Antiphony (10 page)

After the churning bombast of the opening movement, the performers have now settled in to the quiet contemplation of the middle section of the piece. This is probably the easiest portion to play; a sequence of evenly-spaced chords that transpose the powerful A minor theme into the soothing key of D flat
major. This is the part that Theodore should probably try to learn first, but he is attracted more to the third movement, the soaring finish that also happens to be the most technically difficult. He has spent the better part of the past year slowly adding to the number of phrases he can at least play correctly, if not proficiently and in time. Every time he attempts to play it, it comes out sounding awkward and forced—and nothing like what he is hearing tonight. But it does provide him with the enormous benefit of understanding exactly how splendid this young woman's talent really is. Theodore is now witnessing something only perhaps a few dozen people on earth can actually do.

He looks over at Ilene, and it appears that she is enjoying herself. She enjoys these evenings out with him, but he knows that she doesn't appreciate the music the same way he does, doesn't comprehend the structure and meaning behind the phrasing and harmonies that are evolving within the piece as it moves from one strain to the next. She treats this as another type of indulgence of him, his eccentric tastes and habits. If it were up to her they would go to the 17-screen cineplex at the far end of the strip mall down the road from their suburban home and watch a romantic comedy about a woman and a man who love each other but won't allow themselves to admit it until a series of progressively more absurd and embarrassing incidents forces them into the realization that they were meant for each other all along and forever. If it were up to her they would never buy a piece of original artwork. Her tastes are simple, mundane, yet that is part of what he has always loved about her—she is an earthbound counterweight to his speculative
flights of fancy. She watches daytime television shows about cooking and Lifetime original movies about women who are drawn to handsome, dangerous men who abuse them. And she loves the modest split-level home his earnings have bought them.

Lately, he has been remembering for some reason a day trip they took together when they were very young, married only a year perhaps. He must have still been in graduate school in Indiana, living in the tiny two-bedroom rental house off campus with only their small mutt terrier long-since passed away and their dreams. They went with another grad school couple, not much more than acquaintances really, a guy he knew from one of his classes and his wife, to a small town in the countryside perhaps an hour or two away, where there is a replica Christmas village that sells holiday crafts and blue and gold ornaments and marzipan candies all year round. It must have been in the fall, this trip, for he has a distinct image of walking to the top of a small rise with Ilene's hand in his, the other couple, whose names he has long forgotten, standing next to them beneath an elegant sycamore tree whose leaves had just turned, and looking out over the town squatting down below, with one of its chimneys emitting a twirl of smoke. He has been wondering why this particular moment has popped up in his memory after all these years, so vivid it seems as if it might have happened only yesterday. And he decides now, as the quiet middle movement of the concerto draws itself to a close, that it must have been for him a moment when he could feel the dream spread out before him, when they had it all to live for, their whole lives still ahead—raising children, buying houses, doing work that might someday
change the world—all of it was there ahead of him. Even in the past couple of weeks, when he was still anticipating taking over Victor's job, he knew, his subconscious propelled this image up from within, because he knew deep inside that although the Directorship would be a huge leap in salary and status, it wasn't really what he had always dreamed of doing. His dream has always been to discover something that will change the world forever—perhaps even the ultimate discovery, the Theory of Everything. And this job, directing the research of others, no matter how prestigious it might be, is really more administrative than anything else and would signal the end of his quest to change the world with his science.

At least that's how he would like to think of it. Maybe that's just a story he would like to believe because the job he has been aiming for the past nine months, since Victor announced his imminent retirement, is now beyond his reach.

There is a brief pause, as the third movement is about to begin. The soloist takes a deep breath and stretches her fingers, curling and uncurling them discreetly by her lap in preparation for the whirlwind of notes that is to come.

After a subtle overture from the clarinets, the soloist dives into the final movement with a dramatic run up the keyboard and then back down again. Then a sequence of breathtaking dancing notes leads into the string section driving home the main theme. This third movement is the piece of music he most loves—it seems to transpose into sound his vision of what his work might someday ultimately be—generous, grand, and full of heart and meaning—as expansive and finely-tuned as the universe itself. From this vantage point in the box high above
the stage, he can see the music ebb and flow across the orchestra like a living thing, the lone piano answering the call of the strings, echoing their song back in a starker and more intricate pattern.

There are perhaps fifty or sixty musicians playing in unison here, fifty lines of melody woven together to create a unique vision of reality. Theodore thinks about the minds of each of these musicians focused on their music, each of them playing one part, but all of them contributing to this unified, complex, giant sound that pervades the auditorium. Each line of melody expressed by one of these musicians is a fragment of consciousness. He watches one of the oboe players, a thin, reedy woman with her lips pursed tight; the music that comes out of her horn started with a thought in her head, and ultimately originated as one grand thought in the mind of Grieg, the composer. Grieg first pictured and heard the notes she is playing a hundred and forty years ago.

Now the oboe player has a few measures of rest, as the soloist beats down on the keys to produce a stunning crash of block chords. She sets her oboe down in her lap, lays it across her legs as if she were riding a bus to work and the instrument were nothing more noteworthy than an umbrella on a rainy day. The work she does is magnificent, but to her it is still a job. She plays her part, contributing to and enhancing the whole. She does not have to shine forth like the dramatic, dark-skinned soloist. Perhaps Theodore has always overestimated his own talent—maybe he has always been destined to be more like the oboist, playing her supporting role. Only a chosen few can stand out from the crowd. Only once in a hundred years or
more can a man change the course of history through his science. Why should Theodore have imagined that it might have been him?

The very last crescendos are happening now. The final towering runs up and down the scale, with the full orchestra building ever louder and more intensely behind the majestic rhythm of the keys. Now, the trumpets blare their recapitulation of the symphony's main theme, capped off by seven staccato repetitions of a single shimmering chord—but wait. Wait. Wasn't that a wrong note he heard?

It was. It was off—one of the trumpets, one of the notes of that chord was clearly out of key. He heard it; he knows this symphony so well, has listened to it so many times on the sound system at home and in his car, that he knows a wrong note was played, just a half-tone off, a slip of the finger perhaps, one valve of the trumpet left open or not closed. That wrong note has thrown the whole thing off. The spell has been broken, even though the soloist and all the rest of them are still hurtling towards the finish.

He glances over at Ilene to see if she has noticed it too. But, of course, she hasn't. She is still smiling that secret smile to her self, the one she does when she is lost in her thoughts and nothing around her seems to matter. She isn't paying any attention to the details of what's going on. To her, the symphony is just a generally enjoyable experience, another entertainment. It has no meaning in and of itself.

What about the rest—he looks down at the sea of heads below him and they all are staring straight ahead, like a school of fish, a herd of domesticated animals, oblivious and unknowing.
They don't appear to have noticed either. The conductor—yes, he seems to be glancing, or scowling, in the direction of the trumpets, but maybe that is only Theodore's imagination. It was just a brief instant. The conductor's arms are still waving wantonly about his head—up and down they go. With a flourish, he points towards the strings and asks them for more.

Perhaps Theodore has only imagined it. But whether he imagined it or not, even the thought of the wrong note has shattered the unified reality created by all of these musicians playing together. It has ruined the performance for him.

As the soloist and the orchestra come together one last time to play the final triumphant chords, Theodore finds he must look away. He stares down at the program clutched within his hands and tries to ignore the absorbing and resonant beauty of the ultimate notes, and the searing wave of applause that must follow.

A
T HOME, IN
the bathroom, Ilene undresses and starts brushing her teeth in her underwear. It is one of her habits that doesn't quite annoy him, but is something that doesn't lend itself to enhancing his mood in the moments before they might find themselves in bed together, ready for sex. He could say something to her about it, but that would only serve to expand this minor distraction into an incident that would certainly break the magical spell required for the two of them to come together,
and, at worst, escalate into a full-blown argument between them.

At any rate, he isn't in the mood for sex. They would normally top off a night such as this with a congenial session in bed, but Theodore cannot shake the disappointments of this day enough to avoid another disappointment. That sour note from the second trumpet—he knows he heard it—seems to linger in his ears; he can hear it reverberating through the vast concert hall, a momentary rip in the fabric of the symphony that has grown into a chasm.

Ilene can sense his mood. He sees that by the way she leans over the sink to spit out a mouthful of toothpaste. She doesn't glance at him in the mirror as she does this, only looks down at the bowl of the sink. He unbuttons his cuffs and decides this is his chance to break away. He catches her eye in the mirror as she raises up from the sink and splashes water into her mouth to rinse.

“I think I'm going to go downstairs and work.”

“Okay.” The answer comes back to him as two even, level syllables, both an acknowledgment and an unstated question, the question being, “Why aren't you coming to bed?”

He pats her, twice, on the bottom, with his hand slightly cupped, as lightly as a small child would tamp down sand around the base of a sand castle, a gesture that is enough to convey to her the idea that he still finds her sexy and attractive, it is only his own foul mood that is deterring him.

Relieved from the pressure of the bedroom, he hurries down the stairs before she can gather enough courage to call after him. He holds onto the railing as he turns the corner at the
landing, in the dark. Lately, his hip has been bothering him, his left one. A tightness, a twinge of pain, that makes him take the steps after the landing one at a time; my God, he thinks, this must be what it feels like to begin growing old.

His study is all the way across the house, at the end of the back hallway that leads to the garage, as far away from their bedroom as can be. He often stays up later than Ilene, to work—he does some of his best work in the still hours after midnight, when the rest of the world is asleep and he can be alone with his thoughts. This study is his favorite place to think: the sound deadened by plush carpeting, a desk as wide as the two windows that look out onto the garden, two Degas prints flanking it—the one with the pink and green shades displayed most prominently on the wall that's visible as he enters. Also here, the piano he uses to distract himself when the work is not going so well.

The sheet music is open on the stand above the keys, taunting him, luring him. It is more a book than a sheet, the entire Grieg concerto he heard only an hour and a half ago distilled onto 72 pages of paper. The score shows both the piano solo and the orchestral parts below, for reference. From a few feet away, the music appears to be a blur of dots and dashes, a secret code only a madman could read, crazy patterns zig-zagging up and down and across the page. He moves closer, drawn to the silent challenge of the score. Examining the music written out this way always proves to be a bit daunting for him: Look at all the notes, the beams and dots and demi-quavers and crochets, the prickly sharps and flats that litter the runs and transmit the feel of fingers trickling up and down the keys. How could one
man conceive of such a thing? And then, having conceived of it, how could he so precisely translate his vision—his audition, more properly—onto the page?

Theodore sits down at the bench before the piano and turns to
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, where the very last section of the third movement begins—the culminating majesty of the final runs and trumpet blasts and rolling tympani. He rolls his head around, shrugs his shoulders and shakes his hands to loosen up the fingers. He pronates his left foot, to get ready for the pedals—it feels as if he has banged his ankle on something, as if there is a bruise right on the ball of it, one of those odd aches and pains that he sometimes feels without knowing where it has come from. In his head, he hears the woods and strings play their jumping background rhythm that leads directly to the alternating left-hand chords he starts to play as a lead-in to the first trilling runs of this final six-minute section.

It is not all fast, but it
is
intricate. He bangs it out, with feeling, leaning his weight on the keys, bringing all the sound he can out of this little upright piano, pausing for a moment here and there where the orchestra is supposed to echo his runs. He has been working on mastering this section for eight weeks now; he knows he should begin with the slower middle movement, but these 88 bars of music are, to him, the epitome of greatness, the condensation of everything he feels about his own work, expressed in a wall of melody.