Erich Segal - The Class

Watching his face on the monitor in the control room, Maria could not help but feel that at this moment her husband was thinking of his own teacher, Dr. Landau.

And so it continued, with colorful accounts of the great pianist’s conquests first of Paris, then of London — all before he was sixteen.

“It was at this point,” Danny commented, “that the young musician began to feel the strain of his endless schedule of travel and concertizing. He was, one may say, a jet-setter before the invention of jets. In fact, it was scarcely yet the age of the railroad. And it took its toll.

“When he went with his father to the seashore to recuperate, the elder Liszt, also weakened by their travels, contracted typhoid and passed away. His final words to his son were, ‘Je crains pour toi les femmes,’ roughly translated, ‘I’m worried about what women might do to your music.…’ ”

Staring intently at the monitor, Maria suddenly felt her heart beat faster. Could he possibly be talking to her? Could he be saying in public what he was afraid to say in private? That he had wasted his youth on empty promiscuity. But at last was changing… growing up? She now realized why he had left this program till last. For he knew that — perhaps for the first time in his life — he would be speaking from the heart.

They stopped for technical reasons, tape changes, and even one or two muffed lines. Thus, it was well after ten by the time they reached the most difficult part of the broadcast.

Danny was explaining how Liszt deliberately created music so difficult that only he himself could play it. And in fact, when his pieces were published, he had to revise and simplify the music for the hands of normal mortals.

It had been Danny’s devilish inspiration that, at this point in the program, he would play from the original manuscripts to show how the great man himself might have sounded.

Knowing what a challenge lay ahead for her husband, Maria called a ten-minute break, during which she made the crew double-check everything. She wanted no mechanical foul-ups, lest a perfect performance by Danny require a retake because of some technical failure. She also wanted to give him a breather to gather strength at this late hour of the evening.

At last they resumed.

“Rolling, Danny. Anytime you’re ready,” came his wife’s voice through the loudspeaker in the studio.

They began the sequence with a relaxed medium shot of the pianist explaining what he was about to do. The camera then reverse-zoomed slowly into a long shot of him sitting down at the keyboard. Then, at the most dramatic moment, they would move in over his shoulder for a close-up of his hands.

At 10:45 P.M., Daniel Rossi attacked Franz Liszt. And was beaten back.

He had chosen as his first example the soloist’s entry in the E-flat concerto. But for some reason — which he ascribed to fatigue — his left hand kept slipping in tempo as he raced the length of the keyboard.

After three unsuccessful retakes, Maria called through the mike, “Hey, Danny, it’s after eleven. Why don’t you knock off and finish it first thing in the morning when you’re fresh?”

“No, no,” he protested, “I want to wrap this damn series tonight. Just give me a short break.”

“Take five, everyone.”

Danny returned to his dressing room and immediately reached into his makeup kit for one of Dr. Whitney’s “megavitamins.” He then sat down, looked at his reflection framed by a dozen light bulbs, and tried to take deep breaths to relax.

And then he saw it. The thumb and forefinger of his left hand were trembling involuntarily.

At first he thought it was a mere reflex, a compulsion to drum the damn Liszt fingering into his system. But no, even with a conscious effort, he couldn’t stop the shaking — except by covering it with his right hand.

He tried to reassure himself that this was merely tiredness. He had, after all, been working for nearly ten hours. But it was not with any real sense of confidence in his own explanation that he once again appeared on the studio floor.

On the way from his dressing room, he had hit upon a subterfuge that would at least get him through this night’s ordeal. For if he indeed had a problem (which he kept telling himself he did not), he wasn’t about to share it with the taping crew of the Philadelphia Public Television station.

“Hey, Maria,” he called, “can I see you for a second?

She hurried to him.

“Listen,” he whispered to her, “could you have the director change his shot plan a little?”

“Sure. What do you want?”

Danny then motioned with his right hand. “What if, when he pulls back as I start to play, he pans around and shoots me from the top of the piano? That would be a pretty dramatic shot.”

“Maybe,” said Maria. “But I don’t think he’d be able to get your hands in from that angle. Isn’t the whole point the fact that you’re doing these really difficult fingerings that only Liszt could manage?”

Danny sighed wearily.

“Of course. Yes. You’re right. But between you and me, I’m exhausted. I’m not so sure I can get through the stuff without having to stop a million times. This way, if I mess up, we can always overlay the sound with some of the practice cassettes I’ve made.”

“But, Danny,” she pleaded, “that seems like such a shame. I mean, I know you can do it. I’ve heard you in the studio at home. Why don’t we just wait until tomorrow?”

“Maria,” he said sternly, “this is the way I want to do it. Now help me, please .”

To the consternation of the director, the taping was completed with the camera shooting down on Danny’s face.

And so it did not take in Danny’s hands, as once again his left failed to keep pace with the right. None of the crew noticed this subtle discrepancy. But Danny did.

I don’t know how I could have dreamed it was a good sign.

When Andy got back east from spending Christmas with his mom and her tycoon in San Francisco, he called my office and asked if we could meet for lunch. I thought, Hallelujah the millennium, my son wants to make friends with me. This was especially encouraging since next September he’ll be starting college. And I’m hoping to persuade him to choose Harvard.

Gauchely I suppose, I asked him if he wanted to eat at the Harvard Club. He turned thumbs down on that because it was “bourgeois.” I should have known then that bad news was in the offing.

I met him at a health-food place in Greenwich Village, where, as we ate a lot of sprouts and leaves, I tried to bridge the chasm separating us with all the loving words I could think of. But, as ever, it was he who was the one conveying truth to me.

He brought up next year. I quickly assured him that if he didn’t want to go to Harvard I honestly wouldn’t mind. He could go to any college in the world and I would gladly pay the tuition.

He looked at me as if I were a man from Mars. And then patiently explained that American education wasn’t relevant to anything. In his view, the whole Western world was decadent. And the only solution was to cultivate our spirits.

I told him I’d back him up in whatever he’d decided.

To which he replied that he strongly doubted it, since his decision was to drop out of the whole family.

I then said something like, “I don’t get it, Andy.”

He then revealed that his name was no longer Andrew, but Gyanananda (I had to ask him to spell it), which is Hindi for “seeker of happiness and knowledge.” I tried to take this all with good humor and offered that he would be the first Eliot of that name.

He explained that he was no longer an Eliot. That he was opting out of everything my rotten generation stood for. And was going to spend his life in meditation. For this he did not want, nor did he need, any of the so-called Eliot money.