Madame Sousatzka by Bernice Rubens Read Free Book Online

concerts he shall give. And six months, you say. Six months, it is nothing. From the beginning we have started.’
    Mrs Crominski had never been convinced of that necessity. She recalled with a smile the regular Wednesday lesson, when Mr Lawrence came to the house, before all this nonsense of traipsing every Friday to the other end of the world and getting a hump for your trouble, even if it was all for nothing.
    â€˜When will he be ready?’ she said, suddenly angry.
    â€˜Mrs Crominski,’ Madame Sousatzka made an effort tobe calm. ‘If only concerts you want for Marcus, there are other teachers. Plenty other teachers. If for being a great pianist, there is only Sousatzka.’
    Mrs Crominski didn’t quite see why the two were antithetical. But Madame Sousatzka’s calm tone of voice had made her feel ungrateful. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Grateful you know we are. You know how it is in the life. Like all the mothers I am anxious for the best for my boy. I am happy you teach him, Madame Sousatzka. Very much he loves you, almost he forget sometimes I am his mother. Yes, is true,’ she said and she realized it suddenly for the first time. ‘Of course,’ she added quickly, ‘only sometimes he calls me Madame Sousatzka, now I come to think of it. Not very often he calls me that. Is habit, that’s all.’
    â€˜Of course,’ said Madame Sousatzka, jubilant. No matter how hard Mrs Crominski tried to take back what she had said, she had told her what she had wanted to know. And she immediately set to thinking how she could keep Marcus and his love. She couldn’t allow him to play in public. That was out of the question. If he did, his genius would be noticed, taken up by some showman or other, he would be launched and celebrated and she would lose him. There would be other teachers, the lettered ones, recognized by the Establishment, and she would get the occasional card from him at Christmas. She had had too many of those cards from other Sousatzka renegades. Her mantelpiece over Christmas was a tinsel testimony to her failure. Marcus she was determined to keep.
    On the bus on the way home, her eyes shut, Mrs Crominski was biting her tongue. She deeply regretted having betrayed Marcus’s feelings about Madame Sousatzka. She knew, too, how miserably she had failed in her cover-up. Her failure embarrassed her, and she voluntarily twitched her body. It also made her angry. ‘Three more months I’ll give that woman,’ she said to herself, ‘if Marcus doesn’t give a concert by then, I’ll take him away from her. And the hump. All that nonsense she talks. A bump, she calls it. Glasses she needs. It had better go, and quickly.’
    She had to move up to make room for a large gentleman burdened with parcels who sat heavily beside her, steppingon her foot in doing so.
    â€˜Bitte,’ he said, with some concern.
    â€˜You foreigners,’ said Mrs Crominski, ‘you’re all the same.’
    Madame Sousatzka looked lovingly at Marcus as he sat down at the piano for his lesson. Since Marcus had been coming to her, the memory of Boris had grown less painful. But she realized, especially now, after her talk with Marcus’s mother, the possibilities of losing him. She knew that with his talent, he had a right to a better teacher than herself. She knew that to teach was only a substitute for her, her evolved ‘method’ only an excuse for having failed to make the established grades. In the beginning she had believed in her method, even though its origins were specious. She had had utter faith in it, but it was difficult to ignore the fact that none of her pupils had greatly benefited from it. Perhaps they hadn’t stayed long enough to understand it. Yes, that was it, she convinced herself. With Marcus, if she could only keep him, it would work. She put her arm round his shoulders, outlining with her fingers the slight