The short story “The German Church” written by the People’s Writer of Azerbaijan, Afag Masud
The German Church
‘It’s my fault,’ I said, almost choking with anger. The headmistress pulled a wry face as I stammered on, ‘I had no idea this child was musically gifted. She never showed any interest in music lessons or singing!’ I managed to finish what I had to say, despite the lump of fury in my throat.
Flushing slightly, the headmistress raised her eyebrows: ‘You don’t have to apologize. There’s no need to look for anyone to blame. If you want to know, many brilliant musicians had no musical education. If the child really does have some talent — and I’m sure she does, more than enough — it will show itself.’
Rena sat at the enormous grand piano, shoulders hunched as usual. While the headmistress was speaking, she looked doubtfully at the two of us. She always reminded me of a baby calf when she was like this and I sometimes even called her ‘Calfie’.
The headmistress got up and walked over to the piano, having had enough of sitting opposite me. She took Rena’s fingers in her hands and started to knead them like dough.
‘Look at these fingers. They were made for the keys of a grand piano,’ she said, putting the girl’s fingers back on the keys.
‘Play what you were playing just now, child,’ she said pleasantly.
Rena blinked, sat up straight and began to play, her small, pudgy fingers tensely picking out the complex chords of Mozart’s Requiem. Wonderful music rippled through the room. Closing her eyes and turning her back to the piano, the headmistress waved her right hand in the air, playing an invisible keyboard with Rena. Then she opened her eyes and said to the teachers sitting to her right, ‘Just listen. Can you believe this is a fourteen-year-old child who cannot read music and hasn’t had a single music lesson?’
Though Rena didn’t hear the headmistress, she played with even more enthusiasm, her small fingers flying, as though the amazement of those present would confirm her prowess.
By the end of the piece, the headmistress was back in her place, resting her chin on her hands and gazing into the distance.
‘I think vocal training is the only way for your daughter to get into music.’ This was one of the teachers, a thin, older woman, whose spectacle frame merged with the deep wrinkles in her face. ‘She’s no playing technique to speak of. Her fingers are zero. Yes,’ sensing that the headmistress wanted to say something, she cut her off airily, ‘I entirely agree with you that her fingers have some agility, but they do not feel the keys, they aren’t poised on the keys like a ballerina on points, they waddle over them. In a word, it’s too late. That’s why Jewish people test their children at music, ballet, sport and so on at an early age — to avoid this kind of thing.’
The teacher gave me a look of triumph.
Though I was pierced to the quick by the teacher’s comments, I didn’t show it. I turned to Rena, smiling brightly.
Rena was sitting at the piano, wearing her dumb calf expression. She looked at me and the teachers as though she didn’t know if their remarks were complimentary or not.
A group of children were coming into the music school, carrying a variety of instruments in their cases, as we walked out. Rena’s hidden look of longing in their direction annoyed me, so I nudged her shoulder. ‘Stand up straight.’
Turning up her coat collar, Rena walked silently beside me. It was hard to tell what she was thinking about — maybe the hours and days of effort she had put into learning Mozart’s Requiem finger by finger over the past two years. As for me, I was remembering her childhood, her indifference towards school, music and books, and her inclination towards sweets and sleep, trying to appease my sense of guilt over the disastrous afternoon.
It all began the day we went to the German church two years ago when Rena was still living in her simple childhood world, far removed from serious music. The solitary old church hid in an avenue of yellow flowers and faded bushes, a few steps back from the crowded city centre pavement. Its dark spire could be seen from far away, almost touching the clouds.
Rena was spellbound as the small string ensemble played Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi. She remained stockstill, made weightless by the music which had come down from a higher realm to fill the hall. At the time I had no idea the stamp this unexpected impression would leave on her child’s heart. At the theatre Rena usually ate popcorn or crisps or at the cinema she would doze, but here she seemed to be following something, or to have descended into mysterious depths. Wide-eyed under the music’s influence, she was far away from the stage wandering through unknown territory.
When we got home from the concert that evening, Rena sat at the piano, tinkling individual keys. From the next morning she spent hours at the piano. At first she moved her fingers gingerly over the keys, as though stepping on a marsh, but I couldn’t believe my ears a few months later when I heard her play the Requiem so skilfully.
Rena had learnt to play the Requiem note by note, but she soon learnt basic chord structures and began to play even better. Our days began with the walls vibrating to the magnificent Requiem and ended with the same lament. After a while I felt that the music had changed something in our house, instilled something of mystery in each of us. Though I couldn’t put my finger on what had changed, there was no doubt that this music, which had taken over our house and which Rena had brought from the German church, was no longer just the famous Requiem. It was a terrible wave of energy, as though the spirit of a person that had withered in a corner had been brought back to rampant life by the music.
‘I knew that would happen,’ I said to break the silence, holding Rena’s arm as we crossed the road.
Rena didn’t say anything. Her face clouded with sorrow, she was deliberately lagging behind me.
To change the subject, I talked of the bright future ahead of her, like other teenagers, listing the advantages of different professions and the success she would achieve.
Rena had dark shadows under her eyes and her nose seemed longer. It gave her the air of an ancient Greek philosopher.
That evening Rena didn’t go near the piano. She stayed in her room, lying on the sofa, her face turned to the wall.
In keeping with Rena’s mourning our lights went out that evening and didn’t come back till morning. My elder daughter and I spent the evening in the candle-lit kitchen. Even in the cold and dark we could feel the waves of tragedy eddying through Rena’s gloomy room, but we didn’t dare go in.
At breakfast time there were more shadows under Rena’s eyes. In just one night her tired face had become longer and thinner. She made no reference to the previous day, but in a voice crushed by defeat talked about the world’s famous operas, the greatness of opera, the right physique for opera singers and so on and so forth.
I understood the meaning of the eddies swirling all night around her silent room — the crushing defeat of the Requiem had forced her to change course from failed pianist to singer.
From that day onwards a terrible new operatic Requiem replaced the piano version. The Requiem Rena had found in a shop was sung by a fearsome choir of women, who marched on us in dreadful, magnificent accusation as though we were arraigned before a people’s court.
I would picture these haughty women singing in their gigantic voices. They were tall, hulking, venomous nuns, their faces veiled. As they sang, holding the enormous score of the Requiem before them, their necks grew longer until they touched our ceiling.
Listening to the choir, Rena grew pale and her eyes bulged until she resembled a huge ancient fish. We all grieved to see the poor girl in this state, but couldn’t save her from plunging headlong into the abyss right there amongst her family in her childhood home.
To speak to Rena or carelessly walk past her was as cruel as disturbing a victim of torture who was sleeping peacefully. The music created tension in the rooms, cracked the walls and shook the floors, so sometimes we dared to turn it off on some pretext or other and to criticize Rena for her obsession. But when we saw her pale face and the silent sorrow deep in her eyes, we realized we were wrong and hadn’t fully understood. Easy as it was to grasp that this music, born in Austria in a far-off century, had taken our little girl from us and was holding her in some mysterious realm before our very eyes, it was correspondingly difficult to bring her back from there. Rena’s retreat to the silent loneliness of her room, her need to find sanctuary away from us, meant there was no going back to her previous life.
The days passed in this way. Every evening I would return from work to find our home still plunged in mourning, as though under foreign occupation. I would hurry to take off my coat and shoes and go to Rena’s room, where I would find her lying face down on the sofa, like a boxer knocked out in the ring. I would sit next to her, carefully brushing her hair, or kissing her muscular shoulders, like swimmers’ shoulders. Though I kept finding new ways to comfort her, Rena’s condition did not change.
One day Rena finally turned towards me. Staring at me, her eyes swollen from crying, she said, ‘I cannot sing either. My vocal chords are too weak. I can’t reach the high notes.’
That evening I collected up all the cassettes in the house, packed them together and threw them into a hard-to-reach corner of the wall cupboard at the end of the hall. The next morning I decided to save our house once and for all from this contagious bundle and took it to work, where I hid it among some old books.
After the cassettes had gone, peace and quiet descended on our house. The Requiem had shaken up our home, changing it beyond recognition, so it took us some time to return it to its previous state. First we brought in a cleaner to wash away the traces of the music. We had her clean every room from floor to ceiling. Then we swapped rooms, putting Rena in our elder daughter’s room. To brighten up the atmosphere, we brought home video tapes of new adventure films or comedies, we went out at the weekend and had family dinners. None of us mentioned the Requiem.
Rena began to resemble a patient who has lost their physical strength during a serious illness. She ate nothing, never smiled, gave short, listless answers to our questions, didn’t say a word about music, hurried past the deep abyss behind the door to the piano room, and lost her resemblance to a Greek philosopher.
That’s how things were for a while. I was happy. The days of torment and anxiety were behind us. They had given me a vague dread of classical music, but I didn’t let it bother me. I sensed, though, that the mysterious danger hanging over us was not past, that something was lurking in a corner, and my senses were not wrong.
One day as I turned into our yard from work, the strains of the Requiem struck me like lightning. The weight of the baskets in my hand forgotten, I ran up the stairs two at a time. I imagined the storm of music blowing through the rooms and in the last room Rena lying face down on the solitary sofa, not breathing. A weight in my chest rose up my throat, choking me.
I opened the door, raced inside and stood horror-struck in the middle of the hall.
It was back, its attenuating rhythms stretching our hall walls, touching the ceiling, shaking the doors. The choir was gradually getting louder, its swelling sound pinning me to the wall, as though pushing me outside.
I went weak at the knees and wrists, my vision blurred. I dropped the baskets in the hall and forced my reluctant feet to Rena’s door. I opened the door, walked in and was rooted to the spot.
The sofa where Rena was supposed to be lying face down was empty.
I rushed from room to room, checking under the beds and inside the wardrobes.
Rena was nowhere to be found. She had disappeared. I looked for the cassette player to stop the thunderous strains of the Requiem, but couldn’t find that either. The cassette player too had disappeared without trace.
I was among the angry nuns with vengeance and cunning in their hearts. I couldn’t work out in what corner of our house they were singing. I was exhausted wondering where Rena could be and remembered the dark spire of the German church reaching into the clouds.
1996