Somewhere, in the depths of my childhood, I recall sitting in the kitchen while eating toast and drinking powdered milk. Yes, it's true, my mom bought powdered milk! And she made us drink it. It was all part of her rickets prevention strategy. So there I was drinking powdered milk while watching a black and white movie on a tiny television. The movie depicted a piano composer. The characters in the movie called the composer "Frederic." Frederic looked sullen and generally unwell, as if he never drank milk. But man, could he play the piano! His hands could pound the keys with bravado and purpose. His hands could also float over the keys as if they were smoothing sheets. The music flitted between major and minor keys like a sparrow in a tree; it was lyrical and compelling. It made me feel both happy and sad.
My mom entered the kitchen. She looked at the television while sipping her Folgers Instant Coffee. Her demeanor changed abruptly.
"Oh...oh!" she said, "I know this movie! I know this movie! This is the movie about Chopin. Watch, he's going to start coughing up blood onto the piano keys, because he's dying of tuberculosis. I love this movie!"
I swallowed some toast and sipped some milk and looked at my mom. She was transfixed.
Sure enough, the actor playing Frederic Chopin started coughing up blood, and you could see the dark, bloody drops falling onto the white piano keys like splattered paint as he played his mournful arpeggios.
At that moment I decided never to get tuberculosis. I also decided to learn some Chopin pieces on the piano. That week I asked my piano teacher, Doctor Mr. Robert Ruppeman (that's what everyone called him!) if I could learn Chopin's Polonaise in A flat, Opus 53, The Heroique. The Doctor Mr. looked at me for a full minute without saying a word. Then he removed his wire rim glasses and started cleaning them with his handkerchief. He chuckled. Then he started laughing. It escalated. In a moment tears were pouring down his face as the laughter continued with all the unbridaled whimsy of a Chopin Mazurka. I had never seen the Doctor Mr. even crack a smile. Finally he composed himself.
"The Heroique!?" he stammered with sudden gravity. "The Heroique!? That old war horse! Why, not even Vladimir Horowitz himself could master that piece until he was 20 years old. Your hands are too small. You don't practice enough. It's too much! It will destroy you!" He went back to cleaning his glasses.
"I'm not afraid! I want to learn the piece!" I pleaded.
Doctor Mr.'s eyes went wide and dark as he grabbed my shoulders. His voice went all Yoda and spooky: "You will be afraid," he said. "You...will...be!"
As my adolescence progressed, I dabbled in simpler Chopin tunes like Etudes and Nocturnes. I lost myself in the compositions and their moodiness. They inspired me to approach girls. Girls, especially the artsy ones, loved Chopin. Once, during algebra, I told a girl that playing Chopin was like floating alone in a boat on a lake. She told me I was dark and mysterious, like a cave, and she wanted to go spelunking in my soul. I said, "That's nice," excused myself, then ran all the way home.
Some years later I went cross-country skiing near Bear Valley. As I skied through the forest I listened to Chopin ballads on my Walkman. The music serenaded me as clumps of dense snow fell from the branches onto the trail. I turned the music louder and pushed myself harder. It was just me sweating and breathing along with Chopin out there in the Sierras. That was until the snowmobile driver pulled along side me and interrupted my enchanted reverie. I took off the earphones and looked at the brawny, bearded, heavily-bellied man wearing the wool hat with ear flaps. Steam rose from his nostrils.
"Are you deaf? Move to the side you idiot!" he bellowed.
At age 22, the height of my adolescence, I travelled alone to Europe. In Paris, I made a special trip to Pere Lachaise Cemetary, the burial place of Chopin (and incidentally, the burial place of Jim Morrison of the Doors). Apparently Chopin's heart was removed, with his consent, of course, and carted off to the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw where it is now kept reverently in what looks like a big mayonnaise jar (after the mayonnaise had been removed). Anyway, I sat before the monument at the grave, and I simply said, "Thanks, Fred. You're the best."
The years passed. I outgrew Chopin. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart now seemed more optimistic, more relevant and less ghastly than Chopin. Recently, our family travelled to Italy. We toured La Scala (the famed opera house) in Milan. One of the display cases showed a cast of Chopin's hand:
You can see that it is his left hand. It's not his real hand. His real left hand is in a pickle jar at a church in Bolivia. Ha ha! Just kidding. Anyway, the tour guide explained how this cast of Chopin's hand was taken immediately after his death. Everyone gazed curiously into the display case. I stood nearby and held up my own hand. It looked remarkably similar to Chopin's hand.
The tour guide said, "Note Chopin's hand. It is so dramatic, so capable of expressing Chopin's profound emotion." I held up my own hand and felt proud. I knew I could have played The Heroique! I even raised my hand so other's in the tour group would notice it.
The tour guide continued, "Note, also, how feminine and lady-like Chopin's hand was."
I recoiled and thrust my hand into my back pocket, slowly moved away and hid behind an exhibit showcasing opera glasses from the 1800s. I felt naked. And it wasn't the good kind of naked.
Like I said, though, I could have played The Heroique.
But then again, maybe not.
