Читать книгу: «Kashi», страница 2

1 Chapter Two

New York

The concert schedule was tight, and Paul hardly had the time to breath and relax. They started off in London, flew to Milan, Vienna, Zurich and finally Berlin. The German capital was covered by a thick coat of snow when the plane from Zurich touched ground in Tegel. Paul tried to see Berlin as any other destination before, but he could not ignore the fact that it was different for him. He saw the face of the woman who had prophesied his visit in SoHo not more than a month ago in front of his inner eye. He shook his head, strongly feeling the need to get rid of this vision, but the more he resisted it, the more alive it became. Her eyes glowed with an understanding that he had never seen in anyone before. Without expressing it in words her whole appearance suggested to him that she knew. But what? What did this woman know? His future? He was unable to say why, but he sensed that she knew more than that; something deeper and more profound, some hidden secret. And as much as he vainly tried to figure out what the strange meeting that night in SoHo had really meant, he could not fight down his fears. Yes, he had feared the woman and her self-assurance. And even though she had been able to foresee his future, he distrusted her. He felt cold and unlocked his seat belt when the aircraft had finally reached its parking position. Phil looked at him and Paul smiled.

“Ready for the ice-cold eastern wind?”

“Absolutely!” Phil gave him a brave look.

After his awkward confession, Phil had been more reserved than Paul had ever known him before. Paul had tried to cover the fissure in their inner bond with amplified friendliness. But if he was truly honest with himself, he had to admit that the gap could not be repaired. Paul did not want to judge his friend's feelings nor hurt them, but jealous admiration was a reaction he had not learned to deal with. It made him feel insecure. He had always assumed that he and Phil met as equals, but now he felt forced to realize that Phil must have had a hidden notion of inferiority from him for many, many years. Paul tried to avoid being alone with Phil now, but he was struck by a cold and stabbing pain with every act of avoidance.

The rental bus needed more than two hours to get through the heavy snowfall that had recommenced soon after they had landed to bring them to their Hotel close to Kurfürstendamm. Paul stared through the window and heard the same questions replay in his mind. Why Berlin? What is so important about this city?

He was tired and fell on his bed as soon as he had locked the door of his room. When Phil called to ask if he wanted to have dinner with him, he turned the invitation down.

“I am so tired, Phil. I have to sleep. I want to be well-rested for the rehearsal tomorrow.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, just tired. See you at breakfast", he lied when he once again felt the pain of avoidance.

Paul stared into the darkness. He could sense that something was waiting for him here in Berlin, some important experience or some revelation. But what kind of experience? What kind of revelation? It was not his first time in Berlin. He had been here at least five or six times. Why now?

He drifted into a deep unconscious sleep, where dreams had no space to enter. Only when the city started to wake up again, his sleep became lighter and allowed subconscious images to form. Paul was used to intense dreaming, but this morning's dream was different from anything he had ever experienced before. He saw himself in the bar in SoHo across from the clairvoyant woman again. He experienced the same situation in the dreaming state now that had actually happened in the waking state a few weeks ago. But now Paul felt much calmer, much clearer, more aware; he was able to perceive details that he had missed during the actual nightly encounter. He perceived the woman´s face, her fairly tanned skin, and green eyes, the freckles on her nose and cheeks. Now, more then that night, he was aware of her beauty and a strange kind of glow that made her skin shimmer in a golden color. Paul saw her delicate fingers and felt her touch on his hands like a burning fire of energy that was almost too strong for him to bear. He re-experienced her insisting speech and while she was talking with a slight accent, which he had not noticed that night, she felt more familiar than anyone he had ever met in waking life. Not only she knew him, he suddenly realized, but he too knew her better than any person around him. Her eyes did not let go of his and she said: "You are not the man you think you are! Awake!" His heartbeat accelerated rapidly, he started sweating and a strong energetic pain ran through his spine and his legs when he woke up tossing and turning around, hitting his head on the night table.

The next minute he became freezing cold and forced himself to get up, get into the shower and let the warm water dispel the shadows of the dream. But the water could not cast the echo of the woman´s intriguing voice out of his mind's ear. "Awake!" she commanded and he knew that she did not intend to wake him up from his night's sleep.

When he walked into the breakfast room, most of the orchestra members were already eating. Phil got up and waved. Paul said hello to everybody he passed by on his way to Phil´s table. Some of the younger musicians must have had a late night. They looked quite tired.

“Are you ready for rehearsal in twenty minutes?” he asked with a broad smile. Most of them nodded over-ambitiously.

“You look relaxed”, Phil opened their conversation.

Paul did not show his surprise. “Yeah, I had a good, deep sleep and you?”

“Fine. Just had a sandwich and went for a walk in the snow. There is something about this town that I really love.”

“Yes, I think I know what you mean. Berlin is special.”

Paul had a French breakfast, a coffee, and a croissant only, and left the breakfast room early clapping his hands at the exit to attract everybody´s attention.

“Rehearsal begins in 10 minutes in Senator Hall. Please, be on time!"

He went straight to the hotel´s largest conference hall that Emerson had rented for two additional rehearsals before the final rehearsal in the concert house at Gendarmenmarkt. Of course, the orchestra knew its program, but it was important to practice the entire concert more than once at any new city. The musicians had to adapt to climate, atmosphere, jet lag and many other phenomena of travel. And the more time they had to fuse music and the quality of the individual environment the better. And, furthermore, it was necessary to have a daily routine, no matter where, to keep them alert and connected with the music and the conductor.

The instruments had been brought to the practice hall. Yet, Paul was alone when he entered the large room. He looked around and tried to catch the special atmosphere of the place taking a deep calm breath. The hotel was built in the twenties of the past century, a historic building with high ceilings and numerous architectural characteristics of that time. It reminded him of his apartment building in New York.

He walked over to the conductor's desk and went through the score. Every note appeared as a sound in his mind's ear the instant his eyes fell on it. He remembered the night when he had written this suite. He had gone to bed early, worried about his separation from Kaya, feeling severely injured by her emotionally. The suite played in his mind and calmed it, but at the same time his emotions – the pain and the guilt - were stirred by it and grew more agitated, indomitable. Kaya had been right. He had hurt her and Sean first, maybe irreparably. It was only equitable that he was hurt, too, by her reaction and by the effects of his own decision. When he had left L.A. for New York he did not know that he would have to pay with the cruel currency of loneliness.

The ensemble entered the hall in small chatting groups and Paul woke up from the strong memories inseparably tied to the composition. “Do you want the audience to feel your hurt”, an inner voice asked him a second too late, because his entire attention was now drawn to his colleagues and the intense practice of today´s rehearsal. Before he was totally consumed by the work, he only vaguely noticed his rationalization: there is no love without hurt!

The next minute he had won back full concentration on conducting. For him, the conductor was the only one in the orchestra who had walked the road outlined by the score personally. He knew every danger, every cliff, every hole. He knew each dead end and also the beautiful spots, the peaks and the climax of the journey. He had to guide the orchestra through unknown territory every time, even though the musicians had played the piece of music countless times before. They trusted him that he was able to lead them through, and he was absolutely sure that they were capable and willing to find their way and make the best out of it.

The strings had their part now and filled the entire hall with sound so rich and meaningful to him, that he could only feel and surrender to it. This was the pure beauty to him, the beauty beyond words, beyond description; the beauty of life itself, hidden in everything, every being. Paul had to fight down his tears because he was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to find this beauty in his own life, not only in music but in life itself. He swallowed strongly several times and almost lost concentration, but then other instruments echoed the theme of the strings and the emotions released him.

When he looked up, he saw an elderly man standing at the entrance. Their eyes met for an instant and even though there were more than twenty meters between them, Paul noticed that the man was moved to tears, too. But when he looked up from the score the next time the man had disappeared.

This time Paul did not dare to turn Phil´s invitation for a late lunch down. They walked through the snow, warmly packed in thick coats, hats and lambskin gloves watching their breath turn into white clouds of chimerical forms.

“Do you want to talk about it?" Phil dared to ask when they sat in an Italian bar in a small side street only a few minutes later.

“Talk about what?” Paul reacted cold and defensively pretending to concentrate on the menu.

“Something is burdening you. I am afraid it is my confession that I admire you.”

Paul looked out of the window not ready to lie into Phil´s face, but also not willing to admit that the friend was right.

“It´s not that. I told you, I am generally having a hard time.”

“Because of the fortune teller!?”

“She was not a fortune teller.” Paul almost shouted, surprised by his own emotionally strong reaction. The waiter came to take the order, and Paul wanted to stop the conversation here, but Phil did not let him off the hook.

“I am sorry. I thought she told you, you would travel to Berlin before you even knew.”

“She did, but she was not a fortune teller.” Paul tried to put into words what he felt about her. “She was more like a messenger; a person who knew me, who wanted to let me know that I will be facing a major change in life.”

“It´s still because of the audience!?”

Paul took a deep breath. “No, Phil. And that is precisely the point, why I do not want to talk about it. Because I can not explain what I am experiencing and feeling right now. I don´t even know what is wrong myself.”

“Why don´t you try. Sometimes that helps.” Phil looked at him innocently and Paul felt that he still trusted him. He cared and he wanted to honestly help. Paul was unable to turn this empathy down.

“It is not because of the audience. I mean,… the audience is not the cause of my mental and emotional turmoil.”

Phil nodded understandingly. Paul felt encouraged to search for words and explanations.

“The audience is more like a mirror. It is showing me that something is wrong with me. I want more or something else than I get and I don´t know why!”

“Is it because of Kaya?”

“Kaya? No. That is long passed. I suffered before, when and after we split. But I think the worst is over now. That is another strange aspect of the whole story: why now? Professionally, I have the best time of my life and the private waves have calmed."

“Could it be a depression or some kind of fatigue?”

“It could. I don´t know. But it doesn´t feel like an illness. It feels more like an impending change.”

“A change to what?”

“I wish I could grasp that, Phil. I dreamed of the woman last night and she urged me to `awake`.”

Phil looked at Paul seriously. “You are a lucky man. But I think you have to prepare for some things that you will not like.”

“I don´t want changes. I like my life!”

Phil laughed. "Don´t resist, Paul. Learn from your music. It keeps flowing with any change and in the end, this is what makes its wholeness, its completeness: its willingness to be anything – joy and pain, loss and gain!"

◊◊◊

They separated in front of the restaurant because Phil needed to buy a few things at the KaDeWe department store, which was only a five-minute walk from here. Paul meandered around, not ready to return to his hotel room and still fascinated by the atmosphere of the German capital. Something drew him through the park towards the Reichstag, once again home to the German parliament since 1999 - sixty-six years after it had been destroyed by a raging fire. During the long walk, Paul allowed his thoughts to flow freely. He studied the landscape, the architecture, cars, and people when all of a sudden he heard the metallic sound of a military band in his mind. He started trembling when the inner sound of the military parade became louder and stronger, and at the same time, he caught the sound of soldiers marching lock-step. There was a dark and alarming feeling in these sounds, which grew even louder when matching images appeared in front of his mind's eye. The soldiers were dressed in brownish green uniforms, reminding him of pictures he had seen from the time of the Second World War. When he looked up within the inner space he beheld long red flags hanging from the Reichstag building, showing huge swastikas, the sign of the Nazi regime. His heart started beating as fast as this morning. Paul was ready to panic again. The inner image suggested danger so strongly, that he actually felt threatened. He stopped and turned his sight to the outside world only, reconnecting with the current time and space. He followed the cars to assure himself that this was 2013 and not 1933. He looked at the people, walking, riding bikes, busily heading hither and thither. They were modernly dressed, using cell phones and drinking coffee. Paul stepped close to the street, waving for a cab. Luckily, after a few minutes, a taxi stopped in front of him. Only when he felt the cold black leather of the seats underneath him he was able to relax a little. But the inner images still held him captive.

In the lobby, he bumped into Phil.

“Gosh, you are totally pale. Are you okay, Paul?”

“Yes, no. I don´t know. I need to be alone!”

Phil was extremely worried but did not know what to do to calm Paul. He let him run into the elevator and helplessly watched him disappear behind its closing doors.

In his room, Paul fell in an armchair without taking his coat off. His heart was still beating fast and he could not control the images that swept over his mind, visions of Berlin more than sixty years old. He saw several places he had never been at knowing that they had existed at that time. Soldiers and girls dressed in uniforms practicing to goose-step. The entire city was colored by a dark, daunting atmosphere that swallowed any positive emotion and even action. It was like a nightmare he could not wake up from. After a while, he remembered the woman´s advice given on a cold November night in SoHo: “You will go to Berlin and you have to be very aware of your perceptions and your feelings. You have to listen to your inner voice. And please, do not judge your experiences. You are safe and you will be guided…!”

Paul did not feel safe, and he did not feel guided, but the woman´s voice and her words calmed him. She had warned him. Maybe Phil was right and he was a lucky man after all. "What does this inner voice tell me by projecting these pictures", he started to ask himself, immediately gaining more distance to the horrifying scenes and more strength to face them. "It forces me to look back, to see what Berlin has once been and at the same time it allows me to see what it has become – vivid, creative, a place of unity, where East and West have reunited and at the same time a modern, cosmopolitan city." He felt the strong urge to focus on the images of the past again. The atmosphere of the years before the war, the manipulation of the people by the Nazi regime and its propaganda, the preparation and training for war and the killing of millions. He witnessed, how an inhuman ideology began to rule over the beliefs of a whole nation and destroy its sanity and reason; he saw, how it began and he could think only one thought: "Thank God I was not part of this!" With this thought, the nightmare ended abruptly.

He hid in his room until the next morning. Paul did not even go for breakfast and ordered the room-service early. Then he went for another long walk through the city. He was determined not to allow fear to reign his behavior. He wanted to face the images of his subconscious mind. But today it stayed calm. No images. No visions. He walked through the streets and tried to figure out what had triggered the sequence of scenes that he had seen with his inner eye yesterday. He even passed the same place, where it had started the day before, but his mind remained unstirred.

Before returning to the Hotel, Paul had enough time to stop at a little bar across the street for a strong, hot espresso. The bar reminded him of the place in SoHo, even though it felt and smelt much more European. He took a seat at the counter and ordered a Macchiato, when he saw a man´s face in the large mirror behind the bar. Was that the elderly man, who had listened to his rehearsal the day before, Paul wondered and got up to approach him curiously.

“Good morning, Sir. Sorry to disturb you. Did you listen to my concert rehearsal at the Hotel vis-à-vis yesterday?” He pointed toward the Hotel entrance on the other side of the street.

The elderly man looked at him shrugging his shoulders and shook his head. “No English!”

Paul looked at the waiter helplessly. “Could you translate for us, please?”

“My English is not the best, but I will try”, the waiter promised willingly. “Haben Sie gestern die Orchesterprobe im Hotel gegenüber gehört, hat der Herr gefragt.“

The old German looked at Paul with widely opened eyes and nodded insecurely.

“May I invite you for tomorrow's concert at Gendarmenmarkt?"

“Er möchte Sie zu seinem Konzert morgen ins Konzerthaus einladen.“

„Das ist sehr freundlich von ihm. Aber ich habe schon eine Karte.“ The man laughed.

“He already has a ticket, Sir.”

Paul started laughing, too. “May I invite you for a coffee, then?”

“Der Herr möchte Ihnen dann wenigstens einen Kaffe ausgeben.”

„Sehr gern. Aber er muss sich zu mir setzen. Ich würde ihn gerne etwas Wichtiges fragen.“

„He would like you to sit with him. He says, he wants to ask you something important.”

Paul felt nervous. He pulled a chair back and sat down, while the waiter kept standing.

“Ich kannte seinen Großvater, müssen Sie wissen.“

The waiter seemed surprised and translated the words of the German. “He said, he knew your grandfather.”

“My grandfather? Where from?”

“Ich war sein Schüler.“

Paul did not understand. Which grandfather?

The old man looked at Paul seriously and began to tell his story, while the waiter translated almost fluently.

“Your grandfather was very talented. Just like you. He played the violin like no other. But he did not compose at that time before the war.”

“Where was that?” Paul needed to know.

“Here, in Berlin!”

“I am sorry, but I have no ancestors in Berlin. You must mistake me for someone else.”

The elderly man seemed to get upset and the waiter had trouble to keep up with his translation.

“He says, he knew your mother and grandmother, too. Katharina und Susanna.”

Paul´s grandmother's name was Katherine and his mother was called Susan. Could the old man speak the truth?

“They had to leave the country during the war. But he has never again heard anything of your grandfather. He would like to know, how he coped with the difficult situation.”

“Which situation?”

The old German looked at him stunned. He took Paul´s hand and said. “Sorry, boy.” Then, he turned towards the waiter beseechingly. “Ich muss mich geirrt haben. Bitte entschuldigen Sie.“

„He apologizes. He must have been mistaken.”

The old man got up abruptly and left the bar. The waiter looked perturbed. “What was that?”

“I have no idea. He must have mistaken me for someone else.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I don´t know. He seemed to know you. He knew your work. He even comes to see your concert.”

“You have a point there. But my ancestors are all American. No one has ever been to Berlin.”

“Mysterious!”

Paul nodded. But he felt calm and at peace with himself. The old man must have seen someone in him who he was not. There was something scary about the mind of older people playing tricks on them, he had to admit. But this man´s wrong memories did not affect him. He gave the waiter an extra tip and thanked him for the help.

“Would you like tickets for the concert?”

“I would love to come, Sir, but I have to work. I am very sorry. Maybe next time you come to Berlin.”

“Will I ever come back”, Paul asked himself. He did not know. His future seemed more unpredictable than ever. Whenever he tried to see what was lying ahead of him, he could see nothing but a gray fog.

During the next rehearsal, Phil watched his friend closely and concerned. But he did not dare to ask Paul again if he was alright. He tried to give Paul more space and freedom by taking care of the group. Paul was able to retire to his room alone whenever he needed to.

The final rehearsal at the Konzerthaus went well. Paul had struggled successfully to gain back his inner balance for the last concert of their trip. When he took a cab all by himself that evening, he started again wondering about the old German and his weird story. Would he come to hear the concert tonight? Did it matter? Yes, somehow it did because when Paul had seen him the first time that morning in Senator Hall of Midtown Hotel, he had thought that the man´s tears had flown because his music had touched him. Paul had felt close to the man, understood and recognized. But when he found out that the man confounded him, these feelings had been fully erased. Paul had been sad and disappointed. His strongest desire had not been fulfilled. Once again.

The cab stopped as close to the artist's entrance as possible. The tour bus had not arrived, yet. Paul paid the driver and when he slammed the door shut, his eyes fell on an advertising pillar right next to him. Adrenalin shot through his veins, and he almost lost balance. The woman! The woman from SoHo! It was her. No doubt. Karen Garin was her name. She was a sitar player?! And she would give a concert here, right here, at the Konzerthaus on Monday. In two days. She was in town. His thoughts were rushing too fast to grasp.

Phil found Paul in his dressing room.

“She is here!”, Paul said in a low voice meeting Phil´s eyes in the mirror before even saying hello.

“Who?”

“The woman from SoHo.”

“Here at the concert?”

“In town. She is giving a sitar concert here, exactly here, on Monday.”

“Man, that´s hard to believe.”

“I have a ticket for Monday night. It´s true.”

Phil could not believe what he heard. “You won´t fly back with us?”

“No, Phil. I have to see her. I just have to hear her play.”

“You have never been interested in Indian music.”

“It´s not the music, it´s her. I have to see her.”

Phil had never seen Paul that spontaneous before, and he knew that nothing could hold him back.

Paul conducted the concert with split awareness. Part of it was here in the Konzerthaus, doing what he had practiced countless times, mechanically moving his arms, giving signals and holding the corpus of the orchestra together. The other half thought about the woman, her name, her profession, her life. He tried to figure out, how old she was, where she might live and why he had never heard of her. This divided awareness did not diminish his performance. He conducted just as virtuosic and flawless as ever.

Only shortly before the curtain fell for the intermission, he had a glimpse into the auditorium and tried to find the elderly gentleman. Paul spotted one empty seat in the middle of the third row. Surely this was his. Paul felt the same disappointment again that had struck him when the man had left the bar without further explanations yesterday. But he forgot the encounter immediately when he came backstage. The woman´s presence was too strong, too meaningful and too frightening. He could not think of anyone or anything else. In fact, suddenly anything else seemed meaningless and unimportant.

He fled the scene once again when the final applause did not stop. After the third bow, he left the stage, pulling the first violin in the front next to Phil. He did not care if the audience would feel disappointed. He was no longer willing to keep up the habits. After all, concerts too followed the principal of giving and taking. He was disappointed too and people might as well see how he felt. They did receive his compositions much more openly than he had expected, but still they did not see, what he tried to show, they did not feel, what he tried to describe, they did not hear the story he had told. He felt helplessly stuck in a repetitive pattern and he did not find the exit.

He almost ran back to the hotel through the freezing winter night. Huge orange trucks tried to keep the roads free from heavy snowfall that had again started during the concert. Men were sweeping and salting the sidewalk without Paul´s notice. He did not even get cold.

As soon as he reached the hotel he opened his computer to search for Karen Garin on the net. She did not have a personal website, no social media account; she did not advertise herself. After quite a while he found a group of people chatting about her. The members called her "master of the sitar", a denomination that has only been achieved by Indian men so far. The group spoke of her very respectfully, and one girl called her "the only truly spiritual artist" she had ever met. Paul looked out of the window into big, fluffy, slowly sinking snowflakes. He tried to recall Karen Garin´s appearance and compare it with the judgments he read about her. She definitely was a special person. He had felt that too, that night. But he would never have found such words to describe her. "She is the modern day pearl in a long rosary of tradition that goes back to the time when the sitar was brought to India from ancient Persia", he read.

The more he found out about her, the stronger he wondered, why she had approached him in New York. She did not come to the bar accidentally, he suspected. She must have sought for him intentionally. Why did she know him? How? And how the hell, did she find him? He had never been in that bar before!

Some people had posted pictures of Karen Garin on stage with a drummer, after a concert, in a crowd of admirers. She seemed to always smile gently, but when Paul looked at the images more closely, her lips did not smile, only her eyes did. There was a gentleness in them, that deeply touched him. "Loving kindness", he thought. "She embodies loving kindness." Suddenly, he wondered, why he had feared her so much. And then he remembered: because of her self-assurance. He had feared the way she had talked to him: totally sure of herself and her message. There had not been the slightest doubt in her. A wave of coldness ran up his spine. Paul had felt this extreme certainty even stronger in his dream when she had told him to awake.

When he tried to find her music on one of the video channels, that his work was frequently posted on, he did not discover anything. One thing was certain: she was not a mainstream artist. She rather seemed to reach a small group of people, who saw more in her work, than just entertainment. For them, it had a numinous quality, a spiritual aspect that was not simply owed to the Indian origin of her instrument. He spent half of the night on the net, but in the end, the information began to repeat. He had not yet found out, where she came from, where she lived, how old she was. The only reliable information he could get was that she toured with her band, a drum, a tanpura and a violin, for four months a year, from September till January, mostly in Europe and the States, but also in Asia and Australia. And she had played in a small venue off-Broadway the night they had met in SoHo.

The orchestra had left early Sunday morning. Phil had been worried to leave Paul in Berlin.

“I can stay with you if you want… if you need me…", he suggested carefully.

“I appreciate that, Phil. But you don´t have to. I am alright and I will be alright.”

“I hope this Karen will not be a disappointment.”

“How could she. I expect nothing of her. I am just curious.”

“Just curious? I am sorry Paul, but this is more than curiosity.”

Paul laughed. “I guess your right. I will call you and let you know how it went.”

Phil just could not stop worrying. “Will you really be okay all by yourself?”