Free Middle C by William H. Gass

forth the night. For a moment Mr. Hirk was proud of his age. A piano teacher had flown the soprano to these great heights: an old man was her wings, as well as her lover, and saw her soar.
    Joey knew then that he would not be able to tell Mr. Hirk he was fired, that the lessons were over—“terminated,” a word Miriam had learned at work to fear—now that Mr. Hirk was finally reaching out—only figuratively, of course—to his pupil, and opening his heart’s attic to him, unwrapping his enthusiasms, and—young Joey recognized—confronting the death of his hopes, the ruins of his life. Mr. Hirk, after all, lived in a small dark leaf-lit room; he was no one who had ever played or sung before the public; he had probably never even taught another who might, then, have gone on to earn acclaim. And for a pittance, for pity, he was beating booktime to a boy who was only, at best, a mime, a faker who had never faked a measure of Chopin, and didn’t even know what a Czerny was.
    Mr. Hirk had managed to raise an admonitory finger. Marcella Sembrich, wisely counseled, he said sternly, had not strained her voice singing Wagner. Oh she was pure bel canto, pure Italian, he said with hoarse approval. Always, small Joey, she studied. Her whole career. To sing Lucia , to sing Traviata . To sing Verdi, Donizetti, Puccini. But you are playing at playing, not working at playing, you are only pleasing yourself, small Joey. Well, you must stop having fun and learn the fundamentals. Then you may be able to please someone else.
    In these words small Joey heard he hadn’t made Mr. Hirk happy. That’s what he heard. Moreover, the name—Small Joey—was new, and not nice. These criticisms restiffened his resolve. He would hand Mr. Hirk his envelope, give him the small sum he was charging for the lessons, and say his services were no longer needed. He would do this with a dignity for which he was presently searching.
    But Mr. Hirk, who had not heard what Joey was resolving, who hadnot felt the stiffening of anyone’s will, went on without pause to another tale. This anecdote was about a true pianist. It might have been titled: “Ignace Jan Paderewski and the Spider.” The story was wholly unfamiliar to Joey, who had decided not to listen. Like you, Paderewski was slow to become a student; like you he had bad teachers; like you he learned through his ears and had no technique, only instinctive fingers that went for the nearest note like kids after cake; yes, yes, like you he did not know how to work. Yet he became the greatest pianist of his time. Of his time … And more than that …
    Joey let his features settle into the sullenness that Miriam found so insufferable, but Mr. Hirk’s mind was in another country, an ocean and a sea away, where Joey was an eager auditor whatever his face let on. Mr. Hirk cleared his throat of phlegm that, fortunately, never materialized.
    Paderewski was studying in Vienna with Leschetizky—a name you do not know, because I have taught you nothing—and he had taken a couple of tiny rooms near the villa of this greatest of piano teachers, the author of a method named for him that had helped to eminence some of the most famous pianists of that age. Young Paderewski, as I say, had no technique; he was like you in that, small Joey, though he was, I must also say, a master of the pedal, he pedaled better than you do perched upon your bike. He did not kick the pedal, or otherwise abuse it, he caressed it—“footsie,” we say, you know—he played footsie with the pedal. Never did he chew upon himself neither. He was growed up! Anyway—are you listening? This is a lesson, which is what you are here for—so—one day, in his little candlelit room as dark as this one on account of the plants, Paderewski was practicing a piece by Chopin, an exercise in thirds. You do know thirds? While he was playing, a tiny spider dropped down from the ceiling to just one side of him, a bit above the deck of the piano, on a