我寫上音 The Shanghai Conservatory of Music in my writing

我寫上音

THE SHANGHAI CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC IN MY WRITING

By Vivian Yang

從能記事起就知道上海音樂學院和附屬音樂中學。在上音任教的一位舅舅無疑是親戚中最賦有藝術細胞的。久而久之，我便是耳濡目染，在不知不覺中受著薰陶。每次家庭聚會，他總是滔滔不絕地說天道地，手舞足蹈。誰讓他是個音樂家呢？

對上音附中的認識則是更感性了。伯父們繼承父業，都是西醫。第一醫學院和附屬中山醫院在文革前將一位伯父由海外聘回時，把位於東平路上的一座花園洋房作為福利分配給了他。每次父母帶我去玩時，總會聽到對面那大花園內傳來的悅耳的鋼琴、小提琴聲。

伯父會笑話道：“妳聽聽，那幫小孩子彈練習曲比妳爸爸還強。”

我雖不到學齡，卻也吳儂細語地試著為父親辯護：“伯伯呀，附中裏相的小囡是專門學鋼琴咯。爸爸只不過是彈彈白相相，消遣消遣。噥講是勿啦？”

媽媽對這一地段更熟悉。小時候在賈爾葉愛路（現東平路）1號席公館的法式宅院裏住過幾年，對裏面郁郁葱葱的花草樹木還有感情。當時年幼的她對在綠茵茵的花園裏蕩秋千的情景仍記憶猶新。在上海又潮又冷的冬天，她總會情不自禁地回憶起席家大鍋爐燒水汀為整幢樓供暖氣的享受。

媽媽的外祖父曾幾度出任財部政長。屋主席德秉是他的老部下和世交，曾任中央貨幣印製廠的廠長。抗戰後期，席德秉先生攜全家老小赴重慶內地，房子便留給了老上司一家。種着茂密法國梧桐樹的短短一條賈爾葉愛路上，兩邊就這幾幢獨立豪宅。它和在畢勳路（現汾陽路）南端盡頭與祁齊路（今岳陽路）以120°的角度相交，那街心花園上便是1937年旅滬俄僑所立的普希金銅像。當時年幼的媽媽只記得在去三角花園嬉耍時，由家傭抱著去摸過Alexander Pushkin的鼻子。“像家裏大狗的鼻頭一樣，冷冰冰、光溜溜的。”

媽媽告訴我，當時蔣介石、宋美齡曾在東平路9號的上音附中現址居住過。那座被蔣命名為“愛廬”的花園洋房是宋的陪嫁嫁妝，也是蔣、宋在上海、杭州及廬山“三大行宮”中最歐化的。不難想像，取名“愛廬”的靈感可能是來自陶淵明的詞句：

“孟夏草木長，

  繞屋樹扶疏。

  眾鳥欣有託，

  吾亦愛吾廬。”

能在上海灘十裏洋場上擁有如此一塊鬧中取靜的小綠洲，的確會令人感受到一縷陶公所憧憬的世外桃源的韻味。與9號“愛廬”左右為鄰的7號和11號分別是孔祥熙、宋藹齡，和宋子文的宅第。“那時9號是很清靜、神秘的。 樟樹洋樓，浪漫典雅，” 媽媽會說。“哪像現在從早到晚聲音不斷。”

文革後期，主席夫人江青的寵兒革命現代樣板戲劇團的斗士們雄赳赳，氣昂昂地佔領了附中領地。一時間，優雅的西洋古典音樂變成了鏗鏘的京劇唱腔。什麼“窮人的孩子早當家”囉、“這草包倒是一堵擋風的牆”囉、“壯志未酬誓不休”囉，充斥了鄰里空間。上音附中成了名符其實的“無產階級文藝領空。”跟在自己家裏一樣，去伯伯處時再也聽不到鋼琴聲了。

鄧小平重新主持工作之後，上海音樂學院與國際同行的交流活動與日俱增。已是上音教授的舅舅談起Isaac Stern 斯特恩，Seiji Ozawa小澤征爾，Yitzhak Perelman帕尔曼等大師訪校講課時那喜形於色的興奮激情至今歷歷在目。

1984年1月，筆者在上海外國語大學開始教授英語和新聞不久，便在舅舅的撮合下採訪了上音木管五重奏室內樂隊和其澳洲導師，為《中國日報》“人物/文化”版撰冩了我的第一篇署名英文文章 “Woodwind group thrives.”

八五年底，我作為美國“与民同樂”演出團的報幕主持人以及同声翻譯，与北京東 方歌舞團和上音師生联欢，同臺共演。從北到南，歷時兩周的中國五大城市訪問演出， 以在上海文化廣场的成功公演而告終。

從此之後，我与该歌舞團的几位音樂爱好者结下了友谊，書信、伊妹儿往来至今。

現在，上音附屬小學也已由汾陽路遷併入東平路9號，與附中成為一體。校园中几栋洋樓也被租用，成為商业设施。媽媽的舊居1號和宋子文的老房子11號，也一中一西地開出了餐館。烏魯木齊南路和岳陽路像括號的兩邊一般，將短短的一條東平路包摟在中間，舊景不再。

但轉念一想，上海自開埠以來一直是個華洋雜處的混合體，中、西文化融合並存。上音和附中正是座落在這片地皮上的歷史和現實的見證。

以下所附我的小說节录，背景就是上音。

人物和内容自然纯属虚构，但字里行間讀者也许可以看出我与上音感情上的一丝牵连。

Author’s Note:

    

As a child, I grew up hearing stories about, as well as music from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. One close relative has been a professor there for three decades; another lived for over two decades opposite the campus of its Affiliated Middle School. The sounds of pupils practicing etudes would drift into his house and garden, weekends included.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that my debut published story, a bylined feature in English in January 1984, was a profile on the Conservatory’s woodwind quintet, its first ever. I knew all along that the Shanghai cultural institution once staffed by White Russians would one day appear in my creative writing, as it does below -- not quite a fugue, just pure fiction.

MOTHER AND MICK LEWDWINSKY     © by Vivian Yang

SOME SAY THAT two forms of non-verbal communication are universal: music and sex. They may very well be right. My mother’s newfound love is a case in point.

In early 1981 in Shanghai, Mother started a romantic relationship with her co-teacher in the violin honors class at the Conservatory’s Affiliated Middle School. Her role is to play piano accompaniment. He is a young, Russian-American by the name of Mick Lewdwinsky. Mick has shoulder-length flaxen hair, straight, aquiline nose, pale, ultra thin lips, and bedroom eyes. Mick, of course, is a violinist, a true artist who looks the part.

Born Mikhail Lewdwinsky in 1952 in the then Soviet Republic of Ukraine, Mick had a golden childhood growing up as a privileged “successor to the great Communist cause.” His most admired childhood hero was the Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin. Later in life in the West, Mick would often reflect on the irony of his childhood hero worship and his own decision to defect to the U.S. as a late teenager.

Brought up in Kiev in a well-equipped modern apartment by Stalin-ear Soviet standards, the young Mikhail spent summers with his family out in the country, practicing the violin in a dacha allocated to the Lewdwinskys through his father’s job. The father, Comrade Professor Lewdwinsky, had been a university music historian in Kiev until an appointment in Moscow came up in the late 1950’s. More importantly however, Lewdwinsky Sr. was a trusted Communist Party intellectual and music theologian. In Moscow, Mikhail and his younger sister Olga were determined to make themselves “revolutionary music prodigies” and continued their training with the best tutors that the Soviet Union had to offer. He played violin and she, cello.

Then, in 1969, the Lewdwinskys’ fate changed for the better yet again. Comrade Professor Lewdwinsky became a cultural attaché in the Soviet Union’s embassy in Warsaw. It was there, in the slightly more liberal Poland, that Mikhail was able to receive the heavily jammed short-wave radio broadcast from a U.S. military base in West Germany. It was there, too, that he heard The Rolling Stones for the very first time. Soon, the young Russian lad was calling himself Mick. After Jagger.

In 1970, his short-wave radio brought him the news that The Swedish Academy had awarded a Nobel Prize to a compatriot, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Before long, Mick secured an English phrase book and put it in the middle of his violin case with his music scorebooks.  He began to memorize the words and phrases with the same enthusiasm he reserved for learning numerous violin etudes by heart. On one gray Warsaw winter morning, 18-year-old Mick Lewdwinsky crawled into the trunk of a Soviet Embassy-owned Volga entering the U.S. Embassy and asked in his heavily accented English for political asylum.

Not having an I.D.s on him, he gesticulated that what he needed was a violin. A junior’s violin borrowed from the daughter of the U.S. cultural attaché was quickly brought in. The diplomat knew of his Russian counterpart Lewdwinsky Sr. from cocktail functions but the two head never spoken during those Cold War days. Mick Lewdwinsky spent part of the afternoon playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, from memory, without any accompaniment. The instrument’s limitation notwithstanding, his performance all but put the U.S. Embassy staff into a trance. One blurted out: “This kid could one day make it to Carnegie Hall!”

As the Americans applauded and cheered, Mick felt tears rolling down his cheeks. He would not speak. He could not speak. With the bow sticking out in the middle of the air, he took the longest and the deepest bow of his life, holding back emotions, insisting, persuading, pleading, and waiting for the sentence of his life to be pronounced. Minutes ticked by as he bowed in earnest, in silence …

His wishes were granted. The U.S. cultural attaché presented Mick with that junior’s violin, complete with its black leather case and the blessings of its original owner, the American girl. “A violinist cannot be without a violin no matter where he chooses live,” said the career visa-stamping lady. Other embassy staff had their housemaids (cum host country-trained petty spies) rearrange their drawers and came up with a change of clothes for the young musician. The day he boarded a plane for New York, he was wearing a pair of denim, bell-bottom trousers and carrying nothing else but the violin case.

The rest of the Lewdwinskys were soon recalled in disgrace. In Moscow, the family was sent packing back to Kiev. Olga was declared unfit for cello. Lewdwinsky Sr. was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Promptly removed also were the glorious prefixes of “Comrade” and “Professor.” However, despite being regarded now as “an enemy of the people,” Lewdwinsky Sr. still considered himself lucky that Comrade Brezhnev had spared him the fate of being shipped to a Siberian labor camp on a cattle wagon, Andrei Sakharov-style, wearing a soiled, sable trapper’s hat previously owned by a now deceased prisoner.

In time, Mick Lewdwinsky graduated from The Julliard School on a full scholarship. But he did not quite make it to Carnegie Hall. In time, he started teaching at the Special Music School of America right across from The Lincoln Center. His passion now was to impart his knowledge and techniques onto the musically talented children of New York though his music. A private student was a recent immigrant from Shanghai. She told him to watch the documentary “From Mao to Mozart.”

“You will definitely like it, Mr. Lewdwinsky. You will definitely like Shanghai, too, if you ever visit there. My parents told me that Shanghai used to have lots of Russians like you.”

She was right. Mick fell in love with the Shanghai music scene portrayed in the film, which documented Isaac Stern’s month-long visit to China in 1979. Mick loved the history of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He marveled at the White Russians’ contributions during the 1920’s and 1930’s to this Shanghai cultural institution.

“From Mao To Mozart: Isaac Stern in China” was to win the 1981 Academy Award for Best Documentary. But Mick Lewdwinsky did not wait for that. Within a week of watching the documentary, Mick sent his C.V. to the Affiliated Middle School. By August 1980, he was in Shanghai. A 12-month working visa is granted. The visa category he belonged to: Foreign Expert.

As luck will have it, Mother becomes Mick’s co-teacher.

MOTHER HAS NO idea that “the professor from America” is a 28-year-old lad. Mick Lewdwinsky has no idea that “the senior piano teacher” is an attractive 38-year-old single mother. Mother has no idea that Mick does not speak a word of Chinese. She has no idea that even his English sounds Russian, as she understands neither language. She has no idea that the young “American expert” speaks English in a way most Americans would associate with “an Eastern European professor.” Yet none of these matters, as Professor Lewdwinsky asks his teaching colleague not to worry about the language barrier. We share the same universal language of music!

Before long, Mick gives Mother a Russian name, Nadia. Before long, Nadia plays Liszt’s Dream of Love No. 3 just for Mick. His extremely dexterous and sensitive fingers are in heated competition with hers. The expert fingers of the foreign expert match those of her own --nimble, strong, and practiced. Experts in themselves. Her expert fingers and his skilled hands. Their fingers compete on piano keys and on violin strings. And off. Their fingers play the instruments. Or they simply play with each other, unlocking and locking themselves tight, bringing their own music to crescendo after crescendo.

No other language is needed.

Mick knows this well. When he was playing his solo violin concerto in the makeshift chamber music hall of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw ten years ago, not one word was spoken. Not English. Not Russian. Not Polish. He just played and played. He spoke eloquently with his music. He expressed his desire for freedom with the universal language of music.

Few can appreciate the beauty and the practicality of the School’s multi-storied Piano Building as much as Mother and Mick can. It is designed in such a way that several hundred piano-practicing rooms are situated one after another, row after row, and stacked up on each floor. Their size is no larger than a king-sized bed. The furniture inside is nothing more than an upright piano, its seat, and a scores stand for solfeggio. Tuck the seat under the piano and you will have enough room on the floor about the size of a twin bed. Hard as the floor may be, and the thick carpeting left by the White Russians has not been cleaned in decades, it can still provide a good cushion. Once the bilingual “Private Lesson in Progress. Do Not Disturb!” sign is up and the door is locked from within, few will seek you out. Chances are, whatever music is made inside the little piano-practicing room is going to be drowned out by reprimands and repeatedly interrupted etudes from adjoining rooms. 

Mick will always remember a least expected and thus most fascinating way by which Nadia reveals her charm once. At the end of one particularly passionate session, as Mick helped her fasten her bra hooks from behind. Nadia, both of her hands free, points at the ears on the Beethoven bust statue sitting atop the upright piano and giggles like a bell. Mick experiences another rush of excitement and unbuckles her bra again.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Beethoven is deaf.”

And he gives her a big hug from the back, Russian bear-style. So they go on with their temporarily intercepted musical composition under the watchful eyes of the intense-looking, deaf but not blind Beethoven. Entering into and exiting from largo, presto, or allegro. In and out. On and on. Until it reaches its final movement. Oblivious that the metronome Nadia has set in the beginning continues to tick on.

The tempo must go on.

Mother begins to learn English in order to tell Mick her story. She learns English in preparation for her potential move to America. She is certain that if she succeeds in achieving the right amalgamation of her verbal and nonverbal communication efforts, Mick will pop the question and make an honest woman of her.

In her broken English Mother tells Mick: “Your idol Yehudi Menuhin. My idol Van Cliburn. I dream about America since 1958. That year Van Cliburn 23 years old. American pianist won top prize in Moscow. Tchaikovsky Competition. That year I 16. The Competition is every four year. I give myself eight year to 1966, then I be 24. Closest in age to Van Cliburn then. I wanted go Moscow, make name for myself alongside American Van Cliburn.

“But you know what happen in China 1966. Cultural Revolution. Moscow impossible. Later, I hardly allowed touch piano. Now you come in me. Now you come in my dream. Oh, dearest Mick, take me, go America, please!”

Mick understands Nadia’s psychology perfectly. Shanghai to Nadia today is like Kiev or Moscow or Warsaw was to him in his teens. She wants her way out. She wants to live in the West and breathe the air of freedom.

Still, there are realistic survival issues, he tells her. Mick is not sure he can make a decent living and support her.

“I no want you support. I know support me all my years! All myself! I teach pianos to Chinese childs! No want English in Flushing! Like toilet, you know. Many big money Taiwan peoples love to Flushing!”

Mother has done her research. She has charted out her future path. All she needs is a ticket from Mick to leave China. Mother has found out that many affluent new immigrants from Taiwan have populated the New York City neighborhood of Flushing, “like toilet.” There, they have bought real estate, set up Chinese restaurants and grocery stores, established Chinese-language Buddhist temples, Christian churches, and weekend Chinese-language schools. They are the nouveau riche of the Asian immigrate community. As a result, the demand for quality, Chinese-language instruction in piano, violin, Western painting, or ballet far exceeds the supply.

Mick is in awe over Mother’s ingenuity and her spirit of independence. Within days of Mother’s Flushing appeal, he has knelt down and popped the question.

Mother replied in both English and Russian: Yes! and Da!

Beethoven could not hear this, but he was there in the piano-practicing room to bear witness to the holy moment. A holy moment well calculated, timed, and elicited by Mother, perfectly matching the beats of the metronome next to the Beethoven bust.