No sign of melancholy about the pianist when he again mentioned the Auditorium audience, briefly mentioned, mentioned fleetingly, briefly because we were in the Café Einstein and it was by way of a rejoinder to me but fleetingly also because it wasn’t in the least important, fleeting as a butterfly he recalled the audience’s reaction, I still haven’t understood their reaction, the pianist said smiling, he’d handled the reaction well, had been booed and hissed, had provoked scandal in the Auditorium not only as the pianist but also as a composer, had bowed to his booing audience, shaken the conductor’s hand and congratulated the players and bowed again, then left the stage in a deluge of boos as if it were applause, I in the audience already sick at the thought of the pianist’s feelings and also identifying with the audience and dying of shame, identifying with the pianist and dying of humiliation, he not dying of anything and leaving the stage as if to applause, not upset but reassured, indifferent neither to the boos nor the hisses but encouraged to continue on his own path. The audience didn’t understand, the pianist decided, they simply didn’t listen, composing a piece with the sole aim of pleasing my audience was not my intention either, would have been impossible, would have meant selling my soul as a composer, would’ve put an end to my life as a composer, not only as a composer but as a pianist too, and not only as a pianist but as a man even, so the pianist on returning to his dressing room and his life’s work as a man, a grand statement for me but the only one that’s worthwhile. Alone in his dressing room he told himself, man to man, I’ve written nothing of which I could be ashamed. This is how one becomes a man alone, he realized, standing before the great mirror opposite the Bösendorfer, looked unsentimentally at this incidental portrait and saw himself alone and handsome on the other side, just as he had always hoped to be. Later he’d discussed, it was evening on his birthday, fleeting as a butterfly, deep in conversation with the evening’s accompaniment, the Auditorium audience’s reaction, he’d never before encountered such a hostile reaction, had been even more shocked by their reaction having had faith, he added, in that audience, would never have expected such mediocrity of that audience, had almost expected something over and above ordinary applause, a firestorm of applause, not that he’d ever depended in any way on weather phenomena to seal his choice to compose but because his music, he knew, was the spirit of resistance, that this spirit of resistance was indeed, in his conception, the spirit which could best figure this city and therefore the people of this city therefore the audience not in general but of this Auditorium in particular he’d imagined as made up of sons and daughters of first-generation Résistants. The daughters and sons wouldn’t only have appreciated his music because it was announced in the program as “music of resistance” but would have sought, and found because they sought, the resistance in the music, in the structure of the piece, in its compositional technique, its instrumentation, in its form and heart. Instead of which he had been booed and hissed by the regular patrons who being sons and daughters of first-wave non-Résistants weren’t as a rule in the least bothered about resistance in general or by the Résistance in particular and had no education other than education in non-resistance. They’re all yea-sayers, Jasager he translated, a bunch of Jasager. Now the usual accompaniment had gone up to the pianist and taken his hands, incredibly relaxed hands while the rest of the pianist’s body except those two extremities was stiffer than a stiff, had kissed the palm of one then traced from there along the beloved forearm then up to the shoulder beloved likewise, embraced the pianist and taken the pianist like a baby into her arms, had soothed the baby with such right and benevolent words. Beethoven and Wagner and Schoenberg were booed and hissed so many times you can consider this experience a mark of honor, the accompaniment murmured into the composer’s ear then stroked the composer’s hair, the composer’s neck, kissed his neck then kissed the whole of the composer, inserted her leg between the composer’s legs, and finally made love to the composer. Laid out on his back with the accompaniment moving gently harmoniously tenderly elegantly upon him and without haste, he on his back hands behind his head then hands on the accompaniment’s hips both of them eyes on the ceiling, letting the accompaniment ride and letting himself be overtaken by this emotion without acceleration was no easy hack as the accompaniment understood
