The Absolute, page 29
“Tatiana’s impulsiveness,” he confessed to friends, “helps me understand it makes no sense to write one work after another, if the effort is preserved only by the superstitious will to profess a ‘stylistic identity.’ In its reiteration, this identity makes all new creation superfluous. When I recognize the work of some colleague as soon as the first chords have sounded, I know it’s time to leave the room. The small yet great secret true artists cultivate is to distort the automatic program of their tastes and tendencies, making each composition into something new over the course of its development, in order to radically differentiate each work from the previous ones. Simply put: We have to invent ourselves every morning, make ourselves magicians and keep surprising until the end!”9
With the slowness of those affected by an excess of discretion, Alexander at last decided to thank Tatiana for the lesson she’d given him without his having looked for it. When he did so—in a way he considered explicit, hoping his gesture of recognition didn’t escape her—he found it curious that Tatiana’s reception was colder than expected. Used to her displays of veneration every day, the disciple’s aloofness irritated my uncle, and he was about to react negatively but preferred to curb his anger. It was the first time she’d ever behaved this way.
But what was happening to Tatiana?
Nothing is more disturbing than the fear of suddenly losing what we’ve always taken to be ours. By virtue of a simple and unexpected gesture, Tatiana, who for months had barely stood out from the decor, was now the element that disturbed his life. It isn’t strange that as a consequence of this discovery, Alexander forced things along, bringing them to a point only he considered unexpected and surprising.
* * *
8 Decades later, Glenn Gould would discover recordings in which Tatiana Schloezer performs Alexander Scriabin. Even with her untrained playing, accentuated by the jerkiness of the needle sinking into the plastic record’s groove, the organization of the work comes through clearly. Tatiana rarely used the pedal, which in his own performances my uncle emphasized heavily to forefront the aspects that most interested him (echoing and inchoate sound, Eastern fantasies and hypnotic, mist-filled atmospheres). With this omission, Schloezer emphasized what, following the impulses of his romantic character, Alexander had hoped to disguise in his compositions: the evident presence of a powerful contrapuntal structure, learned under Taneyev, who had studied it in J. S. Bach. Needless to say, in his own versions, Gould drew out this tendency.
9 Typical of the “middle period” of his creative evolution, this statement by my uncle anticipates the central problem of modern art. Alexander Scriabin notes the paradoxical character of an aesthetic creation that stakes itself on a constant cycle of transformations, which—at its logical extreme—will necessarily produce the result that an artist doesn’t recognize himself in his own works (not to mention the other kind of recognition from the public, permanently lost to him in advance). At this indeterminate moment in an aesthetic career, some come up against the horror, the very substance of emptiness, while others discover in it the ultimate gamble, the supreme achievement. Naturally, since art is made by limited subjects, imperfect and finite, once the artist is dead, the cycle of mutations in their work concludes. And what remains? A gallery of mutilated statues at the mercy of the elements.
As we know, in his glorious “final stage,” Alexander Scriabin clearly understood the bounds of his aesthetic project of constant change and resolved to surpass them, proposing to go beyond the frontiers of art and transform the course of the Universe in its entirety.
7
Beyond the refreshing impression it gave my uncle to find himself with a young, flexible and available body, which gave way to his vigor after months of abstinence, the fact Tatiana went from the living room to the bedroom didn’t seem to produce a substantial change in their relationship; at least, it wasn’t a complete change. The difference could be perceived in the greater pleasantness (the relief) that Alexander showed, and his willingness to reduce the distance between them. Yet Tatiana continued to wear a surly expression, the imperturbable look one expects from governesses and servants.
For a while, he preferred to understand this attitude as the obedience to appearances a single woman must display if she lives in a man’s house. But truth is, their environment didn’t pay the slightest attention to convention, so at some point my uncle had to ask himself about the reasons that made Tatiana wear a scowl. The most obvious thing, to ask the woman herself, would have been at once tricky and useless. With sensitive women like her, every question is a torment, every interrogation an accusation. To force on her the dilemma of either babbling inanities (if she herself didn’t know) or lying deliberately (if she wanted to hide the reasons for the behavior) would mean to act under false premises to obtain a single result: moral violence. It was better—he thought—to diminish the risks of conflict by turning to indirect methods.
Thus Alexander decided to accept the degree of hypocrisy implicit in the act of proceeding with a delicate inquiry. Taking Tatiana’s hands and guiding her to sit beside him, he told her he wanted to speak to her as one speaks to a dear friend with whom there are no more secrets. Tatiana, who in general was used to answering even his most trivial comments, didn’t let out a word. If the evening light that came in through the window had been slightly more intense, if my uncle had been a little less concerned with picking out the phrases he was about to utter, he’d have noticed Tatiana’s slowness in taking a seat and the paleness that spread over her whole face, and would have anticipated the situation was taking on an aspect rather different from what he’d imagined for developing events. Whatever the case, he tackled the matter. He declared he had no complaints or resentments, only gratitude, and claimed it was solely concern about Tatiana and her state that encouraged him to beg that she freely express any uneasiness or disturbance she might feel. Was she comfortable in the house? Sometimes he saw her looking absorbed, overwhelmed, listless. Did she find herself with too many responsibilities? Did she perhaps need to take a vacation, continue her studies? Or did she need some free time to work on her own compositions . . . ?
Tatiana listened to these suggestions in silence, then bowed her head a little, slowly rubbed her eyes—was that a tear or the shine of makeup on her cheeks?—and fixing her gaze on some indefinable point in the room, murmured:
“Idiot.”
Alexander didn’t know whether she was referring to herself, him, the whole world or the situation. But he noticed she was now crying without covering her face. The tears kept sliding down, perfect ovoid drops that barely grazed the perfect skin, now redly haloed by rays of sun going to hide beyond the golden domes of Saint Peter’s fortress. Before he was forced to turn on a lamp, my uncle had the opportunity to discover the beauty that flooded through Tatiana, the terrible beauty that streamed from this woman. Racked by terror, enveloped in the aura of a new kind of inspiration, he wanted to say something she would understand as a request for forgiveness or proposal to begin again, but he didn’t have the chance to open his mouth, since she spoke first. She said that he rejected her, he’d always rejected her; that when he hugged her in his arms, when he kissed or caressed her, every one of his gestures demonstrated he was only offering her a miserly and short-lived scrap of his attention. From the start, she said, Alexander had presented her with a coldness able to freeze the center of the earth, yet she’d kept silent and remained by his side, hoping that at some point things would change, and dreaming of a moment that would never arrive, because from the very start it had been clear that he’d never take responsibility for anything, never really look at her in the way she hoped he would, that his mission in this world was not to make her happy.
Taken aback by the violence of this claim, Alexander left the room and went to his bedroom to think. When he came out, it was night. Dinner hadn’t been served and Tatiana had shut herself away in the guest room.
By the next morning, my uncle had thought over the matter enough to recognize that, notwithstanding the way they’d been presented, to a certain degree the woman’s arguments expressed the truth. From the moment they’d met, she’d left behind everything for him, even pretense. Tatiana had been the ideal student, and he hadn’t known how to see her in that light because her natural modesty had emphasized her virtues and concealed her gifts. To put it bluntly, he used her without noticing her, without contributing to the development of her talents. Tatiana had made every effort, but now he had to devote part of his time to her, to getting her to return to composing and playing.
8
Tatiana showed herself to be a hardworking student. Her progress was so quick that after a few months Alexander pushed her to sit for the annual pianists’ competition at the Moscow Conservatory. If she achieved one of the first positions in the selection, her career as a professional of the instrument would be assured. Although she didn’t display great enthusiasm about the proposal, my uncle was confident in advance of a favorable result. His laughter could be heard, clear and high-pitched, through the hallways of the building as they waited to enter the concert hall.
“Joy, joy!” he said as he rubbed his pupil’s hands wrapped in ermine gloves. “Everything will go splendidly. The jury isn’t used to performances like the ones you’re capable of offering. And if out of stage fright you aren’t at your usual level of quality, don’t worry. They’re friends of mine and will be understanding. Beruloff even owes me a few favors.”
“The only thing I want is for this to be over soon,” she whispered.
It was a somewhat gloomy comment, but Alexander attributed it to her great sensibility. After all, they’d seen several candidates leave the exam hall in a state of total devastation.
When her turn came, Tatiana moved stiffly into the hall. She’d adopted an updo for the occasion, hair pulled back into a tight ballerina bun, which gave her a severe, disciplined, angular look. Without greeting anyone, she took a seat on the stool and waited. Taneyev—by now an old alcoholic—leaned over the table and gave her a friendly once-over:
“Your maestro, my most esteemed Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, present here today, let slip to us you greatly esteem our dear Ludwig van . . .” he said. “It would be most appreciated if you could offer us a movement or, if you like, just a few measures of one of his sonatas. What would you prefer?”
“She knows them all to perfection,” my uncle answered for her.
“Ah, good, good, very nice. It’s terribly cold out today. Would you like to loosen up your hands by starting with something simple, like Clair de Lune . . . ?”
“She’ll play whatever you ask,” said my uncle.
“But my cherished Alexander Nikolayevich . . . Beethoven composed thirty-two sonatas! Only a pianist with substantial experience could know them all . . .”
“You’ll be astonished by the speed and clarity of her performance, her talent for double thirds, octaves, sixths and chromatic sequences, her unparalleled ability for sight reading . . .”
“In that case, my admired . . .” sighed Taneyev. “She can begin wherever she feels like.”
“First movement of Sonata no. 8 in C Minor, op. 13,” announced Tatiana.
“The Pathétique!” rejoiced Taneyev. “Grave; allegro di molto e con brio. Light and pain. A concentrated movement, detailed and intricate. Go ahead, please.”
Alexander held the view that before launching into the first strokes, a pianist must feel the secret vibration of energy that flows from the instrument and communicate one’s own to it. When Tatiana gently placed her fingers on the keys and seemed to be resting, or perhaps listening to something, he realized (yet again, as he had so many times in the last months) she’d fully embraced his approach, and wagered everything on the magic of this initial contact. He also observed, content, the way his pupil’s white skin stood out from the ash yellow and black ivories. A triple checkerboard. The reflection of her fingers on the polished wood. Tatiana crouched over, her shoulders curved as if to concentrate the fury of her body as pale as it was strong, and with a sharp jerk of the head, she began. For a few seconds, in which he kept his eyes closed, my uncle let himself be carried away by the excellence of the performance. There, in the mountains and valleys of time, was what he’d taught her, enhanced by the sensitive gentleness of her touch, which sought to transmit to each note her yearning to draw out its intimate resonance, its duration exceeding the possibilities of acoustics and amplitude. Going beyond the spectrum, even . . .
Suddenly, a false note. And silence.
Tatiana remained unmoving, sitting up straight. She stared into the angular abyss of the piano’s open lid.
“It’s nothing. You can start over, most valued one,” proposed Taneyev. “This often happens when one has learned a piece well: one trusts too much in mechanics, in corporal mnemotechnics, and wham! The error of memory is followed by a physical stumble. All you need is to recover your automatism.”
“Absurd,” my uncle said. “Tatiana isn’t the victim of a breakdown in the performance sequence. She isn’t a little drummer girl. She knows what she’s playing very well.”
“Memory is trivial, writing is permanent. I think the problem would be solved if someone brought her the score . . .” proposed Beruloff.
“Sonata for Piano no. 29 in B-flat Major, op. 106,” announced Tatiana.
Her left hand rose up.
“Just a second, most precious one,” said Taneyev. “This sonata poses colossal technical difficulties. For years no one dared perform it publicly. Liszt was the first. As you know, it was Liszt who promoted the idea of the performer as a specialized object of astonishment for a public of middle-class ignoramuses, who, knowing nothing about music, pay their entrance fee to see a kind of illusionist of high-speed percussion, a monkey dressed in a tailcoat. And so . . . Those are not the only difficulties to overcome either. You also have to shift between many different registers . . .”
“. . . Like a fish in water, our Tatiana,” said my uncle.
“Third movement. Adagio sostenuto. Appassionato e con molto sentimento,” added Tatiana.
The same bend, the same gesture. She was made for the instrument. Who wouldn’t have written for her? She began. The A and C-sharp. A whole temple enters through the narrow door of the first two notes. Scriabin looked at the jury; the jury smiled. Everyone remembered, everything flowed. After the scherzo assai vivace, which closes in an enigmatic way with what seems to be a question mark, the crystal clear tinkling of these two notes forms the start to one of the most beautiful sonata movements ever written. Here, in the theme with variations, Beethoven is an Olympian maestro. What a risk! The main theme, written in an almost polyphonic form, transforms with the first variation into a melody that prefigures Chopin and accentuates the tormented character of the movement . . .
Feeling that Tatiana was playing it safe, my uncle’s consciousness went ahead in its necessity to grasp the piece, to enjoy not only the moment but also the unfurling of the form in its wider structures: after a few measures in which the deaf author pretends to feel disoriented, he begins the second variation, superbly constructed as a melody with wide intervals, and after this modulation appears the third variation, in truth a modified form of the first . . . Here it seems Beethoven wanted to shout, to do away with all the preceding anguish, and in the end the main theme returns like a memory, the twilight glow of a Russian or German sun falling over the fields . . .
Another false note, and silence.
Taneyev had a hard time opening his lips.
“And now what, carissima?”
“Maybe you’re a little nervous, and . . .” said Nikolai Tcherepnin.
“First movement of the Sonata for Piano no. 27 in E Minor, op. 90,” announced Tatiana.
“Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck,” whispered Tebalski, as correct as he was disheartened.
After a couple of chords that dissolved into arpeggios, the same thing happened.
Why, during this setback, did the figure of the woman dressed in black take on the appearance of a mechanical bird?
Alexander left his seat, climbed up to the platform and, taking Tatiana by the arm, gently said: “Let’s go.”
When she’d stood up, my uncle acknowledged the jury with a slight bow of the head.
Back at home, Tatiana showed signs of a strong headache and went to her room. She spent the whole afternoon sleeping, and in the evening began to cry out in her dreams; all her bedclothes were soaked and she burned with fever, but she refused to receive the visit of a doctor and swore she’d be cured only if my uncle promised he’d never submit her to a test like that again.
Alexander promised what she wanted, and by the next morning Tatiana had recovered.
Distressed by the evidence that Tatiana had shown herself to be incapable of facing challenges others consider to be a powerful stimulus, my uncle asked himself what it was this woman expected or wanted. Was it something he could offer, allow or obtain for her? Something within reach of his fingertips? Or was it something abstract, ineffable, lacking substance?
On this point, it’s impossible not to wonder how my uncle could have been such a genius of Romanticism, and such a hopeless case when it came to sentimental matters.
In his position, even an individual gifted with a minimum of perceptiveness, someone barely above the level of the subnormal, would have noticed that Tatiana’s fury (her irritation, her spite, her bad mood) was the natural consequence of a hope forever disappointed, of a heart tired of never receiving the consolation of which it dreamed. Of course, love was the dark area in my uncle’s life, both what he felt for Tatiana—which beat away inside him, a dull unnamed throbbing—and the agony he’d felt for Vera, from whom he’d ripped himself away in the belief it would save his family. Maybe the hard time he had bringing love into his life again can be understood as the tremendously paralyzing but understandable manifestation of the terror the body feels during dark hours of the soul, the nightmarish possibility it will experience the effects of another amputation. For him, Tatiana could be anything—student, concubine, grantee or benefactress—except the region of flesh and blood where a wound could reopen, one that still hadn’t stopped bleeding.
