Free The Secret Knowledge by Andrew Crumey Page A

mass production and infinite reproducibility. His students at the college, he’s meant to get them to competition standard, meaning they should play like machines, he shows up at work next day having slept for two hours and he’s got to give lessons as usual, though all he wants is to tell them to go to hell.
    When he gets a call on his office line he assumes it’s Laura, grabs the receiver, skull throbbing, but it’s Verrier. “Did you get the score?”
    “I haven’t had time to play it.” Conroy’s hung-over, they aren’t buddies now, Verrier’s unwelcome urgency has too much salesmanship about it.
    “I look forward to hearing your opinion.”
    “I’ll let you know.”
    Student he sees later in the week, kid called Harry, he could be the next Paul Morrow, the hair and attitude are spot-on and who gives a damn about expression? They’re doing Chopin Études ; Harry attacks the ‘Winter Wind’ like he’s a psycho with a hunting knife, sawing his way through the right-hand sextuplets. This is competition style, all right. The two of them discuss interpretation and Harry uses the term “take-home message”. What else do you expect from a generation taught to equate education with financial investment and personal debt? Conroy nods off in the middle of the next piece but is woken by a fortissimo fit for the Wembley Arena.
    “How was it?” Harry asks at the end, a puppy wanting a pat on the head.
    “You’ve clearly been practising.” This is what every teacher at every level says to every student who’s just dished up for them a plateful of musical vomit.
    “Thanks.”
    Four days of a life without Laura that began years ago, her number comes up as not recognised, she’s ditched her mobile as well as her man, both equally outmoded. After Harry, Conroy has some free time and starts playing through the Klauer. This, too, he thinks, is a kind of farewell gesture, and like every artwork it’s a one-way message. Klauer bowed out and left no room for a response; all we’ve got is a half-empty wardrobe.
    Klauer’s a chameleon, the first movement gives nothing away, there are possible references or allusions, but no sense of who exactly he was, this mysterious fellow with his secret knowledge. Nor did Conroy ever really know Laura; it’s only when they surprise you that you find out your ignorance. We expect continuity, not paradox.
    The slow movement strikes him as more readily grasped, something operatic about it, though gradually Conroy understands what the peculiar scoring and implied colours really mean. This is an idea for a symphony; these are meant to be violins, horns, an oboe. The entire work is a skeleton, and it’s with this in mind that he repeats the movement, trying to guess which solo instrument is intended to be heard at the outset. In his mind a park, people in old-fashioned costume. A dull pop somewhere and a man falls to the ground. That’s all there is to it, the gap between life and death.
    In the afternoon he has a new student to see, a late starter on the course, must have transferred from somewhere else. When he arrives at the room she’s already waiting for him, small girl, sweet smile but can’t have much strength in those limbs. She says she’s called Paige. He opens the sound-proof door, gestures her inside and asks, “How long have you been playing?”
    “I started when I was four.”
    “How long is that?”
    “Sixteen years.”
    She tells him a familiar story of lessons and grade exams, junior competitions and medals, a childhood dominated by a single lustrous project. Conroy always likes to know from the start what sort of influence the parents have had, he’s seen plenty of students glad to have escaped domestic domination and wanting to take it easy. But this girl seems motivated, managed to do well in her school subjects, had other options and chose music against her parents’ advice.
    She offers him the Barcarolle , accomplished if a little stiff. Conroy finds