Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling Read Free Book Online Page B

there in the dark?” he asked, and kept his hand around mine until he opened the door into the hallway.
    When we stepped out into the light I became a man again, and we both let go.

Chapter Four
    T HE NEXT DAY, I LISTENED TO THE RADIO WITH Mother. a Russian diplomat explained the importance of Finnish territorial concessions lest the Germans invade the Hanko peninsula or use Karelia or Lapland as the bridgehead from which to attack Leningrad. It seemed to me that they were talking about Mars. Mother turned off the radio and played a few bars of music.
    “When I hear Finland, I think of Sibelius,” she said. I looked out the window at the haze around the winter sun. “My teacher heard Sibelius give a lecture on the overtones one hears in a meadow.”
    “You hear those, too,” I said.
    “Not a meadow,” Mother said. “At least, not usually. We don't spend much time in meadows. Yet.” Mother repeated daily her desire to leave Paris. All cities, she thought, were at risk. She played a few more bars of music. “Here's someone else,” she said.
    “It sounds the same.”
    “It's not.” She played one phrase, and then another. “That's Sibelius.” More notes. “And that's Mussorgsky, who came first. But I can't blame the Finn.” She played some more. Finally, she said, “One can hardly blame a copyist.” I realized then what she was trying to say. This was her own oblique, nearly opaque forgiveness, then, for my transgression.
    In my youth, it had come as a revelation to consider that some ofmy mother's strangeness was a result of her speaking to me in a language that was not her native tongue. With the crisis in Europe, though, as Mother grew ever more unusual, I decided that she would have been perplexing in any language. Or rather, that language for her was a necessity but not her preferred means of communication. Thus, during an explanation such as this, it was best to sit quietly. I had not the training to discuss Sibelius or Mussorgsky. At times I wished I had continued the music lessons of my childhood. As an adolescent, this same kind of wish had led me to study Polish, secretly, for a few months in hopes that one day I would speak to my mother in a proud declarative sentence and she would answer me with joy and clarity. Sadly, perhaps because gifts of music and language are often linked, I possessed neither one.
    She was now playing a new piece. “Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky wrote this for the painter Victor Hartmann, who died young. They had an exhibition of his watercolors, and Mussorgsky went and composed a piece for each of the paintings. A composition that accompanied him throughout the exhibit. This, the Promenade that I am playing, means Mussorgsky was walking between paintings. Movement One. And the first painting he saw was The Gnome , and that's Movement Two.” She played the Promenade theme again. “Listen to how dignified and precise the rhythm is. Then he sees another painting”—I could hear a key change—“and that's The Old Castle. This is the closest you can ever get to that exhibition. They say all of Hartmann's paintings have been lost, so there is only the music. And Mussorgsky drank himself to death.”
    THAT SAME MARCH, MOTHER DEVELOPED A NERVOUS cramp in her right hand that gripped her four fingers into a claw, leaving only the thumb mobile. It appeared spasmodically, and no doctor could treat or diagnose it. Her performing schedule was curtailed. No longer tied to the symphony season, she clamored for a move south. There was a known specialist in Nice and a hypnotist in Bordeaux. The humid climate might be good for her clenched muscles. Father delayed. Mother practiced Ravel's Concerto for Left Hand.
    March of that year also beheld the last great exhibition at the Berenzon Gallery—though of course we did not know this at the time—with works by Degas and Cézanne. Mother insisted on attending the opening, though she gave guests her left hand and retired earlier