The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 40

Zack found the other pupils' lessons of great interest. For he understood that these more advanced lessons would be his one day. He did not doubt that this was so, Mr. Gallagher had set into motion a sequence of actions and his trust in Mr. Gallagher was absolute.

He's allowing Zack to observe other pupils, Chet. Isn't that wonderful!

If it isn't too much for the kid.

Too much, how can it be too much?

Children turn against music if they're pushed too hard.

Strange he felt no envy of the other piano pupils except envy of their larger hands, their greater strength. But these too would be his one day.

What relief, Hans Zimmerman never made personal or hurtful remarks to his students, as Sarrantini had done! He cared only for the execution of music. He seemed to make little distinction between older and younger pupils. He was a kindly teacher who praised when praise was due but did not wish to deceive, for always there was more work: "Schnabel took it as his ideal, he wished to play only those piano works that cannot be fully mastered. Only those pieces 'greater than they can be played.' For what can be played, is not the transcendental. What can be played easily and well, is Schund."

The disdainful expression on Hans Zimmerman's face allowed his pupils to know what the German word must mean.

Zimmerman had himself studied with the great Artur Schnabel, Gallagher informed them. In Vienna, in the early 1930s. He was now retired from the Portman Academy of Music in Syracuse where he'd taught for decades. He was long retired from the concert stage. Gallagher surprised Hazel and Zack bringing several records Zimmerman had made in the late 1940s with a small prestigious cla.s.sical record label in New York City.

The records were piano pieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Schubert. Hazel would have spoken to Hans Zimmerman about them except Gallagher cautioned her: "I don't think Zimmerman wants to be reminded."

"But why not?"

"Some of us feel that way about our pasts."

At Zimmerman Brothers, Hans Zimmerman kept to the rear quarters of the brownstone while Edgar Zimmerman ran the business. The two were co-partners, it was believed, yet Hans had virtually nothing to do with the selling of merchandise, employees, finances; Edgar ran everything. Hans was known to be only four or five years older than his brother, but he appeared of another generation entirely: courtly in manner, rather detached and deliberate in his speech, with smudged bifocals that were often drooping out of his vest pocket, untrimmed steely whiskers, a habit of breathing noisily through his teeth when he was concentrating on a pupil's playing. Hans who was tall, gaunt, n.o.ble in his bearing wore mismatched coats, sweaters, unpressed trousers. His favored footware was a pair of very old penny loafers. You could see that he'd been a handsome man once, now his face was in ruins. He was reticent, elliptical in criticism as in praise. From out of his corner Zack witnessed entire lessons when Mr. Zimmerman murmured no words except "Good. Move on" or "Repeat, please." Several times Zack had heard the terrible words: "Repeat the lesson for next week. Thank you."

It was common for Mr. Zimmerman to have Zack repeat pieces, but he had never yet asked Zack to repeat an entire lesson. He called him "child"he didn't seem to remember his name. For why should he remember a name? Why a face? His interest in his pupils was in their hands; not their hands exactly but their fingers; not their fingers exactly but their "fingering." You could a.s.sess a young pianist by his or her "fingering" but you could make nothing of significance out of a name or a face.

The whole of the magnificent Hammerklavier Hans Zimmerman had memorized more than fifty years before remained in his memory intact, each note, each pause, each tonal variant yet Hans could not be troubled to remember the names of people he saw frequently.

And here was the gifted child, a rarity in Hans Zimmerman's life now: out of nowhere he'd seemed to have come with his eager, somehow old-European eyes, not at all an American boy, to Zimmerman's way of thinking. He would ask no personal questions of the boy's mother, he did not want to know about the boy's background, he did not want to feel anything for the boy. All that was extinguished in him now. And yet in weak moments the piano teacher found himself staring at the boy as he played his exercise pieces, one of the tricky little Czernys perhaps. Presto in six/eight time, three sharps. Left and right hands mirroring each other rapidly ascending, descending. In the concluding bars, left and right hands were nearly a keyboard apart, the little boy stretched his arms as in an antic crucifixion.

Hans Zimmerman surprised himself, laughing aloud.

"Bravo, child. If you play Czerny like Mozart, how will you play Mozart?"

16.

Makes me happy. What makes me happy. O Christ what!

No idea in h.e.l.l what to play. No one had ever made such a request of the jazz pianist before. His fingers fumbled at the keyboard. So much of his adult life had become mechanical, his will suspended and indifferent. The emptiness of his soul opened before him like a deep well, he dared not peer into it.

His fingers would not fail him, though. Chet Gallagher at the keyboard. That old cla.s.sic "Savin' All My Love For You."

And that turned out to be so.

17.

A love ballad, a bluesy number.

Driving this snowswept landscape.

Gallagher drifting in a dream, at the wheel of his car. All his life he has been hearing music in his head. Sometimes the music of others, and sometimes his own.

Driving to Grindstone Island in the St. Lawrence River floating in reflected sky Lovesick Gallagher redeemed on Grindstone Island in the St. Lawrence River floating in reflected sky "Anybody want to turn back? I don't."

They were driving to Grindstone Island. They were planning to spend Easter weekend at the Gallagher lodge. The three of them: Gallagher's little family. For he loved them, out of desperation that the woman did not love him. The child he loved, who seemed at times to love him. But in the rearview mirror since they'd left Watertown, the child's face was averted, Gallagher could not catch the child's eye to smile and wink in complicity repeating his brash challenge, "Anybody want to turn back? I sure as h.e.l.l don't."

What could the Joneses say. Captive in Gallagher's car being driven at less than forty miles an hour on icy-slick Route 180.

Then Hazel murmured what sounded like No in her maddening way that managed to be both enthusiastic and vague, doubtful.

It was the way in which Hazel allowed Gallagher to make love to her. To the degree to which Hazel allowed Gallagher to make love to her.

In the backseat of Gallagher's car the child Zack had disappeared from the rearview mirror entirely. He'd brought along his Royal Conservatory Pianoforte Studies and was lost in frowning concentration, oblivious of the snowy highway and occasional abandoned vehicles at the roadside.

Gallagher had a.s.sured him there was a piano at the lodge. He could practice at the lodge. Gallagher had banged on that piano plenty of times. He'd entertained his relatives. He'd played for himself. Summers on Grindstone Island, Gallagher's happiest memories. Wanting to convey to the child as to the child's mother how happiness is a possibility, maybe even a place you might get to.

Impulsively he'd bought the house in Watertown. But Hazel wasn't ready for that yet.

Easter weekend on Grindstone Island. It had been a very good plan except on Thursday morning a freezing rain began and within a few hours the rain had become sleet and the sleet became a wet wind-driven snow howling across Lake Ontario. Nine to twelve inches by Friday morning, and drifting.

Still, the region was accustomed to freak storms. Snow in April, sometimes in May. Quick blizzards, and a quick thaw. Snowplows had been operating through the night. Roads into the Adirondacks would be impa.s.sable but Route 180 north to Malin Head Bay and the bridge to Grindstone Island was more or less open: traffic moved slowly, but was moving. By Friday afternoon the wind had blown itself out. Sky clear and brittle as gla.s.s.

G.o.d d.a.m.n: Gallagher wasn't going to change his plans.

The snow would melt by Sunday. Certainly it would melt. Gallagher was insisting. He'd been on the phone that morning with the caretaker who'd a.s.sured him that the driveway would be plowed by the time Gallagher and his guests arrived. The lodge would be open, ready for occupancy. The power would be on. (McAlster was sure there'd be power out at the camp, there was power elsewhere on the island.) In the lodge there was a kitchen, stocked with canned and bottled goods. Refrigerator and stove. All in working order. McAlster would have aired out the rooms. McAlster was a man you could rely upon. Gallagher had not wanted to change his plans and McAlster agreed, a little snow wouldn't interfere with anyone. The island was so beautiful covered in snow. A shame such a beautiful place was deserted most of the year.

A shame it belongs to people like you.

McAlster, now in his sixties, had been entrusted with overseeing summer residents' properties for decades. Since Gallagher had been a small child. Not once had McAlster spoken with the slightest air of reproach, in Gallagher's hearing. It was Gallagher who felt shame, guilt. His family owned ninety acres of Grindstone Island of which less than five or six were actually used: the rest was woodland, pines and birches. There was a mile of river frontage, of surpa.s.sing beauty. Thaddeus Gallagher's father had acquired the property and built the original hunting lodge in the early 1900s, long before the Thousand Islands region was developed for summer tourism. It had been a wilderness, at a remote northern edge of New York State. The small native population of Grindstone Island lived mostly in the area of Grindstone Harbor, in asphalt-sided houses, tar paper shanties, trailers. They owned bait-and-tackle shops, gas stations and roadside restaurants. They were trappers, guides, commercial fishermen and caretakers like McAlster, hiring themselves out to absentee residents like the Gallaghers.

Don't you feel guilty, owning so much property you rarely see Gallagher had asked his father Thaddeus as a young man provoked to ideological quarrels and Thaddeus's reply had been hotly uttered, unhesitating Those people depend upon us! We hire them. We pay property taxes to pay for their roads, schools, public services. There's a hospital in Grindstone Harbor now, didn't used to be! How'd that happen? Half the population in the Thousand Islands is on welfare in the off-season, who the h.e.l.l d'you think pays for that?

Gallagher's anger with his father so choked him, he had trouble breathing in the old man's presence. It was like an asthma attack.

"My father..."

Beside him in the pa.s.senger's seat of his car Hazel gave Gallagher a shrewd sidelong look. Unconsciously he'd been sucking in his breath. Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

"Yes?"

"...says he wants to meet you, Hazel. But that won't happen."

He'd told her very little about his father. Very little about his family. He supposed she'd heard, from others.

In fact, Thaddeus had telephoned Gallagher the previous week to inquire This new woman of yours, a c.o.c.ktail waitress is she, a stripper, call girl with a b.a.s.t.a.r.d r.e.t.a.r.ded son? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Gallagher had hung up the phone without speaking.

Prior to this call, Gallagher had not heard from his father since Christmas 1962 and then it had been Thaddeus's private secretary calling, with the message that his father was on the line to speak with him and Gallagher had said politely But I'm not on this line. Sorry.

"Well. If you don't want me to meet your father, I won't."

"You and Zack. Either of you."

Hazel smiled uncertainly. Gallagher knew he made her uneasy, she couldn't read his moods: playful, ironic, sincere. As she couldn't interpret the tone of the more tortuous and meandering of his jazz piano pieces.

"You're too good to meet the man, Hazel. In your soul."

"Am I."

"Hazel, it's true! You're too good, too beautiful and pure-minded to meet a man like Thaddeus Gallagher. You'd be despoiled by his eyes on you. By breathing the same air he breathes."

Why Gallagher was so angry suddenly, he didn't know. Possibly it had something to do with McAlster.

Hazel Jones, William McAlster. Individuals of the servant cla.s.s. Thaddeus Gallagher would identify Hazel Jones at once.

Behind a slow-moving truck spreading salt on the highway, they were approaching Malin Head Bay. It was nearly 6 P.M. yet the sky was still light. There was an icy glaze over many trees, flas.h.i.+ng sunlight like fire. Traffic moved sluggishly along Main Street where only a single wide lane had been plowed.

Gallagher didn't want to think what Grindstone Island would be like.

McAlster had promised him, though. McAlster would never go back on his word.

McAlster would never disappoint Thaddeus Gallagher's son.

Relenting, Gallagher said they could always stay at the Malin Head Inn, if the island didn't work out.

"You aren't worried, Hazel? Are you?"

Hazel laughed. "Worried? Not with you."

She touched his arm to rea.s.sure him. A strand of her hair fell against Gallagher's cheek. He felt a choking sensation in his chest.

She'd told him a man had hurt her. He supposed the man had been Zack's father, who had left her, hadn't married her. This would have been almost seven years ago. She'd kissed him and drew away from him telling him she had no wish to be hurt by a man again.

"I'll make it up to you, Hazel. Whatever it was."

Gallagher groped for Hazel's hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed her fingers greedily. Not an erotic kiss unless you knew the desperate ways of Eros. Gallagher had not kissed Hazel that day. They had not been alone together for five minutes. He was weak with desire, and outrage mixed with desire. He would marry Hazel Jones, next time he crossed St. Mary Bridge to Grindstone Island she would be his wife.

McAlster was right, the island was beautiful in snow.

"Our property begins about here. That stone wall."

Hazel was staring through the winds.h.i.+eld. The child in the backseat was at last alert, watchful.

"All that is Gallagher property, too. Miles uphill. And along the river."

The River Road had been plowed, if haphazardly. Gallagher drove very slowly. His car was equipped with chains, he was accustomed to driving on icy graveled surfaces. On the island, there were more trees covered in ice, tilted at sharp angles like drunken figures. Some of the birches had shattered and collapsed. Evergreens were tougher, not so extensively damaged. In the road there were fallen tree limbs, Gallagher drove carefully around them.

"You can tell it isn't winter, can't you. By the sun. Yet so much snow. Jesus!"

The river was choppy, wind-churned. Vast, and very beautiful. Before the sudden freeze, the river had thawed; now at the water's edge amid enormous boulders there were jagged ice-spikes, jutting up vertically like stalagmites. Gallagher was conscious of the woman and her child seeing this for the first time.

"That's the lodge, at the top of that hill. Through those evergreens. Over there are guest cabins. It looks as if McAlster has plowed us out, we're in luck for tonight."

The Adirondack-style lodge was the size of a small hotel, made of logs, fieldstone and stucco. Its roof was steep and s.h.i.+ngled and it had two ma.s.sive stone chimneys. Adrift in snow at the crest of a hill was a tennis court. There was a gabled three-car garage, a former stable. High overhead a hawk drifted, lazily dipped and turned on widespread wings. The sky looked like gla.s.s about to shatter. Gallagher was seeing Hazel Jones at last beginning to see He is rich. His family is rich.

That hadn't been Gallagher's reason for bringing them here. He didn't think so.

18.

A rough wild game! Driving her like a panicked animal along the rows of cornstalks. Drunk-looking cornstalks broken and dessicated in the heat of early autumn and the browned ta.s.sels slapping and cutting at her face. Herschel clapped his hands laughing his high-pitched heehaw laugh Git along little dawgie git along little weenie long-limbed and loose-jointed and he was breathing through his mouth as he ran, as she ran, a flame-like sensation in her belly, she too was laughing, clumsy and stumbling on her small legs so she fell to one knee, she fell more than once, scrambled to her feet before the sc.r.a.ped welt filled in with gritty blood, if she could make her way to the end of the row of cornstalks to the edge of the farmer's field and to the road and to the cemetery beyond How the cornfield game ended, Rebecca could never recall.

19.

"Momma? Are we?"