KARL WALLACE
THE NIGHT I MET EINSTEIN
When I was a young man, just beginning to make my way, I was invited to dine at the home of a
distinguished New York philanthropist, Lady Jane Vanderbilt. After dinner, our hostess led us to an
enormous drawing room. Other guests were pouring in. My eyes set on two unnerving sights:
Servants were arranging small gilt chairs in long, straight rows. Up front, leaning against the wall, were
several classical musical instruments. Apparently we were in for an evening of symphony music. I use
the phrase “in for” because e music meant nothing to me. I am almost tone deaf. I was born with poor
hearing and became almost totally deaf in my left ear at age eight when I contacted a mastoid infection
in my left middle ear. Only with great effort can I carry the simplest tune.
In those days, symphony musicians had long hair, hence, I called their stuff ‘long hair;’ they played
violins, piccolos, trumpets, clarinets, and such. The drummer’s clash the symbols, and pound on the
timpani drums, gongs, gourds, triangles, cow bells, and so forth. Over and over all evening long, no
vocals--guitars or drum sets, just instrumentals. It’s all guaranteed to wave me to sleep and then wake
me up at the crescendos. I avoided attending symphony concerts as if my life depended on it. Very few
times have I been forced or trapped, as in this situation, to be here in the first place.
So, what I have learned to do (out of desperation) is bide my time until the tuning stops, the conductor raises both arms, stops the tuning, brings his arms down which starts the musicians.With the audience now comfortably seated, I start fixing my face in what I hope has an appearance of intelligent appreciation of the music. I close both ears from the inside and tuck my palm under my chin for support-usually my right palm as I am right handed. Next, I begin the process of what I call “first stage dream- hand submergence.” Practiced as I am, it takes but a few moments, and those nearby who happen to look my way observe only a contemplating lover of the arts with his eye lids hanging partly open. On this occasion there must not have been enough crescendos.
Suddenly, the audience was on their feet clapping. It was intermission. I had slept through the first half. I quickly stood up, embarrassed and afraid I had snored or worse? Just then I heard a gentle, accented voice on my right say.
“You’re not fond of Ravel?”
I knew as much about Ravel as I did about nuclear fission. But I did know one of the most famous
faces in the world, with his well-known shock of untidy white hair and piercing eyes. I was standing next
to Albert Einstein.
“Well,” I said, hesitating uncomfortably. I had been asked a casual question so all I had to do was be
equally casual in my reply. I could see, however, from the look in my neighbor’s extraordinary blue eyes
that their owner had no intention of merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I might place on my part in the verbal exchange with this man, his part mattered very much. Above all, I knew this was a man to who you did not tell a lie.
“I don’t know anything about Ravel,” I blubbered out. “I’ve never heard of him.”
A look of perplexed astonishment washed across his mobile face. “You have never heard Ravel?”
He made it sound as though I had said, I'd never taken a bath. “It isn’t that I don’t want to like Ravel,”
I replied hastily. “It’s just that I’m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and actually I’ve never really enjoyed
this stuff.”
A look of concern came upon his face. “Please,” he said abruptly, “You will come with me.” Einstein took my arm with one hand and at the same time placed his famous pipe at the side of his mouth. As he led me down the hall and across the crowded foyer, I kept my eyes fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation as to who I was followed us. Einstein paid no attention to it. Resolutely, he led me up some stairs to the floor above. He opened the door into a book-lined messy study, drew me in, and shut the door.
“Now,” he said with a small, troubled smile. “You will tell me, please, how long you have felt this way
about music?”
“All my life,” I said, “The fact that I don’t enjoy music isn’t important. I wish you would go back
downstairs, and enjoy the music.”
He shook his head and scowled. “Tell me, is there any kind of music that you do like?”
“Well, I like songs that have words and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.”
Einstein smiled and nodded. “You can give me an example perhaps?”
“Well, almost anything by Bing Crosby or Ray Charles.”
He nodded briskly. “Good!” He went to a corner of the room, opened the cover of a phonograph and
started pulling out records from a cabinet. Soon he beamed. “Ah! Bing Crosby’s, White Christmas,” He
put Bing’s record on the phonograph, lowered the needle arm onto the edge of the record. In a moment
his study was filled with the relaxed lilting strains of White Christmas. He grinned at me, as he kept time
with the stem of his pipe. After four or five stanzas, he stopped the phonograph.
“Now will you tell me, please, what you have just heard?” The simplest answer seemed to be to just the lines. I began quietly, but desperately trying to stay in tune.
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know. Where the tree tops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the sky.”
The expression on Einstein’s face was like a beautiful morning sunrise. “You see! You do have an
ear,” he cried with delight.
I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs; I had heard it hundreds of times, so
it didn’t think it really prove anything.
“Nonsense! It proves everything. Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in first grade? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in, say, long division. Could you have done so?”
“No, of course not.” I replied.
“Precisely!” Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipe stem. “It would have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. You would have closed your mind to long division. As a result, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it is possible thatfor your whole life you would be denied the beauty of long division, or maybe the rhythm of time in the universe. Who knows what would become of you at that impressionable age?" The pipe stem went up and out in another wave.“But on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. You would start with elementary things. Then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems you would be led up to long division...so it is with music.”
Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. “This simple, charming song is like simple addition or
subtraction. You have mastered it.” Next came Ray Charles’s, “Born to Lose, I’ve lived my life in vain. Everything has only brought me pain; Born to lose and now I’m losing you.”
“Now we go on to something more complicated.” He found another record and turned on the phonograph once again. The golden voice of John McCormack singing The Trumpeter filled the room. After a few lines he stopped the phonograph.
“So! You will sing that back to me please?” I did with a good deal of self-consciousness but for me a surprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on his face that I had seen only once before in my life. That was on the face of my father when I graduated from college.
“Excellent! Wonderful! Now this, Caruso.”
I managed to reproduce an approximation of the sounds of that famous tenor, and a few more
followed. I couldn't shake a feeling of amazement, of being here. He was completely occupied by what
we were doing. Recordings of music without words came next which I was instructed to follow by humming. When I reached for a high note his mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough in my humming, for he turned off the phonograph.
“Now young man," he said, putting his arm through mine pipe in his mouth,
“We are ready for Ravel.”
As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the musicians were tuning up for the final selection.
Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the knee.
“Just allow yourself to listen. That is all.”
For me, it wasn’t really all. Without the effort he had just poured out for a total stranger, I would
never have heard as I did that night for the first time in my life, Ravel’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” I have
heard it many times since. I don’t think I shall ever tire of it, because I never listen to it alone. I sit beside a small man with a shock of untidy white hair, a pipe clamped between his teeth, and yes, all that’s
contained in those blue eyes in their extraordinary warmth, beaming through the wonder of the
universe. I had been given a passport to the universe of music.
When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that of the other patrons. My feeling
that this was going to be an Armageddon had disappeared. I seldom again felt lost in the rhythm of
universal music.
Suddenly with an icy glare at me our hostess confronted us.“I’m so sorry, Dr. Einstein, that you missed so much of the performance tonight."
Hastily Einstein came to his feet.“Don’t be sorry, my young friend here and I were engaged in one of
the greatest activities man is capable of.”
She looked puzzled. “Really? And what is that?’
Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders and said, what for me at least became an endless
debt.
“We were opening up yet another fragment of the universal frontier of the original rhythm of
beautiful music in the universe."
"Oh, please forgive me,” Then turning to the person on his right he said,
"Let me introduce you to Robert Ravel."
To read more Karl Wallace stories go to: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
