Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

As little of the self as possible. The performer is a facilitator, a middleman for the — unpresent, often deceased — composer, bearing a tremendous responsibility of presenting the composer’s music to the public while staying true to the composer’s ideas and intentions, to his thoughts and feelings. But most pianists lack the faculty of actually hearing the composer, of hearing themselves as the composer, of hearing the text. ( Unfortunately I have to reconcile myself to the thought that nobody will ever play my works to my liking as I had imagined them. Chopin.) Sometimes it is necessary to go far then come back. Imagine the melody as heard from an instrument of different quality from the piano, say the oboe, trumpet, flute, or French horn. But how does one teach the blind, who have no way of first seeing the text on their own, but must always arrive at it secondhand, through another? This way.

Bach. All those voices crying out. Faint floating sadness. Music is a map of the world. A map of Time. The sense of release it (he) brings. Unless his thoughts are pinned down by musical business they tend to drift off to painful matters. Second-thinking. Strain and worry. Even more reason to give up his mundane students and give all his time to Tom. Assuming of course that Perry Oliver continues to pay.

Today, he starts Tom on the Chopin études. “Aeolian Harp” étude (op. 25, no. 1). Tom is looking positively cheerful while Seven sits on the couch legs dangling, reading his newspaper, the leaves pushed close to his face. He is no longer watching us, Howard thinks. He is not even listening. He is not afraid of me now. That Howard can stand. Howard can ignore him, efface him, act like he isn’t there.

Howard and Tom, all thrill and trembling, the teaching a great source of pleasure for them both because they both welcome the unexpected, never know what will come next. Now he hears me, he thinks. He hears me. He places one round hand on Tom’s shoulder to encourage him, praise him. His words do not belong to him any more than his body, his hands, his feet. Utter them back, claim them, or they will be lost. Tom takes on the glamour of something still to come.

The instructor draws the curtain and shutters.

Have a little sun, Tom says.

The instructor opens the curtains and shutters. Tom waves his hands as if directing light over to the piano. Then his fingers descend upon the keys, descend without touching, prepared, caught in space, awaiting orders.

Tom, let’s give this a try.

Let us do the work of our hands, Tom says.

From his place on the couch twenty feet away, Seven notices how the instructor looms above Tom, closely observing Tom’s posture and hands, the awkward sprawl of his knuckles, the elements of his movement and fingering. Sometimes the instructor keeps time with his feet, throwing his hands up high. Tom firmly on track. Only when his hands stop will the instructor sit down. Right there on the bench, beside Tom, the wood whining under their weight. Four hands now at the piano. Two of each color. A white man and a black boy seated side by side on the same polished wooden bench. Where Tom is concerned, perhaps he can do nothing right, the way the instructor wants it. Seven the unmoving witness. He must sit quietly. Not a squeak or a stir lest he be banished from the room. But he is perfectly capable of being silent, figures that he can even maintain silence for longer than Perry Oliver. In fact, put to the test, he can pass days on end in uninterrupted silence — no talking, no music.

He sits under the sun’s invisible weight. Day slants through the window. But the atmosphere in this house, in this room, is still heavy. The instructor’s face set and distant. All Seven can sense from him is his anger, his dissatisfaction with things. He recalls their first introduction to the house. The instructor saw them come in, but he didn’t see how frightened Seven was. He gave Seven a little smile and tried to make small talk. But Seven could hardly hold up his end of the conversation.

Didn’t know what to say. Nothing he could say. He said nothing, tongue-tied. He didn’t want to say anything stupid. How do you converse with a music instructor? What do you say and what do you not say? So he simply stood there, praying that words would come. No wonder the instructor has not encouraged him to speak since.

That first day, he took in the dimensions of the room and its sparse furnishings and many books, his gaze relinquishing one space for the next. He made his first tactless remark. That’s a shiny piano.

The instructor actually turned to look at the piano. Then turned back to Seven, his face a thousand words, none of which he cared to sound. The tilt of his head and his expression — a curious mixture of pride and spite — brought to mind the planters and the pose they assume when they speak to their overseers, although the instructor — Mr. Howard, kindly call me Mr. Howard — is far more modest and unassuming in appearance and dress. And for this reason, he was a rather plain man, Seven decided. If he seems on in years, it is only by comparison with Mr. Oliver.

You will find the couch directly over there.

Seven sits with uneasiness. Mutely, he looks at the bookcases, at the window, at the bare walls. If he gets up to move, say to glance out of the window, or to browse at the titles of the books on the instructor’s shelves, he must do so on tiptoe. The strange sensation of knowing that he is the object of the instructor’s secret glances. Who knew that sitting could be fraught with dangers?

One day the instructor leaves Tom at the piano in the middle of the lesson, comes over to Seven, and shows him into the small dim kitchen with orders to find himself something to eat. Seven makes no fuss. Thinks little about it. He doesn’t want to be in the way. Although he is sick with shame and worry and can barely eat, no matter how hungry he might be. Soon the instructor goes a step further and suggests that Seven might prefer outside. Seven complies. The sense of ridicule that covers-uncovers him. What will he say should Mr. Oliver ask? His job to keep an eye on Tom at all times, even in the presence of this instructor. So how is it that he allowed Mr. Howard to banish him from the house? He waters and hays the horse’s mouth again and again, reassuring himself with solutions he will come up with.

Perry Oliver had made his orders clear. A plain statement of intention. Seven was to escort Tom to and from Mr. Howard’s residence, but he was also to remind Mr. Howard at every opportunity to show Tom as many new songs as possible and to keep the lessons, the training and exercises, to a minimum. Frighteningly simple. But now he doesn’t have the slightest clue if this is what the instructor is doing. Nor does he know how to ask. He lacks the courage to confront Mr. Howard. His heart is too soft. That must change. Indeed, it comes to him that he will need to voice certain words one day. (Most words are kept.) For Seven wants what Mr. Oliver wants, even when he is not thinking about him. His feeling for Mr. Oliver stops short of love.

Couch, kitchen, horse — for nearly three weeks that’s the way it goes until the day Seven enters the house with his newspaper under his arm. The newspaper (reading) appeases Mr. Howard’s desire to banish him from the house, and the couch has been his since. Not that he had planned it that way. The paper was only an accident. (His usual seeking out of Morphy.) Even so, the dishonoring memory of his feeding the horse, his feeding himself, is overtaken by the consoling image of his sitting here on the couch reading his newspaper.

Seven feels himself returned to the road of his mission. A cause for celebration. Rightfully so, for the music lessons have become point and purpose of their day. Teach Tom some tunes. In fact, the lessons come with more, are benefiting him in ways he could never have imagined. Are giving him something he wasn’t even looking for. The instructor will play four or five different notes, then a moment later play the same notes again, making them sound totally different. He plays them a third way and a fourth. The same notes for unalike ears. How is this possible? Hard to believe what he hears. Hard to believe.