The Blue Guitar Read online

  Toby can feel the weight of the man’s arm as Hirsch leaned over the desk, while elsewhere in the flat his wife cooked up a batch of sauerkraut as she ducked between roughhousing children: “Shhh, your father is working.”

  Toby’s head jerks up.

  Did someone speak?

  Just Lucy who is still on tiptoe, reading. “They’re all in Polish or German,” she says. “Beautiful bindings. He must have brought his library with him on the steamer. And look, Toby, this toy is handcrafted. Do you think Hirsch made it for one of his children?” She holds up a small wooden tugboat painted red and black.

  Toby hears but doesn’t listen. His heart has tapped open. He’s fallen back into time and can smell the long-vanished bakery below with its old-country sweet buns, and when he pulls at the sleeves of his jacket, it’s the ratty suit coat that Leopold Hirsch wears in the photograph above the desk. Another richer fragrance of pipe tobacco permeates the room after all these years. Hirsch got his favourite brand shipped to him from overseas, except during the war years when he lost track of most of his relatives, some of whom moved here for weeks or months, crowded into the bedrooms, rolling cots up the narrow staircase.

  The room is a blur. Toby tastes salt, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he stands helpless and watery, half drowning in his own fluid.

  Lucy notices and quickly reaches to touch his hair. “It is your great luck to feel deeply. Which is why you play like you do.”

  The book of études was composed earlier, back in Europe when Hirsch was still a student at the conservatory, but the gorgeous “Triptych” was formed in this room. The work begins with that lush romantic melody, and you think you’re in for a good time, then it kicks open and you don’t know where the hell you are.

  Lucy drops her hand and nods toward the corner. “Do you suppose there’s a real guitar in there?” she asks. A battered instrument case leans against the wall. “Or is it just for show?”

  Toby says, “One way to find out.” He strides across the room. Leaning to snap open the case, he suddenly stops himself. He doesn’t want to know. If this case is empty, a sham, better that it stay shut. He rises to his feet and backs off.

  “While he was beavering away at his scores, his wife was peeling potatoes and caring for the mob of children,” Lucy says. She slips into the hallway where the walls are decorated with photographs and framed programs going back to the late 1920s.

  Swiping his face with his sleeve, Toby composes himself — what an odd turn of phrase.

  “These must be his parents,” Lucy calls back. “Fine old gent with heroic sideburns. His mother looks like an unforgiving creature, sucked-in cheeks. Mind you, photography was a big deal in those days.”

  When Toby doesn’t speak, she pokes her head back into the studio. “His mother’s family was in the shipping business back in Poland.” She stares for a moment when he doesn’t respond.

  Toby practised for four hours this morning. His hands are supple as heated putty.

  Hirsch wrote that music came to him as dictation from a mystical source. He studied the kabbalah and other texts and even met Krishnamurti one summer.

  “They held salons for artists and musicians on the last Thursday of each month,” Lucy says, returning to the hallway. “Here’s a tiny drawing by Paul-Émile Borduas that must be worth something. Madame Hirsch, quote, ‘cooked massive stews for the hungry children and artists.’ I bet she did.”

  Leopold might be out in the park with the children when sound came to him, sidelong, like the cranked-up music box of the ice-cream vendor or pretzel sellers. He could work anywhere at any time, because, as he famously wrote, music emanates from the world around us, from trees and sky to machine noise and the whirr of telephone wires. To receive these sounds, Hirsch trained his ears and mind to enter a state he termed the Receptive Cone.

  Toby has experienced it in himself, a sensation both glorious and unnerving. He feels the enchantment grow in him now, so close to the master.

  Lucy cries with delight. She’s found the nursery. Reluctantly, he leaves the studio with its moist smell of tobacco and old books. Lucy stands in the middle of a room with a sloped ceiling and a mitred window that looks onto a brick-and-glass building that wouldn’t have been there in Hirsch’s day. A rough-hewn cradle sits on the floor, plaster doll tucked under its miniature quilt. She picks up a pint-sized hairbrush from a shelf and slowly whisks it across her forearm, then lowers herself onto the rustic bed, perching next to a teddy bear, minus most of its fur.

  “The little ones are so dear,” Lucy says, glancing up at Toby as if waiting for him to echo her sentiment.

  When he doesn’t respond, she appears almost cross, an expression Toby recognizes: Jasper gets this way when he thinks Toby should act more interested in what is going on around him.

  Lucy asks, “Do you know who else lived here?”

  “Relatives from the old country.”

  “Polish and Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms, escaping their ghettos before the Nazis blew through.”

  A cold snake enters Toby’s gut. He knows this change in tone. Usually, it comes from old people. To this point they’ve been cordial, but once they discover he’s got measurable cc’s of German blood in his veins, he’s implicated in the crimes of the century.

  Lucy rises slowly from the bed and wanders over to the flip-top desk where she lifts a piece of sky from a jigsaw puzzle and ticks it against her teeth. “Think of the terror that made them leave and how difficult it was to land here with just the clothes on their backs.”

  “My sympathies are with the ones who didn’t escape,” Toby says.

  “Quite so.”

  “I contain the whole range of human feelings,” he adds, unable to mask the defensive tone.

  She runs her minesweeper eyes over him, then sets the puzzle piece down. “Of course.”

  Why does he feel accused of something?

  Leopold Hirsch tiptoed in at dawn to gaze at his sleeping children, three girls curled up on the one bed, and he listened to the raspy chest from the littlest child who would later die of pneumonia. It can be a curse to hear too much.

  They step out of the haunted room into the corridor. This part of the hallway is decorated with faded manuscripts displayed behind glass, most too spotty and stained to recognize, though isn’t that the opening fragment to the adagio?

  “Bathroom,” Lucy says, stating the obvious as she peers into the adjoining doorway.

  A rusty streak blisters the surface of the claw-foot tub that rests on four chunks of wood, and there’s a distinct whiff of drains. Sitting on the pedestal sink is a sponge so crusty you know it hasn’t touched water in decades. That step stool must be for little Laura, pictured in the photos down the hall.

  As Toby pulls back into the corridor, music starts up, gypsy violin drenched in melancholy, but when he glances around, he spots a speaker tacked in the corner where he’d hoped to see an old gent in a frayed suit, sawing away.

  Hirsch adopted folk music in his compositions, wove old tunes into sophisticated new world caprices and sonatas. The violin crests and hangs in on a long fermata — and that’s when Toby hears footsteps climbing the narrow staircase. So far they’ve been the only visitors to the museum. Leopold Hirsch is a little-known figure on this side of the Atlantic. The steps pause on the landing, and through the sound of music they pick up the gasp of heavy breathing.

  A stout man in his sixties pulls himself up the final flight of stairs. He wears a suit of timeless cut with shiny shoes. “Welcome, welcome,” he pants, sweat pooling on his brow. “Tell me, fine people, where are you coming from?”

  “Toronto,” they chorus.

  “Excellent.” He slips a pad and pencil from his pocket and writes this fact down. Toby notes his badge: the leopold hirsch society.

  “You have been born there also?” the man asks.

  Eastern European accent, Toby judges. “That’s right,” he says, watching as this, too, is written on the small pad.
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  “And you, madam?” Before Lucy can respond, the man begins to cough violently, and the visitors step hastily out of range.

  This is how it begins: a propelled spray of saliva, an enclosed space.

  “Pardon me, friends,” he says when he’s recovered. Then he turns to Lucy, pencil poised.

  “Born in Calgary,” she says.

  “And you enjoy our exhibition? Is interesting and provocative, yes?”

  “Very,” Lucy assures him.

  “We have restored this house for the enjoyment of musicians and followers of Dr. Hirsch. Maybe you would like to join our society. The dues are modest.” He stares at them in the gloom of the hallway. “Perhaps you have relatives in Poland or some special interest?” When there is no immediate response, he peers at Lucy’s badge. “Ah, a guitarist from the competition! Such an honour. I have been waiting for you people to come and visit our modest museum, but you are the first.” He flushes with evident pleasure and turns to Toby. “You, sir, are also one of the talented musicians?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Then you must follow me to Special Collections,” the volunteer insists. “An area where we allow only certain people, scholars and professional artists.” He beckons them toward the stairs, talking excitably. “We will begin with early letters sent back to his father. Perhaps you don’t know that Hirsch’s father was an eminent psychoanalyst with no less than Dr. Freud as his teacher.” He pauses, noting that the pair of musicians isn’t following. “So now we descend to the ground floor, to the special library.”

  “We’ll be stuck there for hours,” Lucy whispers in Toby’s ear, seeing alarm cross his face. He’s got to get back to the dorm and practise. Time presses in.

  Lucy swings her purse over one shoulder and says crisply, “I’m afraid we must dash back to the university.” She touches Toby’s arm in a wifely way.

  The man seems hurt. “You must be interested in seeing these precious items — letters in his own hand to famous artists, original manuscripts, concert programs … and many personal articles.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Lucy says.

  “Perhaps we can come back,” Toby says brightly.

  “Yes!” Lucy chimes in. “We’ll return once this is all over.”

  The man’s shoulders sink, and when he speaks, it is in a resigned voice. “Yes, when it is over.”

  Toby feels Lucy’s sharp tug on his sleeve. “Time to fly,” she says, foot planted on the top stair.

  “Go then,” the man says, flattening himself against the wall. “A woman must never be kept waiting.”

  It is the same heavy-handed courtliness that Klaus employs with what he terms “the fair sex.” Suddenly, Toby can’t get out of there fast enough. He pushes past both of them, hastening down the stairs and out the door to the bustling sidewalk where it is midday and women clip down the busy street in high heels, chattering into their cellphones.

  What would Dr. Hirsch make of this new generation of urban sounds? No doubt he would incorporate the ring tones, gypsy violin, even the pneumatic drill upending pavement across the street into some aural tapestry that would first cause laughter from his puzzled audience, then worship.

  “Were we very rude?” Lucy asks, joining him on the sidewalk. “I knew he’d suck us into an archival tunnel, make us examine every shoelace and grocery list.”

  “Imagine reading his letters …” Toby says.

  She looks at him sharply. “You read German?”

  He doesn’t. Klaus tried to implant the language in his sons’ minds, but they resisted, scorning his marzipan rewards for the correct conjugations of verbs. All that remains are a few common words and a handful of nursery rhymes.

  They glance up as a shadow passes: a blimp coasts across the sky, trailing a banner that advertises a common analgesic tablet. At the same time a taxi blares its horn, mimicking the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth while a kid strides past, earphones leaking hip-hop beats.

  Lucy squints at him, using her hand as a visor. “Toby Hausner,” she says, “you’ve fallen for that piffle about the Receptive Cone.”

  The dorm foyer buzzes with a fresh batch of conventioneers. The army cadets have disappeared, replaced by members of an international human rights organization. Delegates in jeans, saris, and suits line up before the gowned table to receive their registration kits. With jet-lagged ardour they pump hands and clap one another on the back while Lucy threads through the crowd, muttering apologies.

  When she reaches the elevator that will whisk her up into the women’s wing, she calls back to Toby, “Come by at six for cocktails.”

  He lifts an arm to protest. Cocktails! He must work until the sun sets and until his hands plead for mercy.

  Moments later he slips into his cell. The guitar case lies across the cot, lid propped open. Somewhere far below the Metro rumbles.

  Toby begins playing the trio with his fretting hand planted in seventh position, when of course he should have begun back in second, allowing for the cathedral-bell chime and a smooth transition. He worked this out months ago. Seventh position, he quickly discovers, leads to instant crisis and an open string thunking — so much for the cathedral chime.

  He scrambles in his suitcase to find sheet music he hasn’t looked at in weeks; mistakes pop up at surprising times, when memory is most confident.

  Never play a mistake twice, for it will burn new neural channels. Play it correctly five or six times before pressing on. That’s how you compose new memory, the one you want to live with.

  The bully boys have won, and it’s a dark day for the institute.

  President Luke lets out his belt a notch and can’t stop himself from smirking. He has the nerve, once the board meeting is over, to walk Jasper to the door, slip that hairless arm around his waist, and say, “We’re counting on you, as ever.”

  That Jasper will hand in his official resignation by Monday.

  Just twenty minutes earlier Jasper presented an itemized list of Luke’s activities to the executive while they stared fixedly at their agenda sheets.

  “The office can’t continue to function like this,” he explained. “I’m afraid it’s Luke or me. You must decide.”

  And so they decided.

  And still they won’t look at him, for Jasper has become contaminated, like those poor souls in D Wing across the street, breathing through thrice-filtered air.

  Twenty-One

  Lucy, dressed in a wraparound skirt made from some gauzy Indian cotton, peers at Toby’s right hand, while he stares down at the crown of her head. She flips the hand over and examines his palm, making small noises of discovery. “I’ve seen this before,” she says, and he catches the perturbation in her voice. She looks up at him, steady gaze. “Have you been told what it means?”

  “That I’m part ape,” he cracks. He knows he has a weird right palm — two deep lines instead of the usual heart, head, and life.

  She doesn’t smile, and suddenly he’s on edge. Last thing he needs is Lucy deciding to predict his future. It’s an old fear, people looking at him with concerned eyes, seeing something scary he doesn’t see himself.

  They perch on her bed in a dorm room like his, yellow spread crumpled beneath.

  “Where’s the drink you promised?” he asks.

  With reluctance she drops his hand and pads off barefoot to the kitchen. He hears the crack of ice cubes and soon she returns holding two tumblers of Scotch. Taking one, he settles against the pillows at the head of the bed as she heaves herself beside him. There’s nowhere else to sit in the cluttered room, the solo chair being piled with clothes and sheet music. Someone across the hall is strumming chords that sound jazz-inflected and improvisatory.

  “Trace doesn’t exactly practise,” Lucy says. “She doesn’t want her program to get stale.”

  They exchange smiles. No one is so good that she can leap from one recital to the next without practising a great deal. Some of the tension leaves Toby’s body — one less competitor to worry
about. Slugging back the Scotch, he gasps as it attacks the back of his throat.

  “Of course, the moment I leave the pod, she’s hard at it,” Lucy adds.

  The bed is unmade, which shocks Toby slightly — so like his mother’s distracted housekeeping and unlike Jasper who plucks micro-fluffs off the carpet and tut-tuts over wall smudges. The window ledge is littered with cosmetics and a toothbrush, inadequately rinsed.

  You are in this woman’s bedroom, Toby.

  The warning is noted, a pesky voice that some might call conscience.

  “Give me your palm again,” she says.

  Amber liquid fires up his mouth and throat and chest. It’s not just an instrument that creates sound; it’s the entire realm of sympathetic vibrations, the edgeless world.

  Lucy reaches out, and his hand slides like a fish onto hers. She touches the flesh firmly. “Your palm is nearly square,” she says, tracing its edges. “And the fingers are surprisingly short for a guitarist. A classic fire hand.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, my dear —” she arches her eyebrows “— that you are excitable and highly creative.” She holds his palm to eye level and examines it for several seconds before saying, “Most unusual.”

  “Why?” He can’t disguise his curiosity.

  “Twinned with the simian line …”

  “The what?”

  “You see it in primates, these two deep creases.” She strokes skin around the contours of flesh and bone. “I would guess that you live intensely, perhaps with an undercurrent of fear.”

  He starts to pull away again, but she grips firmly.

  “You have enormous gifts, but of course you know that.” She frowns. “Such gifts are often wedded with shadows.”

  The room feels tiny, a shoebox to set a pet mouse in.

  “I don’t mean to frighten you,” she says.

  “Just tell me if I’m going to win.”

  “I’m no soothsayer.” She hesitates. “But I’d put my money on you.”