Read Online The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain - Free Book Online Page B

bedlinen would be too heavy for him to carry. He wondered how strong – at almost ten years old – he was supposed to be.
    He left the bathroom and went to the kitchen and found the remains of the vegetable stew on the hob, but it didn’t look like anything he might want to eat. The floating white leeks reminded him of the horrible long penis he’d seen in Ludwig’s hand. He poured the stew down the drain, trying not to gag when he saw a large leek blocking the run-off. He thought that if he’d been some other boy, he would have begun crying or at least whimpering by now, but he wasn’t: he was Gustav Perle. He was going to
master himself –
for the sake of his Mutti, for the sake of his dead father, for the sake of Anton, who cried too often, for the sake of a few beautiful things in the world, like the sun on a balcony in Davos. He took the slimy leek in his hands and threw it into the bin.
    He washed his face and hands and changed his clothes and set out to walk to school. He didn’t know what time it was, so he asked Frau Teller at the flower stall to tell him the time, and she said, ‘All I know, Gustav, is that it’s Wednesday.’
    When he got to school, he found that lessons were only just beginning. He went into his classroom and sat down at his desk and the feel of the familiar wooden desk was comforting. It was as if it were the one thing in what Ludwig called ‘the universe’ which hadn’t altered in the last twenty-four hours. Holding onto the desk, he decided that after school he would borrow money for the tram fare and go to see Emilie at the hospital. He hoped he would find her in a clean bed, with her hair washed and combed.
    He whispered to Anton, ‘Mutti’s got pneumonia.’
    ‘What’s pneumonia?’
    ‘It’s like TB. She almost died in the night.’
    ‘Do you really mean “died”?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What would you do if she died?’
    ‘I’d be alone,’ said Gustav.
    At break time, Anton told Gustav that his piano teacher, Herr Edelstein, had entered him for a Children’s National Piano Competition, in Bern. He was going to play Debussy’s ‘La Cathédrale Engloutie’.
    ‘When?’ asked Gustav.
    ‘In the summer. Before we go on holiday to the mountains. But there are heats first.’
    ‘What are “heats”?’
    ‘It’s like a first round and then a second round. You have to go to Bern and play for two of the judges. Then if you’re good enough, after two rounds, you get to go in the competition.’
    ‘And what happens if you’re not good enough?’
    ‘I will be good enough, Gustav. Maybe you can come to Bern and hear me perform?’
    Gustav liked to imagine Anton onstage in a huge concert hall, alone with the black grand piano, open like an enormous heart, about to gather him in. He hoped he would be able to persuade Emilie to take him there, so that she, too, could hear Anton playing.
    It was cold in the schoolyard. Gustav wanted to tell Anton about the thing that Ludwig had done, so that the repulsion of it could be shared and not just remain burrowing through his brain, like a worm burrowing through the earth. But the thought of trying to describe it made him feel sick. He also wondered whether Anton would
blame
him, in some way, and then shun him. It was easy to imagine Anton walking away from him and telling the other boys that Gustav Perle had done a disgusting thing. So it came to him then that he would have to keep it locked away inside him and tell no one –
ever
.
    He listened instead to Anton’s excitement as he talked about the piano competition. Anton said, ‘It may be a bit frightening, to play in front of so many people. My mother says there’s a pill I could take to stop me getting nervous. She also says I’d better get used to it, because that’s probably going to be my career in life, being a concert pianist.’
    ‘How does she know?’
    ‘Because I’m a “prodigy”. That means I’m more brilliant at playing than almost everyone else of my