied. When he finished, the elderly Hans Zimmerman murmured in approval. He’d removed his smudged eyeglasses, he was smiling at his youngest pupil.
“Very good, child. You have played it four times, it can be no mistake you have hit only right notes.”
In Watertown, New York, where Mr. Gallagher had brought them. Where days-of-the-week were crucial as they had not been crucial in Malin Head Bay. Where Saturday was so crucial that Friday, which was the day-before-Saturday, soon became for Zack a day of almost unbearable excitement and apprehension: he was distracted in school, at home feverishly practiced piano for hours not wanting to take time to eat supper and refusing to go to bed until late: midnight. For Saturday morning at 10 A.M. was his weekly lesson with Hans Zimmerman.
Saturday was Zack’s favorite day! All of the week built up to Saturday morning when his mother brought him with her to Zimmerman Brothers arriving at 8:45 A.M. and they would not leave until the store closed early Saturday afternoon at 3:30 P.M.
How old is he, Hazel?
Six and a half.
Only six and a half! His eyes…
There was the excitement of Zack’s lesson with the elder Mr. Zimmerman which sometimes ran over ten, fifteen minutes while the next pupil waited patiently in a corner of the music instruction room at the rear of the brownstone. But there was the excitement, too, of being allowed to remain behind to observe certain of Mr. Zimmerman’s advanced students at the keyboard for this, too, was a way of acquiring technique.
“So long as you promise to sit very still in the corner, child. Still as a little Maus.”
Zack thought A mouse is not still but nervous.
Zack found the other pupils’ lessons of great interest. For he understood that these more advanced lessons would be his one day. He did not doubt that this was so, Mr. Gallagher had set into motion a sequence of actions and his trust in Mr. Gallagher was absolute.
He’s allowing Zack to observe other pupils, Chet. Isn’t that wonderful!
If it isn’t too much for the kid.
Too much, how can it be too much?
Children turn against music if they’re pushed too hard.
Strange he felt no envy of the other piano pupils except envy of their larger hands, their greater strength. But these too would be his one day.
What relief, Hans Zimmerman never made personal or hurtful remarks to his students, as Sarrantini had done! He cared only for the execution of music. He seemed to make little distinction between older and younger pupils. He was a kindly teacher who praised when praise was due but did not wish to deceive, for always there was more work: “Schnabel took it as his ideal, he wished to play only those piano works that cannot be fully mastered. Only those pieces ”greater than they can be played.“ For what can be played, is not the transcendental. What can be played easily and well, is Schund.”
The disdainful expression on Hans Zimmerman’s face allowed his pupils to know what the German word must mean.
Zimmerman had himself studied with the great Artur Schnabel, Gallagher informed them. In Vienna, in the early 1930s. He was now retired from the Portman Academy of Music in Syracuse where he’d taught for decades. He was long retired from the concert stage. Gallagher surprised Hazel and Zack bringing several records Zimmerman had made in the late 1940s with a small prestigious classical record label in New York City.
The records were piano pieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. Hazel would have spoken to Hans Zimmerman about them except Gallagher cautioned her: “I don’t think Zimmerman wants to be reminded.”
“But why not?”
“Some of us feel that way about our pasts.”
At Zimmerman Brothers, Hans Zimmerman kept to the rear quarters of the brownstone while Edgar Zimmerman ran the business. The two were co-partners, it was believed, yet Hans had virtually nothing to do with the selling of merchandise, employees, finances; Edgar ran everything. Hans was known to be only four or five years older than his brother, but he appeared of another generation entirely: courtly in manner, rather detached and deliberate in his speech, with smudged bifocals that were often drooping out of his vest pocket, untrimmed steely whiskers, a habit of breathing noisily through his teeth when he was concentrating on a pupil’s playing. Hans who was tall, gaunt, noble in his bearing wore mismatched coats, sweaters, unpressed trousers. His favored footware was a pair of very old penny loafers. You could see that he’d been a handsome man once, now his face was in ruins. He was reticent, elliptical in criticism as in praise. From out of his corner Zack witnessed entire lessons when Mr. Zimmerman murmured no words except “Good. Move on” or “Repeat, please.” Several times Zack had heard the terrible words: “Repeat the lesson for next week. Thank you.”
It was common for Mr. Zimmerman to have Zack repeat pieces, but he had never yet asked Zack to repeat an entire lesson. He called him “child”-he didn’t seem to remember his name. For why should he remember a name? Why a face? His interest in his pupils was in their hands; not their hands exactly but their fingers; not their fingers exactly but their “fingering.” You could assess a young pianist by his or her “fingering” but you could make nothing of significance out of a name or a face.
The whole of the magnificent Hammerklavier Hans Zimmerman had memorized more than fifty years before remained in his memory intact, each note, each pause, each tonal variant yet Hans could not be troubled to remember the names of people he saw frequently.
And here was the gifted child, a rarity in Hans Zimmerman’s life now: out of nowhere he’d seemed to have come with his eager, somehow old-European eyes, not at all an American boy, to Zimmerman’s way of thinking. He would ask no personal questions of the boy’s mother, he did not want to know about the boy’s background, he did not want to feel anything for the boy. All that was extinguished in him now. And yet in weak moments the piano teacher found himself staring at the boy as he played his exercise pieces, one of the tricky little Czernys perhaps. Presto in six/eight time, three sharps. Left and right hands mirroring each other rapidly ascending, descending. In the concluding bars, left and right hands were nearly a keyboard apart, the little boy stretched his arms as in an antic crucifixion.
Hans Zimmerman surprised himself, laughing aloud.
“Bravo, child. If you play Czerny like Mozart, how will you play Mozart?”
16
Makes me happy. What makes me happy. O Christ what!
No idea in hell what to play. No one had ever made such a request of the jazz pianist before. His fingers fumbled at the keyboard. So much of his adult life had become mechanical, his will suspended and indifferent. The emptiness of his soul opened before him like a deep well, he dared not peer into it.
His fingers would not fail him, though. Chet Gallagher at the keyboard. That old classic “Savin‘ All My Love For You.”
And that turned out to be so.
17
A love ballad, a bluesy number.
Driving this snowswept landscape.
Gallagher drifting in a dream, at the wheel of his car. All his life he has been hearing music in his head. Sometimes the music of others, and sometimes his own.
Driving to Grindstone Island
in the St. Lawrence River floating
in reflected sky