John Irving - Until I Find You

They walked uphill on the tiny streets to St. Peter; one day he would know the names of these streets by heart, Jack was thinking. Schlüsselgasse, opposite the Veltliner Keller, and Weggengasse—he would hear them in his head, like music.

“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Dr. Krauer-Poppe asked him. She was nice about it, when she saw that he couldn’t speak. “St. Peter has the largest clock in Europe—a four-sided clock on its tower,” she told him, making small talk as they walked. “Would you like a tissue ?” she asked, reaching into her purse. Jack shook his head.

The sun would dry the tears on his face, he wanted to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come. Jack kept clearing his throat.

By the blue-gray church, there was a small, paved square with lots of trees; there were plants in the window boxes of the surrounding shops and houses. Some construction workers were renovating what looked like an apartment building. The building was across the square from the church, and the workers were standing on the scaffolding—working away. A hammer was banging; two men were doing something complicated with a flexible saw. A fourth man was fitting pipes—to build more scaffolding, probably.

It was the pipefitter who first spotted Dr. Krauer-Poppe and waved to her. The three other workers turned to look at her; two of them applauded, one whistled.

“I guess they know you,” Jack said to Anna-Elisabeth, relieved that he had found his voice. “Or are they just like construction workers everywhere?”

“You’ll see,” she told him. “These workers are a little different.”

It seemed strange that there were people going into the church and it was not yet eight on a weekday morning. Was there some kind of mass? Jack asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe. No, the Kirche St. Peter was a Protestant church, she assured him. There was no mass—only a service every Sunday.

“We can’t keep them away,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “St. Peter is open to the public.”

More people were walking up the broad, flat stairs to the church; they looked like locals, not tourists. Jack saw men in business suits, like the banker his dad had surprised in the men’s room at the Kronenhalle; he saw women with young children, and whole families. There were even teenagers.

“They all come to hear him play?” Jack asked Anna-Elisabeth.

“How can we stop them?” she asked. “Isn’t it what sells books and movies? What you call word of mouth, I think.”

The Kirche St. Peter was packed; there was standing room only. “You’re not going to sit down, anyway,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told Jack. “And you’re going to leave, just before your father finishes. William doesn’t want you to see the end of it—not the first time.”

“The end of what ?” Jack asked her. “Why would I leave before he finishes?”

“Please trust me,” Anna-Elisabeth said. “Klaus—Dr. Horvath—will take you outside. He knows the right moment.” She covered her face with her hands again. “We all know it,” she said, with her face hidden.

The stone floor of the church was polished gray marble. There were blond wooden chairs instead of pews, but the chairs stood in lines as straight as pews. The congregation faced front, with their backs to the organ—as if there were going to be an actual service, with a sermon and everything. Jack wondered why the audience didn’t turn their chairs around, so they could at least see the organist they had come to hear—so faithfully, as he now understood it.

The organ was on the second floor, to the rear of the church—above the congregation. The organ bench—what little Jack could see of it—appeared to face away from the altar. The organist looked only at the silver organ pipes, framed in wood, which towered above him.

How austere, Jack was thinking. The organist turns his back to the congregation, and vice versa!

A black urn of flowers stood beneath the elevated wooden pulpit. Above the altar was an inscription.

Matth. IV. 10.

Du solt anbätten

Den Herren deinen Gott

Und Ihm allein

dienen.

It was a kind of old-fashioned German. Jack had to ask Dr. Krauer-Poppe for a translation. “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve,’ ” she told him.

“I guess my dad is what you’d call a true believer,” Jack said.

“William never proselytizes,” Anna-Elisabeth said. “He can believe what he wants. He never tells me or anyone else what to believe.”

“Except for the forgiveness part,” Jack pointed out to her. “He’s pretty clear on the subject of my forgiving my mother.”

“That’s not necessarily religious, Jack,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said. “That’s just common sense, isn’t it?”

She led Jack outside the church again, and they went in a door and up some stairs to the second floor—where the organ was. It was a smaller organ than Jack was used to seeing—very pretty, with light-colored wood. It had fifty-three stops and was built by a firm called Muhleisen in Strasbourg.

Jack looked down at the congregation and saw that even the people who were standing were facing the altar, not the organ. “Nobody wants to see, I guess,” he said to Anna-Elisabeth.

“Just leave with Dr. Horvath when he tells you,” Dr. Krauer-Poppe told him. “After William plays, he will need some ice water, and then the hot wax, and then more ice water. If you come out to Kilchberg in the late morning, maybe you can go jogging with him—and with Dr. Horvath. Later this afternoon, you can hear him play blindfolded—for the yoga class. Or you can watch one of your own movies with him!” she said excitedly. “Just leave when it’s time—okay? I’m not kidding.”

“Okay,” Jack said to her.

When Dr. Horvath and Jack’s father came up the stairs to the second floor, many people in the congregation turned their heads to look at William Burns. William was all business; he acknowledged no one, not even Jack. His dad just nodded at the organ. Jack felt Dr. Krauer-Poppe brush against his arm. Anna-Elisabeth wanted Jack to know that this was how William was before he played. (How had she put it the night before? “William is what he is.”)

There was no applause from the congregation to acknowledge him; there wasn’t a murmur, but Jack had never heard such a respectful silence.

Dr. Horvath was carrying the music. (There was what looked like a lot of music.) “Normally he plays for one hour,” Dr. Horvath whispered loudly in Jack’s ear. “But today, because you’re here, he’s playing a half hour longer!”

Naturally, Dr. Krauer-Poppe overheard him; perhaps everyone in the congregation could hear Dr. Horvath whisper. “Do you think that’s a good idea, Klaus?” Anna-Elisabeth asked Dr. Horvath.

“Is there a pill to make me stop?” Jack’s father asked Dr. Krauer-Poppe, but Jack could tell that his dad was just teasing her; his mischievous smile was intact. When William sat down on the organ bench, he looked into Jack’s eyes—as if Jack had told him, at that very moment, how much he loved him and every inch of his skin. “Did you remember to call your sister, Jack?” his dad asked him.

“Of course I called her. We talked and talked.”

“Dear boy,” was all William said. His eyes had drifted to the keyboard; Jack could hear his father’s feet softly brushing the pedals.

Anna-Elisabeth had taken the music from Dr. Horvath and was looking through it. “I see finger-cramping possibilities, William —lots of them,” she told him.

“I see music, ” William said, winking at her. “ Lots of it.”