John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack was nervous and counted the chandeliers. (They were glass and silver; he counted twenty-eight of them.)

“Later we’ll go jogging !” Dr. Horvath told Jack. “I’m going to dinner with you and William tonight. We’ll give the girls the night off!”

“Great—I’m looking forward to it,” Jack told him.

“Unfortunately, it’s not the Kronenhalle,” Dr. Horvath said. “But it’s a special little place. The owner knows me, and he loves your father. They always cover the mirrors when they know William’s coming!” Dr. Horvath whispered—for everyone to hear. “How brilliant is that?”

“ Bitte, Klaus!” Dr. Krauer-Poppe said.

Jack could see that she was going to turn the music for his dad, who appeared ready to play. No one in the congregation was looking in their direction now. The congregation faced that stern command from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve.”

William held his hands at shoulder level, above the keyboard. Jack heard him take a deep breath. By the way the congregation straightened their backs, Jack could tell that they’d heard his father, too—it was a signal.

“Here comes!” said Dr. Horvath; he bowed his head and closed his eyes.

William’s hands appeared to be floating on a body of warm, rising air—like a hawk, suspended on a thermal. Then he let his hands fall. It was a piece by Bach, a choral prelude—“Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier.” (“Blessed Jesus, We Are Here.”)

“ Tranquillo, ” Dr. Horvath said with surprising softness, in Italian.

After that, Jack just listened to his father play. Jack couldn’t believe how William kept playing, or how no one in the congregation left—how they never moved a muscle. They were standing, Dr. Horvath and Jack—Dr. Krauer-Poppe stood the whole time, too. Jack couldn’t speak for the others, but his legs didn’t get tired; he just stood there, absorbing the sound. William Burns played on and on—all his favorites. (What Heather had called “the old standards.”)

William played for over an hour. They heard Handel, and everyone else. When his dad began Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor—the famous piece that had been such a crowd-pleaser among the prostitutes in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam—Dr. Horvath nudged Jack.

“We are almost leaving,” Dr. Horvath said.

Naturally, Jack didn’t want to go, but he saw that Anna-Elisabeth was watching him. Jack trusted her; he trusted them all. It was a hard piece of music to go down the stairs to, but Dr. Horvath and Jack quietly descended. His father was too busy playing to see them go.

It was warm in the church; all the doors were open, and the windows that would open were open, too. The sound of the Bach poured into the little square; it came outdoors with them. The Bach was not as loud outside—in the trees, or on the stone stairs leading away from the church—but you could hear every note of it, almost as clearly as you could hear it in St. Peter.

That was when Jack saw all the people in the open windows and doorways of the surrounding buildings. Everywhere he looked, there were people—just listening.

“Of course it’s not quite like this in the winter !” Dr. Horvath was saying. “But still they come to hear him play.”

Jack stood at the bottom of the church stairs, in the middle of the little square—just listening and looking at all the people. There wasn’t a sound from the construction workers, who had long ago stopped working. They were standing at attention on the scaffolding, their tools at rest —just listening. The man who’d been wielding the hammer had his shirt off; the two men who’d been working with the flexible saw were smoking. The fourth worker, the pipefitter, held a small piece of pipe in one hand—like a baton. He was pretending to be a conductor, conducting the music.

“Those clowns!” Dr. Horvath said. He looked at his watch. “No finger-cramping episodes so far!”

The Bach sounded like it was winding up, or down. “There’s more?” Jack asked. “Another piece after this?”

“ One more,” Dr. Horvath said, nodding.

Jack realized, from the way they were standing, that the construction workers on the scaffolding knew the program as well as Dr. Horvath knew it; they looked as if they were getting ready for something.

Suddenly the Bach was over. It happened simultaneously with a puzzling exodus—families with children were leaving the church. Some of the mothers with younger children were running; only the adults and the teenagers stayed.

“Cowards!” Dr. Horvath said contemptuously; he kicked a stone. “Get ready, Jack. I’ll see you later—for some jogging !” Jack realized that Dr. Horvath was preparing to leave him.

Jack also realized that he knew the last piece. In his case, he’d just heard Heather play it in Old St. Paul’s. How could he ever forget it? It was Boellmann’s horror-movie Toccata. The construction workers knew the Boellmann, too—perhaps William Burns always played it last. The construction workers clearly knew everything that was coming.

It wasn’t at all like not being able to hear it, when Jack had stood outside Old St. Paul’s. What poured out of the Kirche St. Peter was deafening. Jack was not familiar enough with the Boellmann to detect his father’s first mistake, the first finger-cramping episode, but Dr. Horvath obviously heard it; he winced and made a fist of one hand, as if he’d just shut his fingers in a car door. “Time for me to go back inside!” Dr. Horvath cried.

There came a second mistake, and a third; now Jack could hear the errors.

“His fingers?” he asked Dr. Horvath.

“You can’t believe how the Boellmann hurts him, Jack,” Dr. Horvath said, “but he can’t stop playing.”

Jack thought of those prostitutes within hearing distance of the Oude Kerk, no matter how late at night or how early in the morning; now he knew why they couldn’t go home if William Burns was playing.

At the fourth mistake, Dr. Horvath was off running. “I like to be there when he starts undressing !” he called to Jack, taking the stairs three at a time.

The music raged on—the soundtrack for a chase scene to end all chase scenes, Jack imagined. In his next movie, there might be such a scene. Maybe he could get his dad to play the Boellmann—mistakes and all.

The errors, even Jack could tell, were mounting. The construction workers were poised on the scaffolding.

“I have a son!” Jack heard his father yell, over the deteriorating toccata. “I have a daughter and a son!” his dad shouted. Then William’s fingers locked—his fists came crashing down on the keyboard. A flock of pigeons exploded from the clock tower of the Kirche St. Peter, and the construction workers started singing.

“I have a son!” they sang; they had even learned English, listening to William Burns. “I have a daughter and a son!” they sang out. They had more enthusiasm than talent, but Jack had to love them.

“ Venite exultemus Domino! ” his father sang, the way you would sing or chant a psalm.

One might assume that ordinary construction workers in Zurich wouldn’t necessarily know Latin, but this wasn’t the first time these men had listened to William Burns, and—as Anna-Elisabeth had told Jack—these workers were a little different.

“ Venite exultemus Domino! ” the four workers sang back to Jack’s father.

The man who’d earlier been hammering now held his hammer in one hand, his arm high above his head; the two workers with the flexible saw held it aloft, as if they were offering a sacrifice. The pipefitter had seized a long length of pipe, which he held straight up—like a flagpole.