"No, no -- I dont think that would be appropriate." Mister Bilderbach had said when the Bloch was suggested to end the programme. "Now that John Powell thing -- the Sonate Virginianesque."
She hadnt uood then; she wa to be the Bloch as much as Mister Lafkowitz and Heime.
Mister Bilderbach had given in. Later, after the reviews had said she lacked the temperament for that type of music, after they called her playing thin and lag in feeling, she felt cheated.
"That oie oie stuff," said Mister Bilderbach, crag the neers at her. "Not for you, Bien. Leave all that to the Heimes and vitses and skys."
A Wunderkind. No matter what the papers said, that was what he had called her.
Why was it Heime had done so much better at the cert tha school sometimes, when she was supposed to be watg someone do a geometry problem on the blackboard, the question would twist knife-like inside her. She would worry about it in bed, and even sometimes when she was supposed to be trating at the piano. It wasnt just the Blod her not being Jewish -- irely. It wasnt that Heime didnt have to go to school and had begun his training so early, either. It was --?
Once she thought she knew.
"Play the Fantasia and Fugue," Mister Bilderbach had demanded one evening a year ago -- after he and Mister Lafkowitz had finished reading some music together.
The Bach, as she played, seemed to her well done. From the tail of her eye she could see the calm, pleased expression on Mister Bilderbachs face, see his hands rise climactically from the chair arms and then sink down loose and satisfied when the high points of the phrases had been passed successfully. She stood up from the piano when it was over, swallowing to loosen the bands that the music seemed to have drawn arouhroat and chest. But --
"Frances --" Mister Lafkowitz had said then, suddenly, looking at her with his thin mouth curved and his eyes almost covered by their delicate lids. "Do you know how many children Bach had?"
She turo him, puzzled. "A good many. Twenty some odd."
"Well then --" The ers of his smile etched themselves gently in his pale face. "He could not have been so cold -- then."
Mister Bilderbach was not pleased; his guttural effulgence of German words had Kind in it somewhere. Mister Lafkowitz raised his eyebrows. She had caught the point easily enough, but she felt ion in keeping her face blank and immature because that was the way Mister Bilderbach wanted her to look.
Yet such things had nothing to do with it. Nothing very much, at least, for she would grow older. Mister Bilderbaderstood that, and even Mister Lafkowitz had not meant just what he said.
In the dreams Mister Bilderbachs faed out and tracted in the ter of the whirling circle. The lips urging softly, the veins in his temples insisting.
But sometimes, before she slept, there were such clear memories; as when she pulled a hole in the heel of her stog down, so that her shoe would hide it. "Bien, Bien!" And bringing Mrs. Bilderbachs work basket in and showing her how it should be darned and not gathered together in a lumpy heap.
And the time she graduated from Junih.
"What you wear?" asked Mrs. Bilderbach the Sunday m at breakfast wheold them about how they had practiced to marto the auditorium.
"An evening dress my cousin had last year."
"Ah -- Bien!" he said, cirg his warm coffee cup with his heavy hands, looking up at her with wr