Masterful Friend

One of the most enduring images I am left with from my years at Los Gatos High is also the most ironic. It is Rudy Giskin, sitting obediently outside the door of Mr. Criswell’s physics classroom while the class went on inside, waiting for the bell. It was not in a single episode that he landed there; he was routinely ejected. How is it, I wonder, that the most disciplined person I knew was a discipline problem?

Rudy lived across the street from me. His family had come to California after the war from New York City. His parents, both music teachers, had met when they were students at the Julliard School in New York. Rudy’s mother was a vivacious Polish woman with a quick wit, who had danced in a ballet company in New York and then taught piano at home. His dad, who as a child escaped Russia during its revolution, was a diminutive and gentle man who had played viola in the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini. He was the music director at a local high school and played with the San Jose Symphony. Rudy’s mother was nearly a head taller than his dad and their temperaments were quite different. They seemed an unlikely couple, but clearly bound by their love of music.

Music was everywhere in that household. There were always cars parked outside with parents waiting for students who had come for private string lessons from Charlie or piano lessons from Lillian. In later years, Rudy also gave lessons at home. The music agenda seemed to drive the rhythms of their family. Because of their schedules, I don’t remember the Giskins going on vacation together. This set up the opportunity for an impromptu exchange program between our families: Rudy would come with us on camping trips and excursions; I went to the symphony with Rudy and his mom. Rudy and I played on a softball team coached by my dad. Mr. Giskin, an observer of the game, was the assistant coach for scorekeeping. In the early days of our neighborhood and our lives in Los Gatos, everything seemed perfect, and even in retrospect, it was. There were “win-wins” everywhere.

In whatever he chose to do, Rudy was a master of technique. Though not powerfully built, he was skillful at most sports, particularly those requiring good eye and hand coordination. He was so quick; he could snatch any housefly out of the air. He was an amazing softball and baseball pitcher; he could throw baffling underhand stuff when we were still playing by Pee Wee League rules. He had deadly ping-pong serves and returns and was a fine tennis player. He could swim laps in the pool for hours. Because I hadn’t then learned the importance of technique, I could never understand how Rudy excelled at so many sports without potent musculature. He did it with method.

I can’t remember when Rudy didn’t play music. His instrument was the cello. His practicing was part of his life’s routine. We scheduled time at the basketball net around it. While Rudy was practicing I idled time away playing pool at home or reading novels. Trying to get him outside, I sometimes sat anxiously in his room while he finished up his lessons, which were mostly exercises and made little sense to me. I could see Rudy’s fingering was nimble and his bow strokes forceful, but I watched him play the cello for years without any appreciation for what I was witnessing. We were in our late teens when, after practicing one day, he offered to play a piece that he’d mastered. It was the first personal performance he’d given me. He delved into it and as his music filled the room, I was astonished at its majesty and felt myself being transported. I looked at Rudy and he seemed to be soaring, taking me with him. His bow worked quickly and his fingers moved in intricate patterns, but his face, with his eyes uplifted, betrayed no struggle or intensity; it was entirely serene as he released a flood of mellow, doleful and ethereal sounds from his cello. It was as if his struggle for expression had already taken place, during his habitual practice, and now we were sharing its surge. It was then that I first knew Rudy as an artist.

There was always the possibility of hilarity with Rudy. It once happened at the expense of his dad. Adjacent to the Giskin’s garage where a backboard was mounted for basketball, was a fence that angled up toward the house. On the fence hung a dartboard, and when we finished shooting hoops we threw darts. Mr. Giskin, an avid gardener, often passed through a gate in that fence between his rose garden and the back yard. He wore one of two gardening sweatshirts, each printed with the bust of a great composer: one of J.S. Bach, prim in his powdered wig; the other of Beethoven, with a fierce scowl and hair flying. There was a little group of us there one day when my dart toss got loose, sailing over the fence. Seconds later we heard the gate latch click and turned to see Mr. Giskin standing in the gateway, a dart hanging from his chest. If I said the dart was stuck in J.S. Bach’s eyeball it would be an exaggeration, but it might as well have been. Expressionless, Mr. Giskin took out the dart, returned it, and without a word went back through the gate to the back yard. With our hands to our mouths and surprise in our eyes, we looked for cues from each other. What did that mean? Was he mad at us? The image of Rudy’s dad with a dart in his chest wouldn’t go away and there was no stopping our mirth; we ran down the driveway to where we thought Mr. Giskin couldn’t hear and howled.

Rudy, Lew Nerenberg and I were a trio. We came together before kindergarten and our families stayed in Blossom Hill Manor while others moved on. My two pals both had Jewish parents who’d migrated from New York City, but their families couldn’t have been more different. The differences were a source of great amusement to me when Rudy and I would visit the Nerenberg home to pick up Lew for an evening out. At the Giskin’s home, run by the music schedules, there were clear, orderly rhythms. At the Nerenberg’s, where there were four children to manage, a much different dynamic was present. To me it was exciting; to Rudy it was chaos. Knowing that once he stepped through the front door there would be time-traps everywhere, Rudy would first try to get Lew to come outside. He was seldom successful, because Lew was never quite ready. I was no help, because I enjoyed the omnipresent commotion and wanted to watch Rudy’s pique rise. Then Rudy would stand near the door watching helplessly as the entanglements grew; Mrs. Nerenberg would begin her interviews (she was always interested in what you thought, where you were going, what you were doing), which were punctuated by her calls to the rear of the house to give instructions and reminders to her other children (there was an intercom in the house, but I never saw it used). Then, when the commotion shifted and it seemed we were close to leaving, Lew, who was either oblivious to Rudy’s impatience or cleverly taunting him, would begin to share things; a cartoon from the New Yorker magazine, articles, pictures or music. There was always something; it absolutely drove Rudy bats and I loved it.

Rudy had little tolerance for nonsense and as he matured he became a bit of a wisenheimer. He had the capacity for seeing the underside of things, sometimes to my bafflement. And he was never careful about expressing his view when he detected BS, regardless of the source. While he kept loyal to his life’s love, his music, he seemed to embrace a mild cynicism in order to help him deal with disappointments or disturbances in other parts of his life. It now seems he somehow knew his life would be short and he wouldn’t waste it with delusive dreams, imagined romances, fads, or ostensibly irresistible pop culture. Which is not to say he didn't indulge in the pasttimes of youth; just hanging out with friends. We spent many choice hours laying on the grass in the shade of the apple tree in front of my house, shootin' the bull.

One day in our junior year, while we stood before the bookcase in my living room, Rudy told me that he had been diagnosed with a disease of the lymph system. He didn’t say what his prognosis was, just that he would have to have some nodes removed and maybe radiation treatments at Stanford Medical center. It was hard for me to tell how serious this was, since there was no room in my consciousness for an idea that there might be life without Rudy. I remember looking out the window at Charlie Giskin’s rose garden and wondering about radiation treatments. Did they put you at one end of the Stanford linear accelerator? I had no sense for the gravity of what I’d just heard.

Rudy was the perfect friend, thoughtful and selfless. He taught me to accept gifts. Once when I resisted accepting something from him because I feared I would not be able to reciprocate, he admonished me: “Can’t you learn to take something and just say thanks?” For a period during college when I was struggling and depressed, Rudy spent regular time with me to lift my spirits. He was slowly dying then, but acted like a loyal friend despite his own difficulties.

Rudy finished college and obtained his teaching certificate on schedule. He got a job at a junior high school as the music director, and worked with the students in forming an orchestra. He was out earning a living while I was trying to amend my circuitous course through school. During the school year beginning in the fall of 1970, I saw Rudy carry his books and materials to work using a cart to and from his car. He had become too weak to carry a briefcase. His carrying on with his life in the face of persistent decline and appalling physical aggravations was the most courageous human effort I had known. I do not remember when I last saw him, but in the spring of 1971 my father told me that Rudy, during one of his frequent hospitalizations, had died of an enlarged heart. The allusion was not lost on me. I went directly across the street and found the Giskins milling about in grief. Mr. Giskin seemed inconsolable. I went to Rudy’s mother and embraced her, and found myself crying for the first time outside my own home in the presence of others. As Rudy’s brother Joel averted his eyes, Mrs. Giskin sobbed, “You were his friend.”

I still wonder what exactly Rudy did to provoke Commander Criswell to kick him out of class so frequently. Without the advantage of having been there, I can only imagine, but I never knew Rudy to be disruptive without a cause. Likewise, I never knew Rudy to tolerate nonsense that would squander his time. And even then, time was running short for Rudy.

Doug Pulling

Postscript: I recently discovered an October 2003 obituary for Joel Giskin, and was surprised to find Lillian Giskin listed as a survivor in nearby Federal Way, Washington. I contacted her by phone, and found her sounding bright and witty. She told me she still gives piano lessons at home and teaches Haiku at the local community college. We plan to visit soon.