THE NIGHT I MET EINSTEIN
When I was a
young man, just beginning to make my way in life, I was invited to dine at the
home of a distinguished New York philanthropist, 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, the drummer’s clash
the symbols, and pound on the timpani drums, gongs, gourds, triangles, cow bells, whatever.
Over and over all evening long, no vocals, guitars or drum sets, just instrumentals. It’s all a
guaranteed to wave me to sleep and then wake me up at the crescendos, especially after having just eating
a lobster dinner. I avoid 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 do out
of desperation, is bide my time until the tuning stops, the conductor raises
both arms, stops the tuning, brings his arms down quickly, which
starts the long hair musicians going. With the audience now comfortably seated, I start fixing my face
in an appearance of an 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 and my index finger pushing my eye lid up, and my middle
finger pulling my lower lid down.
On this occasion there must not have been
enough crescendos, because 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 been snoring.
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 the 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. He led me up the carpeted curvy 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 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 too
just sing the lines. I began quietly, 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 snow.”
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 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 that for 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
orsubtraction. You have mastered it.” Next came Ray
Charles, “Born to Lose, I’ve lived my life in vain. Born to lose and now I’m losing
you. All my life I’ve lived pain born to loss 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 JohnMcCormack 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.
Einsteinstared 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 symphony
was finished, I added my genuine applause to that of the other patrons. Myfeeling 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 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 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."
Author Karl Wallace
