Published in The Grove Review, Fall/Winter 2004, and chosen for the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project/National Public Radio Show The Sound of Writing, 1993 (Story read by actor Barbara Rappaport)
On a Sunday afternoon in early November, Frankie Pawlick stood on the large front porch of his house in west Toronto. He wore a warm navy jacket, just given to him by his daughters, a new red woolen scarf that looked lively against his white hair, and new leather gloves. He kept one arm on the porch railing to steady himself while his family–three daughters, two sons, a profusion of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, nephews, and grand-nieces, their husbands and wives, and babies beyond his capability for classification–flowed out of the door of the house, circled around him, and spilled onto the lawn. He smiled and nodded to them as they called out goodbyes and slowly made their way to the street and their cars. When Joseph, his twenty-eight-year-old grandson, stepped onto the porch, Frankie motioned to him with his gloved hand, then leaned close to ask if Joseph would like to stay for a vodka.
Joseph smiled and shook his head. He turned the collar of his tweed coat up against the cold, looking like the professor that he was.
“Just one,” Frankie said, raising two fingers and smiling conspiratorially. “And a little music. Prince Igor, if you like.”
Joseph laughed as if Frankie had told a joke. He rested his hand on the shoulder of his son Paul. “Another time, Poppa. We have to get going.”
Frankie looked down at young Paul. It could be fun for the little boy, too. He could get out his baton and conduct. The little ones were always amused by that. If Joe would stay just for one.
But Joseph and Paul were out in the street walking toward their car before Frankie could suggest all this. Lately, Frankie thought, things happened faster than they used to. It was too bad. He knew the Russians well, had spent almost ninety years listening to them! His mother had taken him to concerts in Krakow as a small child, and he had always preferred the Russians, despite his Polish upbringing even, even despite fighting against them back when he was eighteen years old. If Joseph the Professor had stayed, he might have learned something new. And it was Sunday. Where did Joseph have to go on Sunday?
Odd, Frankie thought, how everyone had got up from their chairs to leave at once. And his wife Rosalyn had bustled among them in her tight knit dress and orthopedic shoes as if this were normal. As if she had orchestrated it.
The pale November sun slanted into his eyes just as a woman stopped on the step beside him to speak to him. He could hardly hear her, and he couldn’t see her face either, with the sun like that. Who was she? Someone who would enjoy a vodka with him? She had a brown print kerchief tied under her chin, a lumpy camel-haired coat, a heavy handbag. He thought not. He nodded as she advised him to take care till she was back to visit again, and shifted his eyes down to the grass where the children were playing.
A boy of about eight darted down the steps, pulling his sweater on over his head as he ran. Frankie liked the look of him–quick and daring, he thought. Other children scrambled about, collecting their jackets, shoes, and toys, preparing for their car rides home. Frankie focused on a little girl who sat hunched over the handlebars of a tricycle in the middle of the sidewalk. The hood of her jacket was tied in a tight circle around her face, her eyes were fixed on the fat front wheel of her plastic trike. Frankie watched her legs on the pedals straining to move the wheel over the edge of the lawn and onto the soft brown grass.
He moved out from the porch railing and inched down the steps toward her. He could help her.
One of Frankie’s daughters, Leila, materialized at his elbow to help him down the steps. He allowed her to, but when he reached the sidewalk he pulled his arm away and made a target of the little girl on the tricycle.
Blue flower patches covered the little girl’s worn corduroy pants. She could not be more than three years old, he supposed. How odd that they should both be inhabiting the same sidewalk.
He was in front of her and bending to catch hold of the handlebars when the mother of the child whisked by and pulled the girl up off the seat. She lifted the trike in her other hand in almost the same motion.
“Time to go, Anna. Say goodbye to Poppa.”
Frankie gazed at the mother and thought to himself, she is too fat. She could not be in his family. In time she will make the little girl fat, too, he thought.
They were away from him and at the gate to the street before Frankie could say a word. Just as fast as Joseph and Paul, in spite of the fatness of the mother. Frankie felt a stab of shame. Perhaps she had thought he would hurt the child. He watched the girl’s wistful face as she looked back over her mother’s shoulder, her hand waving toward the unconquered lawn. In apology, Frankie lifted his arm and motioned back to her. Someday, little brown-eyed girl, he thought, we will listen to Prince Igor and have a vodka together.
Suddenly everyone was gone and he was waving at nothing. It was certain that things happened faster than they used to, Frankie thought. The sun, for instance, dropped at lightening speed each day behind the hills of High Park, across from his house. Now, with his long arm outstretched in front of him, he saw that it sat in the sky a thumb-to-baby-finger stretch from the tops of the highest pines. Perhaps he would sit in one of the slatted chairs on the lawn to watch it race down to the horizon.
Just as he had settled back in the chair, adjusting the zipper on his new jacket exactly half way down and rearranging the red scarf, a shiny black box of a car drove by in the street. The rumble seat on the back of it held a black and white number, 378. The man driving the car wore a top hat, the woman beside him a feathered bonnet. The woman leaned over and tweaked the horn as they went by. Frankie was delighted. He smiled and raised his gloved hand in a kind of salute to her. There was someone who would enjoy a glass of vodka.
Behind that car drove a low, dark-green car with large fenders like wings and number 270 on the spare tire at the back of it. Then another boxy car with large, thin, spoked wheels. Similar to mine, he thought.
Other cars ambled by. Frankie waved to each one that held a lady, as long as she was not fat. He could tell if they were fat even from the waist up, even with his second-rate spectacles, which seemed to be getting worse. He had never liked fat women, he thought. That’s why he’d married a dancer–he pictured Rosalyn in draped, ivory-white silk unfurling on the stage like a white orchid.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the door scraped open and Rosalyn stepped out on the porch behind him. Frankie turned stiffly in his chair. “Look at this,” he said to her. “These people–they’re out exercising their cars.”
Rosalyn adjusted thick black frames on her nose and pulled an imaginary wisp of hair back into her grey curls. She peered out at the street, her pale blue eyes doubting.
“Be a race along the Wisla, I bet,” Frankie said. He leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his leather gloves together softly. He wished he was holding a glass of vodka between the new gloves.
Rosalyn pulled her cardigan tightly over her chest and stepped down onto the grass beside Frankie. “I think it’s a club for people with antiques, Frankie.” She took hold of Frankie’s arm. “Sit back in your chair, why don’t you.”
He inched forward a little more.
Rosalyn removed her hand from his arm. She sat down heavily in the lawn chair beside him and without looking at him, said in a flat voice: “You’re forgetting again. You’re not in Poland.”
Frankie kept his eyes on the procession of cars while she shuffled in her seat beside him, arranging her skirt around her knees. Finally she was still and they both watched silently until the last car passed.
“They were wearing hats,” Frankie commented finally, to introduce a new subject. Rosalyn was Canadian and had never lived anywhere else but the west end of Toronto, so she could never get mixed up about where she was. He had lived in Krakow and London before Toronto, making it harder. Still, he felt embarrassed about mentioning the old river. He pulled the peak of his cap down a little over his eyes.
“It’s cold out here,” Rosalyn said. She raised her shoulders and grasped her elbows, her sign language for cold. But Frankie had heard her clearly enough. “Come in for your nap,” she persisted. “You have to remember you have a weak heart.”
“I have a weak everything,” he said, looking down at his long thin legs, the sags in his dark trousers. He figured that a glass or two of vodka would strengthen him considerably, warm him up.
“Well at least pull the zipper up on your jacket,” she said, frowning. “That jacket just hangs on you.” She leaned over to do it for him, her chair wincing loudly as she moved, but Frankie pushed her hands away.
“I think I’ll watch the race instead of the nap, today.”
“There isn’t going to be a race.” Rosalyn let out a quick sigh and grasped the wide arms of the lawn chair, pulling herself up. Bending slightly over him, she took a deep breath and shouted: “That was just a parade!”
Her voice ricocheted in his ears. Of course he knew that! He meant the sun, he told her. He wanted to watch the sun race down the sky and behind the hills.
Rosalyn walked toward the porch steps and waved her hand toward him dismissively. She bent to pick up a plastic Batman that lay forgotten at the edge of the sidewalk. “It’ll be two hours at least before it sets, Frankie,” she said, softer this time. She put the Batman into the pocket of her print apron and pulled at the pink cardigan again. “And it’s too cold for you to be sitting out here so long.”
He supposed she was right, though it was annoying to do so. He rubbed his neck where the wool scarf was scratching him. If she said it would be that long, he believed her. He was not a fool; he knew her perceptions were sharper than his. She was twelve years younger, and age hadn’t interfered with her as much as it had with him. Not yet, anyway.
It was a little cold, Frankie remarked to her. Nothing a little vodka wouldn’t fix, he thought. He turned and followed her, his eyes on her thick support stockings and thick black shoes. Who would have thought her dancer’s legs would end up like this? Once, they had loved to dance together. But her legs bothered her too much now. Some day she would find their house too big to care for, too. He supposed that Rosalyn would live in a condominium after he died.
Rosalyn and Frankie never discussed his death, which made Frankie sad. Rosalyn wouldn’t participate in any conversation about it, as if speaking of it would rush the process. Talk of his youth as a conductor was also frowned upon, as if the fact of it was an affront to her. Don’t talk about the past, don’t talk about the future. Meanwhile the present rushed by, he thought; it practically didn’t exist.
Frankie walked along the creaky hallway floor toward the back of the house. He could hear Rosalyn in the kitchen. She was cleaning up the dishes and putting away the food. He wondered for the hundredth time why she wouldn’t let the younger ones do that for her.
He shrugged to himself. It was not his problem.
He pushed open the door to the den. The blinds had been closed, so that his books and records along the left side of the room seemed to be covered in a grainy film, like a bad TV picture. The TV itself caught the most light of anything in the room. Rosalyn had already opened the sofabed on the right side of the room. She had placed two pillows just the way he liked them and left a white blanket in case he felt chilled. He unzipped his jacket and laid it carefully over the back of a leather chair. He wondered where the chair had come from. He couldn’t remember it being there before. It stood under the window, brown leather like his gloves. He had always preferred black leather.
He sat down on the edge of the sofa. Why not a vodka, Joe or no Joe? Several, perhaps. He sat and stared into the gloom, deciding. Yes, why not, he would go down to the basement to the freezer, where it was kept. To hell with Joe, with Rosalyn, with the doctor. He would pour himself a glassful.
For times like these he kept a small, amber glass on the bookshelf, behind the dictionary where he knew it would not be found. He took it and walked–though shuffled was more the word nowadays–to the basement door. He could still manage the basement steps if he was careful. He opened the door gingerly, because it sometimes squeaked. He had said to hell with Rosalyn, but still he didn’t want her worrying. He thought he could hear her humming over the sound of water running and dishes clattering.
It was easy. He lifted the door of the freezer and was greeted by a cloud of icy air. Inside a little lightbulb glowed festively through the silver label on his vodka bottle. He reached for it, at the same time reminding himself to put the basket of laundry back on top of the freezer before he left the basement.
He knocked back one icy shot while he stood by the open freezer. He filled his glass back up again and eyed the sparkling liquid. He liked the way it frosted the glass. It reminded him of the vodka he had drunk on the wintry day Paul, his eldest son, had been born. He’d spent a long night and morning waiting and worrying at the hospital before the birth. He had not felt he should have anything to drink while Rosalyn was going through everything. But once it was over, he celebrated with an afternoon of cigars and food and drink at Rosalyn’s parents’ house. “You finally did it!” his father-in-law, Stepan, had kidded him, a rakish gleam in his eye. The glass that Stepan had handed him seemed like a reward. Frankie was not a young father, but he had felt like one. And how cold and pure the vodka had tasted, with the winter sun pouring through the windows and shining through his glass.
That night, rosy with drink, he’d gone to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Box Concert with Rosalyn’s two sisters. It was 1941, the middle of the war, before his own sisters and brothers would join him in Canada, but he couldn’t have been happier. He had a new son, the first of many he hoped, a wonderful loving wife with beautiful legs who would dance the night away with him, and the possibility of becoming Associate Conductor for the Symphony. He smiled upon everyone in Massey Hall. He wanted to shout out his good fortune.
That night he had gone home and drunk more vodka straight from the refrigerator freezer, icy, glorious. Then he’d stood out on the front porch that he shared with two other families–a porch not far from the one he’d waved goodbye on today–and toasted his neighbours, singing just for them the Polish national anthem. None of them had come out to join him, but his happiness had been as pure as the drink in his hand.
Now here he was again admiring a frosty glass. But this time he was standing in the middle of the basement. No, in fact he was once again in the den. He could not remember coming back up the stairs and down the hall. Had he remembered to put the basket back on the freezer? He couldn’t be sure.
Oh well, he thought, it’s no serious matter–and the glass is still three quarters full.
In the warmth of the room, the comfortable pillows, the bright white blanket, it almost felt as if he had stared into the glass and made the vodka appear by magic. He set the amber glass down on the coffee table. It would be better to have a clear glass, to see the vodka better. He would have to find the right moment, when Rosalyn was shopping perhaps, to switch this yellow glass for a better one.
But where was he? He had been thinking. Oh, yes, Ettore Mazzoleni. Ettore Mazzoleni had become the Associate Conductor of the orchestra the year after Paul was born. And Frankie Pawlick had taken on a full-time position as a clerk in the City Government.
Frankie bent over his wooden radio cabinet. It was tuned to CBC. He had never liked any other station, so the needle was always at the same spot. Not much in the way of good music or good orchestras in Canada, he thought to himself. This thought was like a daily mantra he’d kept since 1942. He flicked the radio on, hoping there wasn’t a talk show on at this hour. He was lucky–Tchaikovsky had died, and they were playing his music. He sat down on the sofa again. He lifted the glass to his lips.
“Happy Birthday, Pyotr Ilyich,” he said softly into the half-light of the room.
Wait a minute. No, he thought, it was Tchaikovsky’s death, not birth. Funny how you could celebrate both after someone was dead. Which was the more important? He doubted anyone would celebrate his death after the initial funeral. Well, OK, he would celebrate it now. He took another mouthful of the vodka and stared at the red needle behind the thick, clear plastic of the radio band.
He listened to the soft voice of the woman radio announcer. Perhaps she had beautiful legs, he thought. She was telling him that Tchaikovsky had died many years ago. A hundred years ago, in fact.
So what, not so long ago really, Frankie thought. He shut his eyes and rested two of his long fingers on the bridge of his nose, to help him concentrate. He might have known Tchaikovsky, mightn’t he, if Tchaikovsky had lived as long as he, Frankie, was doing now? But Tchaikovsky lived so far from Krakow. He shook his head in annoyance. It was so difficult to measure time and distance.
Clasping his hands in a ring around his glass, he tried to gather his thoughts. The announcer was talking about Tchaikovsky’s visit to New York. Then why not Krakow? They could have met at the Warsaw Conservatory, couldn’t they? It was possible.
They were going to hear the Symphonie Pathetique, she said. “What else?” he answered her, aloud. Tchaikovsky had conducted it just eight days before his death. He wondered if Tchaikovsky’s wife had discussed his death with him. Why not?–the entire symphony was a discussion of death. How could she have ignored it? But if he remembered correctly, Tchaikovsky’s marriage had been a disaster. He didn’t like to think too much about the reasons for this. Maybe Tchaikovsky’s wife hadn’t even cared whether he lived or not by the time death arrived.
But now he had missed the bassoon opening. Damn. He had meant to get out his baton to conduct. It sat in its black leather box on the top shelf of the bookcase, where he could see it. He imagined standing and crossing the room, feeling the dust on his fingers as he put his hand on the black case, carefully unlatching the brass catch, and slipping the baton out of the old, worn velvet lining. He imagined the cork ball of the baton in the palm of his right hand, the delicate wooden rod between his thumb and first finger, and then moving his arm wide like a great, powerful bird, drawing out the orchestra.
But the music kept him rooted to the sofa. He felt heavy as stone, unable to move. Yet the violas and cellos needed to be cued in. With great effort, he lifted his left hand and brought them in, softly. After all, he thought, I am good enough not to need a baton. He set the glass of vodka down on the coffee table in front of him and began keeping time with his right hand.
At one time Frankie had not had good control over his right arm, and he’d suffered for it. Back when Frankie was a student, Malcolm Sargent had compared him to the French composer Lully, who died of gangrene after thumping his toe with the long staff he used to keep time. You are not churning butter, Francis, Sargent had mocked, with a peculiar mixture of brutality and charm, you are conducting an orchestra. Frankie felt that his own long life was partly a result of learning to control his right arm.
Frankie moved his hands and arms in a miniature version of what he would do in front of a real orchestra. He stared at the clear white liquid in the glass in front of him and conducted to it, as if the little round world of the glass and the vodka was an orchestra. As if he was in a little round glass world himself. He felt stronger. He turned his left palm up and curled his fingers gently, beseeching, showing the strings how to sweeten their tone. There was no need even to stand, he realized–he could imagine standing, his left foot a little forward to keep perfect balance. He was not one of those conductors who moved around a lot–he knew better than that. He was not like Gustav Holst, whose fall off the podium had cost him his life!
Now the violins and cellos were falling together in the famous lyric theme that Frankie loved so much. Those simple eighth notes had never failed to move his sentimental heart.
Even as a young man this had been so. Many years ago in London he had slipped quietly into the back of the concert hall at the Royal College of Music. It had been late afternoon, like now, with a similar pale sun and white sky. He had just happened to come in by chance. He’d forgotten something. He remembered leaving his bicycle on the steps, and running in with the eagerness of a new student, newly arrived in England, twenty-four years old–though that was much older than most of his fellow-students. Alright for a conductor, though. When he opened the door to the concert hall, the Third Orchestra was playing that so-familiar, falling theme, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonie Pathetique. The hall was empty and dark except for the stage lights shining down on the orchestra players. He had rested against the railing, looked down the even descent of empty chairs and watched the baton draw out the line. He hadn’t minded the poor intonation of the Third Orchestra. Instead he felt an overwhelming desire to be the one pulling the music up out of the players and into the air. He would have liked to have leaned towards the violins and flattened his palms to show them they should hold back. Hold back and don’t overdo it, he would’ve said. He was confident that he would do all of these things one day: gesture to the basses to sustain the line, cue the percussion for a difficult entry, plead with the winds to offer themselves up to each phrase.
He was so glad in his heart to be there, and he planned to show everyone what a fine musician he was.
But this was years before coming to Canada. It was years before marrying Rosalyn. And long before he realized it was impossible for him to make a living as a conductor in Canada.
His back hurt the way he was slumped against the back of the sofa. He shifted and reached for the glass of vodka. The feel of the little glass in the palm of his hand satisfied him, much as the round handle of the baton always had. He took a drink, then tipped his head back until his white head rested on the sofa-back. Tears came, just as they had in the concert hall, and they stayed poised in his eyes for a moment before falling to his cheeks. He was filled with the youth of that unexpected moment in the concert hall. He felt the wetness but didn’t move to brush it away. He was in the hall, the score for Borodin’s second symphony under his arm along with his baton in the small black case that his father had given him when he left Krakow.
The door bumped open, though he hardly heard it. Rosalyn came in, untying her apron as she came. When she saw his posture, his face, her mouth opened in shock and her arms shot out toward him. She cried out his name, but he heard it only as a distant cry, as if someone was calling him from outside in the street, outside of the concert hall that filled his imagination.
Something snapped beside him, and suddenly the light of the lamp beside the sofa diffused his memory. He raised his hand to his face, then opened his eyes. Rosalyn was bending over him in alarm. He looked up at her, unable to speak.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice hoarse and panicky.
He found it difficult, for a moment, to place her. He touched the wetness on his face with one long, bony hand, then looked across the room and saw the leather case containing his baton. Oh yes. This room.
Rosalyn bent over him still, waiting for an answer. He thought to tell her about the winds offering themselves up, but it sounded crazy. “Just the music,” he told her. She stood staring. “Just the music,” he repeated.
She narrowed her eyes. “What about the music?” she asked him. Her voice held relief–aah, nothing serious–but it was still sharp with suspicion.
“It made me think of something,” he answered, “something a long time ago.”
“It makes you cry?” she asked. She put her hands on her aproned hips. She glanced at the glass of vodka that sat on the edge of the coffee table.
“If it makes you cry, then turn it off!” Rosalyn crossed the room and peered down at the front of the radio. Her dishwashing-red fingers hovered over the dials on the old radio, then flicked one of them off. There was silence. She turned, eyed the glass of vodka, hesitated.
He stared at her. A silent pulse crossed between them before she backed out of the room, shutting the door as she went.
He heard her shoes walk down the hall and back into the kitchen. He listened carefully. Water running into a saucepan. Someone outside dumping garbage into the metal cans behind the house. The wind rattling the fence, making it lean over the brown grass on his front lawn.
A pain shot through his back. A sliver of presence. He winced. He lay down on the sofa, without bothering to take off his shoes or loosen his tie. He glanced at the glass of vodka on the coffee table, and reached out for it for a last mouthful. Then he put his head carefully on the two cushions, placed just the way he liked them. He pulled the blanket up over his chest and crossed his hands. The vodka felt warm inside of him. Though he could wake up tomorrow and a blanket of snow would tell him it was winter.