Moonlight Rehearsal

A story by Armin Wiebe

(First published in a/cross SECTIONS:New Manitoba Writing, Manitoba Writers' Guild, 2007)

Copyright © Armin Wiebe 2007

Gretna, Manitoba Die Mennonitische Schul, October 31

Abend vor Allerheiligen. The Kanadier say Halloween. The Mennonitische Schul tries to forbid the students from making celebration of such a pagan Katholisch fest. Prinzipal Schapansky in morning chapel speaks about October 31, 1517 and how Martin Luther nailed the 95 Thesis on the church door at Wittenberg. Of course Funk finds much to Schpot at in the hallway and the toilet. In Literatür class we read Hamlet and the prinz has back come to Denmark from Wittenberg, and so Funk, pious as a deacon’s wife, asks Schapansky if that is the same Wittenberg as Luther’s Wittenberg, and Herr Schapansky, who is hoch gelehrnt in the United States, says, “Ja, Hamlet would be familiar with Luther’s teachings,” and he shows us in the Shakespeare text where the dichter is making Wortspiel with Diet of Worms. Schapansky seems always pleased when Funk asks such a question and I wonder if Schapansky has awareness of Funk’s behaviour when out of the sight of the elders. Our friend Kehler loves a Witzen krieg, also, and sometimes plays along with what Funk has started in class by asking one question that twists things so Funk will be the one with the red face.
But Kehler stays no more in our room. To help him pay his Schulgeld Kehler is working for Lutheran Baumeister, a German who offered Kehler room and board and work. So Kehler has no time for Funk and his dummheit. He spends each minute in school working on his studien because in the evening he is working busy with the Baumeister.

I try diligent to be with my studien also, but to be in this cramped room with Funk or alone with my thoughts for hour after hour leads me to schrecklich dreams. I fear this night, for this Abend vor Allerheiligen has awakened what I have so long tried to forget. Oh Funk, why did I let you lead me from my desk to partake in this Halloween custom? To go about in the darkness and push over toilet kiosks and smash face-carved pumpkins that people had set out with candles burning inside gave me too much remembering.

And then to hear Klavierenspiel through the frostich air. Prost simple musik but Klavierenspiel it was, and then Funk says to me, this is the house where stays the Mexikanner Kehler. And so we nearer by went until through a window we could see a woman wearing marriage dress playing piano beside our freund Kehler. Before I could still my heart, Funk was knocking on the door and then the woman with the white gown opens the door and Funk says to her that his friend is famous Klavierspieler von Rusland and the woman us invites inside. Kehler is sitting still by the piano and his face doesn’t look happy to see us there. But Maria, the jungfrau in the marriage dress is so peppich and allürisch that Kehler matters little to me and I let her lead me to the piano bench. I think only to play some simple Volkslied like “Hänsjen klein, Geht allein” but when my stiff fingers reach for the keys there is only one place to begin and as soon as Beethoven ‘s chord murmurs through the room I forget where I am and

…BEETHOVEN BLATZ rolled the practice grand piano to the centre of the rehearsal studio, positioning the instrument so the keys caught the pale moonlight sifting through the dusty gothic windows. Waxed spots on the floorboards and the slightly raised piano lid gleamed; the glass lamp set near the music rest glinted. He felt for a match in his pocket, then decided there was no need.
Blatz tiptoed toward the orchestra chairs to grab the piano bench, but his eye caught the rotating stool in the corner, so on a whim he carried it to the piano and centred it in front of the keyboard. He sat down, reached for the pedals with his foot, then rose and spun the seat to raise it, then sat again, pulled the stool in closer, and adjusted the sleeves of his dress coat. His fingers touched the opening chord, then arpeggios trickled from his fingertips so softly even Blatz could barely discern whether his ears were hearing the piano or if his brain were merely echoing the melody murmuring in his heart day and night.

The adagio sostenuto, a hymn to Christ walking on moonlit waters—the argument he had used to justify the playing of music beyond the Bach hymns in the Gesangbuch— and the argument was not completely false: Beethoven Blatz felt the sustained slowness of the opening movement as a barely perceptible breathing, a bridge from the mildly stifling peace of the village to the footloose minuet of the allegretto with which he danced into the liberating thunderstorm of the presto agitato. Even that first time when his fingers had furtively fumbled over the racing arpeggios and fortissimo chords he had felt such a surge of longing and hope, and yes, confidence and belief that one day he too would break free from the smothering cloud he felt himself moving inside most of his days. Even that first time he stumbled through Beethoven’s Sonata 14 in C# Minor he had a dream that one day he would play the sonata through the way Beethoven had written it to be, free and unrestrained, played in a great open space with no fear of incurring the censure of dull slumbering souls, and he had wished he could move the piano out from the chalk dust school house into the open air, to the top of a mountain or perhaps a fishing boat moored twenty yards from the shore of the Black Sea.
Yet even now, when his heart and his fingers knew Beethoven’s score from memory—for Blatz had copied the sonata from the library sheet music collection five times, each time noting more and more, and still he wished he could see the work in Beethoven’s own hand, dreamed of traveling to Vienna to study Ludwig’s manuscripts—even now he felt there was a hesitation to his playing, a failure to achieve a complete letting go as if he were still furtively playing Beethoven’s music in the school house, fearful of villagers whispering that he strayed from God.

Sonata quasi una fantasia—a sonata, but almost a fantasy. Beethoven’s subtitle suggested a discomfort with the confinement of the classical sonata form, a hesitant desire to break free: a state of mind Blatz felt matched his own. As his fingers rippled over and hammered the notes of the presto agitato through to the crashing end chords he felt as near to flight as he thought a man could get. But when the last chord faded he was always ready to return to the hymnal arpeggios of the opening movement. As he did so again this night in the rehearsal studio with the moonlight sifting through the dusty windows he recalled the apocryphal story of how Beethoven had composed the Moonlight Sonata while playing for a shoemaker’s blind sister on her poor harpsichord by moonlight after the wind snuffed out the candle. Blatz had read enough of Beethoven’s history to know that Ludwig van had not given Sonata 14 the name Moonlight, that it had been named thus by the poet Ludwig Rellstab. Ludwig van Beethoven had named this music Sonata in C sharp minor op. 27 no. 2 and had dedicated the sonata to Giulietta Guiciardi. Blatz knew all this, but still a part of him believed the story of how Beethoven and a friend while walking down a dark street one night heard one of Beethoven’s compositions being played inside a humble cottage. Stirred by this, Beethoven knocked on the door and discovered a blind girl who played by ear music she had learned while lurking outside the house of a lady practicing on a piano. The thought of the great composer in a tiny room composing on a poor instrument this music that so obsessed Blatz seemed to offer him some hope that he too perhaps someday could create beauty.

Blatz’s fingers entered the final third of the opening movement. Behind him, a skirt rustled. He hammered the right little finger melody, maintaining the arpeggios with his remaining fingers as a barely audible violin joined in, another note for the chords that punctuated the climbing and falling melody, blending in, not breaking out, but adding an amused tone to the adagio sostenuto, confusing Blatz with fear and desire that barely allowed him to play the movement through to the two-handed whole note chord of the closing bar. Blatz smiled in the darkness now, and he paused a mere second before starting into the tripping minuet of the allegretto.

The violin bow rapped his right knuckles lightly. Blatz stopped, held his breath. Sonia’s scent settled over him, tickled his nostrils.

“Always Blatz with that hundred-year-old German music,” Sonia said in Ukrainian. “When will you open your ears to the twentieth century? Play some Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, yes, Shostakovich!”

Blatz turned on the stool. “But aber der Beethoven is a genius,” he stammered in a mixture of German and Ukrainian. “The Sonata 14 is a bridge from das Klassisches zu das Romantisches. Two traditions in one composition. Sonata quasi una fantasia!”

“Ah yes, my dear Beethoven Blatz…” Sonia deftly flipped Blatz’s hair off his forehead with her bow. “…the German genius moved forward with his times. He was no slave to Mozart or Hayden. He embraced the spirit of Napoleon and broke free of stifling tradition.”

“Aber meine liebe Sonia, you cannot mean that Mozart or Hayden could ever be stifling!”

“Oh yes, my lovely man who would be Beethoven, oh yes, even Mozart stifles when turned into a god—an everlasting unchanging god.” Sonia pushed against Blatz’s shoulder with her bow hand. He raised his heels to allow the stool to spin him around until he faced the keys. He reached out to play the opening chord, but Sonia pushed him into a further spin, which rolled the stool away from the piano. She pirouetted between Blatz and the piano, raising her violin to her chin and poising her bow on the strings in a single legato slur.

“Bitte wait!” Blatz cried. “Played right Sonata 14 is as revolutionary and modern as any young Russian, yet Beethoven never forgets the sonorous nature of love.”

“But Blatz, mein lieber Herr, the adagio sostenuto is not a love song, it is a funeral hymn by a genius who desired love but feared it more.” Sonia’s bow repeated the legato slur. Blatz, wide-eyed at her silhouette in the moonlight, breathed in her presence, a scent of toilet water mingled with a smell like that of his sisters. For a moment he feared the desire stirring in his trousers, became aware of his own smells, his seldom bathed body, his rarely cleaned suit. Then the legato slur of Sonia’s bow drew off into the opening chord of the adagio sostenuto and Sonia pirouetted out from between Blatz and the piano. Blatz, ignoring but not fighting the squirming in his trousers, rolled back to the keyboard and reached out for the opening chord. His eyes followed Sonia as she danced out of sight behind the raised piano lid for a bar of the repeating legato slur, emerging on the other side as her wrist raised to slide the bow over to the G string. Blatz started into the opening arpeggios, his fingers finding the keys effortlessly even as he gazed on Sonia’s dancing feet, her dancing bow, her dancing shoulders draped with a fluttering shawl. Despite Sonia’s pirouettes, despite her improvised harmony, Blatz played the adagio precisely with perhaps even more restraint than he would have used had he played it inside the village church, had there been a piano in the church. At the same time his eyes never wavered from Sonia’s pirouetting figure and her bow flitting and floating from string to string, never playing Beethoven’s melody, but always resonant, always sonorous, never a hint of discord. Even their breathing aligned, their unison gasp breaking the silence before Blatz’s fingers trickled into the allegretto. Sonia’s bow droned in contrast to the carefree trippling, then danced when the movement slowed, the violin building in tempo so that when Blatz reached the end of the allegretto he plunged into the presto agitato with nary a pause and for the first time in their playing Sonia’s violin joined his piano in the melody and for the first time Beethoven Blatz felt that he had come close to the passion of Ludwig van. His heart hammered so ferociously he was awed for a moment that his body might splinter in the way of Beethoven’s pianos when the composer had forced divine thunder from this mortal instrument. And all the while he felt hitched to Sonia’s violin, led so fast he almost missed slowing down for the final hammering notes.

Panting, Blatz turned on the stool to gaze into Sonia’s eyes. Her shoulders heaved as she gulped for air, but her violin never left her chin as she returned his gaze, her eyes gleaming darkly in the moonlight. Her bow moved back to the strings, caressed high notes so lightly the sound barely breathed in Blatz’s ear.

At first Blatz thought Sonia was playing a Shostakovich violin concerto and for the first time he regretted not exploring beyond Beethoven for he could hear how the piano might go well with the violin. Blatz had never allowed himself to improvise, never allowed himself to play by ear. A flash of horror called up the blind girl who had learned to play Beethoven’s music simply from eavesdropping outside a window. Doubt shivered down Blatz’s spine even as Sonia’s violin rose to a pitch that called out to be tempered by bass chords and Blatz felt that as a man he must respond, that he must reach out. His mind counted down the scale to resonant chords, but before he could reach out for the keys Sonia started into a raucous scraping of the bow and sat down on his lap, continuing the zigzagging melody that cried out for crashing piano chords but her foot kicked out sending the stool swirling, leaving Blatz no choice but to reach out and clasp Sonia’s squirming body to keep them from spilling onto the moonlit floor.

And still she played, her hips writhing in Blatz’s lap as she drew the horse hair over the strings, writhing even when she paused as if she were listening to a piano bridge setting up the next violin solo. Her foot kept the stool in motion, kept Blatz away from the keys, kept him squirming with the ache to reach out to complete the music.

By now Blatz realized that Sonia was not playing Shostakovich nor Prokofiev; she was composing, creating as she played, having used Shostakovich’s notes as a stairway to a song of her own, a spilling of her own passion, raw music not yet shaped, not yet tamed, and the whispered rumor flashed through his head, the rumor that Sonia was a gypsy, that her dark eyes contained a history of roaming and sleeping on grass beneath wagons, hearing fiddlers dancing around campfires.
A flash of sheet lightning lit up his mind and he glimpsed a basket on the back step of a village house, saw a dark-eyed infant blinking from a smothering blanket.

Blatz gasped, turning sideways to gulp air, even as he pressed his cheek hard against the crocheted shawl covering Sonia’s back and his long splayed fingers clutched her ribs as if sustaining a ten-note chord over endless bars.

THE PRESTO AGITATO I just had entered when my ear began to detect mistonish sounds as I played the high notes over the treble staff. I further played but when the mistonish high notes appeared again I felt such a disharmonisch scratching through my bones I understood those Hamlet words from Shapansky’s class about “sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh” and I could not play more. I could not stay. I feared what I might do. Yet I feared to venture out alone into the dark night where toilet kiosks were being over set and face-carved pumpkins smashed in the street. I fear where this dark night will take me. Back in the dormitory room, having left Funk behind with Kehler and the woman, having stumbled along the dark shadows hearing the Shovahnacha in the distance doing mischief, I now hear ängstlich Aufruhr in my head that mixes Sonia’s Himmlisches Musik and the Götterdämmerung of the Anarchists. But I feel too, and I fear it, a winzig kleine flame of something, an itch of music, not hope, no there can be no more hope, just Glut, an ember that hardly glows but will not die, and tonight the Klavierenspiel and the woman Maria in her marriage dress breathe on that Glut, threaten to grow it into a flame, and I fear what a flame in my soul will have me do. Already the jangled notes of Maria’s piano have me casting my eye on my piano tuning tools. I have read in biography that Beethoven in the fury of his composing would test limitation of his pianos so that strings snapped and hammers broke. Can such a Klavier be found as I would need to play the horror music of my heart? Could such horror be even music?

BLATZ STUMBLED back to his dormitory room as the moonlight gave way to the pale rays of dawn. His nostrils still breathed Sonia’s scent, his fingers still clasped her skin, the action of his heart still hammered with desire untempered by the guilt of its fumbled release. Sonia had insisted that he let her return to her room before a master or a servant discovered their disarray. Blatz, swimming in emotion and lust never before experienced or even dreamed of, would have preferred drowning in the moment rather than venture into the chill air of reality, but Sonia, having led him into the salty sea, pushed him back out. “I must go at once,” she had whispered, “I must take care of your mischief.” Despite her tousling of his hair as she spoke, her voice had been stern, almost German. Blatz had been confused, startled by the abrupt shift from reckless passion to matter-of-fact practical urgency. But when his door clicked behind him he was relieved, until he felt village eyes burning his back. He did not turn to look, but sank to his student cot and cupped his face in his hands. In the stillness before dormitory doors began to open to begin the day, faint music stirred his inner ear that would not leave him even in the full light of day.