Lanceheim Page 4

  He listened.

  This was the second day of rehearsals. Except for the timpanist, a blue elephant with a name no one could pronounce, everyone in the orchestra had worked with Walrus before. They knew what this meant. Therefore, when the timpanist with a superior smile on his lips—as if to say, “Is this pretentious or what?”—turned to the flutes, he got no response. Seeing Walrus standing on the edge of the stage with closed eyes, fanning the air, might perhaps be a sorrowful sight if you thought that the composer had fallen victim to his own myth. Later, however, someone—perhaps one of the sweet violas or one of the oboists, generally considered the most social section in the philharmonic—would let the blue elephant know what he had witnessed.

  This is what Reuben Walrus’s creative process looked like. He apparently heard melodies and harmonies within himself, silences and dissonances, orchestrations and parts. The philharmonic in Lanceheim had witnessed this several times—how Walrus stood among them, yet in his own world, and with closed eyes directed his inner orchestra, the one that never played a wrong note, neither hesitated nor questioned.

  After a few long minutes the composer finally opened his eyes and turned over the music paper he was holding in his right fin. With his scratching ink pen he frenetically wrote down five, ten, and finally fifteen different parts that he had just “heard.” Not once did he hesitate.

  “I’ll write out new ones for everyone,” he mumbled, “just now it’s only the cellos I want to hear. Only cellos.”

  And then he set back the score in front of the cellists.

  “Play,” he nodded and closed his eyes.

  The cellos were heard again, the violins picked up where they felt comfortable, and Walrus nodded without opening his eyes.

  Better.

  The Music Academy was celebrating its one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary, and Reuben Walrus had been invited to write the piece that would inaugurate a week bulging with musical festivities. The invitation had arrived almost two years ago, and Reuben, after a year of hesitation, had accepted the commission. Even if he could not maintain that he had exclusively agonized over this Symphony in A Minor since then, he had devoted much effort to it. Whatever conflicts he may have had with the Music Academy over the years—and they were numerous, despite the fact that he could not recall any of them in detail—the invitation was a major official recognition. He had been asked due to past qualifications, but those past qualifications would not bring him through this in one piece if this symphony did not live up to what his reputation promised.

  And it had been a while since he had tackled something of this scope. With the years and their successes, many other things made demands on Reuben’s time. The actual composing he did was confined to simpler things. Last year he had squeezed out a couple of string quartets, but not more. The year before that, a few arias and ten sonnets was all he managed. To be quite honest, none of these compositions were more than deft elaborations on the sort of thing he had done previously, and for the sonnets in particular only neglect awaited. Since the Piano Concerto in D Major had been performed for the first time exactly nine years, eight months, and…a few days ago, there had been nothing other than trifles.

  But the years passed. His time went to conducting or at least sanctioning recordings of previous works that musicians, orchestras, and smaller ensembles from the various corners of the city asked for. Reuben Walrus had been productive when young, inconceivably and inexcusably productive, he might think; a few things were best buried in the compost heap of time. Devoting yourself to the past entailed making revisions. He reorchestrated pieces for new sets of instruments or transcribed symphonies to keys better suited to tonal colors that had not been available when he wrote them. The development of technique had opened unexpected paths for contemporary composers, and Reuben was fascinated by the possibilities that he had never had.

  His daily routines also included managing the financial aspects of his own musical activity. As he found these tasks inconceivably boring, they took him a disproportionately long time. Many, not least his ex-wife, had again and again suggested that he ought to let someone take care of bookkeeping, invoicing, and investing, but he would not. Some called this stinginess; others emphasized his certified need for integrity. Reuben himself answered, pressed and disagreeable, that it was certainly a little of both.

  Finally, Reuben’s private life in recent years had been equally hectic and turbulent. Not only due to his companion, Denise, although she clearly demanded the kind of attention that only a young, spoiled, and beautiful animal had the right to demand.

  The invitation from the Music Academy scared him to death. But at the same time it was his salvation.

  While the philharmonic continued into the grandiose madness of the symphony, Reuben Walrus stepped down from the stage.

  Three weeks was all he had before it was time to play the symphony for an audience, and the last third was still left to write. He had been noncommittal with the philharmonic. They had asked of course for the last pages of the score. He thought that when rehearsals got going, he would find inspiration more easily. Well, that remained to be seen.

  When the Afternoon Sky had reached its most saturated blueness, Reuben Walrus again clapped his hands, but in a different way, a way they all recognized. Rehearsals were over for the day. The musicians set down their instruments. A couple of them, old friends, intended to exchange a few words with the great composer, but Reuben quickly fled the concert hall, with his coat over one fin and the score under the other. He was still holding Dr. Swan in check. Her words were encapsulated in the darkest corner of his brain, and they could only remain there if he avoided talking with anyone. Out on the sidewalk he turned right, and went north as fast as he could.

  This was his block. The street where he lived, sea blue Knobeldorfstrasse, was no more than a stone’s throw from the concert hall. Over the past few years the neighborhood from Dieterstrasse up to Rosdahl had gained a reputation as being pretentious and expensive, but the pendulum always swung back. When Reuben bought his four-room apartment ten years ago, the area had been exciting and slightly dangerous. The price of the large apartment was lower than that of some studios he had looked at farther south. And once they had carried the grand piano up the six flights of stairs, Reuben swore never to move away.

  He loved Knobeldorfstrasse. He loved the old rooms—their musty odor that he had made his own, the yellowed wallpaper that reminded him of times past, and the creaking floorboards that responded to his steps like old acquaintances. The water in the sink remained cloudy until it ran for a minute or two. The bathroom was too cramped for a washing machine, and for that reason he could take his clothes to the dry cleaners with a good conscience. The obligatory drying cabinet—where stuffed animals sat if they happened to end up by mistake in one of the day’s rain showers—was of an old, obsolete model, and it smelled burnt in a manner that caused him to feel hungry.

  He loved the view from the bedroom toward the shady inner courtyard and the rusty bicycles that no one seemed to own and that could stand in peace year after year. And the contrast on the other side, facing Knobeldorfstrasse, where the pulse beat faster every day and the formerly abandoned apartments had been transformed in recent years to trendy cafés and boutiques that constantly changed ownership.

  The sixth floor, the apartment under Walrus, stood empty. It had always been that way. The low rent level in the building allowed the tenant one floor down, a fairly successful milliner with stores in both Lanceheim and Tourquai, to use the apartment as a storeroom. This meant that Reuben could play his piano as much as he wanted, any time of day whatsoever. This was perhaps Knobeldorfstrasse’s best quality.

  Reuben Walrus managed to make it the whole way home without Dr. Swan’s words penetrating his defenses, but once he was inside the door his powers of resistance ran out, and he collapsed on the carpet. It could not be true, he thought. It could not be true.

  Three weeks.

  Kleine W
allanlagen was not the largest park in Mollisan Town, nor was it the smallest. Around a hill that was considered a mountain by Lanceheim loyalists, the city had laid out a gravel path. Lanterns were lit along it throughout the night, but still most avoided going into Kleine Wallanlagen when darkness fell. It was long ago that there was justification for the rumors of drug dealing and prostitution, but the gravel path was edged by dense bushes and ancient oaks, and the many hiding places contributed to fantasies.

  Reuben Walrus stood hidden in the dark shadow of one of these mighty trees. Peering toward the building facades on the other side of pepper red Mooshütter Weg, he took a gulp of cognac that he had poured into a steel pocket flask. He had the flask in his inside pocket, while he carried the bottle of cognac in his coat pocket; drinking straight from the bottle was, despite everything, unthinkable. He was not used to drinking, and was already thoroughly intoxicated. The night had just passed its climax; the darkness was compact, and the chill penetrated right through the walrus’s shiny fabric. This did not bother him. He was directing all of his concentration toward the windows on the third story of the building opposite, and he saw clearly how the two animals inside were preparing for departure. The female stood impatiently by the door while the male ran back and forth through the rooms, perhaps in pursuit of belongings, but just as likely on the lookout for excuses to stay behind.

  Reuben bided his time. If he had waited this long, he could wait a little longer. He emptied the flask of alcohol and poured in more from the bottle. It became more and more difficult to hit the little opening, but it made less and less difference if he spilled. In the corner of his eye he saw how the entryway opposite opened and closed. He waited until the sound of the strange male’s hooves were no longer heard on the sidewalk, sneaked out of the park, and slipped quickly and soundlessly across the street. He punched in the code expertly and opened the door to the stairwell without turning on the lights. In the darkness he fumbled his way up the two flights of stairs and fell three times before he was standing outside her door.

  He had a key. She didn’t know, Fox von Duisburg, that someone else had the key to her home. Reuben chuckled to himself and unlocked.

  Inside in the dark hallway he remained standing, suddenly doubtful. Was this really a good idea? He tried to think about it, create a little distance between himself and the situation, but the cognac allowed no such thing. Instead he tittered at something he forgot at once, and then the ceiling light in the hall came on.

  “You!” exclaimed Fox von Duisburg.

  She was wearing a thin red dressing gown over her silk pajamas, holding a baseball bat in her paw, and staring at him.

  The unexpected light made him jump. He was frightened when he saw the raised weapon, yet he could not control himself. Fox’s face transformed his tittering into a bubbling, deeper and deeper laugh. Although he knew he shouldn’t, he found he could not put a stop to it.

  “You’re drunk,” he heard Fox von Duisburg declare with a certain surprise.

  He neither could nor wanted to deny this. He held his stomach and fell forward in new spasms of laughter, so that he was transformed into a panting pile of fabric on the floor in her hallway.

  This had at one time been his hallway.

  “Old boy,” said Fox, crouching down to raise one of his fins and place it around her neck. “Help out now.”

  And then she pulled him up from the floor and dragged him into the living room. When she dropped him off on the couch, his laughter had been transformed into shaking sobs. Fox von Duisburg had been married to Reuben Walrus for twelve years, but never before had she seen him cry. For a moment she felt paralyzed, completely empty. It was late at night, and her lover had finally left. Instead of falling asleep in her cozy bed, she found an intoxicated, crushed ex-husband in the hallway, and realized that the night had only begun. With an inaudible sigh she sat down beside him on the couch and placed her arm on his back.

  “She gave me three weeks,” snuffled Reuben.

  Fox stroked him across the back and asked who he was talking about.

  “In three weeks it’s over,” he explained.

  “What happens in three weeks, darling?” she asked.

  “In three weeks I am never going to hear again,” Reuben forced out. “I am never going to compose again. My life is over.”

  Fox von Duisburg made coffee for them. Reuben sat at his place at the kitchen table and watched as she stood by the old wood-fired stove that she refused to replace for reasons of nostalgia and whipped the warm milk foam just stiff enough. The scene was familiar, except for the dense darkness outside the windows. They had been divorced for more than fifteen years, yet he felt secure and domesticated at her breakfast table. The table and stove were both remnants of Fox’s childhood. She had lived in this apartment her entire life. From the apartment’s perspective, Reuben Walrus was only a temporary resident who stayed longer than he was welcome.

  “We never should have moved apart,” said Reuben.

  “Do you mean it’s been a long time since you had coffee with foamed milk?” answered Fox with a broad smile.

  The aromas made him nostalgic: the smell of the wood burning in the little opening, the milk that was warmed in the saucepan, the soft detergent she used when she washed her dressing gown.

  “Sure, it’s been a long time since I had coffee with foamed milk at three o’clock in the morning,” he admitted.

  “It’s a good thing we don’t live together anymore,” smiled Fox. “I would never manage my days if the nights were like this. Not at our age.”

  “If we move in together again, I promise that I will never ask for foamed milk before the Morning Rain at the earliest,” he offered grandly.

  “Fantastic,” she said, pouring the milk into the coffee cups. “No suitor could be more romantic than that. When can you move in?”

  She set out the cups and sat down across from him at the kitchen table. He smiled, tasting the hot coffee carefully, whereupon the foam stuck to his long mustache. This caused her already tender heart to break, and spontaneously she placed her paw on his fin on the table and patted him.

  “Say it like it is, you don’t want me to move in at all,” he said.

  “You don’t want to move in, you only want to hear me say no.”

  He shrugged.

  “It suits me to pine, it suits you to reject.”

  “In your world, perhaps,” said Fox.

  “You used to like my world,” Reuben replied.

  “I loved your world, oldster. It was the best of worlds. I would recommend it to anyone.”

  “That’s not what you said to Veronica,” Reuben reminded her.

  Fox remembered Veronica, and smiled broadly.

  “If you drag your lovers here for the sake of comparisons,” she said, “you can’t count on me making it easy for you.”

  It had been a strange evening a few years ago. How he had come up with the idea of bringing together his new young female and his ex-wife he did not recall; they reminded him of each other, therefore they ought to meet. It was one of his stupidest ideas. All females paled in the glow of Fox von Duisburg.

  He sighed heavily.

  “I am never going to love anyone like I loved you,” said Reuben Walrus.

  “That’s the least I can demand,” replied Fox von Duisburg.

  The moon was still half when he managed to convince her to take a walk. Her eyelids had become dangerously heavy the last quarter of an hour, and the idea that she could fall asleep and leave him alone was worse than he could endure. Fresh air and exercise was the medicine.

  They walked arm in arm, a single shadow across sidewalks and on facades, wandering this way and that through north Lanceheim. After the divorce he had found a new apartment in this neighborhood, not least to be close to Fox and Josephine. He no longer remembered why they had separated, he hardly remembered it when he wrote the divorce documents, but he knew that it had been a wise decision. He loved her, perhaps she loved him
, but they should each live on their own. Relationships had never been his strong suit; he had a tendency to forget about them even while they were going on, and when he remembered, they were over. He lived for his music, and when it took possession of him…when the harmonies were flowing through him…when the sounds revealed themselves to him and suggested how he should orchestrate them by means of string quartets, brass quintets, or entire orchestras…when the visions intoxicated him, and the joys of the work were in the keys under his sensitive fins…then there was no place for anything else.

  Not even for Josephine.

  He had not been the best of fathers, but he knew some who were worse. Reuben was forty and some-odd years old when they got Josephine Lamb, and it was too late to conquer the role of dad. He was who he was. Fox never became a mom either; she was her cub’s girlfriend right from the start. Had he felt left out, set aside? Was that one of the reasons for the divorce? But he thought that contact with Josephine got better afterward, when he moved down to Knobeldorfstrasse and could devote himself to her when she came to visit. He taught her to play the piano, and he taught her to play the violin. The tuba was her own decision.

  “I am never going to hear again,” he said, as a cold breeze came around the block and searched its way into their eyes. “I am never going to know if what I experience inside me is what the orchestra is playing. Never again will I dare put my music in print, because I will never again discover where the mistakes are hiding.”

  She did not reply.

  “I am never going to…,” he said, but there was nothing more to say.

  The wind picked up. After ten meters or so they turned onto gray Friedrichstrasse, an alley so narrow that the wind could hardly find a place there. She stopped, and took hold of the lapel of his coat.