Terry Fisher
Women
CHAPTER ONE
The auditorium hummed with the bustle of the students taking their instruments out of cases and getting into seats. There were bursts of discordant noise as the various instruments ran short scales, loosening up, and there were occasional jokes and laughter, a murmur of conversation, and a rattle of chairs and music stands. The librarian trotted in a side door with an armload of music folders, followed by a couple of students with heavier loads, and they began working their way along the rows of the orchestra, putting the folders on the stands.
The concertmaster, a thin, nervous-looking young man of nineteen or so who had lank, black hair and a bad complexion, rose from his seat in the string section and walked to the podium, carrying his violin. He took the baton from the narrow shelf under the podium and rapped it against the side of the podium, and the conversation and movements slowly faded away. He replaced the baton and tucked his violin under his chin, then he slowly drew the bow across the strings and sounding a soft, clear A. The piano picked it up, chording, then the other instruments began to pick it up. The sound swelled, filling the auditorium as the instruments harmonized, and the concertmaster walked back to his chair. The A faded and the instruments began to noodle softly in a wavering blur of sound as the students loosened their fingers, with a background rustle from the percussion section as the drummer whisked at a snare with a pair of brooms.
The door at the other end of the auditorium opened and closed, and a woman became visible as she walked from the darkness along the center aisle toward the stage. She was a slender, lithe woman of medium height, and she was carrying a motorcycle helmet in one hand and an attache case in the other. Her brown hair was in a short, loose, casually arranged tumble of curls, and she wore flared slacks, a blouse, and a short jacket. The slacks hugged her slender hips, tiny waist, and full, smoothly contoured thighs, and the cuffs flapped around her short boots as she walked along the open space in front of the stage toward the steps at the side of it. Her features were exceptionally attractive, with large, grey eyes, full lips, and a small nose. At first glance her face seemed to enhance her attractiveness. Her eyes were large and required no cosmetic emphasis, and even from a distance her lashes were long and thick, with a natural curl. The contrast between the natural color of her lips and that of her skin approached that of a pale lipstick, and her eyebrows were dark and full. She wore no jewelry.
She walked across the stage toward the podium in a firm, determined stride, her hips swaying from side to side with a graceful, unaffected motion, and she stared straight ahead, not looking at the students. Her age was difficult to guess. The slender build and the way she walked was youthful and there were no hints of lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, yet there was a mature and experienced air of confidence and authority about her. The line of her lips also had the slightly tense, nervous firmness seen in those who have endured anguish or sustained months of pain. The students silently watched her, their expressions ranging from indifference to guarded apprehension. A couple of the male students stared at her speculatively. The harpist, a tall brunette of twenty or so, looked at her fixedly then glanced down with a slight flush on her cheeks.
She put the motorcycle helmet on the floor by the podium, opened the attache case and took a notebook out, then put the attache case by the helmet and stepped up on the podium. "Good afternoon."
Her voice was soft and well modulated, but it had a penetrating quality which carried to the back of the orchestra. There was a murmur of response from the students then a hushed quiet as she opened the notebook and jotted down check marks for attendance. There was complete silence in the auditorium except for the muffled movements of the librarian and the two students who were still moving along the rows and putting the music on the stands.
The librarian had arrived late with the music, and a frown creased her brow as she distributed the folders she was carrying and watched the two students with anxious glances. She was a blonde in her early twenties, and her long, thick tresses were tied at the back of her head in a ponytail. Her light cotton dress fit her well, hugging the swelling curves of her buttocks and her jutting breasts, and the male students glanced at her and exchanged winks as she moved from place to place, her long, bare legs flashing. She had soft, beautiful features and a smooth, creamy complexion, marred by her frown. The two students finished and she nodded for them to leave, then she walked down the steps to the podium with the master folder of music. The woman on the podium was still making check marks on the class roster as the librarian edged the folder of music onto the podium by the notebook. She glanced down at the librarian and gave her a perfunctory smile as she took the folder and pulled it to the center. The librarian smiled apologetically, started to say something, then glanced at the orchestra and closed her mouth as she turned away.
The woman on the podium finished with the notebook and put it to one side, then opened the music folder. Her fingers searched the shelf under the stand for the baton, and she picked it up and absently stroked it against the side of her face as she leafed through the music. The top pieces were the scores which the orchestra had previously studied and had presumably mastered, and in the back of the folder was the score for new music for the week. Her brow wrinkled in a frown as she looked at it. The Beethoven Pastoral. Beautiful music and a powerful composition, but excruciatingly difficult even for a symphony orchestra of seasoned musicians to master. In the time allotted for each new piece, in any event. She sighed with resignation, a mental picture of a dart board arrangement for curriculum selection fleeting through her mind. The students remained absolutely silent and motionless, watching her intently. She was somewhat of an enigma. One of the few well-known female conductors, she had arrived in the city a couple of years before to accept a post as assistant to the conductor of the local philharmonic, even though the prestigiousness of her doctorate in music from the university in Vienna appeared to outweigh the conductor's academic qualifications. At the same time she had expressed a willingness to take the local conservatory orchestra class, an offer which had been quickly snapped up by the conservatory. Her only interests seemed to be the philharmonic and her classes, where her performance was brilliant, and the rest of her time seemed to be spent in the quiet seclusion of her house in one of the better residential areas.
She was known to be pleasantly businesslike until aroused, but in common with other conductors her boiling point seemed to be constantly adjusted back and forth by some giant cosmic rhythm which worked in conjunction with artistic temperament. Her classes were disciplined sessions without general conversations, in contrast to other more relaxed classes where anything from world affairs to the weather might be entertained as a topic of discussion. Some students had ventured to ask her a question about herself and had been coldly ignored. An indication that someone had failed to completely study their score would bring an icy look or an acid comment, and an indication of inattention would result in a scathing tirade more than sufficient to rattle the composure of the most self-confident student.
"Let us work on the Beethoven."
The comment was in a low, quiet tone, and there was a flurry of movement and rustling of paper as they dug through their folders. She looked down at the score, her eyes moving over the familiar notes, and waited for quiet. There was a thump as the drummer, and awkward, overweight, red-faced young man of twenty or so dropped his folder to the floor, then a scuffling as he gathered it back up. She sighed almost imperceptibly at the noise; he periodically managed to drop his music, one of the sticks, or turned over his music stand. There was a muffled giggle which choked off as she raised her eyes and glanced around. Then silence.