Dissonance (13 page)

‘You noticed! I got that progression from the
Creole Rhapsody
.'

A broad smile appeared across Schaedel's face. ‘You thought of that?'

‘I bet you don't have anyone else who would've?' Madge said.

Schaedel picked up the score and looked at it. ‘Amazing,' he said. ‘Listen, Erwin, we have a very good composition teacher here. Hans Knorr. Would you mind if I showed him this?'

‘No,' Madge said. ‘Go ahead.'

‘No,' Erwin agreed.

‘If you like, I could have a word to him, and see if he has a place.'

Erwin turned to face his teacher full on. ‘I'd like that. I was thinking, in time, I'd like to do more than just play.'

‘Of course, I'll speak to him. You have a telephone?'

Madge wrote their number on the top of Erwin's score. ‘What would he charge?' she asked.

‘I'll speak to him about that too. In the meantime, I'll see you at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, Erwin. Try and wear something comfortable.'

Erwin looked down at his suit, up at his mother and then at Schaedel. ‘We didn't know how formal it would be,' he explained.

Schaedel smiled. ‘You won't be needing a suit quite yet.'

That afternoon, as sheets of rain spread out across Bramweg, as paper-sellers sheltered under torn, canvas awnings, as boys in shorts and singlets played in the black mud of the Free Church graveyard, Erwin sat at his piano practising the accompaniment to Schubert's
Erlkönig
. It seemed appropriate – dark clouds, the blast of the tempest, dead children and wild horses. Three boys, aged seven or eight, sat on chairs across from Erwin. They were dressed in suit pants and jackets. Erwin had told them to keep quiet but occasionally one of them would mumble or complain about being hungry.

‘Quiet!' Erwin would snap, and they'd all drop their heads and stare into their lap.

Inside her bedroom, Madge was giving an advanced English lesson. Four older boys, fifteen or sixteen, sat uncomfortably on the edge of her bed, each of them pushed together by the sag of the mattress. They had books open in their lap and were trying to copy words Madge scribbled on a small blackboard on an easel.

‘It is the best red colour', she wrote, watching them press their knees together, awkwardly writing on the hills and in the valleys of fresh, white paper.

‘So?' she asked one of the boys, when he'd finished.

‘It is the worst red colour,' he replied.

There was a sound of moving chairs from the next room, and then Erwin's voice. ‘Would you boys sit still!
Setz euch, jetz! Ruhig!
'

‘What is it?' Madge called.

‘They're fighting … they're wrestling each other.'

‘Boys!' Madge shouted, tapping on the wall.

Advanced English was followed by beginners at 4.00 pm. The mothers had already dropped their little ones and it wasn't even ten to four. Madge had smiled, and welcomed them, as she had the previous few weeks, but she'd wanted to say, ‘Your lesson is at four o'clock, not three thirty, and this is not a babysitting service.' But she'd bit her lip; for now she needed goodwill. Later, when she had a waiting list, she'd start to lay down the law.

It had been Erwin's idea. He'd remembered the German and Italian lessons the singers took at the Elder Conserva­torium. He'd often thought how easy it would be to teach someone something you'd been doing your whole life. So when Madge first said to him, ‘Now we need to start thinking about money,' he'd replied, ‘What about English?'

Madge had smiled. She got started on the signs straight away.

English Lessons

by

Mrs Magda Hergert

Rates (per lesson)

Beginner 2'6

Intermediate 2'8

Advanced 3 shillings

Conducted at Bramweg, Tue. And Thur. Afternoons

Call … … …

She and Erwin walked the streets of Sülldorf, searching for noticeboards, pinning up their bilingual sign in shopfronts and taping them to lampposts and urinals.

So that now she had a total of eleven students. Pocket money, she explained in a letter home to Grace, but she would teach every day if need be.

‘Now,' Madge continued, as the four big boys tried to move apart. ‘Look at this example.'

She took her chalk and wrote. The board slipped from its easel and she steadied it and started again. ‘We have an excellent collection of cars.'

She watched them copy her words. ‘So?'

Erwin heard a knock at the front door. Christ, he muttered. He stood up, looked at the boys with a scowl, and opened the door. ‘Hello,' he said.

A girl with short, brown hair, clutching an arm full of music, looked at him and asked, ‘You're English?'

‘Australian,' he replied, modifying his tone, studying her deep-brown eyes and high, sculpted cheeks.

‘A long way from home?' she said.

‘You speak English?'

‘Of course. You speak German?'

‘Ein bisschen.'

The girl noticed the boys. ‘These are your brothers?' she asked.

‘My mother's students,' he replied. He let her listen to the chorus of voices from the next room and then said, ‘Can I help you with something?'

She looked mortified. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, you must think I'm so rude. My name is Luise, Luise Hennig. I live down the hallway.' She extended her hand and Erwin didn't know whether to kiss or shake it. Instead, he just touched it, and moved it in the air. ‘Erwin Hergert,' he said.

‘A German name?'

‘My father was German. We are from the Barossa Valley.'

‘In Australia?' she asked.

‘South Australia.'

‘I heard you playing,' she began, gathering her thoughts, using a single finger to move hair from her eyes. ‘It was you, wasn't it?'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Schubert?'

‘My mother sings.'

‘So do I … I mean, I study.'

‘Where?'

‘At the Conservatorium.'

Erwin glowed. ‘I'm with Professor Schaedel.'

‘Schaedel. He's meant to be good … although …'

‘What?' Erwin asked, half-grinning.

‘He has a reputation.'

‘For what?'

She thought better of it. ‘It doesn't matter. I have a recital coming up, and I need to find an accompanist.'

Erwin didn't want to appear too anxious. ‘Well … I could.'

‘I could pay you.'

‘No, I need the practice. And I need to get to know people.'

Madge appeared at the door to her room. ‘Hello,' she said to the girl.

‘Hello,' Luise replied.

‘Mother, this is Luise,' Erwin said. ‘She studies voice at the Conservatorium.'

‘Really?' Madge managed, smiling.

‘She's a neighbour. She lives down the hall.' He looked at Luise. ‘Which flat?'

‘Two E.'

‘Two E, Mother. Two E.'

‘Wonderful. Nice to meet you, Luise.' And she returned to her pupils.

One of the younger boys looked at the other two and whispered, ‘Ich liebe dich,' making a star-struck face and pouting.

Luise glared at him. The boy looked down into his lap and tried not to laugh. Erwin hadn't heard, and didn't know what was happening. He looked at the papers in Luise's arms and asked, ‘Do you have the music?'

‘Yes,' she replied.

‘Would you like to …?' He indicated the piano and she smiled. ‘Do you have time?'

‘Of course.'

They moved towards the piano and Luise pulled some yellowing sheet music from the middle of her pile. She placed it on the piano, put down her scores and said, ‘It's not too difficult.'

Erwin sat down and looked at it and shrugged. ‘I've played this before, when I was five or six.' He saw his mother watching them from the doorway and asked, ‘
The Wanderer
. When did we first – '

‘Years ago,' she replied.

Erwin played an introduction of triplets that got louder as the chords flattened and flavoured and then diminished into a sort of recitative.

I come from regions high and free,

To humid vales and moaning sea …

‘That's not your key,' Erwin said, noticing straight away, starting again two tones higher.

Luise sang the same two lines and then Erwin stopped again. ‘That was magnificent,' he said, turning his whole body around to face her.

‘No, passable. Mother thinks my voice is too … thin.'

‘Rubbish. It's like a flute; but you're only … how old?'

‘Sixteen.'

‘See. The voice is a muscle. It has to beef up.'

She smiled. ‘Beef up?'

‘You know, get big, like a cow.'

‘A cow?' she laughed.

‘Not you, your vocal chords.'

‘I know,' she said, touching his shoulder. ‘I was only joking.'

Madge was writing on her blackboard, but she could look through and see them. She waited for Luise to move her hand and then she finished her crumbling, copperplate sentence.

Erwin and Luise played the song through once, then Erwin said, ‘It's perfect.'

She smiled. ‘Could we still practise?'

‘Of course. We can make it better.'

In the next room one of the older boys overheard Erwin and said to Madge, ‘You can't make it better if it's perfect,' but she didn't reply.

Erwin returned the music to Luise and said, ‘We can go through it, phrase by phrase. That's how I work.'

‘So do I. When then?'

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Four, perhaps?' He called out to his mother. ‘What am I doing tomorrow afternoon, Mother?'

Madge tried to think of something, but couldn't. ‘Why?' she asked, stepping into the sitting room and approaching them.

‘Luise asked if I could help her practise.'

Madge looked at the girl. I bet she did, she thought. ‘Tomorrow afternoon …? That should be alright,' she managed.

Luise looked at Erwin. ‘We have a piano.'

‘And so do we,' Madge stated, anticipating a catastrophe she wouldn't be able to manage.

‘Four then?' Erwin said to the girl.

‘Four,' she replied.

Erwin handed her the music. She waited a few moments before taking it from him. He wondered if this was part of some other language – a vocab of eyes slowly closing and opening, of wrinkles forming around her mouth, of dropped shoulders and fingers brushing over white keys, of a foot being ground into their rug, an earlobe stretched and a forced, staccato cough. He tried his best to conceal his delight from his mother but for a few short moments he didn't really care if she could tell.

Madge simmered: brown eyes and a smile – the downfall of a hundred million men. And what was behind the manners, the pleasantness and shallow good looks? Rusty metal fingernails, clawing at her son, holding him down; Spanish disease all over her legs and cunt, red-raw sores seeping onto bedclothes she shared with Erwin; venom; the need for music as a career, and not a state of mind; the ability to go knocking on anyone's door to get what she wanted, and when she was through with it, the hard-heartedness to throw it aside.

Erwin tried not to look at the exposed skin on the girl's shoulders, her bust (as full as the statues beside his mother's bed, as white and marbled as those in his father's magazines) and a thin frame that only swelled a little around her hips. He caught his mother's eye and looked down at his keyboard. He steadied himself with thoughts of tin cans, of Mother stacking peaches in their shop, labelling each one and placing it beside the others; thoughts of Mother's hair up in a bun, and his Darling Girl (as he remembered calling her) moving uneasily on her knees on the wooden floorboards as she said to him, ‘See, this is why you must practise.'

‘Es ist vier Uhr,' one of the smaller boys said, looking at his watch.

‘Wait,' Madge replied. She took Luise's hand and shook it and said, ‘Tomorrow.
The Wanderer
. Like us … we are ­wanderers.'

Luise didn't like her at all. ‘Tomorrow.'

The advanced class was dismissed and the beginners were shown into the bedroom. Then Madge confronted her son. ‘Why?' she asked.

‘She came to the door.'

‘I knew this would happen, but not so soon.'

Erwin knew exactly what she meant. ‘She needs my help,' he said.

‘I bet she does.'

He shook his head. ‘Why, what are you thinking?'

Madge was furious. ‘You know exactly what …' She noticed the younger boys listening and closed her bedroom door. Then she heard them giggling from inside her room. ‘Quiet!' she screamed, and the noise stopped. She turned back to her son and waved her finger in his face. ‘The first time you kiss her, that will be the end of everything,' she said.

‘Mum.'

‘And as for … what you're thinking.'

‘What?'

‘Don't raise your voice to me.'

Silence. Erwin could feel the whip again. He could see himself crying, curled in a ball beside their piano. ‘It's not like that,' he managed. ‘I'd never be that stupid.'

Madge looked at him as the curtain billowed and knocked over a ceramic swan on their sideboard. Without even looking she whispered, ‘I hope not.'

‘It's good to play with a singer.'

‘I sing …'

‘A professional. It's a new experience. That's why I'm here, aren't I? To learn?'

Madge had run out of words. She looked at the swan and said, ‘It was only a cheap thing.'

‘We'll practise,' Erwin said. ‘We'll do the recital, and that will be it.'

She looked back at him.

‘I promise, Mum. I promise.'

Madge took a deep breath and turned. She opened the door to her room and there was one of the younger boys, standing on her bed, holding one of her bras to his chest and pouting.