For some reason, “Piano Teacher” had summoned up an image of a kindly old man wearing spectacles and an old brown cardigan and speaking with a Professor Von Duck accent. Drazen was nothing like that. First there was his hair: thick, jet black, and brushed straight back so that it seemed to cascade to his shoulders. Then there was his beard: short, precise, somehow emphasizing the sensual softness of his lips. But most of all there were his eyes, dark but filled with light, and hard to look away from.
He was at least fifteen years older than me and I’d only just laid eyes on him but, by the time he stepped forward and shook my hand, my palm was already damp. When he touched me, my nipples hardened. No one had ever had that effect on me before. Then he said my name, “Ann-Tea-Ah,” and I understood what gives cats the urge to purr.
He sat me down in front of the huge piano that dominated his tiny apartment. I felt like Jane Eyre, asked to play for Mr Rochester, and knowing that every note would diminish her in his eyes. Yet I’d been good at the piano once, back before work spread itself across my life like a gorse bush, leaving room for nothing else, so when, standing so close behind me that I could smell his cologne, he said, “I would like to hear you, Anthea,” I started to play.
He listened and watched. There was nothing flirtatious, but I had his complete attention. I played quite well once I got started. Enough to demonstrate some technique at least. He didn’t tell me to stop, so I played every piece I knew. When I finished I wondered why I’d ever given up playing. I was good and this was fun.
“I would like to know what it is that you want, Anthea,” Drazen said.
I had turned to face him, waiting for praise or at least coaching, wanting to look into his eyes again. His question surprised me.
“I want to play the piano.”
“Ah, I had hoped that perhaps you wanted me to teach you.”
“What?”
“You already play the piano. But you play with these…” He reached out and picked up my hand, holding it gently by the tips of the fingers. My skin prickled where it touched him. “When you could be playing with this.”
He held me by the wrist and placed the palm of my hand against my chest, between my breasts. The contact wasn’t overtly sexual but I felt naked in front of him. The surprising thing was that my body was clearly happy about that. My mind was offended.
I shook his hand off my wrist and stood up. “I’m leaving now,” I said.
Drazen bowed his head. I’d never seen anyone do that in real life before. His eyes stayed on me during the bow. I couldn’t read them but I didn’t want to look away from them. I had to remind myself that he had been rude to me and that I wasn’t going to stand for it.
“Are you always so—” I realized that “rude” was the wrong word. He’d been polite but… “—personal with your students?”
“What is life if it is not personal, Anthea?”
That was pretty much the question I’d been asking myself on New Year’s Eve.
“I’m going now.”
He stepped back and to one side so that I had a clear route to the door.
I didn’t leave. It was Anthea the Hun who wanted to leave. The rest of me wanted to stay. I sat down. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You caught me by surprise. I’d like to stay.”
He didn’t look surprised, but he did smile. “Then I’m glad that I ‘caught’ you at all,” he said.
And he had caught me. We became lovers within the week. But even in bed he was my teacher. He taught me to listen to the now, to surrender to the needs of my body in order to feed my soul. Another man talking like that would sound ridiculous, Drazen just sounds truthful.
Months afterwards, lying in his arms after sex, I asked him about the day we met. I wanted to know what he thought of me then.
He lifted my chin off his chest to make me look at him and said, “I thought then, what I think now. That I want you. That, if you will let me, I will take you. That sometimes life is worth living.” I knew then that he loved me.
“We’re here ma’am,” the driver says.
There are no lascivious looks, no innuendo. I smile at him and tip him more generously than usual.
Anja is waiting for me when I get home. She has the same grave face as her father, one that is transformed when she smiles.
Anja is doing her best to find a place for herself in America, but she has a solemnity about her that is not normal for an eleven-year-old American girl, but she is strong, a survivor. She has survived the war in Bosnia, the death of her mother, her exile in America. Seeing her standing there on the porch, her face lit by the huge jack-o’-lantern that I helped her carve last night, I want to rid her of her ghosts. I want to see her filled with joy.
“Hello, Morticia,” she says, holding out her hand in a formal invitation, “come and meet Gomez.”
Tonight we are, at Anja’s insistence, the Addams family. She will, of course, be Wednesday.
Drazen is already in the double-breasted pinstriped suit that is his concession to costume. I wonder if he was wearing it when I called.
“Gomez, mon cher, mon amour,” I say in a voice I hope is like Anjelica Houston’s.
“Ah, Tish, you spoke French,” he says on cue, taking my outstretched arm and kissing his way from the back of my hand up my arm to my neck. I glance sideways at Anja/Wednesday wondering if she approves, fearing that moments like this summon the spirit of her mother. The edges of her mouth are slightly upturned. I take that as warm approbation.
When Drazen’s head is at my neck I twist sideways, plant a quick kiss on his cheek and say, “Thank you. That was delicious.” Then I send him away so that Anja and I can change.
Anja has prepared everything, the clothes are laid out on the bed, the wigs are on the dressing table. It is all I can do to slip away and shower before she sets about her work.
There is an intimacy in dressing each other that is like nothing else. It is recognition of trust and an offer to reveal and to transform. The costumes emphasize this. I never wear black at home, yet now I am wrapped in it like a shroud.
“How do I look?” I ask as the wig goes on.
“Believable,” Anja says.
Not quite the comment I expected. I wonder how I normally look to her. There is a short silence during which I grow nervous in front of this child.
Then she hands me the make-up bag and says, “Make me look sad, but scary.”
It doesn’t take long.
“Gomez” declines to walk the streets with us. Waving a thick cigar, which I know he will not smoke, he says, “My dears, the two of you are frightful enough, three of us could prove fatal.”
By the standards of the day, our costumes are sedate, yet at every door Anja makes a killing. She never once steps out of character, extorting treats because, from her, the threat of tricks seems so real.
I let her walk ahead of me, keeping to the shadows, arms folded across my breasts, whenever we reach a house. Watching Anja, I see her father, his stillness, his confidence. I wonder which of her gestures belong to her mother, Sanja.
I realize that I am jealous of Sanja, for having Drazen before me. Crazy to be jealous of a dead woman, and yet tonight I feel as though, at any moment, I might meet her.
When Anja’s sack is full we return home. She is so serious that I am uncertain whether she has enjoyed herself or whether this has all been a bizarre experiment in which she has tested the sanity of those around her and found them wanting. Yet when she sees Drazen on the porch, she runs to him.
“Dada,” she says, holding up her sack, “look how much they gave me.”