The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 精彩片段：
Wunderkind-2
"No, no -- I dont think that would be appropriate." Mister Bilderbach had said when the Bloch was suggested to end the programme. "Now that John Powell thing -- the Sonate Virginianesque."
She hadnt understood then; she wanted it to be the Bloch as much as Mister Lafkowitz and Heime.
Mister Bilderbach had given in. Later, after the reviews had said she lacked the temperament for that type of music, after they called her playing thin and lacking in feeling, she felt cheated.
"That oie oie stuff," said Mister Bilderbach, crackling the newspapers at her. "Not for you, Bienchen. Leave all that to the Heimes and vitses and skys."
A Wunderkind. No matter what the papers said, that was what he had called her.
Why was it Heime had done so much better at the concert than she? At school sometimes, when she was supposed to be watching someone do a geometry problem on the blackboard, the question would twist knife-like inside her. She would worry about it in bed, and even sometimes when she was supposed to be concentrating at the piano. It wasnt just the Bloch and her not being Jewish -- not entirely. It wasnt that Heime didnt have to go to school and had begun his training so early, either. It was --?
Once she thought she knew.
"Play the Fantasia and Fugue," Mister Bilderbach had demanded one evening a year ago -- after he and Mister Lafkowitz had finished reading some music together.
The Bach, as she played, seemed to her well done. From the tail of her eye she could see the calm, pleased expression on Mister Bilderbachs face, see his hands rise climactically from the chair arms and then sink down loose and satisfied when the high points of the phrases had been passed successfully. She stood up from the piano when it was over, swallowing to loosen the bands that the music seemed to have drawn around her throat and chest. But --
"Frances --" Mister Lafkowitz had said then, suddenly, looking at her with his thin mouth curved and his eyes almost covered by their delicate lids. "Do you know how many children Bach had?"
She turned to him, puzzled. "A good many. Twenty some odd."
"Well then --" The corners of his smile etched themselves gently in his pale face. "He could not have been so cold -- then."
Mister Bilderbach was not pleased; his guttural effulgence of German words had Kind in it somewhere. Mister Lafkowitz raised his eyebrows. She had caught the point easily enough, but she felt no deception in keeping her face blank and immature because that was the way Mister Bilderbach wanted her to look.
Yet such things had nothing to do with it. Nothing very much, at least, for she would grow older. Mister Bilderbach understood that, and even Mister Lafkowitz had not meant just what he said.