Read Online Chamber Music by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online Page B

was given. His small, thin, tense, accomplished fingers were capable of performing extraordinary feats for one so young, his memory was perfect, his understanding of what he was doing almost that of a mature musician. I worried, not about him, for I hardly encountered him at all and knew all this only through Robert’s weary reports of him at our late suppers, but about Robert, whose fatigue grew with the boy’s virtuosity. No longer did he stand to give his lessons but had moved a wicker chair from another room into the music room, a chair that reminded me, when first I saw it there, of Mrs. Seton’s.
    Many afternoons, through the closed door of the music room, I heard Robert’s sharp, angry voice, reproaching Paul for a mistake, I surmised, since I was not able to hear the words. His voice would maintain the same tone after the repetition of the long passage, which to my ear was played brilliantly. Robert would find some small matter to carp about, the boy would play the music again with verve, with greater accuracy, although, not having discerned the initial error, I cannot be sure of this. Again Robert’s voice would cut across the last notes. Often I went downstairs and out into the garden so that I did not have to listen to Paul replaying the same passage, the same rejected perfection followed by the same unreasonable anger.
    After all this time I no longer can remember how prepared I was for what happened. But I did wonder: Would the boy complain to his mother so that she would take him away from Robert’s lessons? Would Robert completely lose control of himself at the boy’s undeniable talent and send his pupil away?
    It was not to be either of these suppositions. In the spring of that year, and just after Robert had returned home exhausted from his tour, Paul arrived alone for his lesson. He had been caught in a sudden rainstorm. His eyes red, his nose running, he stood, coughing, on the landing. His coat dripped water, his thin face was apologetic, his shoes full of water. The boy seemed afraid to go to Robert in this state, and yet there was little I could do for him except to insist he remove his shoes. I gave him a pair of Robert’s old slippers, many sizes too large. Coughing and shuffling in the slippers, he knocked on the music room door and went in.
    I took the sodden shoes down to the kitchen to try to dry them. So I missed the explosion. Paul had been ill with a cold, he had apparently told Robert: “I did not practice yesterday. I hope you will understand that …”
    The ceiling above me shook. Something heavy had been—thrown? dropped?—to the floor. I heard a crash, and then a desperate, thin, child’s voice cry: “ Stop !” I went up the stairs as quickly as I could, hiking up my skirts to facilitate the climb. The door was ajar. In a fury such as I had never thought him capable of, Robert, in his shirt sleeves, stood in the center of the room, holding the fire poker above his head. Paul was crouched on the window seat, his face drawn and white, his mouth open in a mad, terrorized grimace. All his small, even, sharp teeth showed. “Robert, what is it? What are you doing? Stop that. Put it down.” Commands and entreaties poured out of me in one long line of sound.
    Robert looked at me, dazed. Then he sat down, almost as if he had collapsed, onto the piano bench, dropping the poker at his feet. He put his head into his hands. I started over to him, but I was too slow. The boy had jumped toward Robert from his crouched position on the window seat, like a small spring released into the air. Before I could stop him he had crossed the room, stooped down, opened his mouth, and dug his teeth into the flesh of Robert’s upper arm.
    Robert sprang to his feet. “My God! Let go !”
    Paul Brewster appeared for a few seconds to hang by his teeth from Robert’s raised arm, the cloth of Robert’s shirt bunched into his mouth.