Read Online Madame Sousatzka by Bernice Rubens - Free Book Online

movements a certain waltzing rhythm. Sometimes he would change his beat, and thunder, ‘Forte, forte’ instead, and with the new time-signature Marcus would feel the massage take on a marching measure up and down his spine. ‘Now let’s take a plunge into the Arctic Ocean,’ Mr Cordle said. He took a cold wet flannel and pressed it around Marcus’s neck to give a semblance of reality to his fantasies. Marcus shivered. ‘We’ll be warm in no time,’ Mr Cordle said, protecting himself in the plural, and he rubbed Marcus’s neck until a tingling warmth filtered through the boy’s body.
    â€˜Let’s have a look at Russia, shall we,’ he said, in his best rack-side manner. Marcus turned over. He was a boy who responded conscientiously to his cues. He knew the routineby heart. Mr Cordle laid his hands across Marcus’s chest. ‘Oh dear, we are skinny, aren’t we,’ he chided, thumping his fingers between the jutting ribs. ‘Here, have some chocolate.’
    Marcus sat up on the couch. The offer of chocolate always marked an interval in the session. ‘And when are you going to give this concert of yours?’ Mr Cordle always asked this question every week at chocolate time. It was another way of stating that Madame Sousatzka was afraid of losing her prize pupil to the public.
    â€˜Next year, I suppose. Madame Sousatzka says I’m not ready yet.’
    â€˜D’you think you’re ready?’
    â€˜Sometimes I do. I’d like to play for lots of people. I get fed up with practising on my own, with no-one listening except Madame Sousatzka. But maybe she’s right. I haven’t learnt everything yet.’
    â€˜You’ll always have a lot to learn. You’ll never stop learning. If Madame Sousatzka has her way, you’ll never be ready. Have you started on a programme?’
    â€˜I know lots of pieces. They could be made into a programme. I know concertos, too, but however will I get a chance to play them?’
    â€˜Never,’ said Mr Cordle. He pulled what was left of his hair over his head as a fringe, and played with an imaginary watch round his neck, ‘Never,’ he mimicked in the Sousatzka guttural, ‘You’ll never be ready.’
    Marcus laughed, but he quickly checked himself with the thought that he was being disloyal. He remembered his mother’s threatened visit and fleetingly thought that it was justified. When away from her, he found it so easy to be on her side. ‘She’s in my way,’ he said suddenly, ‘I could be earning money. I could be famous. I’m ready. She knows I’m ready but she won’t let me go. I’ll leave her. I’ll go to someone else.’
    Mr Cordle put his hand on Marcus’s shoulder. He felt responsible for the boy’s sudden rebellion. ‘She’s taught you everything you know,’ he said quietly, ‘it would be ungrateful to leave her. Maybe she’s right. Perhaps you aren’t ready. She knows what she’s doing. You’re stillyoung. You’ve got a lot to learn. Lots of things, other than the piano.’
    â€˜But she called me a genius. Only this week, she said I was a genius.’
    Mr Cordle sighed. ‘You see that picture over there,’ he pointed to a sheet on the opposite wall. It was the plan of a man’s body and embedded in each bone, muscle and joint was a line which extended to the outside of the body and which ended in a name of the part to which it belonged. The titles were neatly and symmetrically placed together, assuming the contours of the human frame around a hollow man. ‘When I was a boy,’ Mr Cordle said, ‘about your age, I suppose, that chart used to hang by my bed. And every night I looked at it and I cried. I cried for that man hemmed in by a battery of labels. Those lines you see travelling out of the body,’ he went on, pointing to the chart with a long