Orfeo (28 page)

HIS BROTHER CALLED, out of the blue. Els hadn’t spoken with him in three years. Paul’s voice still sounded like a punk of ten, but with a finger dragging on the record.

Paulie! Jesus, how are you? I can’t believe you’re calling. Who died?

After five fat seconds of nonplussed silence, Paul replied,
Mom.

Carrie Els Halverson had been visiting London with a high school girlfriend she’d rediscovered after her second husband Ronnie came out and left her. The two were inseparable, traveling together twice around the world. But this was Carrie’s first trip to a country where they drove on the left, and on a pretty June morning in 1986, she stepped off a curb in Westminster and was hit by a cab that didn’t even have time to sound its quaint horn.

Peter flew to England. Paul met him at Heathrow. He’d grown so large, slow, and sallow that Peter didn’t recognize him. Between them, they managed to contact their sister, in an ashram in Maharashtra. Susan sent back a muddled telegram, the last Els would ever receive, about how their mother hadn’t died but was simply becoming something else. The brothers had the body cremated, and they spread the ashes illegally in a corner of Chelsea Physic Garden. This was on the second day of summer. The sky was ridiculous with blue. Peter tried to say a few words and found he couldn’t. His brother touched his shoulder.

That’s okay. I knew her, too.

In the three days they spent handling death’s logistics, Peter was surprised to discover how much he enjoyed his adult brother. Paul swam in a sea of theories. Everything from the morning’s headlines to the license plates of buses had hidden significance. But Paul’s torrent of interpretations had something joyous to it. Buried patterns everywhere. It sounded, sometimes, almost like musicology.

They sat in a pub in Holborn the night before Paul’s return home, drinking viscid beer and eating gravy-doused pastries. Paul shared some insights into the
Challenger
explosion and its relation to the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan. Peter gazed upon his brother’s still-woolly head, now flecked with gray, and he regretted all the years they’d been out of touch. Paul had met his niece only twice. It took death to bring the brothers together.

Why is this, Paul?
Peter asked.

Why is what?

Loners should stick together, shouldn’t they?

The idea baffled the giant man.
They wouldn’t be loners then, would they?

Across the oaky pub, people at pushed-together tables sang club football songs, swaying to more communal pleasure in three minutes than Peter’s music had created in thirty years. Another sing-along poured from a television above the bar. Paul examined the bottom of his dinner plate for any revealing fragments of text.

Peter said,
Remember how angry you got, that I didn’t understand rock and roll?

His brother stopped investigating and frowned.
What are you talking about?

You tied me up and forced me to listen.

Did I? Sheesh.

You threatened to wash my ears out with soap.

No, no. That must have been your other brother.

You were right, Paulie. I was deaf.

Paul waved him off.
Just as well you never got into that stuff. A lot of those songs use subliminal persuasion techniques.

Serious?

Paul nodded.
The whole industry employs a fair amount of thought control, these days.

Paul had never heard a note of Peter’s adult compositions. He put Peter’s vocation on par with their sister Susan’s esoteric vision quests. It would have been fun to sit with Paul and some Boulez or Berio, to learn whatever secret messages he might hear.

What do you listen to now?
Peter asked.

Paul set down the dinner plate, shook his head, and shot his little brother a quizzical smile.
I’m an adult, Petey. I listen to talk radio.

THAT NIGHT, AS they went to bed in their shared room in a Bloomsbury B and B, Paul asked,
So how have you been making ends meet?

I’m not, really
, Peter confessed.

Well, you’re all set now.

Peter stretched out on his lumpy twin bed.
What do you mean?

Mom was sitting on a lot. Ridiculously overinsured, too. Even split three ways, you’ve got enough to keep on writing any weirdness you want for a good long while.

Peter sat up against the headboard, his hands cupping his ears, listening to the music of chance. His actuary brother lay in a bed three feet away, annotating newsweeklies in tiny, all-caps letters. A tune materialized in Peter’s head from across a great distance. Placing it wasn’t a problem. He could name that tune in one note.

’Kay,
Paul announced, when his scribbling hand got sore.
Lights out.

Peter lay in the dark, listening to the sounds of a Hammond chord organ as his parents sang.
There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s Stream.
His voice shocked the muted room.

What was Mom listening to these days
?

From Paul’s bed there came a muzzy, puzzled
grunt
. I don’t have the foggiest
. A snort of embarrassment turned into the simplest sob. Then nothing. Then a steady, pitched snore that kept Peter company long into the night.

Insecurity will always be a growth industry. The economy now depends on fear.

The evening had turned icy when he entered Illinois. Now he sat in the motel parking lot with the engine off, sealed in a cocoon of fogged glass. Starving, woozy, and saddle sore, he wiped a portal in the windshield and looked outside. Six feet above the car, against the wall of the faux-folksy chain motel, was a thing that looked like something NASA might send to the outer planets. Security camera. In another life, Els had read that the average city resident appeared on video a few hundred times a day. The fact hadn’t bothered him, then.

Els flipped his collar up around his face, calling even more attention to himself, and stepped into the cold. Cars thrummed from the interstate and frontage road to the south. To the north, towering halogen streetlights illuminated a fairyland of chain stores. Down a car-choked gauntlet of stoplights there spread a copy of the same preassembled strip that seeped northward from Naxkohoman, emblazoned with logos that every toddler in the country learned along with her ABC’s.

A street sign shone in the distance: Town Center Boulevard
.
When Els lived in this town, there’d been nothing here but the richest topsoil in the world, all the way to the horizon.

The lobby of the motel was a cartoon Southwest: quarry tile, muted earth tones, and above the reception desk, pastel paintings of Pueblos. He’d somehow wormholed through into Arizona. A circus-colored popcorn machine stood between the reception desk and a small breakfast area. The room stank of synthetic butter. A bowl of apples so perfect they might have been props for a musical about Eden sat on the reception desk. On the wall above, a flat-screen newscast split into three simultaneous video feeds with two text crawls and a title box beneath.

A twenty-five-year-old in T-shirt and blue blazer looked up from his computer and smiled. Els braced, but the clerk kept grinning.

Hey, there! What can I do you for tonight?

Els glanced over his shoulder, gauging the distance to the lobby door.
Would you have a single free?

You might be in luck,
the clerk said. He punched some keys and bugled victory.
Smoking or non?

The clerk produced a sheet for Els to fill out. Name, address, phone, contact info, driver’s license, make and model of car, plate number . . .

Els took the form and held it in front of him.
I’m paying cash
.

No problem!
the clerk assured him.

Els stood, pen in hand, regarding the form. The clerk looked up from the computer and swiped the air.

Not to worry. It’s just for the files.

Els filled in the form, inventing freely.

You have a loyalty card?
the clerk asked.
Triple-A? Anything?

Els blinked.

AARP? Maybe you left your card at home? No problemo. Ten percent off, for the man with the honest face.

Els traded his money for a key card. On the molding behind the desk, another little webcam glared at him with a cyclops eye.

The room was like the afterlife in a French existentialist novel. Bed, chair, bedside table, clock-radio, wall-mount TV. You could sail to the next galaxy in it, or serve out a life sentence in its minimum-security oblivion. Els showered, almost scalding himself. He lay in a towel on the bed and flipped on the television. He found the news channel, cowering between fourth-generation reality shows. The day’s events unfolded in twenty-second clips. The screen filled with shaky footage from Cairo. Tens of thousands of people fanned out across Liberation Square, clapping, chanting, and marching. As in every large production Els had ever worked on, chaos called the tune. The demonstrators, after dwindling to a trickle, were back in force, in numbers beyond anything the nascent Arab Spring had yet seen. The military were changing sides; the protesters sensed triumph, and all because of one infectious melody.

With a quick crosscut, the scene turned into a Bollywood musical. A singer drifted his way across the square, singing an upbeat tune that could have been the theme song to a sitcom about young cosmopolitans enjoying their star-crossed lives. People held up hand-lettered signs. Vendors proffered food while lip-synching along. Old men in knit caps and women in headscarves mouthed the hopeful, defiant words, which scrolled across the bottom of the screen. The anthem had gone viral over the weekend, saving the revolution.

One more government brought down by a catchy hook. Another crosscut, and the song morphed back to reality. The crowd of euphoric protesters probed each other for clues to what would happen next. Els saw why Socrates wanted to ban all those modes.

But for now
, the Cairo correspondent said,
this revolution seems to have turned around . . . on a song.

Els stood, shut off the television, and found Kohlmann’s phone. Merely powering it up created more traceable data. He didn’t care. The phone played a little tune and reported eight missed calls and a dozen texts. He dialed.

Where are you?
Klaudia said, before he heard a ring.
Are you all right?

That had all the earmarks of a trick question.
I’m fine. I’m alive.

Have you heard the latest?

Probably not,
Els said.

All the IV bags from the Alabama deaths came from the same pharmacy.

Of course
, Els said
. But let me guess: somehow that story isn’t getting as much coverage as the first.

They still haven’t ruled out malicious tampering at the pharmacy site itself.

Oh, for God’s sake.

The authorities are advising increased vigilance at similar facilities.

Giving the all clear, while asking everyone to stay terrified.

Your man from the FBI dropped by to talk. Somebody here must have alerted them about the class.

Oh, Christ.

He asked if we knew your whereabouts. He wanted to know if you were preaching anything crazy.

What did you tell him?

We told him it doesn’t get crazier than Messiaen. Lisa Keane had some pretty good notes, which she shared with the man. Turns out he had someplace he needed to get to. You’d think we Q-tips terrified young people.

Did they ask about your phone?

Don’t worry. If they do, I’ll tell them you stole it.

I, too, had nothing to say, and I tried to say it as well as I could. What harm could so small a thing as saying nothing do to anyone?

Els stayed on in England after Paul flew home. Expense no longer mattered. He could stay for years now, without any sacrifice.

He saw the poster on a notice board in the back of St. Paul’s. He might have created it by imagining. A concert: prestigious Baroque chamber ensemble playing works by unknown composers at St. Martin-in-the-Fields that Saturday. The music had no interest whatsoever for Els. But in the middle of the photo—a dozen musicians in concert dress—holding a cello, was the mother of Clara Reston.

Then the mother turned into the child. The girl had cut her four-foot fall of hair. She wore a tight perm now, silver-blond. Els rejected the evidence, until the evidence rejected every explanation except Clara.

He went to the concert. The two hours of formulaic music were shot through with fleeting, wild phrases and startling harmonies that wouldn’t occur again until the twentieth century. Els couldn’t decide what was clumsiness and what was neglected genius. It didn’t matter: the night held out a string of misshapen pearls that might have gone forgotten forever.

All he could hear was the
Firebird.
Els couldn’t take his eyes off the cellist. She stroked her instrument as she had at twenty, her graceful neck nuzzling the fingerboard. Something was different about her, aside from the hair and weight and middle age. It took Els many measures of Sweelinck to name it: she had turned mortal.

She was bolting from the church with her packed instrument when he found her. He stepped in front of her. She stopped, annoyed, and then, with a cry, she wrapped him in a bear hug without letting go of her cello. She stepped back, girlish, flushed, palm to her forehead, taking her own temperature.
I can’t believe it
.
It’s you!
Her accent had drifted British. Els wondered if she’d forgotten his name.