Authors: Frank Conroy
"Claude," Weisfeld said at the end of a lesson, "the maestro died last night."
"Oh." He glanced around the store and then looked at Weisfeld, hoping for some hint as to how he was expected to react. "That's too bad."
"He was an old friend, but we knew it was coming and he went quietly in his sleep. Franz couldn't wake him this morning."
"So it didn't hurt."
"No. I don't think so."
They sat silently for a moment.
"Franz and Helga are upset, of course," Weisfeld said. "They've been with him a long time. They're moving to Florida as soon as things get sorted out, so I'm afraid it's the end of our arrangement."
Claude gave a start. "You mean no more lessons?"
"No, no. I mean no more Bechstein. No more sauerbraten."
"But we keep on? You and me?"
Weisfeld got up abruptly and stood with his back to the boy. "Of course," he said, giving a little wave in the air. "Of course we do." Claude's keen ear caught the slightest thickness in his voice.
C
LAUDE
, his mother, and Weisfeld sat in the waiting room of the law firm of Larkin, Larkin & Swift. Brass lamps, hunting prints, and oak bookshelves, ten stories above Madison Avenue.
"You never even met him," she said.
"I almost saw him, but it was too dark."
"Old people can be funny. Like children sometimes," she said. "It's your good luck."
Weisfeld stroked his mustache and looked out the window.
Mr. Larkin was a distinguished-looking man with a straight nose, a strong chin, and pale blue eyes. He moved quickly and smoothly as he showed them into his office, indicated chairs, and sat down behind his desk. On the polished surface was a single file folder, which he opened and read for a moment. When he raised his head he looked directly at the boy. "May I call you Claude?"
"Yes. Sure."
"Very good, then. I understand Mr. Weisfeld has informed you that you were named in the will."
"The piano, yes," Claude said.
"Good." His eyes moved to Emma Rawlings. "I thought it would be appropriate for us to have this brief meeting so that I could explain the terms set out in the will and answer any questions you might have. Thank you for coming."
"I'm parked in a hack stand," she said.
"This won't take long. Claude, you are a minor. As usual in such situations, and pursuant to my advice, a trust has been set up with you as beneficiary. Mr. Weisfeld has agreed to serve as trustee. When you reach the age of twenty-one the trust will dissolve and title to the piano will pass to you fully and completely, without restrictions. Do you understand?"
"Do I get to use it in the meantime?"
"Most certainly." Larkin smiled and tilted his head toward Weisfeld.
"The piano is yours, Claude," Weisfeld said. "You'll have it right away. This is just legal, the way it has to be done."
"How much is it worth?" she asked.
Larkin consulted the file. "The estimated value is five thousand dollars."
"That's three medallions."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You can get three taxi medallions with that kind of money."
"Really?" Larkin said. "Well, I'm not surprised. It's a valuable instrument, Mrs. Rawlings."
"It surprises me," she said, pursing her lips.
"Any questions about this?" Larkin paused a moment and then continued. "It would be helpful, Mrs. Rawlings, if we could have a copy of Claude's birth certificate. Perhaps you would be so kind as to mail it to us?"
For a long time they all just sat there. Claude looked at his mother, who tilted back her big head and stared at the ceiling. "I don't have it," she said finally.
"Perfectly all right," Larkin said. "It happens all the time. If you can just give me the hospital and the date, I'm sure weâ"
"He wasn't born in a hospital."
Claude could not take his eyes off her, and he could tell she was aware of him listening. All of this had been forbidden territory.
"I see. At home. Well, perhaps the doctor couldâ"
"There wasn't any doctor," she interrupted again, her head coming down as she looked at Larkin.
"A midwife?" Larkin essayed.
She shook her head. Again a long silence.
Weisfeld twisted in his chair. "Is the certificate absolutely necessary? Isn't there some other way to proceed?"
Larkin thought it over. "Well, any record will do, I suppose. A baptismal certificate," he kept on despite her audible snort, "doctor's records, vaccinations, that sort of thing."
"There aren't any records," she said. "There's just him. There he is right in front of you."
Larkin sat back and folded his hands. He glanced quickly at Weisfeld, who gave the faintest shrug. Larkin reached into his desk and withdrew a pad of paper and a pencil which he pushed across the desk. "Mrs. Rawlings, if you would write down the date and year of Claude's birth, we will prepare an affidavit for you to sign. It should suffice."
She leaned forward and scribbled on the pad.
"Thank you," Larkin said, taking it back without a glance. He tore off the sheet and put it in the file. "There is a second codicil in the will," he said, speaking more rapidly now, "which provides funds for reasonable expenses incurred in the training of Claude Rawlings as a pianist. These funds are limited to payment for piano lessons up to the age of eighteen. The administrator and trustee is Mr. Weisfeld, or in the event of his death, myself. I believe that covers everything." Mr. Larkin got up, came around the desk, and shook hands with everyone. To Claude, he said, "Best of luck in your studies. You've been given an opportunity, and I'm sure you'll make the most of it."
"I'll try," said the boy.
Downstairs, on the sidewalk, she gave him a nickel. "Take the bus uptown. I've got to get to work." She nodded goodbye to Weisfeld and went to the cab. Claude ran after her and caught her as she was opening the door.
"Well then, where was I born?" he said. "I had to be born someplace."
"What difference does it make?" she said, getting in.
He stood by the window, staring at her until she sighed. "You were born in the back of a church uptown. I used to have a job up there singing."
"A church?"
"Yes. A Baptist church. And I took you home the same night. So now you know, and what difference does it make?"
"I don't know," he said.
"I wasn't about to tell that snooty lawyer. It's no business of his. It's no business of anybody." She started the engine and pulled away.
At the bus stop with Weisfeld he said, "I was born in a church, she says. In the back of a church."
"Such things happen," he said. "You probably came fast. Eager to get out and join the comedy."
"But why didn't she just tell him? I don't understand. She could have told him. And how come she never told me?"
"I don't know." He put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Your mother is a complicated woman."
As the bus pulled up Claude said, "I don't want to go home. I don't want to go there right now."
"Come to the store with me. You can help me put up the sheet music. It just came in."
Claude sat on the stoop in front of his house, waiting for the truck. Munching on a dill pickle, he watched the street, the passers-by, the women at the windows of the tenements. A bottle of Pepsi stood beside him, and every now and then he'd take a sip. Three girls were playing jump rope on the opposite sidewalk. They were sisters, Italian, and they never spoke to him, instantly averting their eyes if they met accidentally in the candy store or the grocery. The eldest was about his own age and he thought she was prettyâdark eyes and hair in long black ringlets. Her name was Rosa, but he knew she didn't know what his name was.
He watched the street in an abstracted state, warmed by the sun and by a sense of anticipation about the arrival of the piano. Somewhere in his mind, almost a separate, fenced-off area of his consciousness, he was playing a game to the beat of the skipping rope as it snapped on the cement.
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot,
Twelve full ounces that's a lot,
Twice as much for a nickel too,
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.
He heard a variation, an embellishment in eighth notes, and then a bass line going with it. It continued to run in his head after the girls stopped jumping, the music simply there without thought or concentration, his awareness of it fading in and out, as it might had he been monitoring his own breathing. It did not feel as if he was making the music, but as if the music existed independently of him, flowing along in a corner of
his brain. The sensation was one of tuning in, the way a person is capable of somehow tuning in on one conversation, perhaps at a distance, in a noisy room. He often found himself playing this sort of game. While walking, for instance, when he might give a little skip, to syncopate the melody. Or while riding in the subway, to the clacking of the wheels, when in the general roar he could hear the shadowy presence of massed orchestras playing like fury.
The truck was bright red. It came slowly down the block and stopped in front of him.
PINSKY PIANO MOVERS
read the side. Three large men got out of the cab, and when the back of the truck was opened a fourth jumped lightly to the asphalt. He wore a clean gray uniform and walked over to the stoop.
"Rawlings in this building?" He glanced up at the facade, moving back a step.
"Yes," Claude said. "We're in the basement."
Meanwhile, the three big men were lowering the piano, wrapped in brown quilted tarps, out of the truck onto a large flat dolly.
"You got the key?" asked the first mover. "Let's take a look."
They went to the iron stairs.
"Uh-oh," said the mover, looking down.
They descended and Claude unlocked the door. The mover did not enter, but stood studying the frame of the doorway. "This don't look so good."
"What do you mean?"
"No room to play with down here. Is there another way in?"
Claude closed the door and they went back up. The piano was now on the sidewalk, standing on its side, attended by the three big men. It looked longer than it had in the maestro's apartment. The first mover ran up the stoop and disappeared inside the building. A few people began to stop, and more old ladies appeared at the windows of the neighboring buildings. A small brown dog sniffed the tarp until one of the men shooed it away. The first mover came down the stoop.
"Any windows?"
With a sinking heart, Claude pointed at the fan-shaped window.
"In back?"
"Two. But they're just like that one."
"Well, it ain't gonna go," he said. "Even if we took out the stairs it ain't gonna go."
Claude said, "Can you wait a minute? I'll get Mr. Weisfeld. I'll be right back."
"Who's he? The super?"
Claude ran down the street and turned the corner. He dodged through pedestrians and arrived at the music store out of breath.
Mr. Weisfeld was in front, rolling up the awning with a long iron rod.
"It's too big," Claude cried. "They can't get it inside. It won't fit."
"I should have thought of that." Weisfeld tucked the rod into its fixture and locked it in place. "I'll put the sign up."
When they returned to Claude's building the crowd had grownâperhaps a dozen people were standing around watching. The moving men were drinking sodas.
"I'm Aaron Weisfeld. I signed the delivery order."
The first mover nodded. "It won't go." He glanced at the building. "Up there, we could use a block and tackle from the roof, get it through a window. We've done that lots of times. But the basement, that's another story. You'd have to knock out the wall."
"Let's knock out the wall," Claude said.
"We can't do that, Claude," Weisfeld said. "But don't worry. We'll arrange something."
"So?" asked the mover.
"Take it back," said Weisfeld.
In the basement of the Park Avenue apartment building Al switched on the hanging light bulb in storage room B. The Bechstein, still wrapped, had been partially reassembled and stood on its legs.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Al asked.
"I didn't know it would go on so long."
"Hey. I heard about it last year. A kid going up there for lessons."
"It wasn't lessons, just practice," Claude said.
"And it was you?" Al shook his head. "If that don't beat all."
"The pedals aren't on."
Al pulled out the bench, got down on the floor, and studied the underside of the piano. The pedal cage, an elongated structure of wood and metal rods, lay beside him. He picked it up and slid it easily into position, knocking in the wooden holding latches with the heel of his hand. "Go ahead," he said.
Claude pulled up the bench and sat down. He pressed the pedals and
they felt fine. Then he folded back the tarp and opened the keyboard. When he played a chord the sound was muffled, but clear.
"The movers told me it's worth a lot of money," Al said. "A lot more than just any old piano. You gonna sell it?"
"No. It's a trust."
"A what?"
"A trust. I can't sell it till I'm twenty-one, but I won't do that anyway, even when I am. He trusted me." He ran some quick scales with both hands and then played some Bach, watching his hands fly the way they could not on the piano at home.
"Holy shit," Al said when he'd finished.
"It's a really good piano." Claude played some boogie-woogie, throwing himself into it, showing off.
"Where'd you learn that, child? That's Meade Lux Lewis you playing."
"I've got the music at home."
"You mean you read it off the paper? How'd you learn to do that?"
"Mr. Weisfeld taught me. He's my teacher."
Al sat down on an old trunk, rested his forearms on his thighs, and slowly shook his head.
"So is it okay if I come and play? Mr. Weisfeld says he's going to find a place to move it but it might take a while and I want to keep on doing scales and I could play right here."
"Yeah, it's okay," Al said. "You do what you want. This is my territory down here. Nobody gonna say nothing. You need to play, you just go ahead and play."