Read-Aloud Plays Part 33

that would have been easy. He had tremendous energy. I used to grudge his interest in other things. I hated to see him lose the chances and let them be snapped up by littler men. He seemed to waste himself, right and left, prodigally. But it wasn't that, it wasn't waste. It was all as much a part of him as his music. He detested the stupidity of wealth and poverty, he rebelled against laws that aren't laws, but only interests enforced by authority, he fought against the sheer deadness of prejudice. How he hated all that! And why not? You see, Vera, he was sensitive to it not only as a thinker, but as a musician, too. It was all a part of the discord, and what I used to think his wasting himself was really an effort to create a larger harmony. He used to say that the beauty of music is only the image of beauty in life, and that life must come first. He couldn't endure discords anywhere. Paul despised the musicians who scream at a flatted _f_ but hunger for the flesh pots after the performance. No, he was never _that_. And people resented it. The very people who ought to have understood.

VERA

But he didn't neglect his music, that is...?

JEAN

No. He made enormous efforts to get his violin before the public. And several times he was "discovered" by men who could have made him famous overnight. We all believe that genius will out, despite anything, but it doesn't always. Musicians respected him, but they were afraid of him, too.

He criticized them for their shortcomings in other things, just as he criticized others for their shortcomings in art. He wouldn't accept any talent, no matter how fine, if it went with anything small or destructive.

You can imagine the china shops he left in fragments! Just think! Once in Berlin it was all arranged for him to have a recital--he was working furiously on his program and I was dancing on air--when just at the last moment he heard the director make some light remark or other about women.

Paul was raging! He threw the words back in the fellow's teeth, and made him apologize, but there we were. They called off the recital, naturally.

And I couldn't blame Paul. I was just beginning to understand. Another time ... no, he never had luck. Paul had bad luck. I often think of the Greek tragedies.

VERA

Another time?

JEAN

Another time--it was in Warsaw--we had gone with a letter of introduction to Sbarovitch--

VERA _The_ Sbarovitch?

JEAN

Yes. It was a chance in ten thousand. We p.a.w.ned stuff to get there. Well, Paul played like a G.o.d. Sbarovitch was quite overcome. He swore he would compose something especially for Paul. We had visions of playing before the Czar.

VERA

But what happened?

JEAN

What happened? One night a woman called on Paul at the hotel. He went down, not knowing who it was or anything about her. He said afterward that she started in flattering him and asking him to play for her some time....

Then Sbarovitch rushed in, seizing the woman and cursing Paul with mouthfuls of Slavic hate. So _that_ dream ended!

VERA

But why? Was it Sbarovitch's wife?

JEAN

No, worse luck--it was his mistress. Ah, you can't imagine the re-action from such disappointments! The long, slow warming to the full possibility of the occasion, until the artist's mind and body become one leaping flame--and then the sudden fall into icy water. It takes months to work up to the same pitch again.... And then Rome.

VERA

What, again?

JEAN

Oh, yes. Again. This time--for a wonder everything went smoothly. I had watched over him like a cat, to save him from others' stupidity and his own impetuousness. It came the very moment when he had to go to the theatre. He asked me if I were ready, I wasn't. _I didn't want to go._

VERA

You didn't want to go?

JEAN

No. It's difficult to explain, but somehow by then I had grown aware that the long series of little obstacles, each one accidental and temporary, seemed to express something unseen, something impersonal, a kind of fate ... as if the verdict had gone forth from the lords of things that Paul was _not_ to succeed. And everything seemed to hang in the balance that night. I thought that the fact I was aware of Paul's bad luck made me all the likelier instrument for it to work through. So I told him I had a headache.... He must have felt something in my voice. He dropped his violin and demanded I tell him why I didn't _want_ to go. His intuition told him it was a matter of will with me. I hadn't thought to have a story ready. Besides, I was so worn out that I was on the verge of hysteria. He stormed, and I sat staring at him without a word, wondering only why he didn't forget poor insignificant me and go forth to his glory. I despised him for considering me at such a moment. I didn't understand. _My_ opinion, _my_ feeling, was more important to Paul than the rest of the world. So, after all, I _was_ the instrument.

VERA

But why didn't you just get up and go?

JEAN

As soon as I saw how much it meant to Paul, I tried to. But it was too late.... We sat there arguing until three in the morning. An orgy of tears and self-immolation for us both.... I suppose he might have explained to the director afterward and arranged another concert, but those things are never the same the second time. Well, I forced myself to get rid of that feeling about his bad luck. How I ever succeeded I don't know, for Paul caught my mood and began to believe it himself. But somehow I did. And then I made him give up his violin and begin composing. Of course we had to have money for that. I wrote a relative and demanded, point blank, shamelessly, two thousand dollars. I felt it was my rest.i.tution to Paul. I received the money. What the relative thought, I don't know. I suppose he paid it to avoid getting another such letter from me. I don't blame him.

So we came over here and Paul started at work. I was fighting for him and with him every moment. How he worked! Six months, like a coal heaver. Then he finished and played it over. He tore it all up. Every note.

VERA

Why?

JEAN

He said it was written in an old-fashioned style. It was curious--in his playing he appreciated the most advanced technic, but when be came to compose he found himself imitating the things he had admired when he was eighteen. It had to be worked out of his mind. Well, he did it all through again. This time he said he was only about two years behind. Tore it up again. But now he was convinced he could succeed. And he was magnificent!

I would have shared him with the world gladly, but I knew it was best for him to do this work. The hours this room has seen! Well, he made a few notes, stopped a few days to take breath, and then caught the cold that wore him out. Over there, in that drawer, are the notes, a few sc.r.a.ps of paper. The rest of it--the experience of a strong life, a visioning life, are with the mind that is dumb. Sometimes when I sit here I hear it all played, an orchestra ... new harmonies, pure emotion.... The wonder and then the pain of it are almost unbearable.

VERA

Ah, Jean, I begin to understand.

JEAN

Over in London there are half a dozen men and women who caught a glimpse of Paul as he really was. In Munich there are half a dozen more. He was at his best in a studio among friends with a congenial atmosphere. _They_ knew... but what is that?

I tell you, Vera, the only way I can explain it all is by seeing two forces, two moralities; the morality of G.o.d and the morality of nature.

Perhaps in some people they both work together for the same end, but they don't always.... In the sight of heaven, Paul was an apostle of harmony.

In the sight of nature, he was the seed too many on the tree, the bird wrongly colored in the forest. I sit among these things, the fast-ebbing beats of his memory, thinking of what he might have been for others as he was to me, and my heart breaks. Our unhappiness? A cloud pa.s.sing before the sun--nothing more. And during this past year I have come to love him all over again, not as mate but as mother.

VERA

Ah, Jean, with all his bad luck, he had you! Who knows what might have happened if you had not been there?

JEAN

He had _me_? No, he never had me--he _made_ me.... And that's why I sit all alone with the things that are Paul,--Paul, the flame that was never lit on the altar, the sword that was never drawn from the scabbard.... We talk together, Vera. Paul and I. We talk together, and I wait for him to tell me what to do.