Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

Late at night, when the students had left, I ate small, simple meals, enjoying the movement of a knife through an onion, the division into two pearly parts. My bank account was like an emptying vault: income depended on loans, patents, future sales. There were no loans, no new patents, no future sales. No one was buying a thing and I owed the Plaza Hotel two months’ rent. Their envelopes collected like fallen leaves on the end table by the door. I did not know where I would get the money. I thought of Sasha in Leningrad, reviewing new data. I thought of Katia growing older in New Jersey, but did not call her, just sat in my recliner and watched the students’ arms, like semaphore, signalling that I had more yet to do.

At night I dreamed of sums, but mostly of subtractions.

It was an acquaintance who saved me. One evening Walter Rosen came up to the studio with Lucie, and when she went into the practice room to run her scales, Walter stood meditative in the vestibule. I could see him on my rickety television, like a bit player in a movie. He wore a jacket and waistcoat. He had pouches under his eyes. He crossed to my bedroom door and knocked.

“Who is it?” I said.

“Walter Tower Rosen,” he said.

I tugged the television’s plug from the wall socket. The projector died away. “Come in,” I told him. We had spoken only twice, three times before.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello.”

He seemed to be waiting for me to stand up.

I rose and shook his hand.

“Lucie is my wife,” he said.

“Of course I remember.”

Walter was a lawyer. The first time he and Lucie came to visit, he said the instruments sounded like “Spanish birds.”

I wondered if Walter thought I was sleeping with his wife.

“How can I help you?” I said, hands balled in my pockets.

“Dr Theremin, I understand you are having some financial difficulty.”

I did not react. He did not seem to need me to.

“Lucie has been talking to me about this for some time, although to be honest I didn’t realize how serious it was until I ran into Douglas Hollingworth at the bank and he told me about your line of credit.”

“This is somewhat embarrassing,” I said after a long pause.

“Nonsense. Happens to the best of us.” He seemed to be looking over the room: piles and stacks and jars. He gave a gentle smile. I realized suddenly that this smile was genuine; it was gentle because it was genuine. “Lucie had her second recital last week. It was superb. Everyone says so. There is no question that you are doing important work.”

Did he want her to receive more private lessons? To have a theremin built?

“Lucie is a fine pupil,” I said.

“When capital runs out, one requires investors, simple as that. It’s obvious you have the ideas. All you need is the space in which to develop them. Yes?”

“Yes,” I said carefully.

“We live on West 54th Street. Do you know it?”

“It’s around the corner,” I said.

“We wanted to invite you to move into number 37.”

“To move into?” I said.

“We live next door, but 37 is vacant. You could move your studio.”

“ This studio?”

“That’s the notion,” said Walter. He shrugged, as if he were apologizing. “Just until you get back on your feet. Don’t worry about rent; the current tenants are just a few dusty insects. Moths don’t pay rent either. For us it’s the best of both worlds: I can ask you to explain the scientific principles I read about in the papers; Lucie can practise or have repairs done. Then when your troubles are behind you, you’ll be able to find your own space.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Perhaps we can even have dinner together!”

I looked at this man, guileless, accommodating.

I said, “I do not know how I can repay you for this.”

He waved his hand. “Dr Theremin, it is good for the spirit to be able to help a mensch.”

“A mensch ?” I didn’t recognize the expression.

“A mensch ,” Rosen said, “is what we all aspire to be.”

YESTERDAY, RED APPEARED with a plate of sardines. “Hello comrade,” he said. He did not explain why he had stopped bringing food to my door. He said he was sorry he had been away. He must have noticed how thin I had become because after giving me the sardines he came back a few minutes later with a bowl of thick soup. It was not borscht or shchi , it was not New York pea soup; it was something else. Perhaps it is what Red likes to eat when he is hungry. I thanked him. I told him to give my regards to the captain. I watched his eyes to see if there was a message there, news of mutiny or disaster, the image of a man floating facedown in water, but there was no message. Red gave me the thumbs-up. He left me alone in my cell.

Some nights on the Stary Bolshevik , I can hear sounds from outside. I press my ear to the steel and beyond the groans of the ship, the screws loosening and tightening in the walls, I hear gulls. They cry and whistle. Other times I hear whales; I think they are whales; it is a moaning in four colours. My ear is pressed to the steel and I hear this calling that is like many callings folded together. Ancient blues, greys, scarlets, golds, on top of one another, in a chord. One day I will make a piano that plays the echoes of whales.

An odd thing: in my room I sometimes peer through the porthole at the low waves. They are silent. No sounds penetrate the glass. Looking into the blue sky and the bucking ocean, I never see a circling bird.

AT ITS NEW LOCATION, the Theremin Studio became a zoological garden for like-minded animals. There was still the same procession of pupils — naive amateurs, wealthy dilettantes, scions of Russian-American New York — but also an entourage of artists, scientists, musicians, philosophers, showbiz characters. Awaking in the morning, I turned in my wide bed and wondered what the day would bring, who the day would bring: which men and women would stand in my doorway removing their hats, spilling out introductions. Strangers arrived over breakfast, bowled into the living room after a night of dancing. “Let’s go to Theremin’s!” they must have said. Like I was the host of a beloved dive.

I gave talks on electricity. I hosted midnight round tables about the latest acoustics research. I taught Somerset Maugham about magnets and Sergei Eisenstein about rust. I served black tea and gingerbread to Maurice Martenot, inventor of the brilliant but capricious Ondes Martenot organ. He asked for salt and pepper. Schillinger lectured on aesthetics and harmony. The brownstone’s second floor was for students, the third a workshop, the fourth my personal quarters. The basement had room for storage and a small gym. But the main floor, with its large parlour and low lamps, became a kind of salon. We learned, argued, told ribald jokes. Guests brought bottles of hooch and the liquor cabinet was never empty. While Tommy Dorsey explained his recipe for “Irish spaghetti sauce,” Jascha Heifetz would sit arguing with Mischa Elman about tremolo. Glenn Miller would lean by the stairway’s banister, flirting with every girl. Isabella Marx used a different insult each time they crossed paths. “You cur,” she said. “You rascal.” “You wag.”

It was 1931. Pash had still not returned. One day a man stopped me at a street corner. Another man, his partner, moved into position. They stood close, their shoulders at my shoulders. They were only slightly larger than I.

The first man looked off across the street and tipped his head forward, like a vulture. “Good morning, Lev,” he said, in Russian.