The Vexations Page 14

  The Mirliton is packed for the early show, and Erik hopes Philippe made it into the line outside in time to get seats for the later performance. Already onstage, Erik sits with his back toward the wall, the upright piano perpendicular to the front of the stage, which is only an empty wooden square at one end of the cramped room. Bruant swaggers on, a musketeer in top boots, velvet coat, scarf, and giant black sombrero. He doffs the hat, looks inside it. “Empty as my pockets,” he says with a heavy sigh, then tosses the hat over the first rows of tables and into the back, where a man catches it before it can land on his wife.

  “Thank you for your eagerness, sir,” Bruant says, with false gratitude. “Glad to know we’ll be getting off to a good start.”

  Although his sight line is partly blocked by the top of the piano, Erik watches the man grope for money. No doubt he didn’t expect to be on display in the far back of the room. Bruant is supposed to be on display. This is why the audience has come, because they’ve heard that Bruant is very amusing, stalking back and forth like a panther in the zoological gardens. But the panthers do not ask for money. There are no iron bars here at the Mirliton, and Bruant looks like he might bite.

  Still watching the hat make its way through the audience, Erik doesn’t notice Bruant gesturing for the first song. Bruant walks over and flicks him hard in the forehead, whispers “‘Mirliton,’ now,” and it takes Erik another moment to remember that it’s a song as well as the name of the café. He starts the thunderous chords of the opening and the audience jumps, so that the wooden chairs and the wooden room creak at once. Who needs lights, or a curtain? Part of Bruant’s showmanship is how unadorned it is.

  Just me, Erik thinks. He needs me. And he is both buoyed and terrified by his indispensability. The Conservatory was not the best preparation for this kind of work. While his classical training provided Erik with more than enough technical skill to play cabaret music, he never learned to play by ear, or improvise, or transpose well, moving the key up or down to suit a singer’s voice. He has worked hard to compensate, spending hours of unpaid time copying out transpositions by hand. If he has something written in front of him, he’s all right. His hands and eyes are quicker than his ear.

  The first song goes well enough, a few wrong notes but nothing obvious. Erik’s feeling all right until Bruant launches straight from the last chord of the opener into a patter song completely different from the one Hervochon has placed second in the folder. Erik scrambles through the pages for whatever Bruant is singing. He finally finds it, but there’s nothing on the page save the key signature and a freckling of notes. He does the best he can, noodling up and down the keys until something sounds passable, then repeating it until Bruant glares at him.

  The song, “Automatic Women: You Get What You Pay For,” is about newfangled automatons: an actress, a barmaid, a dancer. The lyrics explain, in detail, just how many coins must be inserted in each, and exactly what actions result. “New accompanist tonight, folks,” Bruant says in the fourth verse. “I put in the coins, but I am not getting what I paid for.”

  In truth Bruant hasn’t paid him anything yet, and now Erik’s afraid he won’t. He shrugs his shoulders exaggeratedly up and down, makes apologetic eyebrows and a crumpled mouth. Sad clown.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Erik,” he says—no point in lying. There are almost certainly people in the audience who have seen him onstage elsewhere. He’s known in Montmartre just enough to have lost his anonymity. It’s the state he thought he was working toward, but right now he wishes he had it back.

  “Try to keep up, Erik.”

  For the next few songs, he can. Bruant does them in the order in the folder, announcing the titles ahead of time so Erik can put them in the rack. When he first arrived this evening, it took forever to find the folder—no one at the Mirliton could remember Hervochon using written music. Here’s one about a chimney sweep. Here’s one about a coal carrier, how he starves all summer and breaks his back all winter hauling heavy loads up narrow staircases. He’s so excited about the invention of elevators that he makes one his sweetheart. He leaves his wife and rides the elevator up and down all day long. Rides it, rides it, up and down. All—day—long.

  The government censors usually guarantee at least some restraint from performers, but tonight Erik doesn’t see any of the familiar faces, turnip-colored bureaucrats scribbling in the back row with a free drink in front of them and often a bribe in their pockets to edit the final report. Maybe they’ve been dispatched elsewhere—Montmartre has grown beyond the government’s ability to police it—or maybe Bruant has paid them off in advance.

  “Pass the hat,” he says. “I saw you, sir, passing it along without even looking inside. So little intention of giving you don’t even think about stealing! I see the cost of your gloves, fine leather, sir, and yet those gloves pass the hat without making a small donation?”

  Bruant doesn’t dance, just stalks and postures and grimaces expressively. His body manages to be both elastic and sharp, a rubber tiger. His voice is nothing special, an octave of gravel and an octave of sunlight, but he’s learned how to drag the one through the other.

  The sole reason Erik is getting by at all is that some of Bruant’s material isn’t original—Erik has played these songs for other singers. Bruant commences one about a luscious lady of the night, then stops himself.

  “Who are we fooling?” he says. “We’re all adults here, yes? The song’s about a whore. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s a song about a fucking whore. Maybe it’ll sound familiar. Fucking whores, every one of you.”

  Two adventurous girls, unchaperoned by any male companion, have been exchanging glances since Bruant started, and at the mention of whores they rise to leave. The girls are heckled, of course, but they push their way steadfastly through the packed crowd.

  “Can’t wait any longer, can you?” Bruant asks them. “Can’t wait to get your hands on each other. Unlace yourselves. Am I invited?”

  One girl is frozen. The other shakes her head.

  “Could Monsieur Erik come home with you?” Bruant tries.

  Erik shakes his head as well. He doesn’t want these poor girls to think he’s part of their problem.

  “No?” Bruant says to him in mock amazement. “Two flowers like that?” By now his hat has been returned to the stage. He empties it of francs and walks over to Erik. “Nothing here, or here, or here?” he says, touching his hat first to Erik’s head, then to his hands on the keys, and finally to his crotch.

  Now Bruant hurls himself into a parody whose vicious political lyrics are laid over the tune of an old waltz. He tells Erik to transpose it into a different key, but Erik can play it only as written. At first Bruant gives it a go. The high notes are too high, though, out of his range. He squeaks and cracks and whispers, then kicks the back of the piano and draws his finger across his throat.

  This is one of those dreams, Erik thinks, like showing up to school in your underwear, except that this is happening. He’s never been halted mid-performance, never heard a performer stop dead like this. He’s watched people finish their songs and fall drunk off the stage. He accompanied one green-faced man who up and died the next night. But the show has always gone on, even if it skipped the last verse. Maybe, Erik thinks hopefully, this could be a dream. He pushes back from the piano and urges his body into the air, as if to take flight.

  “What are you doing?” Bruant hisses.

  “I can’t transpose. I’m sorry. Not by sight.”

  Astonishment and loathing flicker across Bruant’s face before he collects himself. “Where did you learn to play?” he thunders, speaking to the audience now rather than to Erik.

  “The Conservatory.”

  “That explains so much. I need an accompanist, I get a little faggot from the Conservatory. Probably knows Mendelssohn but can’t transpose a little song about our dear president.”

  Erik plays a line of Mendelssohn. The crowd laughs obligingly. Maybe, Erik hopes,
they’ll think this is all staged.

  “Beethoven? Mozart? Chopin?”

  This he can do. He collages the phrases into each other, famous passages the crowd will recognize.

  “Bruant? Let’s give him his place among the stars.”

  Erik plays an approximation of the first lines of “Le Mirliton.” Bruant throws out a few more names, buying time, as he pages through the music in the folder atop the piano. He removes some pieces, shuffles them into order, and drops them into the rack. “Rest of the set,” he whispers. He taps out the tempo for the next song with his tall boot, and Erik comes in cleanly. The wheels are back on, but however well Erik plays, Bruant keeps cracking jokes at his expense. Toward the end of the show a brave soul shouts out a request. “Better not,” Bruant says. “I don’t think Monsieur Erik would be up for that one.” The audience boos Erik. His face goes hot.

  Bruant performs the finale a cappella as Erik stumbles through the tables with the hat held out like a collection plate. “If you’ve enjoyed what you heard,” Bruant calls out, “but especially if you haven’t, please consider a donation so Monsieur Erik may get some piano lessons.” As the audience files out, Bruant doesn’t retreat to a back room. He waits on the stage, by the piano, for Erik to return with the hat. “You were shit. That was shit.” Erik stays silent, eyes downcast, a kicked dog. Bruant snatches the hat, pours it out so that the money rattles like hail onto the keys. “Listen to that. I’d rather listen to that all day than to you.”

  Erik offers to try to find someone else for the second show.

  “On half an hour’s notice, on a Saturday night?” Bruant shakes his head. “We do it again this way. Actually, play even worse, if that’s possible. That’ll be the theme for the late show: hopeless. Since you already are.”

  “Let me try again for real. We’ve got—” Erik’s not sure how much time remains before the second show, but maybe enough to write out the songs Bruant needs transposed.

  Bruant shakes his head. “Since you didn’t have the sense to turn down the job in the first place, this is our best option.”

  “Am I still getting paid?” If the answer’s no, he’ll walk out now.

  Bruant gestures at the money on the piano, on the floor, under the pedals. “I said it was yours. For piano lessons.”

  It’s no small amount. Much more than they’d agreed on, in fact. Even with the humiliation of scrambling on the ground to collect the money, Erik is giddy for a moment. Then he remembers who will be in the audience for the late show. He thinks he has time to run outside and tell Philippe to get out of line, to make up some excuse for Louise and Conrad and Pierre. After Bruant stalks offstage, Erik scoops up the money from the floor and keyboard and shoves it in his pockets, where it clinks against the pocketknife he’s been carrying all day, waiting for his opportunity to give it to Louise. When he looks up, pockets stretched and full, Erik sees Philippe already pulling a chair away from one of the long communal tables. At Philippe’s request, the young woman seated across from him lends him items of clothing—a hat, a scarf, gloves—to drape across chair backs to hold the seats.

  Erik rushes to the table, strips the chair backs, and starts handing the clothing to the woman. “You can’t stay,” he says to Philippe. “The first show was a disaster.”

  “You got sacked already?”

  “I’m playing but it’s going to be terrible. You have to get them out of here.”

  “Your brother and sister? They were always going to hate it. I thought that was a mistake you were letting them make.”

  “I’m going to be terrible.”

  “Well, apparently Bruant thought you were good enough to manage the second show.”

  “Only because he’s going to make fun of me the entire time.” Drinks arrive and Erik reaches for Philippe’s beer, takes down half of it in a succession of gulps. “I’m not Hervochon, I’m just me,” he says, summing up the problem.

  “Always,” Louise says, arriving from behind him with Conrad and Pierre.

  Since the party she has changed into a green dress and rearranged her hair into elaborate loops falling over her ears. Maybe they’ll interfere with her hearing, Erik thinks. “You should go,” he tells her. “The show is terribly racy. I really don’t think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “I can handle racy,” Louise says defensively.

  Pierre sits down, assuring Erik that they’re not expecting anything in particular and will be pleased with the show regardless. His gentle encouragement makes Erik want to spit. As if he cares what Pierre thinks. As if the opinion of some rich, spindly gentleman doctor means anything to Erik.

  He cares, of course. He cares what everyone thinks.

  Erik finishes Philippe’s beer and walks back to the piano like a man headed to the guillotine. As the rest of the seats fill, he studies the folder of music as if it will help him. He wants to announce to the audience that he is really quite well liked at his regular gigs, at the Auberge and the Chat Noir, where the singers have learned to give him their music ahead of time. He’s never too drunk to play. Perhaps because he’s often operating at the edge of his own confidence, he’s patient, quick to adjust his volume to a nervous voice or circle back for a missed entrance. If an audience member gets too nasty, Erik will shame him from the stage. He writes original songs and lets performers sing them for free. At first the songs were too odd and soft for anyone to bother. But they’ve been getting brassier, sassier. Most remarkably, Erik has never tried to sleep with any of the performers. Yet he knows Bruant would be unimpressed by this list of achievements.

  Once the seats are full and the first round of drinks served, Bruant takes the stage and nods his head at Erik. Erik’s fingers, positioned on the keys for the opening of “Le Mirliton,” tremble slightly. The expectant silence is nearly complete. The only sounds are the rustlings of clothing, a few scattered coughs, glasses being set gently on the table.

  Erik clatters in with the opening chords and Bruant, full of glorious contempt, screws up repeatedly so that he can blame Erik. The audience batters him with laughter. During the roll call of classics, Bruant throws in some extra names: Massenet and Liszt and Bach. It’s Erik’s one chance in the show to look competent, and he milks it for all it’s worth. Louise has the musical skill to appreciate what he’s doing, and he imagines he’s playing his medley of classics for her.

  He can tell Bruant is about to move on to the next bit, and Erik can’t let this chance at the Mirliton go by: he yells out his own name. What he plays is the wrong song for the room, for the mood, the moment, but whatever he plays will enrage Bruant, and this is his favorite of his compositions. It’s three years old and still his favorite, which sometimes frustrates him—why hasn’t he surpassed himself by now?

  The piece is serene, unashamedly pretty. The crowd is unsure how to react. If it were a cabaret song they would get the joke, but there is no hint of insincerity or showmanship. Bruant stands with his eyebrows nearly disappearing into his hair. Erik is prepared to be stopped at any moment but tries not to rush. If he doesn’t make it to the end, then let whatever fragment the audience hears sound the way it’s supposed to sound. He dares to hope Bruant will pretend to be in on the plan long enough to let him finish.

  For the moment the notes drop into a pool of silence, one by one, ripples spreading outward. Both the melody and the quiet, mournful accompaniment of the left hand are delicate. It’s a simple piece; unlike so much else of what Erik has been attempting, there is no sense of the reach exceeding his grasp. The piece is small and complete unto itself, a clear glass globe. It feels like that rarest of rare things, a creation that has come out exactly the way its creator wanted. It’s a song you could weep to, deliciously, but also one so gentle and pretty that you could stop listening to it and just let it hang, draped against the background of your life.

  He’s written three of these pieces, all similarly simple, similarly lovely, similarly unheard. There wasn’t really a market for them right now, Eugénie to
ld him matter-of-factly when he played them for her and Alfred in the apartment. The name was baffling, Alfred added. It sounded a bit ridiculous—“Gymnopédies”—like made-up Greek. The intent was to evoke ancient statuary, Erik said, the quiet half-smile of a caryatid. He felt he’d done it, carved three elegant marble statues out of piano notes, but no one else seems to hear them the way he wishes they would.

  All Bruant says when Erik finishes is “Pretty.” Then he’s silent so long Erik wonders if he should push his luck and start playing the second one. He’s trying to feel the room, decipher what they thought. Do they even understand the piece is his?

  “Pretty, like a girl,” Bruant finally adds. “A little sylph.”

  Perhaps “sylph” isn’t a bad descriptor? All Philippe said when he first heard it was “Nice.” Philippe doesn’t know anything about music anyway. He always says Erik’s music is good, even when Erik knows it’s shit.

  “Do you have a little sylph, Monsieur Erik? A sweetheart?”

  Erik shakes his head.

  “Do you have a sister?”

  He pauses, but nods.

  “Is she pretty?”

  He nods again—dangerous, but of course there’s no other option.

  “Then let’s have a song about another pretty girl. A little more fun, eh? Since these people have come out for fun.” Bruant flips through the folder on top of the piano, pulls out a song called “Aimée,” and hands it to Erik. “What’s her name, your sister?”

  This whole turn is so unexpected that Erik wonders if Bruant knows his sister is in the audience. Is this some elaborate plot? He’s afraid to lie. “Louise,” he says.