The Black Spaniard Page 3

  A look of guilt swept across his face, and he shook his head slightly. “No, dearest, I am still not ready for that. I cannot feel but I played some horrible role in his demise.”

  The princess gave him an affectionate hug. “Don’t blame yourself, my love,” she said. “It was fate. Our lives are not our own, and a person’s pathway to success and accomplishment may be cut short at any time by death or some other tragedy. We mourn when greatness is taken from us, when lives are cut short, but life continues, and we must embrace the future while being grateful for the gifts bestowed by the departed.”

  “Madam,” interjected Beethoven, “you are a philosopher. I have studied philosophy at the university in Bonn and have seldom heard such wise and consoling words.” He knew he was laying it on a bit, but he was impressed by this beautiful, intelligent woman.

  The prince and princess bid Luis a farewell for the moment, and left him to enjoy the piano as long and as often as he liked. After clambering up to his room for writing materials and music paper, Luis returned to the otherwise empty music room, its high white ceiling and walls ornamented with painted vines and roses, and spent several hours practicing, improvising, and composing. Servants came in to light the candles and one chandelier, and asked whether he would like a fire. No, he gestured, for he had fire enough. Such luxury, though hardly noticed.

  The recital was a success, with about fifty guests from the Viennese nobility, and a few musicians and merchants in the music industry attending. While enthusiastic about his performances of the younger Bach and Haydn, and appreciative of his original work, it was once again in the improvisation that Luis mesmerized and dazzled his listeners. Afterward, he was embraced, praised, and lionized, accepting the accolades with no embarrassment, as though they were his due. Quite a feat for a foreigner with no pedigree except a few thin letters of reference.

  The prince introduced him around, the princess whispered to her lady friends, and Luis was especially interested in some of the attendees he had heard much about before. There was Baron van Swieten, who seldom left his own home: patron of Mozart and Haydn, and champion of J.S. Bach and Handel. And another prince, was the name Lobkowitz? Some count from Russia, someone’s beautiful Italian wife, and invitations from all to play at their salons and soirees, offers of halls and assembly rooms, as well as recommendations for instruments (which he cordially ignored).

  It was with a cool sense of achievement and success, and perhaps a hint of a smirk, that Luis went back to his new room, a spacious apartment with a modern piano, on the first floor.

  What a way to start your twenty-second year (for, in fact, this was the season in which he was born, though he was never sure of the year.) He shuffled through the day’s post, and there he found among his letters an envelope with a boldly scrawled address sent by his brother Carl. Luis sat down, took a deep breath, and poured a tumbler of port from the carafe on the window sill. It was probably an urgent request for money. He tore open the envelope, and read something quite different.

  “Luis,” it began, “you must come home. Father is dead.”

  Chapter 5

  Winter blew quickly over the great city. On the tall green-grey buildings, the fine snow fell, as though shaken from a sifter. Even the shadows were softened by its touch: pale blue, grey, soft green--all tones of the falling white. It was Advent, but detectable only in the bells: a season heard, not seen. Tolling bells like knells for death where no death passed.

  Luis had several weeks of freedom before the lessons with Haydn began. That would be quite a commitment, like a full-time position, but with no pay. He wrapped a wool scarf around his neck this late morning and walked out onto the powdered street. He had scarcely been in Vienna a month; already his jacket was shabby. Some people attract physical chaos like a magnet, and so it was with Luis. Saving his good pair for public appearances, he wore old boots he had found in the kitchen; he wore no hat.

  There was no question. This time he would stay. Just five years earlier, when studying with Mozart in the great city, he had to leave everything behind to return home to his dying mother, the one person he loved above all others. Now, he walked down Alstergasse, past some high-end apartments, a government building of some sort, a church. Strains of a hymn on the organ drifted into the street and caused him to pause.

  The organ. How long had it been? He walked up the steps and inside, striding past the font of holy water, and stood defiantly in the nave. There were not many worshippers at this hour, mostly the elderly, or perhaps they were not human at all, just clumps of shawls, scarves, and caps bunched up over the backs of pews. He stood and listened as the organist, a fair player, filled the space with sound. The music seemed to fill the lungs, the cavity of the head, the body with sound. His mind drifted back to when he was a boy of 11, studying the instrument with Master Neefe, and later in his teens, astonishing the region with his virtuosity. He was surrounded then by friends, the von Breunings, his best friend Wegeler, brothers, cousins, students, his beloved mother. At last, a sexton approached him and touched his arm, rousing him from his reverie.

  “Here, my son,” he said kindly, placing a coin in his hand, “the Lord is merciful. Get yourself something warm to drink!”

  “I’m not a beggar!” snapped Luis, startled back into a sense of the ordinary. He threw down the coin and stalked out. The pew hunchers did not move, the music continued. But there were tears in the young man’s eyes, and his cheeks were damp, perhaps only with melted snow. He was an orphan now, without father or mother, and had cast his lot with this great grey city in an unfamiliar land. He was not even sure of his own birth date and was estranged from his friends and brothers, whom he might never see again. Perhaps he had never been part of his family after all, but the son of a prince or king.

  When music did not fill his brain, these strange delusions crept in and tormented him. But what the sexton had said about the warm drink struck a responsive chord. He stopped in a café for a cup of strong coffee and to read the newspapers. But even the hot black beverage did little to dispel the oppressive cloud that hung over his heart.

  With Christmas and the New Year, however, things changed radically. Luis was performing everywhere in glittering palaces and salons, and in so doing, infuriating the leading pianists of Vienna. This was all to the good, since the dark, young man with the unruly mane of hair and piercing eyes seemed to thrive on opposition and rivalry. His studies with the great Haydn, which commenced in mid-winter—the very thing that drew him to Vienna in the first place—immediately took a distant backseat to an aggressive schedule of recitals throughout the dazzling city, the musical capital of all Europe.

  In fact, it was with a sour face and unwilling feet that he dragged himself to the master’s studio for excruciatingly boring, tedious, and rudimentary lessons in harmony and counterpoint. How he longed for a close friend, like Wegeler or one of the Breunings, to whom he could pour out his heart. But each smothering episode with the well-intentioned but frequently exasperated Haydn would be followed by a series of brilliant showcases for his genius.

  By spring, Luis had developed a formula for bringing audiences—especially their attractive young female members—to their knees. “Luis,” said the Prince, beaming over his prize protégée, and offering him a fine cigar after one audience had dispersed, “my dear, Luis, how ever do you do it! Did you see what was happening when you improvised on the Salieri theme tonight?”

  Luis smiled, and bit off the cigar tip, tilting his head back for the servant to light the tobacco. “Luis,” the Prince continued, leaning forward in one of the apartment’s drawing rooms, “they were in tears, weeping! Not just the women, but the men! Weeping at the beauty, the power, the miracle of your playing, your imagination. How do you do it, my boy?”

  This was a bit much even for Luis, who turned his head to hide the blush on his dark cheeks. “They are just too emotional, that’s all,” he said dismissively. “I need audiences that can stand up to great ideas!”
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br />   The Prince laughed. “Dear, dear boy, you are turning the world on its ear. Already, you are a different man from the lad who arrived from the country last year.” That was true, Luis reflected. Performing in these small recital environments, thick with the smell of beef tallow candles, sweat, and heavy perfumes, with the cream of Viennese aristocracy as his audiences, seemed to have opened a positive version of Pandora’s box. The better he played, the more the adulation and applause. The more the adulation and applause, the more inventive and virtuosic grew his performances. His self-confidence, already high, had shot through the roof, and there was no more holding him back than trying to stuff the wild unruly spirits back into Pandora’s treasure chest. There was no thought for tomorrow, and no regard for yesterday.

  For Luis had slammed the door shut on his past. Though pining for a close friend with whom he could share his triumphs, he was divorced from the world of the Bonn court, from his now-dead parents, from the Elector who now seemed so petty and insignificant. His teachers—he could hardly remember their names. Even Neefe, though he cherished the Illuminati and Masonic texts his former master had entrusted to him. The great ideas he culled from Neefe and the library of the Breunings, those remained and had taken root so that he would always love Plutarch and Homer, and follow the modern poets, Schiller and Goethe. But over all else, he was drunk with the radiance of his own rising star, a creature whose genius, forceful personality, country accent, and strange appearance gave Viennese society something to talk about.

  Such talk, however, included the mumblings, curses, and gossip of erstwhile darlings of the recital stage. “I hear you’ve been playing a bit roughly at the baron’s,” Haydn said in passing one afternoon.

  “Roughly, what do you mean?” said Luis.

  “Too much emotion, not enough attention to form!” the master said sternly, though with his trademark smile.

  “Emotion! That is what music is about!” stormed Luis.

  “Calm yourself, young man,” corrected Haydn, pushing him lightly with his finger tips to the piano bench. “You’ll never amount to anything if you let your feelings get the best of you!”

  Many were the times that Luis wanted to flee those lessons in counterpoint, the art of pitting melody against melody without incurring discord. In life, as well as in music, Haydn had mastered this art. In conversation and negotiations, he was a genius of polite expression, never upsetting an antagonist’s position, and resolving all arguments with good feelings for both parties involved. While learning to master musical counterpoint, Luis, however, made no effort to incorporate the lessons of tact and delicacy of sensibility in his daily life. For him, all conflict was a call for battle, not a minuet of sweet sounds and moves creeping point by point to a harmonious resolution.

  Soon, however, he would have no more reason to long for conflict as the most arrogant pianists of Vienna challenged him to war.

  Chapter 6

  The first of these occurred early in his Viennese years in the form of one Abbé Gelinek. Before Luis came on the scene, the Abbé was the reigning lord of the piano in the musical city of a quarter of a million souls. About a dozen years older than Luis, with high cheekbones, tussled golden hair, and a kindly though somewhat condescending expression, the ordained priest was beloved throughout the city for his performances and improvisations. And as competitions between pianists were the vogue at that time, it was inevitable that the Abbé would challenge Luis to a musical duel.

  The Abbé, whose patron was Count Kinsky, had a loyal following, and met with a few friends to invite them to the event to be held in the Lichnowsky music room.

  “Who is the other pianist?” one of his supporters, a white-wigged conservative, asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, some nobody from up north,” the priest replied affably.

  “Are you afraid of losing?” asked another, mostly to tease the unsurpassed master.

  The Abbé laughed, then his face assumed a look of dark foreboding. “I am going to pulverize him!” he declared. The Gelinekians roared their approval and left their friend to practice his drills.

  The night of the contest arrived. It was hot, as Vienna often is in the summer, and it was the first time Luis had been exposed to such heat. He took one look at the Abbé and smirked. The Abbé took one look at Luis and politely stifled a chuckle. Ah, thought the Abbé, a scruffy boy, probably a mulatto: mere child’s play. Another feather in my cap!

  The Prince had arranged for two pianos to be positioned back to back, so each instrument could entirely absorb the personality of the performing artist, and to provide a home base for each pianist as the other played. There were easily 100 guests crammed into the hall, including members of the press, and a few aristocrats in search of new talent to patronize.

  The two artists came up to the dais, bowed to each other, then to the audience, which was in high spirits and already given to applause. The bulk of the cheers, of course, weighed in with the popular Abbé, in intimidating ecclesiastical dress, who bowed more deeply in a demonstration of superior humility. It was agreed that the event would consist of three “rounds,” beginning with variations on a theme provided by the opponent, then each playing a work of his own composition, then an extravaganza of improvisation.

  Beethoven won the coin toss, sat at the bench, flipped out his tails, such as they were, and winked at two pretty girls in the front row. With one hand, he carefully played an operatic tune, and could it be possible that he exaggerated a few pauses in deference to his opponent’s aging ears and memory?

  Gelinek smiled affably, played back the melody note for note, then launched into a series of non-descript variations that sounded more like a child’s exercises in theory. Beethoven smiled to himself, leaned back just a bit, and a couple of times raised an ironical eyebrow. Such harmony, such delicacy of tone, the priest’s sympathizers purred among themselves.

  At the conclusion of the performance, the Gelinekians shouted “Bravo!”, while nodding to each other knowingly and, occasionally, elbows jabbed the ribs of the person standing nearby. The warmth of the candlelight, the oppressive heat of a summer evening in the city, and the growing excitement among overdressed concert-goers made for an increasingly toasty experience. When the applause subsided, it was Gelinek’s turn to propose a theme, and he played a delightful tune by Mozart (who, it was widely known, had once spoken favorably of the priestly pianist). He, too, exaggerated certain phrasings for the benefit of this newcomer.

  Luis rattled off the tune perfectly, even further exaggerating certain phrases, and cast a furtive glance at the audience. What was it about audiences that brought out the best in him?

  Luis loosened his collar (an unheard of act of undress in public) and dove right into a series of breathtaking variations, the first so daring and unexpected, the audience gasped. He developed the theme to its maximum potential, right up and into the second variation without a pause. In this variation, he exploited the piano’s range and sonorities to the fullest, with crashing chords and flying arpeggios that no one could believe a human being could execute. Ladies began fanning themselves furiously, and the men were struck dumb.

  A third variation, soft, delicate, mournful, made it seem as though the instrument contained an immortal soul, aching for heaven. Then another rush of octaves and ninths, a peaceful interlude, and a concluding thunder of pianistic gymnastics. Luis concluded the set with a series of crashing chords, followed by a soft recollection of the heavenly strains heard earlier, and then a single “da-DAH!”

  There was silence. Utter, complete, total silence. Then a man in the rear shouted, “Bravo!” and soon the entire assembly was on its feet, shouting, and applauding. Luis smiled to himself, nodded to the Prince who was trying not to burst out laughing, and looked around the piano lid to catch the astonished expression on the face of his opponent.

  “Well,” said the Prince, acting as a kind of impromptu emcee, “on to Round Two! Father Gelinek, please enchant us with your own composition of
choice!”

  The Abbé was not looking quite as robust as he had when he first entered the room. In fact, his right hand was shaking. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and looked almost shyly at the audience. He could not see Luis, who was sitting uncomfortably on his bench, fascinated by little circles of soot on the ceiling. In profile, the two men gave onlookers a study in contrast: the young man on the left, dark, disheveled and perhaps a bit impish; the older man on the right, fair, delicate, and ecclesiastically aloof.

  Most of the good Abbé’s compositions were variations, one of the simplest musical forms. He had selected one of his “Potpourri” series, with a nice conventional opening melody followed by variations featuring plenty of 32nd notes (to showcase his speed) and little flourishes so popular in the court (to highlight his sensitivity). The performance was predictable, although his nerves began to take their toll in the final runs. He concluded quietly, and attempted a weak smile to his well-wishers, who responded at first hesitantly and eventually more warmly in good fellowship.

  “Are you done, Abbé?” called Luis across the instruments. A titter of amusement swept through the audience. More fans appeared, and some women were sharing them with their mates or dates.

  “I am,” said the Abbé with a shaky voice.

  “Then I will play my new Sonata in g minor, still a work in progress,” announced the younger man. He turned to the keyboard, eyes sparkling, and soon filled the hall with haunting sounds of longing, mystery, reclamation, and dreams of an ideal world. The audience was transported, and more than a few sobs were heard during the masterful rendition of the haunting slow movement.