The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 39

Only Edgar Zimmerman sold pianos. Edgar Zimmerman's life was pianos. (His more distinguished brother Hans was not involved in sales. Hans disdained "finances." He appeared in the store only to give piano instructions to selected students.) Yet Hazel Jones was often in the piano showroom, eager to dust, polish, buff the beautiful gleaming pianos. She came to love the distinctive smell of the special brand of lemon polish favored by the Zimmermans, an expensive German import sold in the store. She came to love the smell of real ivory. Zimmerman Brothers had even acquired an antique harpsichord, a small exquisite instrument made of cherrywood inlaid with gilt and mother-of-pearl, which Hazel particularly admired. It may have been that Edgar Zimmerman, widower, a short dapper man with gray bushy hair in sporadic clumps and a spiky goatee which his fingers compulsively stroked, was flattered by his youngest employee's enthusiasm for her work for often he was seen talking animatedly with her in the showroom; often, he would seek out Hazel Jones, and neither Madge nor Evelyn, to a.s.sist him in making a sale.

"Your smile, Hazel Jones! That cinches the deal."

It was a little joke between them, rather daring on Edgar Zimmerman's part. His fingers caressed the spiky goatee, with unconscious ardor.

Edgar Zimmerman, too, was a pianist: not so gifted as his brother Hans but very capable, demonstrating pianos for customers by playing favorite pa.s.sages from Schubert, Chopin, the thunderous opening of Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C-sharp Minor" and the romantic-liquidy opening of Beethoven's so-called "Moonlight Sonata." Edgar spoke of having heard Rachmaninoff play the Prelude, long ago at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. An unforgettable evening!

Hazel said, smiling her ingenuous smile, "You didn't ever hear Beethoven, I guess?in Germany? That was too long ago, I guess?"

Edgar laughed. "Hazel, of course! Beethoven died in 1827."

"And when did your family come to this country, Mr. Zimmerman? A long time ago, I guess?"

"Yes. A long time ago."

"Before the war?"

"Before both wars."

"You must have had relatives. Back in Germany. It is Germany the Zimmermans came from, isn't it?"

"Yes. Stuttgart. A beautiful city, or was."

"'Was'?"

"Stuttgart was destroyed in the war."

"Which war?"

Edgar Zimmerman saw Hazel smiling at him, though less certainly. She was an awkward schoolgirl, twining a strand of hair around her forefinger. Her red-lacquered nails flashed.

He said, "Someday, Hazel, maybe you will see Germany. There are some landmarks that remain."

"Oh, I would like that very much, Mr. Zimmerman! On my honeymoon, maybe."

They laughed together. Edgar Zimmerman was feeling giddy, as if the floor had begun to tilt beneath him.

"Hazel, much said about Germanyabout Germanshas been luridly exaggerated. The Americans make a fetish of exaggeration, like in Hollywood, you see?for a profit. Always for a profit, to sell tickets! We Germans have all been tarred with the same brush."

"What brush is that, Mr. Zimmerman?"

Edgar edged closer to Hazel, stroking his chin nervously. They were alone together in the lavish piano showroom.

"The Juden brush. What else!"

Edgar spoke with a bitter laugh. He was feeling reckless suddenly, this naive attractive girl staring at him with widened eyes.

"'Juden'?"

"Jewish."

Hazel was looking so perplexed, Edgar regretted he'd brought the d.a.m.ned subject up. It was never a subject that quite justified the expenditure of emotion it seemed to require.

He said, in his lowered voice, "What they have claimed. How theyJewshave wished to poison the world against us. Their propaganda about 'death camps.'"

Still Hazel was looking perplexed. "Who is 'us,' Mr. Zimmerman? Do you mean n.a.z.is?"

"Not n.a.z.is, Hazel! Really. Germans."

He was very excited now. His heart beat in his chest like a deranged metronome. But there was Madge in the doorway, summoning Edgar to the telephone.

The subject would never again be brought up between them.

"Hazel Jones, you keep us all young. Thank G.o.d for people like you!"

It was Hazel's idea to bring flowers in vases, to display on the most beautiful of the pianos in the showroom. It was Hazel Jones's idea to organize a raffle for tickets to Hans Zimmerman's annual student recital, held each May; and to offer "complimentary" tickets to customers who spent a certain sum of money at the store each month. Why not television advertis.e.m.e.nts, instead of just radio? And why not sponsor a compet.i.tion for young pianists, it would be such wonderful publicity for Zimmerman Brothers...

Hazel grew breathless, expressing such ideas. Her older companions in the store smiled in dismay.

It was then Madge Dorsey made the remark about Hazel Jones keeping them all young. And thank G.o.d for people like her.

"'People like me'? Who?"

Hazel seemed to be teasing, you never knew quite what she was getting at. Her girlish laughter was infectious.

Madge Dorsey made up her mind then not to hate Hazel any longer. These several weeks since the new salesclerklacking not only experience in sales, but totally ignorant of musichad been hired by Edgar Zimmerman, Madge had felt hatred blossoming inside her, in the region of her bosom, like a fast-growing cancer. But, to hate Hazel Jones was to hate the much-awaited spring thaw of upstate New York! To hate Hazel Jones was to hate the warm blinding flood of sunshine itself! And there was the futility, Madge conceded: Edgar Zimmerman had hired the girl, and Edgar Zimmerman was clearly taken with her.

Evelyn Steadman, salesclerk at Zimmerman Brothers for twenty-two years, was slower to be won over by Hazel Jones's "personality." At fifty-four, Evelyn was yet unmarried, with a waning and ever-waxing hope that Edgar Zimmerman, widower now for twelve years, in his early sixties, might take a sudden romantic interest in her.

Still, Hazel Jones prevailed. Thinking I will make you love me! So you will never wish to hurt me.

"How's my girl Hazel doin' here, Edgar? Any complaints?"

A few weeks after Hazel began working at Zimmerman Brothers, Chet Gallagher began dropping by in the late afternoon, in the wintry dusk when the store was about to close. Out of nowhere Gallagher appeared. He was known to the Zimmermans, and he appeared to be known to Madge and Evelyn, who brightened at his appearance. Hazel was always taken by surprise. Hazel had no idea that Gallagher was in town, and planning to surprise her with a dinner invitation that evening; often, Gallagher had failed to call her for several days, in the aftermath of a temper tantrum.

At such times, entering the store, Gallagher was smiling and exuberant and very much in control. He wore an expensive, rumpled camel's hair coat, his high forehead gleamed and his hair straggled over his shirt collar. Often he hadn't shaved for a day or two, his jaws glinted like metal filings. Hazel felt the glamor of her friend's sudden presence, the flurry of drama that accompanied his every gesture. In the tastefully decorated interior of Zimmerman Brothers Pianos & Music Supplies, on the polished parquet floor, Gallagher seemed somehow larger than life, like a figure that has stepped down off a movie screen. He made much of Edgar Zimmerman, zestfully shaking the man's small hand. He seemed even to enjoy the attention of Madge Dorsey and Evelyn Steadman who fluttered about him, calling him "Mr. Gallagher" and imploring him to play the piano.

"Just for a few minutes, Mr. Gallagher. Please!"

It was a lively scene. If business at Zimmermans had been slow, Chet Gallagher's appearance would end the day on a bright note. For it seemed that the jazz pianist was something of a local figure, and well liked.

Glancing at Hazel with a sardonic smile You see? Chet Gallagher is a big deal in some quarters.

Hazel removed herself to the side, not entirely comfortable. When Gallagher made one of his appearances she was obliged to show pleasure as well as surprise. Her face must light up. She must hurry to him in her high-heeled shoes, allow him to squeeze her hand. She could not hold back. She could not wound him. This was the man who had paid for her move to Watertown, who'd loaned her money for numerous items including the deposit on her apartment. ("Loaned" at no interest. And no need to repay him for a long time.) Gallagher insisted there were "no strings attached" to his friendship with them yet Hazel felt the awkwardness of her situation. Gallagher was becoming ever more unpredictable: driving from Malin Head Bay to Watertown on an impulse, to see her, and driving back to Malin Head Bay that night; capable of not turning up in Watertown when he'd made arrangements to see her, with no explanation. Though he expected explanations from Hazel, he refused to explain himself to her.

In the music store, Hazel saw Gallagher staring at her with an expression of confused tenderness and s.e.xual arrogance and she was filled with anxiety, resentment. He wants them to think I'm his mistress. He owns Hazel Jones!

It was a masquerade. Yet she could not abandon it.

"Come play for us, Chester! You must."

"Must I? Nah."

Gallagher had been a pupil of Hans Zimmerman's as a boy. There was an air of the renegade boy about him, amid these admiring elders. Implored to sit at a Steinway grand, Gallagher eventually gave in. Stretched and flexed his long fingers, lunged forward suddenly and began to play piano music of unexpected subtlety, beauty. Hazel had been expecting jazz and was surprised to hear music of an entirely different sort.

The adoring women identified Liszt: "Liebesraum."

Gallagher was playing from memory. His playing was uneven, in sudden rushes and runs of showy dexterity, then again elegantly understated, dreamy. And then again showy, so that you were watching the man's hands, arms, the sway of his shoulders and head, as well as listening to the sounds the piano produced. Yet Hazel was impressed, enthralled. If she and Zack lived with Chet Gallagher, he would play piano for them in this way...

You must love this man. You have no choice.

She felt the subtle coercion. If Anna Schwart could stand beside her now!

But Gallagher was striking wrong notes, too. Some of these he managed to disguise but others were blatant. Amid a virtuoso run of treble notes he broke off with "d.a.m.n!" He was embarra.s.sed, making so many mistakes. Though the others praised him and urged him to continue, Gallagher turned obstinately on the piano stool like a schoolboy, his back to the keyboard, and fumbled to light a cigarette. His face was flushed, his prominent, pointed ears were flushed red. Hazel could see that Gallagher was furious with himself, and impatient with Edgar Zimmerman explaining fussily to the three women, "You see, it is the style of Liszt himself, how Chester plays the 'Liebesraum.' How his arms roll with the notes, the strength in his arms, flowing from his back and shoulders. It is the revolutionary manly style Liszt made so famous, that the pianist could be equal to the composer's art."

To Gallagher, Zimmerman said with paternal reproach, "You should never have abandoned your serious music, Chester. You would have made your father so proud."

"Would I."

Gallagher spoke flatly. He was lighting a cigarette carelessly, Hazel dreaded sparks falling onto the piano.

Now Gallagher lapsed into teasing Edgar Zimmerman, as he teased Hazel asking how "my girl was doin'" and so Hazel eased away with an embarra.s.sed laugh. She knew, it was through Gallagher's connection with Hans Zimmerman that she owed her job here, she must be grateful to Gallagher as to the Zimmermans and such grat.i.tude was best expressed by not standing about idly like everyone else. Hazel had been shutting up the cash register when Gallagher had appeared and she returned to the task now. She would spend minutes deftly stacking nickels and dimes into rolls for the bank.

Such a tedious, exacting ritual! Neither Madge nor Evelyn could bear it but Hazel executed it flawlessly and without complaint.

"Hazel, my dear. Time to call it a day."

There was Gallagher in his rumpled coat, advancing upon Hazel with her own coat opened to her, like a net.

Sorry for barging in on you like that, Hazel. You weren't expecting me tonight I guess.

No.

But why's it matter? You haven't anything you're hiding from me have you?

Not likely that he would follow them into this new life.

For this was keeping-going in their new way. She smiled to think how astonished he would be, if he could know!

Zimmerman Brothers Pianos & Music Supplies. In a row of brownstones on South Main Street, Watertown. The bay window, visible up and down the street, and the Steinway grand piano illuminated in the bay window. And a vase of tall white lilies on the piano waxy in perfection.

And the brownstone at 1722 Washington Street where H. Jones and her son lived in #26. Where in the vestibule beside the aluminum mailbox for #26 the name h. jones was neatly handprinted on a small white card as a concession to the U.S. Postal Service.

(Hazel protested to the mailman: "But I don't get any mail except billsgas, electric, telephone! Can't bills be delivered just to 'occupant, #26'? Is it a law?" It was.) She did remember: the Watertown Plaza Hotel.

Where as Mrs. Niles Tignor she had signed her name in the registration book. As Mrs. Niles Tignor she had been known. Only vaguely did she remember the rooms in which she and Niles Tignor had stayed and she could not remember at all his face, his manner or his words to her for a mist obscured her vision as, when she was tired, the faint high-pitched ringing was discernible in her (right) ear. Mostly Hazel avoided the regal old Watertown Plaza Hotel. Except, Gallagher liked the Plaza Steak House. Naturally, Gallagher liked the Plaza Steak House where he was known, his hand warmly shaken. Gallagher was a steak man: plank steak, onion rings, very dry martinis. When he visited Watertown he insisted upon taking Hazel and Zack to the Steak House. Hazel was conscious of the danger. Though instructing herself Don't be ridiculous, Tignor isn't a brewery agent any longer. All that is finished. He has forgotten you. He never knew Hazel Jones. For those evenings at the Steak House, Hazel dressed somewhat conspicuously. Gallagher was in the habit of surprising her with attractive "outfits" for such occasions. Ever vigilant of the roaming eyes of other men, Gallagher yet took a perverse pride in Hazel's appearance at his side. In the lobby of the Watertown Plaza, holding Zack's hand and walking close beside Chet Gallagher, Hazel felt the sickish sliding glissando of male eyes moving upon her yet surely there was no one here who knew her, who knew Niles Tignor and would report her to him.

She was certain.

A woman opens her body to a man, a man will possess it as his own.

Once a man loves you in that way, he will come to hate you. In time.

Never will a man forgive you for his weakness in loving you.

15.

"Repeat, child."

A Czerny study that was twenty-seven bars of allegretto sixteenth-notes in four flats. Zack had played it once, slightly rushed, in small anxious surges as his piano teacher beat out the time with a pencil exact as the antiquated metronome on the piano. Zack had not missed or struck any wrong notes at least. Now at Hans Zimmerman's request, he played the study again.

"And another time, child."

Again, Zack played the Czerny study. Half-shutting his eyes as his fingers flew rapidly up, up into the treble, up, up into the treble in repet.i.tive gliding motions. It was a time, it would be months, years of such studies: Czerny, Bertini, h.e.l.ler, Kabalevsky. Acquiring and refining piano technique. When Zack finished, he did not remove his slightly trembling hands from the keyboard.

"You have memorized it, yes?"

Mr. Zimmerman closed the exercise book.

"Again, child."

Zack, half-shutting his eyes as before, replayed the study, twenty-seven bars of allegretto sixteenth-notes in four flats. The four/four time of the composition never varied. No compositions in the Royal Conservatory of Music Pianoforte Studies ever varied. When he finished, the elderly Hans Zimmerman murmured in approval. He'd removed his smudged eyegla.s.ses, he was smiling at his youngest pupil.

"Very good, child. You have played it four times, it can be no mistake you have hit only right notes."

In Watertown, New York, where Mr. Gallagher had brought them. Where days-of-the-week were crucial as they had not been crucial in Malin Head Bay. Where Sat.u.r.day was so crucial that Friday, which was the day-before-Sat.u.r.day, soon became for Zack a day of almost unbearable excitement and apprehension: he was distracted in school, at home feverishly practiced piano for hours not wanting to take time to eat supper and refusing to go to bed until late: midnight. For Sat.u.r.day morning at 10 A.M. was his weekly lesson with Hans Zimmerman.

Sat.u.r.day was Zack's favorite day! All of the week built up to Sat.u.r.day morning when his mother brought him with her to Zimmerman Brothers arriving at 8:45 A.M. and they would not leave until the store closed early Sat.u.r.day afternoon at 3:30 P.M.

How old is he, Hazel?

Six and a half.

Only six and a half! His eyes...

There was the excitement of Zack's lesson with the elder Mr. Zimmerman which sometimes ran over ten, fifteen minutes while the next pupil waited patiently in a corner of the music instruction room at the rear of the brownstone. But there was the excitement, too, of being allowed to remain behind to observe certain of Mr. Zimmerman's advanced students at the keyboard for this, too, was a way of acquiring technique.

"So long as you promise to sit very still in the corner, child. Still as a little Maus."

Zack thought A mouse is not still but nervous.