The Piano Teacher: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

filth unless you pull it back. Mother chose a career for Erika when her daughter was still young. It had to be an artistic profession, so she could squeeze money out of the arduously achieved perfection, while average types would stand around the artist, admiring her, applauding her. Now, Erika has at last been patted into perfection. Such a girl was not meant to do crude things, heavy manual labor, housework. She was destined, congenitally, for the subtleties of classical dance, song, music. A world-famous pianist—that is Mother’s ideal. And to make sure the child finds her way through every entanglement, Mother sets up guideposts along the way, smacking Erika if she refuses to practice. Mother warns Erika about the envious horde that always tries to destroy other people’s achievements—a horde made up almost entirely of men. Don’t get distracted! Erika is never allowed to rest at any level she reaches, never allowed to catch her breath and lean on her icepick. For she has to keep climbing. To the next level. Forest animals come too close for comfort; they want to turn Erika into an animal. Competitors try to lure Erika to a cliff, pretending they’d like to show her the view. But how easily one can plunge down! Mother graphically describes the chasm, so her child will watch out. The peak offers international fame, which is never reached by most climbers. A cold wind blows up there, the artist is lonesome and admits his solitude. So long as Mother lives and continues planning Erika’s future, there is only one possibility for the child: the top of the world.
    Mama pushes from below, for she has both feet planted solidly on the ground. And soon Erika no longer stands on the inherited motherland, she is on someone else’s back, someone she has ousted with her back-stabbing. What shaky ground! Erika stands on tiptoe, on her mother’s shoulders. Her trained fingers clutch the peak, which, alas, soon turns out to be merelya crag; it only looks like the peak. Straining the muscles of her upper arm, Erika hoists and heaves herself up. Now, her nose is already over the edge, but all she sees is a new rock, steeper than the first. However, an ice factory of fame has a branch here, which keeps huge blocks in storage, thereby holding down its overhead. Erika, an adolescent, licks at one of the blocks and believes that a recital she gives is already the Chopin Competition. She believes that the peak is only a few inches away!
    Mother taunts Erika for being too modest. You’re always the last! Noble restraint is useless. One should always be at least in third place; anything less is garbage. That’s what Mother says. She knows best; she wants only the best for her child. She won’t let her stay out in the street: After all, she shouldn’t get involved in athletic competitions and neglect practicing.
    Erika doesn’t like being conspicuous. She elegantly holds back (the offended mother-animal laments) and waits for others to achieve something for her. Mother, bitterly complaining that she has to do everything for the child herself, jubilantly plunges into the thick of the fray. Erika nobly puts herself last, and her efforts don’t even bring her a couple of pennies for stockings or panties.
    Mother nags away at friends and relatives (of whom there are very few, for she broke with them long ago; she wanted to keep Erika safe from their influence). Mother tells all these people that Erika is a genius. She says she keeps realizing it more and more clearly. Erika is truly a keyboard genius, but she has not been properly discovered as yet. Otherwise, she would have long since soared over the mountains, like a comet. Compared with that, the birth of Jesus was chickenshit.
    The neighbors agree. They enjoy listening when the girl practices. It’s like the radio, only you don’t need to have a set. All you have to do is open the windows and perhaps the doors,the music comes in, spreading like poison gas into every nook and