PETROUCHKA [WITH OMISSIONS]

A pianist was beset with panic because his right hand had frozen up, grown heavy, during a Schubert sonata, missing several notes during the Andante, sending a soft murmur—accompanied by hard biting coughs from angry throats—through the audience. All was suddenly asunder, his command faltering, the normal alliance between his skill, his talent, and what might be called genius, broken. The audience settled into a stunned silence, an aural black hole from which emerged a few more tight coughs. As most everyone already knows, his grand celebration, his triumphant return from Moscow, was ruined. And as many of you might have guessed, the sense of panic that began that night would not subside. His fingers—in the parlance of his profession—stayed heavy. Those fingers—I’ll admit—are mine.

The bridges spanning the Cuyahoga were rusted up, some down, others sadly in medias res, either lowering for a train or rising gallantly for an approaching slag barge. To relive old times, I was riding the Rapid into the city, praying for my father, who was in the hospital; praying or trying to find a way into prayer but not exactly sure if I believed in anything aside from what I felt when I was playing Bach. But I mouthed something: God grant my father (certainly you know him, probably have listened to him play when he was principal French horn with the Philharmonic), grant him whatever it is you grant, give him his place in heaven; allow him to pursue some eternal music, and then I opened my eyes to take in the sight of the train car, smeared with grime, fingerprinted winter mud on the walls, the seats orange and beige plastic. When I got to the hospital I half expected to find my father in his bed buzzing his mouthpiece, or his fingers twitching through a complex bit of fingering. Instead, I found a man who had just been given his second shot of morphine, more than he needed for pain, a dose to help him over to the other side. He spoke in the light, airy voice of someone stoned: Like I’ve said, son, you’re playing too wide, son, he said, for God’s sake you’re playing too wide, you should stick with one or two composers, linger on them, explore a terrain and master it, become, you know, like one of those arctic explorers who spend years just trying to get to one place and back alive.