My aunt is coming to San Francisco to visit me next week, and we're turning our normal Thursday night rehearsal into a casual recital. The meat of the recital will be a second attempt at the first Mendelssohn trio, which is really quite a bastard for the piano. I've been working the outer movements back up to tempo on my new piano over the last week and a half; I think this is going to be a much more respectable attempt.
My aunt -- Claire, we'll call her, since it would be a perfect name for her character in a book -- my aunt Claire has been in important part of my psyche all my life. She was a symbol of the limitless possibilities of life for a young Georgian (she broke out, traveled to Europe, the Middle East, Asia, learned other languages and religions, and loved men from foreign countries), and, to my mind, of the parallel consequences of breaking the mold (she has nested in the same tree as her domineering mother for the last two decades).
I wrote a story about Aunt Claire and her husband, but it was too early in my writing, and the subject matter is too serious, to see the light of day in more than small extracts, such as here:
* * *
He made Margaret cry as well. The last time was Saturday night. She hadn’t understood him. “Why don’t you just
do something?” she wailed, her tears welling from her own helplessness as much as from compassion for his frustration. “How can I?” he answered. And then, in the German that they reserved for their most intimate (or heated) conversations: “This world is against me,” he sighed. She threw up her hands, waved them about. “Look,” she said. “Look at this house, look at the teacup at your hand, look at me, Peter, for God’s sake.” She pointed down the hall. “Our son, sleeping, just thirteen, so young — so much to experience.” She buried her face in her hands. “We have so much,” she said, wringing her face in her wet fingers.
He pushed his chair back, pulled himself up. He wanted to stand behind his wife, place his hands on her shoulder, feel her melt against his warmth, then take her up in his arms. But he could not. They would only repeat the scene again and again, making love with heavy hearts and thick lumps in their throats, then wake in the morning and stroke each other’s hair, smiling and staring into each other’s eyes and pretending to see the hope that he knew was a sham.
So instead he walked outside, leaned against the rough wood of the doorsill, and tried to lose himself in the dark. He waited until he heard Margaret put the teacups in the sink, waited for her to click off the small light over the stove, and then waited. He closed his eyes until he felt sleep coming to him, until he caught his head bobbing as he stood there. And then he went back inside, felt his way into the living room, and curled up, exhausted, on the couch.
* * *
God forgive me for that exploration. Such is the direct, visceral power of Aunt Claire and her husband, my uncle, no longer with us.
So sad, so heavy. Let me end with something else inspired by that Peter . . . Something a little lighter . . . Something based on a child's memory of trying to impress his elders . . . particularly that handsome dark oak with the voice of a great planet.
* * *
Pathétique
“Truly enchanting,” he says,
as he passes behind me. Long ago I could
play and speak; today my
fingers demand more of me.
Uncle Ed from Europe – he
never would say where –
does not like my Beethoven.
Twelve-year-old fingers do
things other kids’ cannot,
but Uncle Ed has seen real
talent in the salons of Paris,
or in Berlin or Prague.
He never sits, like my aunt,
or Grandpa, on the creaky
couch to sigh and wonder
at this provincial gift.
There are more pianos there, he says,
than radios and televisions here.
Once he heard a little girl, no more than eight,
play Beethoven as if it were the speech of gods.
