Kuperman parked his Cadillac on Belden, off Halsted. The hall for the concert also served as a chapel. There were no crucifixes on any of the walls, but the seats were pews, with red cushions added to the backs. Bright light flooded in through the tall side windows on this cool afternoon. The audience made Kuperman, at seventy-nine, feel positively young. Much osteoporosis; many people on walkers; most of the women had white hair, several of them seemed bulky; the majority of the men were bald, bent, haggard. Hard to imagine that many people in this audience were ever desirable, even when young, Kuperman thought. He had over-dressed. Only one other man, a doddering guy who looked to be in his nineties, wore a tie.

When Kuperman, seated, looked at the programme he had been handed at the door, he saw that he was about to hear something called the Vermeer Quarter. When Judith Neeley mentioned the name on the drive down, he thought she said the Veh es Mir Quartet. They were going to play works by Mozart, Hindemith, and Schubert. Kuperman had heard of the Mozart and Schubert, but not this guy Hindemith. 

Four men came out, all oddly different. When Kuperman was a kid, they used to call this kind of music "long-hair," but all of these musicians were fairly well-kempt, at least in the hair department. His attention was attracted to the man who sat up front on the left and who played the violin. His name,
according to the programme, was Shmuel Ashkenasi. Heavyset, with curly hair, florid, the fiddle under his double chin, he looked, Kuperman thought, Jewish to the highest power. Kuperman remembered that in the Chicago public schools of his day they offered music lessons for twenty-five cents and you could rent the instrument. He thought vaguely that he might like to try the trumpet; his mother, though, was only interested in his playing the violin. Even at age eight he could not imagine himself carrying a violin case around Albany Park. The violin was, he thought looking at Mr Ashkenasi, the Jewish instrument par excellence. 

During the Mozart, Kuperman noted people around him beginning to drop off to sleep. He tried to find some attractive women or vigorous men, but was unable to do so. Why had they come here, he wondered, all these people, at some inconvenience and expense, on a sunny Sunday afternoon? What was the attraction? Did the music offer them consolation of some sort for the things that their lives didn't offer? 

The Hindemith, the second selection, was just noise to Kuperman. He fidgeted while the four men on stage seemed to saw away at the music. The Schubert, which came after a break, was more like it. Under its melodiousness, his mind wandered, but wandered pleasantly. He remembered his unit marching into Paris near the end of World War Two. He was young, without plans, all his days were in front of him. The time that it took to play the Schubert seemed to pass so much more quickly than that of the other two pieces of music, though, checking his watch, he noted that it was in fact longer. 

Several times during the concert Kuperman glanced over at Mrs Neeley. Her face, in profile, radiated intelligence, thoughtfulness, something blissful about it. She seemed quite beautiful when concentrating on the music. Kuperman sensed that she was hearing things he didn't. What might they have been? Whatever they were, for her they were obviously enchanting, entrancing, filled with a significance unavailable to him, though he thought he would like to be in on it. 

After the concert, Kuperman asked Mrs Neeley if she'd like to have dinner. She said she was sorry but she couldn't, because she was expected at her daughter's in Highland Park that evening. Perhaps another time. Before dropping her off, he suggested they go to another concert sometime, his treat, so he could repay her for this afternoon. She said that she would try to find something interesting upcoming at Orchestra Hall and get back to him.