What’s this music? he asked as he was sitting down. I told him it was a ranchera song and Milan frowned, although I had no idea why. It was dog-day hot. I ordered two beers and we began a liturgy of smoking. On one side of us, an entire family was rushing through their meal ravenously, barely even looking at one another. Živeli, said Milan, raising his beer. Salud.
I asked if he always decided what pieces to play at the last minute. Always. But please don’t ask me how I decide. I don’t know. Sometimes they threaten not to pay me, and once, in Rome, they even insulted and booed me, he said rather proudly, but audiences are in general tolerant or maybe they’re a little innocent and they put up with my whims anyhow. You improvise, I said, depending on whether it’s raining or not. Something like that, he said, smiling. I asked about the last piece. Liszt, he said, but a Liszt piece even Liszt experts don’t know. I looked at him, perplexed. I played it to Berman, or Lerman, as they call him round here, and he admitted he’d never heard it before. I found it (or maybe he said discovered or rescued it). It was hidden away, gathering dust in a library in Belgrade.
The waiter came, and Milan, between sips, said you decide. To start, I ordered portions of guacamole, black beans topped with cheese, chorizo, and tortillas.
Actually, he said after a moment of quiet, it’s an arrangement by Liszt for organ and later by Busoni for piano, from an opera by the German, Meyerbeer. But a strong arrangement, dark, beautiful, and one that for some reason no one knows about.
The waiter served us a number of dishes and Milan began picking at everything, freely, not asking questions, not putting out his cigarette, and not mentioning Monk.
And why such an affinity with Liszt, Milan? He looked up at me and remained quiet for a moment, but it was a bustling sort of quiet, weighted, like the portentous silence just before a train arrives. He opened his mouth but then quickly shut it again — thinking better of it, I suppose. We both watched the family of gluttons leaving slowly. Oh I don’t know, he suddenly whispered in a mentholated voice, maybe because Liszt still allows for improvisation. This was what Milan said, though I’m sure there was something else he wanted to tell me. His music is an open structure, that’s one way of putting it, he said, and took an immense bite out of his tortilla, which was piled high with guacamole. I suspect, he said, still chewing, it’s like being able to play and stretch and fly inside a framework made of air. Hearing this, I imagined thousands of little musical notes floating around inside a white cloud, bumping into one another, desperately wanting to escape. Liszt’s works allow for that, he said, much more than other composers. Know what I mean? The musician, he said, cannot be an automaton. There are boundaries laid down somewhere that at the same time aren’t really there or shouldn’t really be there. For instance, boundaries within a piece, or boundaries between interpretative techniques, or even boundaries between genres. Why create boundaries between genres? Why differentiate between one type of music and another? It’s all the same. Music’s music. And he took an endless swig of beer. Should we order something else? he said with the look of a famished, mischievous adventurer, and so I ordered a dish of pepián stew, another of caquic, and two chipilín tamales.
Sure, Milan, I said without really understanding what he was talking about, or perhaps understanding too well. But why are you so keen to push these boundaries, ignore them, make them disappear? Why are you so interested in the music of someone who invites you to move them and make them disappear? It’s revolutionary. It’s seditious. It’s a bit bohemian, I said, in the strictest sense of that overused word. Why not work within those boundaries? Why the stubborn need to avoid them or rebel against them? Milan said nothing, swirling what was left of his beer around in the glass. Forgive the inquisition, I said, not knowing exactly where I was headed, but I’m fascinated by internal rather than external revolutions. I’m obsessed by them. For example, I’m far more interested in the motorcycle journey Che Guevara embarked on when he was twenty-four — where so many of his ideas were formed and where something magical incubated inside him for the first time — than I am by all the revolutions he went on to foment in Latin America and Africa. Up to a certain point, how and why someone is pushed toward a revolution of the spirit, whether it be artistic or social or whatever, strikes me as a far more honest search than all of the spectacle that follows. Because everything after that, Milan, is pure spectacle. Everything. Painting a canvas? Spectacle. Writing a novel? Spectacle. Playing the piano? Spectacle. And the Cuban revolution? Pure spectacle. The waiter came with our food, but I ignored him. Anyway, I said, sighing a hazy conclusion.
Milan was looking at me angrily, or at least it seemed that way: about to throw beer in my face and roar Serbian insults or perhaps burst into tears. I served myself a mountain of white rice and began covering it with big ladlefuls of spicy pepián.
Do you know what my father does? he asked me, sitting back and crossing his arms, looking like a great leader who doesn’t know he’s been overthrown. He was clearly nervous. I put my spoon down and sat staring at him. He’s an accordionist, he said. I’m the son of a Gypsy accordionist, he said, and finished his beer. Waiter, he called, lifting his bottle, two more. He smiled ironically. And your mother? I asked. He shook his head with an air of shame or bitterness. Only my father is a Gypsy. Not my mother. I look more like her, I mean, my features are more Serbian than Gypsy. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. For as long as I can remember my father has fought to keep me as far away as possible from both his world and his music, to keep them from me. But, like you said yesterday about jazz, I’ve got Gypsy music deep in my gonads. I could have sworn, given the menace in the way he said it, that Milan was grabbing or at least stroking his gonads under the table. I never bring any Liszt CDs on any of my trips, no Chopin, no Rachmaninoff. But I can’t go a single day, Eduardito, without hearing a bit of Gypsy music, a bit of Boban Marković, or Oláh Vince, or the legendary Šaban Bajramović. He smiled. Deep down, I’m a nomad, like them, even if my father wants to deny it. And a nomad doesn’t much like boundaries. Ah, he said to the waiter, thanks very much, and took a sip of beer. Imagine, he went on, as if gripped by some terrible inertia. I’ve been sitting at the piano for twenty-five years, studying with the best classical teachers in the best schools in the world, and all I dream about is being among Gypsies, playing and dancing and feeling the pain of their music. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Milan began serving himself generous spoonfuls of pepián and caquic, and I, considering him brave to attempt such a mixture, could only think about how some people flee their ancestors, while others yearn for them, almost viscerally; how a few run from their fathers’ world, while others clamor for it, cry out for it; how I couldn’t get far enough away from Judaism, while Milan would never be close enough to the Gypsies. And your father? I asked, sensing the answer. He doesn’t know, he said without looking up, his gaze lost in pieces of carrots and squash and goodness knows what else. He can’t know. Milan cut a chunk out of one of the little chipilín tamales with his fork and then, as if I were some watered-down version of his father, confessed: I want to give up classical music. Neither of us said a word, and we finished the food and the beers in that drawn-out silence, exhausted by all the talk, or maybe just allowing all those words to finally find their mark.
We ordered flan and coffee. Suddenly — I don’t know whether out of sincerity or impertinence — I said I wanted to know more about Gypsies, about their music, and Milan just said sure, with a disdainful flick of his head. How did you get on last night? I asked. And lighting a cigarette and raising his eyebrows with the mischievous air of a teenage troubadour, he asked me if all Mayan girls liked to fuck standing up.