We are made for poetry. .
The remaining trio turned oddly consonant. The oboist set her oboe on the music stand and left. The cellist carried on for a while, intrepid, with a figure lifted from the Bach D minor suite, while the percussionist haloed him on xylorimba. Then, succumbing to the inexorable, the cellist, too, set down his instrument, and walked up the aisle to the exit. Maddy, lost in thought, failed to notice. She stood alone onstage with the percussionist, who stuttered away on the wood block.
Or perhaps. .
Maddy sang, shaking her head at the baffling melody and backing away, her arms drawing in as if sieving the wind:
Or perhaps we are made for oblivion.
The percussionist tapped a last dotted rhythm into his block of wood. The stage went black, and it took the house five enormous seconds to decide that the piece was done. Right before the applause, Els heard a nearby baritone whisper, Frauds.
The clapping came from far away. The musicians reassembled for bows. Maddy shaded her eyes and stared out into the dark, looking for the perpetrators and seeing only shadows. Bonner yanked Els to his feet, where he bobbed several times like a water-drinking toy duck. Els turned to see his friend regarding the audience with cool amusement.
People came up to Els after, wanting to take the measure of this audacity. They wanted to get up close, to see if he’d really escaped. Someone put his arms around Els’s shoulders and said, That was something. Someone said, So interesting. Someone said, I liked it, I think. Els thanked and grinned and nodded, seeing no one.
A bald man in a gabardine suit decades out of date slunk up and whispered an emaciated thank-you. Els offered his hand, but the man held his up as if they were defective. I don’t often get to hear, he murmured, something so. . He backed away, flinching in gratitude.
A six-foot-tall woman who looked like deposed royalty squeezed his shoulder from behind. Els wheeled, and she asked in a Spanish accent, What was that supposed to be about?
Around him in the emptying hall, clots of people were grooming and seducing each other. Els smiled at the majestic woman and said, About twenty-four minutes.
Her eyes flashed. It seemed longer somehow, she said, and turned into the lingering crowd.
Mattison emerged from a nearby cabal. He saluted Els with two fingers. You have them all scratching their heads. The most praise his mentor would ever give him.
Across the thinned room, Els saw Bonner seated in the empty first row, staring at the abandoned stage. Richard didn’t turn when Els dropped into the seat beside him.
“Made for oblivion,” Richard said, in an odd monotone. Check. Now what?
Els sat playing castanets on the pads of his thumbs. We could take it on the road. Bloomington. Hyde Park. Ann Arbor.
Could, Bonner said, meaning no. All his mania from the last half dozen weeks had collapsed into mere agitation. His eyes fixed on a series of invisible one-reelers projected in front of him.
Pleased? Els asked.
What’s that?
I said, are you pleased?
And I said, what’s that?
Somewhere in Bonner’s skull, across great, arid expanses all the way to the horizon, the shit-storm of invention was gathering again. The hall had emptied. At last the composer stood and said, See you?
Richard nodded, but to some other question.
Els caught up with Maddy, out in the foyer with three of the musicians. She was flushed and floating, astonished to have run the gauntlet and survived.
Well, she said, when Els came up. That was an experience!
What she means, the oboist said, is, “Never again!”
I liked your chart, the cellist told Els. But I still think it’d be sweeter without the fire drills.
The oboist laughed. You know what Stravinsky said at the premiere of Pierrot? “I wish that lady would shut up so I could hear the music.”
The group wrangled for a while over music’s soul, as performers will do before heading out for weed and beers. The pianist and horn player were already at Murphy’s, half a pitcher ahead of everyone. The percussionist drummed on Els’s shoulder.
Time to get wasted. You two coming?
Maddy looked at Els, who begged off. Mind if I go? she asked.
Can I talk to you for a minute first?
Meet us over there, the percussionist called over his shoulder as the trio disappeared.
It was good, Peter, Maddy said. Those songs have something. I heard new things in them, even tonight.
Els helped her into her long buckskin coat. From behind, he clasped her upper arms. You were unreal.
She softened and backed into him. Was I?
From another planet. Madolyn. I love you.
She scrunched her neck and smiled. You love those songs.
I saw something in you tonight. Something I didn’t know was there.
No, she said, and would not meet his eyes. That was performance.
We should get married. Join our lives.
She studied the score etched into the linoleum floor, humming, frantic but soundless.
Move somewhere neither of us has ever been. Find a place and make it ours. Read to each other at night. Take care of one another.
He pressed every button she had. Discover America. Turn life’s rags into a bright quilt. Levitate the Pentagon.
She shook her head at his list, the way she had at the end of the fourth song. She clamped his wrist in a polygraph grip and scrutinized his eyes.
Let’s walk.
Snow was falling, compounding the already knee-high drifts. They walked for a long while, in talk that quieted into something like telepathy. And by midnight, Peter Els was thawing in his love’s bed, hurting with a hope he’d never felt. He was twenty-seven, too old now for selective service, and engaged to be married. And the future held music so fine and clear all he needed was to take dictation.
They wed two weeks later at the Urbana courthouse. Richard Bonner was their lone legal witness. They would suffer their families’ anger later. No one else had to hear this promise.
Maddy made her own dress, of apricot taffeta, pinned with an orchid that cost a week’s worth of Peter’s stipend. Peter dressed in cambric and corduroy. Richard wore his usual black leather. He was there with Els, in the courthouse bathroom, for the retching.
If I didn’t know better, Bonner said, keeping Els’s head from banging the faucet, I’d say you have stage fright.
Els could only groan.
What are you afraid of? I’m assuming you’ve already seen her naked.
Oh, Jesus. Richard. What if I’m wrong for her? What if this isn’t meant to be?
Es muß sein, Maestro.
What if I ruin this woman’s life?