Yearning

By Eugene Drucker

At thirty, Robert Markel can manage, at best, an ironic relationship with himself. He is a successful drama critic who had once hoped to create powerful original work for the theater. As the novel opens, he stares at himself in the mirror and suppresses an impulse to strike the sneering face that confronts him. His frustrations lead him to commit a serious breach of professional ethics. The narrative ranges from an early childhood accident through his mother’s terminal cancer when the boy is twelve, and on to his idealistic, awkwardly fervent teenage years.

The first phase of the book culminates in his decision to carve out a new identity for himself, to depart radically from what his father had always expected of him. A chance encounter with his future wife is followed by a sad reconciliation with his father, who has begun to suffer from a wasting neuromuscular disease. After his father’s death, Robert’s professional and emotional life begins to unravel.

Yearning for fulfillment through art and love, consumed by the drive to create something where nothing had existed before, Robert tries repeatedly to fill the void left by an emotionally absent mother and a father who failed to provide unconditional love beyond his earliest years.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649790644

Eugene Drucker

As a member of the Emerson String Quartet, Eugene Drucker has received eight Grammys, the Avery Fisher Prize and three Gramophone Awards. An active solo artist, he has recorded the sonatas and partitas of Bach as well as the violin sonatas and duos of Bartók. He is the author of numerous articles, CD liner notes and concert program notes on string quartet and solo violin music. He lives in New York with his wife and son.

Book preview

Praise for The Savior

[A] meditation on the simultaneous indispensability and limitations of art as a transformative human experience … disturbingly provocative. — Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

Drucker’s novel is characterized by closely observed landscapes and city scenes, described in polished prose … the narrative develops an engrossing momentum … — St. Petersburg Times

Violinist for the magnificent Emerson String Quartet, whose interpretations of Beethoven and Shostakovich are unparalleled, Drucker has written a haunting novel of the waning days of World War II. — Publishers Weekly

Bitter, beautiful, profound — like Mahler in its intensity. — Kirkus Reviews

[Drucker’s] meditations on heroism, cowardice and on the place art may (or may not) hold at moments of humanity’s worst failures are moving. His descriptions of these musical works are intensely poetic … [He] writes with profound sensitivity, and his personal connections to this material run deep. — Billboard

"A moving, honest exploration of conscience; Eugene Drucker’s description of music illuminates the text in a way that a nonmusical writer would have been incapable of. The test of a good novel is whether it stays with you afterward, and The Savior is a book you will not forget." — KATE ATKINSON, author of Case Histories and Transcription

"With The Savior, Eugene Drucker has written an elegant, smart and knowing novel that delves into darkness and explores its many shades." — MEG WOLITZER, author of The Interestings and The Wife

Eugene Drucker brings a musician’s understanding of tempo, tone and interpretation to this book. — Paul Newman, actor

About the Author

Photo credit: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Eugene Drucker has received nine Grammys for his recordings with the Emerson String Quartet. As a violin soloist, he has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, and Jerusalem, as well as the American Symphony Orchestra and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he was concertmaster of the orchestra, Mr. Drucker has recorded the complete unaccompanied violin works of Bach and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók. His first novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and appeared in a German translation called Wintersonate. Mr. Drucker has set several Shakespeare sonnets and four scenes from Hamlet for voice and string quartet. His other compositions include At the Edge of the Cliff (five settings of poems by Denise Levertov) and Series of Twelve, a string quartet. He is Music Director of the Berkshire Bach Society’s Bach at New Year’s concerts, teaches at Stony Brook University and lives in New York with his wife, cellist Roberta Cooper.

Dedication

With love for my dear wife Roberta, and deep gratitude for her presence in my life.

Copyright Information ©

Eugene Drucker (2021)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Drucker, Eugene

Yearning

ISBN 9781649790620 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781649790637 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781649790644 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945999

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

In loving memory of my late brother Jack, who was always there for me when I needed him. This novel is based freely on actual events and situations that occurred in my early years. But much of the book is fictional, and one of its major departures from my lived experience is the absence of a figure modeled after Jack Drucker.

Chapter I

August 1957

In his head he heard it all: brooding strings surging forward in waves of crescendos, timpani pounding, woodwinds and brass swelling the volume of orchestral sound. He opened his eyes and gazed out the car window at bulbous legions of lowering clouds, the dark-hued music pulsing urgently in his ears.

His parents asked him why he was making that noise. Was anything wrong?

Nothing, he murmured. He hadn’t been aware of the emphatic exhalations with which he was underscoring the soundscape he imagined, could think only of the heroic musical gestures, the sonic tumult inside on a scale grand enough to match the vastness of the world around him.

At the first distant flash, in the few seconds before the answering thunder, he knew the name of the piece he was composing: The Lightning Bolt Symphony. As the sky opened up and the car was enveloped by the deluge crossing their path, as sheets of rain bounced off the slickened road surface and danced up in crazy silvery patterns caught in the sudden glare of a sea of headlights, he leaned back, cozy and secure in his cocoon, sighing with satisfaction at what he believed he’d accomplished.

12:30 a.m., March 11, 1983

What the hell do I know about art? he hissed, one arm raised, ready to strike the sneering image.

But instead of smashing the mirror, his fist remained motionless, suspended in the air as he pictured the overdramatic gesture and its immediate consequences: shattered glass all over the floor of the hotel room, blood dripping from his hand, the clumsy and prolonged efforts he’d have to make to clean up the mess. He studied the face scowling back at him—the compressed lips, the flared nostrils, the fiercely concentrated expression around the eyes. The eyes themselves absorbed his attention, as they had so often in the past: startling emerald eyes with a ring of gray around the pupils, accentuated by long dark lashes.

His arm grew heavy and eventually began to ache; the grimace faded from his face by imperceptible degrees. His fist loosened, fell to his side with a thud. He shrugged, turned around and walked unsteadily to the desk.

He sat down and inserted a sheet of paper in the sleek blue Olivetti he’d brought with him from New York. Swiveling in the desk chair, he gazed out the window at the brightly lit grid of streets in the Midwestern town that now he couldn’t wait to leave. People were emerging from bars and restaurants near the hotel; he was surprised at how active it seemed, even this late. Then he reminded himself that it was a Saturday night. But in his present mood, he would have preferred to think of this place as a backwater, devoid of stimulation.

And untouched by culture.

He watched the young couples walking down the street with their arms around each other, was suddenly fascinated by the way they seemed both casual and purposeful as they said goodnight to their friends and headed toward their cars. He knew nothing about them, but was seized by an inexplicable certainty that their lives had more direction and were fuller than his.

After all the alcohol he’d consumed, the flickering lights outside started to make him dizzy. Forcing himself to turn back to the desk and the blank page awaiting him, he stared at it for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. And once he decided, he wondered if he was really going to do it.

September 1968

It was approaching midnight. Tomorrow would be his first day of classes at Columbia and Juilliard, and Robert was getting nervous. He knew it was a tall order, trying to attend both schools at the same time. Would he really be able to manage it? There was no official combined program, but the previous spring it had seemed like such a waste to choose one over the other. He was a talented violinist, by now there was little question about that; besides, his father was intent on his developing that talent as far as it would go. And he had brains: number one in his graduating class, for whatever that was worth. But what would the impending onslaught of all this work do to his social life? It had been hard enough during his senior year in high school, having skipped two grades and pretending on dates that he was seventeen instead of fifteen, and then having to account for his lack of sexual experience.

He closed Reformation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Europe, with which he’d been grappling in an attempt to prepare for the first week of Columbia’s Contemporary Civilization course, got up from his hard wooden chair, stretched and yawned. But before turning out the lights, he reached up to the crowded bookshelf above his desk and, amidst the clutter, found a faded sheet of manuscript paper covered with a childish scrawl: The Lightning Bolt Symphony, all three or four phrases that he’d been able to notate for piano at the age of five. Three flats—it was in C Minor, of course, the quintessentially stormy key, doubtless inspired by an early hearing of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. But the resemblance ended with the key signature; the phrase structure was square, and there were too many predictable sequences, too much repetition without variation. At least he’d managed to throw in a non-harmonic tone, F#, bringing with it a dash of chromatic flavor here and there. No white-key composer he! And the dull regularity of the rhythm was relieved by an occasional syncopation, a vaulting octave figure with which he must have intended to propel the music toward each fiery climax.

Whenever the teenage Robert looked at the thin sheaf of paper filled with his various and always aborted attempts to be creative, he would marvel at his ability to come up with grandiloquent titles but very little else. Halfway down the page from where his Lightning Bolt Symphony began with so much turbulence and imagined promise came a slightly later effort, The Outbreak of England. He could no longer recall what had inspired the name—perhaps his confused understanding of a television show about the American Revolutionary War, certainly nothing about the Roundheads, or the Glorious Revolution of 1688—but the image it evoked for him now was closer to an epidemic of acne than to the great currents of history, or the noble striving for freedom and justice that had reverberated in his chaotic, overreaching imagination as a six-year-old. How small, how pitiful these beginnings seemed to him now that he was sixteen! They would have been hilarious had they not struck him as pathetic, because the desire to achieve something big and meaningful had been so intense.

And how different am I now? he asked himself. The main difference, he realized, was that he understood much better how hard it was, how much training and work it would take to create something original and important, to make your mark in the world. But knowing his own limitations only sharpened his yearning to soar.

Chapter II

10:30 p.m., March 10, 1983

The lecture was wonderful. Would you mind if I ask for your autograph? It’s actually for my daughter, who wanted so much to come tonight, but then she couldn’t, because she…

He obliged, noticing that his signature was getting sloppier as the evening wore on. He nodded slightly at the lady, pursing his lips in lieu of a smile as he handed the program back to her. The conservative powder-blue suit and heavy silver necklace she was wearing caught his eye, but he barely looked at her face. He couldn’t concentrate on small talk; he was too hungry and thirsty. The single glass of water they’d placed on his lectern hadn’t really cut it for a 75-minute speech.

There was a spread in the next room—if only he could get to it without being intercepted. He could see it through the doorway. All he needed was to take a few steps and then make his way around the group clustered in his path. Maybe they wouldn’t notice that it was him and wouldn’t say anything.

Don’t appear unfriendly, though. Avoid eye contact but smile, maybe that’ll be enough.

Not bad, a huge bowl of salad, and that must be soup with the steam rising from it. Is there going to be a main course? No, that’s it from the looks of it. Oh, yeah, some little triangular sandwiches on the side table. White bread. Oh, well…

Thank you. I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

Did his smile look as frozen as it felt? The bulky gentleman in front of him wasn’t getting out of the way, seemed to be searching for something else to talk about. Was truly impressed by his forcefulness, his candor. An awkward silence—the man wanted a meaningful exchange, no matter how brief. Clearly an autograph, a smile and a few pleasantries wouldn’t be enough. He had to say something less standard, less perfunctory than usual, or else it would seem rude. No point in offending people, not if he wanted to be re-invited. These lectures were part of his livelihood, after all, and the guy might be on the board.

He cleared his throat. Was there any beer at the drinks table, or would it be just a boring white wine that he was going to down in plastic glassfuls because at least it was cold, which would leave him with a nasty little hangover the next morning when he had to get up at 6 to catch his flight?

You know, it’s gratifying to get this kind of response from people. It’s so direct, such a change from my usual occupation at the typewriter. My one chance to perform—it soothes the frustrated actor in me.

Were you ever seriously interested in acting?

Oh God, why did I bring that up? Now he thinks I want to continue this conversation.

He suppressed a sigh.

Not really. Just some student productions while I was in school, and a few weeks in summer stock.

If you had anything of the charisma you projected tonight, it was a big loss to the theater. The man dabbed some beads of sweat from his forehead with his cocktail napkin as he hovered over Robert Markel. But don’t get me wrong: since you became a leading critic instead of an actor, it wasn’t a loss at all. We do have a number of great actors. I suppose you’ll agree with me there. I’ve read enough of your reviews to know what you think of the current scene.

The guy was fiddling with the thick knot of his tie and tugged every now and then at the lapels of his corduroy jacket, as if to underscore a point as he spoke.

It’s in the playwriting department that we’re usually lacking these days, he went on, and it’s a shame to see talented actors hamstrung by mediocre material.

Does he think his opinions have anything to do with what I’ve written?

For that matter, how many great critics are there any more, or have there ever been? Literary critics, sure. But drama critics?

Go ahead, explain my business to me. Since when was ignorance an inhibiting factor?

Not too many, the man continued, answering his own question, leaning in even closer to Markel. Only a few have raised their columns to the level of literary criticism, what with the limitations of space and pressures of time to turn out those reviews.

Finally, a subject I can discuss without feeling like a total phony. But how else should I expect to feel in a situation like this?

There I’ve put my foot down, as you probably know. My reviews usually appear later than the others. I demand at least one additional day to think about what I’ve just seen.

This remark wasn’t enough to end the conversation, so after a few seconds, Markel added, At first, my editors balked at the idea. They didn’t want to let the other papers beat them to the punch, but then they realized the extra wait might heighten the readers’ interest. This was after I’d established myself, of course. So they came around.

Why am I telling him this? It’s inside information, behind-the-scenes stuff.

I’m almost determining the fate of a production. Well, not I alone, of course.

You’re absolutely right, Mr. Markel. You have a certain power over what happens—power over people’s lives, really—and you’re right to take the responsibility that comes with that power seriously. Let’s not mince words; you have more influence than any other critic writing today.

A self-deprecating, slightly embarrassed smile seemed appropriate at this point.

Thank God—the hostess.

Excuse me, Ted, she said to the man who was standing in his way. Mr. Markel, you haven’t had anything to eat or drink yet. You must be so thirsty after that long talk, and I bet when you opened it up for questions you weren’t expecting such a lively crowd.

Ted’s cheeks seemed to redden slightly, but it was hard to tell whether the flush came from embarrassment or from the martini he’d been sipping continually while holding forth.

I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d just arrived. I thought you had already been in there, he said, gesturing with his drink in the direction of the dining room.

It’s no problem at all. It’s really been a pleasure talking to you, getting your feedback.

You know, it wouldn’t have