Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Yes, to a degree. Perry Oliver sits with a touch of astonishment and gratefulness that he has gotten this far. He has come here freely on his own. Has come to yield up himself. Shaken, breathless, he sits regarding Howard with his own terror, wondering if he might have done things differently. He had considered bringing Tom along — and leaving Seven behind in the apartment — to allow the Professor to see firsthand the project he would be taking on. Still can’t say why he decided against it.

Rest assured, Howard says. He gives Perry Oliver a little smile to put him at ease. You are doing the right thing. The South is no place for a pianist to develop. The air is too damp. It ruins the instrument and at the same time it ruins the pianist. The hands and head go soft in the shortest time.

Howard gives Perry Oliver a look, implying that they are conspirators united against a ridiculous world. However, Perry Oliver steers clear of responding, refusing to be drawn into a discussion that he knows could lead him on a tirade against their country.

See here. The instructor held up both hands palms outward, like a cornered victim going soft before a highwayman with a pistol aimed at his heart. Look closely, he said. See the ridges and grooves standing out from the skin. They help the fingers help the pianist along. They are as important for absorbing and recording our touch as they are for enhancing and tightening the grip. Music enters here through the tips of the fingers and travels up through the hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and makes its way all the way up to the brain.

Perry Oliver sat listening with bemusement at an enthusiasm he had never heard before, soaking in the instructor’s words and gestures, so much so that he missed half of what Howard was actually saying to him, afraid to move, feeling that anything he did would disturb the mood, clues to what Howard was really thinking, the hidden behind the words, held up to eye to tongue to ear.

Is he equal with both hands?

Yes, Perry Oliver said, unclear what he was acknowledging. Both hands are equal.

Forthright instruction, Howard said, is a way to learn how to play two voices clearly but also after further progress to deal correctly and well with three obbligato parts not only to obtain good ideas but most of all to learn the process of invention that is necessary to any style of playing by which to acquire a strong foretaste of composition.

He composes, Perry Oliver said. However, he has a limited program. Perry Oliver looked right into Howard’s eager eyes. Might you be able to demonstrate a full range of songs for him, as many as you know, as many as you can, and build up his repertoire? He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice, hoping to establish by his very intensity a stronger claim to the child than any could make.

Yes, Howard said, although I’m sure some exercises will be necessary. I can assure you that within a week Tom will have learned a new song.

That is quite generous, Perry Oliver said. However, I suspect that he might be capable of learning five songs in a given day.

Something in the other man’s face startled Perry Oliver. It was a look that said Howard had nothing but scorn and contempt for the man who was hiring him.

You see, he possesses an iron memory. Whatever he hears he can play. Perry Oliver never wasted time pondering the origins of Tom’s gift, wondering if Tom’s powers were evidence of the mysterious workings of God’s awful hand or some other supernatural force. Enough to accept a paradox for what it is. He is one to keep to what he knows and understands.

Yes, that is a special consideration. Howard’s eyes flashing the secret of his excitement. We should start tomorrow.

The words surprised Perry Oliver, even more than he had hoped for. Delighted that the Music Professor had put forth the request.

Please bring him here after breakfast.

It was Howard’s expectation that he see Tom as often as possible, three or four times a week — he asked double his usual fee, a sum amounting to almost two dollars per day — a proposal suggesting that both Perry Oliver and Tom would have to lift their own work to merit being in the same place with him.

A rigorous schedule should suit his nature, Perry Oliver said, for he never tires of playing.

Pianists have amazing endurance.

Perry Oliver looked at the piano, a black levitating mass.

A short time later, he emerged dreamily from the house. It’s settled. Saying it to himself, to the other houses, to fading (red) sun and the wind and the trees. Not a moment to take lightly. Even though he had gotten what he wanted, he needed to feel bigger than this man, Howard. What is it that had brought the Music Professor into his life?

He walked faster in the stiff air, trying to calm his racing mind, his eyes filling with the distance that had already sprung between him and Howard. What is this he heard from a block away? Bone-white notes. Trailing behind him, intent on following him home. He found himself standing before a haberdashery window, hats perched bird-like on their stands. Without giving it much thought he decided to celebrate his victory by treating Seven to a gift, a Paul Morphy hat.

It took Howard a week to break Tom out of the habit of simply walking over to the piano and hooking his hat onto the cantilevered lid. Could it be that he truly believes a piano is a casual object of furniture like any other? Tom would step through the door, break away from his navigator, Seven, remove his hat, angle it on the piano, then sit down and begin playing whatever pleased him.

Now Tom has quickly fallen into the proper routine. The servant brings a bowl of water so that Howard and Tom may clean their hands. Holds out a fresh towel so that they may pat their skin dry. They are now ready to begin.

So much depends on where. Start with Tom’s teeth and gums. Tom must learn to keep his mouth shut. When he plays he keeps it open like an oven waiting for unbaked food.

At first Tom gives in with no resistance. Simply goes along with Howard without his usual force of will. He is peaceful and composed before the piano. His face tilted slightly upward as he listens to Howard demonstrate a bar or melody. Mouth shut, eyes unseeing, both naive and enigmatic.

That afternoon when Howard first heard Tom has stayed with him, a sharpened echo in his memory. Clings to the present even as it ceases to make sense in terms of where they are now, of his (their) present goals. Easy enough to recall the many patrons sitting or standing in happy ignorance and a group of overseers seated together at a table with their coats off, their faces twisted out of shape with laughter. He made sure to seat himself as far as possible from them, all the way at the back of the saloon — the tables scarred with initials, the tables without tablecloths — near the decrepit piano.

That’s when Seven and Tom wandered in and took the instrument. A great deal of what followed, the musical performance itself, is lost from memory. A single hearing allows us to retain only so much. Not that he was seeking to absorb anything as Tom touched and sounded the keys, as he tapped sharp glinting notes into a wall of air, the melody rising in pitch and excitement, the cadence increasing, Tom mouth open, hammering the keys, building the song into his body.

At the very first lesson in his home less than a week later Howard learned that Tom has a good ear in the sense that he can reproduce anything he hears, no matter how difficult. But copying is cheap. The hands must engender. And the ear must reign over the hands.

Attuning. Training the ear which is a way of training the mind to hear. Can’t have one without the other. The two are inseparable, go hand in hand. That roughly is how he would (might) describe the process. The clear shape he listens for, the frame of the composition beneath the harmony, the melody, and the rhythm, the lower pattern or higher, as it were. To grow an ear for this hidden structure.