Klaudia stopped making love to her cigarette’s last millimeter. Live?
Her voice was thick with sardonic notes. Music with intricate harmonies, complex rhythms? You might as well write a medical thriller in Mayan glyphs.
She waved her hand over him, the Pope rescinding a blessing, and launched into an account of a terrorism arrest in Albany — a missile sale where all the missiles belonged to the FBI and all the terrorists were bribed into purchasing them. Els didn’t hear. He was savoring the idea that art — an Adams masterpiece — could still be dangerous. It gave him unearned cachet, being dogged by the same Homeland Security hounding Adams. At that moment, someone was combing through the archives for data about Peter Els, scanning his scores to see if he’d ever written any music that might alarm the Joint Security Forces.
Then he remembered. He had written such a thing: his disastrous historical drama, The Fowler’s Snare.
I think I should make myself scarce, he said. A couple of days. Give them some time to sort my laundry.
Her look iced him. Els rubbed his nose and tried again.
It’s just. . I’ve got this thing about handcuffs.
Kohlmann stubbed out her cigarette on her shoe sole and slipped the butt into her back pocket. She fished in her striped Incan jerky bag and removed the smartphone.
I suppose this makes me an accomplice after the fact. She handed him the device, waving it away. There’s a map thingie in there. Knows where you are. Let me give you an address.
He took the device and played. He stroked and pinched the screen, typing with his thumbs the way Fidelio used to sing. He pulled up the mapping app. The former music box was now a compass needle floating above the site of Shade Arbors, Naxkohoman, Pennsylvania. She dictated an address, which he keyed in. A thin green line materialized, running from the needle off the screen.
Klaudia Kohlmann smacked her forehead with the butt of her hand. Shit. You’ll need the charger.
She rose and hobbled toward the facility. At the automatic glass door, she wheeled around. Don’t even think about moving.
More Partch: “I heard music in the voices all about me, and tried to notate it. .” That’s all that I tried to do, as well.
Els cradled the four-inch screen. Driving instructions unfurled alongside the postage-stamp map, too small for seventy-year-old eyes to read. He looked up, toward the garden plots. The air droned like the tinnitus that had plagued him in his sixties and made him want to mercy-kill himself. One low trill split into two, a minor second. The interval turned metallic. A moment more, and the pitches collapsed back into unison.
The ringing resumed, a Lilliputian air raid. The new chord bent into more grating intervals — a flat third, widening to almost a tritone — a glacial creation like Xenakis or Lucier, one of those cracked Jeremiahs howling in the wilderness, looking for a way beyond. The sky-wide trill filled the air with sonic pollen, like the engines of a fleet of interstellar spaceships each the size of a vanilla wafer. It filled the air at every distance, too sweet for locusts or cicadas. Bats didn’t shriek in broad daylight, and birds didn’t sing in chorus. Something abundant and invisible was playing with harmony, and Els turned student again.
A quartet of Shade residents came through the sliding glass, William Bock among them. Seeing his teacher, the ceramic engineer stopped to listen. Holy crap! What’s that?
The guessing began, but no theory held up. In the distance, children with pennywhistles, wind clacking the branches, the hiss of pole-mounted power transformers, a murmuration of starlings, rooftop ventilation units, a muffled marching band drilling on a school football field miles away.
That’s how Lisa Keane, dressed for gardening, found them, a geriatric flash mob standing on the front walk, looking skyward at nothing.
Frogs, she told them. Tree frogs. Singing to each other.
Amphibians improvising, toying with fantastic dissonant choruses: it seemed no less outrageous to Els than his own life.
I can’t tell you what species, Keane said. Two dozen dialects, in these parts.
Els asked, What are they saying?
Oh: The usual. It’s cool and moist. We’re alive. Come here. What else is there to sing about?
This was the woman whom music didn’t move. Els closed his eyes, transcribing airborne harmonies from a time when sending a message over distance was life’s best feat. Listen to this: listen to this.
How long have they been going?
Oh, I don’t know. A hundred million years?
No. I mean. . how long, this year?
The ex-Benedictine calculated. Off and on every morning for the last month.
Bock said, Get out of town!
In another minute, the miracle wore thin and the group wandered off to the shuttle bus. Soon only Keane, Els, and a bent man who moved like a broken-winged eagle were left clinging to the harsh serenade.
At last Kohlmann returned, dangling a power adapter. Oh, geez. What now?
Els pointed treeward at the strobing sound. Kohlmann scowled.
Ach — nature, again? The whole thing is out of control.
Tree frogs, Keane said.
It surprised Els: the ex-nun had a crush on the transactional analyst.
Okay, Kohlmann conceded. Tree frogs. And we need to know this. . why?
Lisa Keane grazed Kohlmann’s forearm and shot her a crumpled smile. Amphibia would not trouble anyone much longer. She waved goodbye and headed down the walk toward her square of cultivated earth.
Klaudia handed Els the adapter. You figure it out. Just do what the Voice tells you, even if you think she’s wrong. Her ways are mysterious, but the Voice has a higher plan for you.
Els said, Can you tell me where I’m going?
My son’s cabin, in the Alleghenies. He and his swarm go in for that kind of thing. Grazing in the poisonous plants. Picking diseased ticks out of each other’s scalps. Got it from his father.
I can’t camp in your son’s house.
They love having other crazies use the place. The four of them are cutting their way through Indonesia with machetes at the moment. You should see my grandchildren. It’s all the bovine growth hormone.
You don’t want the federal government. .
Kohlmann clucked her tongue and wagged her finger like a tiny wiper. Phhh. The key is stuck in an abandoned wasp’s nest in the rafter above the back door. I think there’s a telephone hiding in that thing, somewhere. If you get in trouble, punch the little phone button and tap “Me.”
I can’t take your phone.
I’ve got two more.
But your mail. Your music. Your Web.
I’ve been trying to get off the thing for five months. You’re helping me manage my addiction. She sat up on the bench, pretending to rejuvenation. Hey! Listen. You hear that? Little reptiles, singing!
Els stared down at the device in his lap. Why are you doing this for me? I mean, considering. .
Shut up and use it. I’ve got unlimited everything. None of this minutes shit.