The Mozart Season Read online

  He didn’t say anything. He looked down sideways at me, then looked back at the mirror. He went on shaving and dripping and splashing. “How’d you like the hinterland?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The remote countryside. Up the river.”

  “It was okay.” I walked out of the bathroom, wrote “hinterland” on the clipboard, turned Miles Davis off, ignored my unmade bed, and went to my lesson.

  Mr. Kaplan had “only a few things to say. First, you handled the job very well, Allegra. Margaret was struck by your confidence and your technique. Second, you have some adjustments to make. In the pianissimo sections—the seven-note sequences before letter I in the first movement, and the da-da-da-da-duh sections in the second movement—and some other places—you just can’t play as pianissimo as you’ve been playing. The audience won’t hear you. The orchestra doesn’t have enough control over its own dynamics to let your sound come through. And of course the end, the end of the concerto. And third—what was third?” He looked at me over his glasses.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He sat staring into space. “Ah. I know. The second movement cadenza. The first time you played it last night. I don’t know what you did, but it was unusually beautiful. It had a magic I didn’t teach you. Do you know what you did?”

  I’d forgotten there was anybody else there. I told him.

  He leaned way back on the piano bench and then leaned forward again. “Allegra. What a thing. You did that. Indeed.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “How awfully difficult. And you did it. You’re remarkable.” He stared at me for several seconds, and then he said, “Now, let’s play.”

  I felt better after my lesson. There was a note on the kitchen table in Mommy’s writing that said to call Jessica. I put my violin and stuff down and called her.

  “I just got back last night. I’m still on Hong Kong time; it’s weird. What’s going on?”

  “Strange stuff. How was Hong Kong? Can you come over?”

  “Crowded. I ate so much I’m fat. What kind of strange stuff? Bad strange or good strange?”

  “Both, I think,” I said. “Ask your mom if you can come over. Not for the night. I’ll explain. Can you come?”

  Jessica had been to Hong Kong and I’d been to Trout Creek Ridge.

  She showed up wearing a chopstick in her hair. She looked beautiful.

  We went to the lawn behind our house. My mother said we had to clip roses. You have to clip them at an angle, and the pianist I turned for had said they have to be cut just above a stem with seven leaves so they’ll bloom again. We took turns with the rose clippers and gloves, and Jessica told me about eating steamed frogs and fungus and coral, and about sailing her uncle’s boat, and the lights on Hong Kong harbor at night, and about going to places called Cheung Chau and Sok Kwu Wan, and about her little cousin who was impossible.

  “You know, I feel more Chinese than I did before we went,” she said. “I talked it all the time, I wrote notes to my uncles telling them where I was going, all in characters—I ended up even walking Chinese.”

  She was excited about the Bloch Competition, and I told her about Trout Creek Ridge. “It must be scary to think about,” she said. “I mean, at night. In bed. With your heavenly cat.”

  “Yep. It is. Tomorrow night is just for practice, but it’s—I think it’s like the feeling you probably get if you’re in the Olympics or something. I mean, Trout Creek Ridge isn’t the Olympics. But it’s in public. And. And you only get one chance.”

  I told her about the faster cadenza, but I didn’t know which one, and I told her about the dream with all the Karens. We were cutting a huge bouquet, and we had a pile of dead roses to put in the compost heap.

  She said, “That’s why I’m going to be an architect. You can make sketches and do plans and think about them before you actually build the building in front of God and everybody. It’s not just a one-chance thing. You can make mistakes and fix them so you don’t build a crooked wall and knock everybody down.” She looked straight down into a rosebush. It’s hard to tell when Jessica is thinking about her father. She doesn’t let it show very often. Pretty soon she said, “Is there anything about this competition that’s fun?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The adrenaline, when I’m playing well.”

  I looked at her, standing up to her armpits in the garden, and remembered the flower fight we had once, Jessica and Sarah and I, right in this same place, when we were very little. It was a hot summer day like this one. We were having a little-kid picnic and suddenly somebody started throwing flowers, and pretty soon we were covered with them. Flowers stuck to our socks, inside our shirts, they floated in the red Kool-Aid.

  “Remember the flower fight?” I said.

  We burst out laughing.

  And I remembered that after the flower fight my father came out in the garden and gave us each a swing-around, holding us at arm’s length and twirling us off the ground. I told Jessica she could share my father because hers was dead.

  “What little kids we were,” she said.

  My mother made Jessica take a big bouquet of roses to her mother. Before she went home, she helped me decide what to wear to play the concerto in the hinterland and showed me how to draw the Chinese character for elephant.

  I went to the music room to practice.

  7

  To play in Trout Creek Ridge, I wore a flowered dress and white flats. And I had my hair in one braid hanging down. Mr. Kaplan reminded me that the sun might be in my eyes or it might be down behind the trees in the park by the time I began the third movement. I’d have to deal with it the best way I could.

  He and I went early for the short run-through that Margaret wanted; my parents were coming later and bringing Jessica. Mr. Kaplan had his taping stuff in the car. “I think it’ll help us to have a tape. Don’t you? We’ll compare this one with the February one,” he said as we started out.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Yes, you do know. Your softball coach made videotapes, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. She did,” I said.

  “Well, listening to the performance is going to give us some new ideas, and it’ll give us a chance to check on our old ideas. Right?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He reminded me that people would probably applaud between movements. “And that’s all right,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with people liking music enough to clap for it. They don’t have to know all the concert-hall customs. It’ll be very informal, very homey.”

  But not informal or homey for me.

  “You’ll be fine, Allegra. Just do it the way you love to do it.”

  “I’ll try.” Easy to say, hard to do. Play it the way I love to do it—in front of a whole bunch of people. I kept saying to myself, as we rode along, This concert is for practice, This concert is for building courage.

  “Nobody’s immune to the fear, Allegra. Even Horowitz. Vladimir Horowitz. He used to stand in the wings—paralyzed with fear—and somebody had to push him onstage. Then he’d sit down at the piano.”

  The park was spread out on a little hill with swings and slides at the top and a stage at the bottom. The stage was a concrete platform, with a backdrop made of concrete too. Kids were swinging and sliding at the top of the hill, and people were already sitting on blankets on the grass when we were doing the run-through. We played just a few measures of each movement. The orchestra players were in black and white, and Margaret was wearing a long black dress. It looked almost like the West Coast Chamber Orchestra at Waterfront Park.

  The orchestra was bigger than it had been at rehearsal. Two more cellos, a double bass, a percussion player, and there seemed to be more violins. Margaret explained that she could never get the whole orchestra in one place at one time except in concert. She shrugged her shoulders. “This week it was the county fair. Some of them had to work in booths. A nurse and two doctors were on call. And the Port Commission
had an extra meeting this week. That’s the percussion section.”

  The concert wouldn’t have an intermission, she said. “If we stop playing, people will go home, so we just keep on. You’re third on the program.”

  Mr. Kaplan sat on the grass and set his taping stuff out on the blanket he’d brought. My parents showed up. A whole carload: Bro David and Jessica and Mrs. Kaplan.

  One, I still wasn’t used to having an entire orchestra behind me. Two, some of the people hadn’t been at the rehearsal. Three, the orchestra players weren’t full-time musicians. Four, the cello section was staring into the setting sun and they couldn’t see Margaret’s baton clearly and they came in wrong three times. Five, outdoors does very strange things to music. It’s physics. The way air moves. Strings get out of tune almost instantly, and people on one side of the stage can’t hear people on the other side.

  I was very sure I wasn’t playing with the simultaneous remembering and forgetting, the divine inspiration of the NBA.

  So. The concerto sounded like one Mozart might have written, but not exactly like the one I’d been practicing. The people gathered in the park on their blankets eating picnics really seemed to like it, though. They clapped every time they got a chance. Between movements, at the end of the first cadenza, everywhere. Some people whistled at the end.

  I’d gotten through it. I remembered to bow.

  And the next thing I knew, a little girl came up on the stage and put a big bouquet in front of my face. It was full of daisies and delphiniums. I scrunched my bow into my left hand and took the bouquet and remembered to bow again. And I turned around to shake Margaret’s hand and she put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. She whispered, “Marvelous.” Or maybe it was “Harvest.” Or “Horriblest.” Or “Barfelous.” I remembered to shake the concertmaster’s hand. He grinned at me. The orchestra was clapping, and people on the grass were clapping, and I walked off the stage and went down onto the ground.

  I sat down next to Jessica on one of the three blankets they had spread out. I put my violin in the case and laid the bouquet in my lap. Mr. Kaplan smiled and nodded his head at me. My mother and father both leaned over to me and patted me on my shoulders or arms or whatever they could reach. Bro David pushed a plate of brownies at me and I took three.

  Jessica whispered, “You must really be good. Just at the end of the second movement, I heard some girl go, ‘Oh, Mozart…’ It was like he was her boyfriend and he was kissing her or something.” We ate brownies and got ready for the orchestra’s last piece.

  And out of the crowd came the dancing man. Deirdre’s dancing man. We were seventy miles from Portland, and there he was. He started dancing. His same dance. His same clothes. And the shoes.

  Mommy was explaining to Jessica about him. I heard her whispering that somebody said he’d been dancing at concerts for three summers, and something about our friend Deirdre who’d slept in my room. Jessica looked at me. “He just comes and dances?” she whispered. I nodded my head. “I bet he’s lonely,” she said.

  “He must be,” I whispered back.

  A baby started crying just behind us. “Would it be okay if I dance with him?” Jessica was asking my mother. Mommy spread out her hands, saying, “Okay.” Jessica looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and got up, walked forward on the grass and began dancing. Just the way Deirdre had done, but keeping a little bit farther away from him.

  He did the same thing he’d done with Deirdre. Smiled and danced. The sun was going behind the hills and shining on Jessica’s long black hair and the dancing man’s pocked face. When the piece was over, she shook his hand. Then when she saw him bowing, she bowed to him. They said something to each other. She came back and sat down and the concert was over.

  “His name is Trouble,” she said.

  I looked at her.

  “That’s what he said,” she said. “I didn’t make it up.” People were standing up, getting ready to leave the park.

  Bro David leaned over while I was zipping up the violin-case cover and said, “It was good, Legs.”

  I looked at him. He meant it. I stood up and picked up the bouquet. Several people were coming over to say they liked it and I kept saying Thank-you, and some people told me their names, and a couple of people knew Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan and they were all talking together and introducing me, and Daddy and Mommy were talking to Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan’s friends and I couldn’t see over the people to find out where the dancing man was. He just disappeared. He just wasn’t there.

  I was looking around some people’s shoulders hunting for him when I saw a girl standing in front of me, with thick glasses held together at the left earpiece with adhesive tape. I didn’t see her appear; she was just there. She said, “I really liked hearing you play the concerto.” I looked at her face. It had some giant pimples on it. Her hair was sort of light brown and hanging straight. She put her right hand up to brush her hair out of the way. Her arm was round, almost fat, and two of the fingers on her right hand were splinted together.

  “Thanks,” I said. I had to change pictures in my mind very fast. Out went the tall, beautiful Karens with the ski-racing bibs. In came this Karen, with one button of her plaid shirt popped out of its buttonhole, just above her jeans. “It’s too bad about your fingers. You should’ve been playing it—” I took a deep breath and said her name. “—Karen.”

  She looked at her hand and laughed. “Your name’s Allegra?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Well, Allegra, never go windsurfing when you have to play a concerto, that’s my advice.”

  “It’s really too bad,” I said. “I mean it’s unlucky.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She looked at me. “You’re really good. I loved the second movement. Makes me feel like going home and practicing.”

  I didn’t know what to say. She was nineteen years old and in college.

  “You know what I love about Mozart?” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “He can make you forget everything else. All your problems. You know?” She sort of laughed.

  “I don’t know. I mean—I don’t know.…”

  “You played it really well. Nice meeting you, Allegra.” She walked off. I stood there in my flowered dress holding my violin case in one hand and the bright bouquet of flowers in the other, and watched her big hips waddle away, bumping into people. She was holding her right hand up out of the way.

  “Nice meeting you,” I called to her, but I don’t think she heard me.

  I felt selfish. I wanted to erase the last three minutes from my life. I looked down at the flowers and their big yellow ribbon. Karen should have had the bouquet. I felt guilty holding it in my hand. I felt guilty about my dream. I felt guilty that people had clapped when I played. I even felt guilty for not being fat.

  Jessica came scooting through the crowd. “I looked all over for him. He’s vanished,” she said. “That girl—the chunky one in the jeans. The one you were talking to? She’s the one that said, ‘Oh, Mozart!’”

  “That’s Karen Karen,” I said.

  Jessica made a silent O with her mouth. She said, “Broken Fingers Karen Karen.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I wonder where the dancing man went,” she said. “He dematerialized. How can somebody do that?”

  “Allegra,” somebody said, a man’s voice. I turned around. It was the concertmaster of the orchestra. “We liked playing the concerto with you,” he said. “You kind of inspired us.” He had two little kids with him, a boy and a girl. They stared at me, and the little girl put her hand on the big yellow ribbon on the bouquet and stroked it.

  “Oh, I liked it, too. It was scary. But fun.” He was wearing one of those hats people wear when they drive tractors. It said, “If you ate today, thank a farmer.” “Thank you,” I said. I meant his hat. “I mean, I ate today. Are you a farmer?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Part-time apple farmer, part-time fiddler. I bet you’ll be a full-time fiddler
someday. You really made us practice.” He laughed and took the little girl’s hand off the ribbon.

  “Really?” I watched the little girl’s hand make a fist and go behind her back.

  “You sure did. Most of us went home Tuesday night and did some woodshedding.”

  Woodshedding is hard practicing. “I did, too,” I said. The little girl hooked her hand in his pants pocket and started swinging back and forth in an arc.

  “Well, thanks for coming. We were kind of up a creek.…”

  “I know,” I said. “Unlucky for Karen, lucky for me.”

  “Yeah. She’ll be okay, though. She’s tough. She’ll play again, better than ever.” The little boy tugged on the man’s violin case. “Well, these kids oughta be home in bed. So long, Allegra.”

  “So long,” I said.

  The crowd was separating. People were getting little kids off the slides and pulling them along down the slope and into cars. Our bunch broke into two groups, part of us to ride back with my parents and Jessica to ride with Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan because she lives near them and Daddy’s car was crowded. “I just don’t know where he went,” Jessica said to me.

  “I don’t even know where he came from,” I said.

  “Miss Shapiro?” somebody said. I looked. It was the old lady who’d cried at rehearsal. She was very short, and her violin case looked too heavy for her. In the white blouse and long black skirt she looked sort of like a rabbit. “It was wonderful, Miss Shapiro,” she said in a quaky voice. She reached her hand up to her collar. It was shaking. An elderly shaking hand.

  “So were you,” I said. “The orchestra was fun to play with.”

  “I like it,” she said. “It’s my home away from home. We’re amateurs.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  For a little moment it was just the little old white-haired lady and me both bursting out laughing. Maybe she knew what we were laughing at, but I didn’t. Her laughing was old and crackly and mine was probably childish. There was just a set of sounds coming out of both of us, and we stood there looking straight at each other and laughed and laughed. What was strange about it was that I didn’t feel weird laughing with a total stranger probably six times my age. In fact, it felt wonderful. Then we both stopped laughing, almost at the same time.