Matthew Funk
A Question Of Taste
A young student crushed under depression finds
it’s the weightless
things that make life worth living. 2nd Kurt Baumann
story.
Matthew
Funk
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Kurt breathed in smooth. He pulled on the cigarette smoke like a violin string, reveling in the sustain – draw, gasp, hold, and then, when the buzz of the black air inside him dulled, a languid exhale, breath like a stretching cat. For awhile he stared at the cigarette’s tip, watching it float in the cushion of the expelled smoke. But he could not hold the moment long enough, and as he brought the cigarette close for the next drag, his eyes were snapped up by Rudi’s.
Kurt shook his head, reminded why he didn’t want to come to this breakfast. Rudi’s eyebrows raised, and with that Kurt knew his friend would not be deterred.
“Need I even ask?”
“No, man. No.” Kurt smiled, hoping the smoke he blew out as he did would hide any betrayal of its lack of authenticity. He looked away, watching his finger tap a puff of ash into the porcelain tray – the conch shell with the Gaugin on the bottom, his favorite of Rudi’s collection. When he looked back up, Rudi was still staring at him.
“But you’re still coming on Friday. You’re going to talk to your mom about it.”
“I
don’t know.” Kurt stared out the
apartment window, where the rain on the single, solid pane of glass cut
“You can’t get the money from her? I mean, you tried to get a job…” Rudi began, the consternation showing as it always did – as a single line bisecting his brow, the solitary mark on a face that was a smooth field of old freckles.
“I can’t, man.” Kurt rolled his eyes over Rudi for a moment, but let them carry on, to drift around the room – anything but fix on something. He stuck his cigarette in his mouth to keep from biting his nails and reviewed the small room’s fine furnishing. For all of Rudi’s economy of space, and therefore of rent, he made no secret that he lived well. A table lamp like a cool black elipse; a phonograph with a shining chrome rack of records suspended above it by a contractor’s screw work; glacieral glass coffee table; wide wicker chairs; and abundance of things, all crisp and quality. Kurt felt a shiver of shame, hid it under smoke.
“I can’t, man,” he repeated, now looking Rudi right in the earnest disappointment of his eyes. “She’s done enough for me this month.”
Rudi just stared, as if he looked at Kurt long enough, his old school friend – his wild, sensible friend – would be restored before his eyes. After long, he said, “This is Furtwängler, man. Furtwängler, at long last, and he’s doing the 9th.”
“It’s also—” And though nothing came to Kurt, save to desire to just repeat – louder – his insistence that he wouldn’t ask his mother for the ticket money, he knew there must be something else that would excuse him. There was always some excuse, just as there was always some grounds to discount one. He had been in trouble enough times to know that. “It’s almost the end of the month. I don’t want to ask her for more when she’s just going to give me more come the first.”
“She’d understand.” Rudi implored, putting both words down like booted feet. Kurt sighed, tried to smile, and succeeded when Rudi mercifully began to get up from the coffee table. “The greatest conductor of the century…”
Rudi picked up the plates from the table, the remnants of their egg-and-bacon breakfast. Kurt, reclining on the couch, nodded his thanks and plucked up the newspaper from the table. “I know your mom,” Rudi finished. “And your mom would understand.”
Kurt looked up at his hovering friend, hoping he didn’t appear too startled. He was at a loss for words; he could only agree with Rudi, after all, especially considering how much seeing Furtwängler meant to him. He desperately wanted to go to the concert – music was, after all, his life. But perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps he should have other priorities. Rudi voiced his suspicions for him.
“You need to get a job.”
“Yeah I do.”
“Any job.” Rudi set down one of the plates as Kurt’s expression soured. He reached into his courdoroys and pulled out his lean, neat leather wallet. Kurt had only a moment to appreciate how different the billfold was from his fat, old one before Rudi flipped it open and drew several bills free. He set these on the table.
“It’s just not that easy,” Kurt insisted. To what, he wasn’t sure. Rudi picked up the plate and entered the kitchen.
“It can be if you let it.” Rudi yelled as he set the dishes in the sink, then opened the faucet. “You just need something to survive, man.”
“I don’t want to just survive. Living isn’t about just surviving.” Plucking at the newspaper, Kurt righted himself on the couch, finding repose suddenly painfully uncomfortable. He sat up, sifting through the pages, unable to make out anything he wanted to – or could – read.
“Whatever, man. Job means money. You need the money.”
Not that badly, Kurt reasoned – not badly enough to ruin a moment of his life with compromise, drudgery and dismay, like his parents had. Not moment. It was about finding the right work, using his time to improve his life, not sacrifice it for momentary satisfaction or immediate concerns. That was the privilege of not having to worry about starving, and Kurt knew enough about it to know he didn’t have to worry. It wasn’t that he was afraid of work, certainly. Was it?
And Rudi’s money was sitting right there. There always seemed to be something sitting right there.
“You need something, and it isn’t hard to find something. Just apply yourself to it like you do your music.”
He couldn’t though. He couldn’t just pick it up, as easy as it would be, as much as everyone wanted to. It was bad enough living on his parents’ money – mother’s salary and dead father’s pension. It was bad enough not finding it in himself to get the jobs he wanted. And the money was just laying there.
“I’ve got to head out.” He yelled into the kitchen. “I’ve got stuff.”
“Right,
man. Sure.”
Rudi leaned into the open doorframe, smiling, in time to see the door shut
after Kurt. The smile faltered. It fell when saw the stack of bills sitting on the
table.
Kurt
stared into the
Kurt had twenty marks. The river, a thing of movement, had had more and less in its time. It would know how such an amount should be spent; it had to tell him, for Kurt was entirely lost.
He tucked up the collars of his coat, blocking the thin rivulets of rain that cut his face. Kurt adored the city center and University park, but he wished that for once he could be caught in a real downpour in these places – for all the times it had rained when he was there, never once had it been more than a trickle, a thin tease of rain. Such equivocation made Kurt uneasy. Twenty marks could buy him an umbrella. Twenty marks could buy him a new pulp magazine to read on the walk home.
Twenty marks was not enough money for anything that mattered and too much money for thing he could do without. Twenty marks could buy a bag of chips, a plastic whistle, a piece of candy. Twenty marks could buy quite a few stamps, a poor book or a damn good pack of cigarettes. Twenty marks could not buy a college degree that mattered, an exemption from the draft or a house. Twenty marks could not buy the ticket to the Berlin Philharmonic’s presentation of Beethoven’s 9th symphony; it could buy him the finest transportation home, a private car, across the river to Friedrichshein, but it could not buy him peace of mind on the way there.
“Peace
of mind is overrated,” Kurt said. The
Like
all the buildings along the river, east of the National Chancellery, the building housing
the café looked like an ornate, seamless stack of layers, each stacked to the height of
five gray floors. All the buildings were the
color of old ash rubbed down, or of a hungover man’s face, or of the sand in Kurt’s
favorite pictures from National Geographic – the ones of the North African coast. All of the buildings had fluted frames to their
windows, curled cornices on their highest corners, and with their regular arrangement of
muted earthtones, seemed to be doing their best to blend in with other the other slightly
ostentatious, dull colored stone of
Kurt pushed aside the beaded mandala curtain just inside the door and wiped his feet on a mat woven into the image of a peacock. He shook off his coat and gazed about the room as he wandered up to the counter, noting that the last office he worked in seemed to have more character than the furnishings around him. The server, who seemed equally unimpressed with the place, nodded in welcome and voiced a greeting that died of starvation somewhere behind his lips.
“Hey.” Kurt said. Above the rows of flavoring syrup, coffee bags and brass tins of tea marked with Twinings logos, the typical chalkboard offered the menu. Apparently it had been offering the same thing for some time; though a musician, Kurt knew enough about the visual arts to detect the clammy, almost plastic permanence that chalk took on when left in place for months. At least, he thought, the board didn’t specify a particular type of coffee.
“I’ll have the coffee of the day.” Kurt didn’t bother checking the board, located lower down by a grinning porcelain gremlin in a chef’s hat, that indicated what kind that was. All that mattered, it seemed, was that it cost only ten marks. And that it would get him speeded up enough, buzzed enough, that he could momentarily fantasize some charming piece of music on the way home and actually believe he was an artist. But the server, perhaps because of training but certainly not out of enthusiasm, identified the brew anyway.
“Sumatran.”
“Sure.” Kurt looked up to find the server staring at him, eyes narrowed. He shrugged. What the Hell was the guy’s problem? Was it that he hadn’t been more vocal in his consent to Sumatran over whatever else they had on grind? If so, what was the issue? Misery loved company; why was ennui any different? Kurt actually began to feel himself involuntarily glowering before he realized the server wasn’t staring at him. Kurt turned to see who was behind him.
“Mr. Furtwängler.” The conductor looked up from brushing water off the bowl of his hat and gave Kurt’s breathless greeting an awkward smile in reply. Kurt felt one of his own snap onto his face, wide and glittering.
“Yes.” The fellow said. The corners of his mouth twitched to match the dramatic curves of his eyebrows as he nodded in greeting. “Hello.”
“What…?” Kurt began, then realized none of the sentences that came to mind – What the Hell are you doing here? What’s going on? What am I doing actually talking to you? – would be appropriate.
“What are you having?” Kurt decided on, and, tucking his smile back into modest proportions, grinned genially.
“Just a –” Furtwängler began, and Kurt’s heart soared when the man’s magical hand, the hand that could inspire instruments en masse to house the host of heaven, swept at the chalkboard. “It’s fine – just a coffee.”
“I insist,” Kurt said, setting down his last ten mark bill on the counter and sliding it with a violent finality towards the server. “Allow me.”
The server set down the coffee, and Kurt took his eyes off of Furtwängler long enough to turn and pick them up. As he did, the server caught his attention and set hands on the cash register keys. “Together, then?” the fellow asked.
“Yes. Together.”
All contents copyright © Matthew Funk 2007, all rights reserved.