Authors: Michael Boehm
MAESTRO
The city was shattered.
Tumbledown buildings leaned together like drunkards, whispering secrets from vacant office to moldering apartment.
Lonely breezes slipped down streets, choked with the charred corpses of automobiles.
The Maestro carried his duffel bag down one street, weaving his way among piles of crumbled masonry.
He arrived at last at the symphony hall, its squat marble architecture largely intact, save for the shattered windows and ripped façade.
He withdrew a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the side door, as he had every Sunday at noon for the past eight months.
Before that, he entered by the performers' entrance in back, but the
sight of the bodies had driven
him to the side entrance since then.
By touch and memory he wound his way through dark passages to the concert hall.
He pulled the curtain aside and stepped onto the orchestra's stage.
It was lit only by the pale sunbeam filtering in through the rent in the roof, but it was enough.
He unzipped his duffel bag, withdrew the portable stereo, and placed it on the stage.
It was an old model, battered but serviceable.
He breathed a silent prayer it would last through one more performance, and then withdrew a sheaf of music from the duffel bag.
He placed the music on the stand, stood in his position on the podium, took up the baton on the music stand, raised it high, closed his eyes, and waited.
When he was ready, he slipped his free hand into his pocket, withdrew the remote, studded the Play button, and slid it back into his ripped tuxedo trousers.
After a few delicious moments of anticipation, Mozart's
Quintet
in E-flat for piano and winds, K.452
began to roll forth from the speakers.
The Maestro swooped and bobbed his hands in accompaniment to the extended largo opening of the piece.
He particularly enjoy
ed this performance
, recorded at the Boston Symphony Hall in 1956.
The piano was strongly in charge, but in an open and insistent, rather than forceful, manner.
He metronomed his baton back and forth with the gentle and textured larghetto that followed.
The woodwinds finally asserted themselves, as he knew they would.
His chest swelled with the beautiful symmetry of the piece.
Far back in his mind, the small portion of his consciousness that was not swept up in the piece took note of the presence of t
he Wolf.
He stirred
, somewhere in the balcony terrace, sta
ge left.
The Maestro
heard his hob-nailed boots scraping and thudding against the dirty floor of the balcony.
He paid the Wolf no heed, however, as Mozart's allegretto finale swelled. He extended his baton towards the appropriate quarters of the orchestra for each instrument's cadenza passages.
It finished with a flourish, and the Maestro added his own with a flick of his wrist. .
The music ceased, but the Maestro kept his eyes shut, hands lowered, breathing steadily.
He could no lon
ger ignore the Wolf.
The man in the balcony pulled
open a long zipper
.
He
had never seen him, but the Mastro felt that he knew the man.
The Wolf had lived in the balcony for a very long time now, and the Maestro wondered when he would tire of the Sunday music.
When he did, the Wolf would probably kill him.
It mattered not to the Maestro.
The music was his life, his soul, the only thing worth living for in this wasted place. Without it, he would rather be dead.
The next piece flood
ed out of the speakers:
Dvořák's
No.9 in E minor
.
The Maestro swept his arms out and around in a strong gesture, and the Wolf was gone from his mind again.
He gesticulated aggressively, enunciating the New World riffs of Dvorak's piece with his baton.
The swells of music rose to the perforated ceiling, and the Maestro's soul rose with it, longing, questing, straining for apotheosis. There was something more here, something hidden within the music
, something he had spent his lifetime straining for, always one note away
.
He reached outwards with his hands, trying to embrace the music, press it to him, become one with the modality.
With a sputter and a crackle, the music ground to a halt. The Maestro was left standing in mid-gesture as the last echoes of
Dvořák resounded through the concert hall and died out.
The batte
ries
.
He had found them in the ruins of a convenience store, under piles of cheap sunglasses and shattered bottles of inexpensive liquor.
They had lasted through six weekends, but he knew t
heir time was due.
Batteries were becoming harder to find in the blasted city, and these might very well be the last.
He lowered his hands, slowly, sadly, an angel coming to rest one last time before Revelation.
He breathed once, twice, caught a sob in his throat.
He had come so close.
Close to absolution, close to ascension.
But the world had pulled
him back down again,
into the
mere
dust.
His ears were excellent, tuned by a lifetime of practice.
He heard it clearly when the Wolf opened the bolt-action of the rifle and slid the 30-06 bullet into the breech.
So this is how it ends
, he thought.
It was appropriate that the end of his life should coincide with the end of the music.
He chuckled a bit, until he heard the bolt slide home as the Wolf worked the action of the rifle.
The Mastro did not open his eyes.
He did not want to see the yawning black muzzle of the rifle pointing at him from the balcony.
It would be a vortex of despair, consuming what little grace and dignity remained in the world.
These things were anathema to the Wolf, and he could not stand them.
This was his world now, and he decided what would exist and what would be obliterated.
The
door opened.
The Maestro opened his eyes and was blinded by a rectangle of light at the far end of the concert hall.
Two figures were silhouetted in the light, leaning together.
They moved into the concert hall, and the Maestro realized it was one person carrying a large instrument case.
The Musician limped down the aisle towards the stage.
She was a petite woman of golden complexion.
As she drew close, the Maestro could see the reddish splotches on her face.
Her hair was matted and shorn.
One leg of her pants displayed a large blood stain near the knee.
But she held her instrument case in a tender and proud manner that he recognized immediately.
He nodded to her.
She laid the case gently on the dusty carpet, unlatched it, and withdrew a cello nearly as large as she was.
She took
her instrument
to the first cellist position, sat, and rosined the strings.
When she was done, she leaned the cello against her shoulder with one hand, and held th
e bow in her lap with the other.
It
was clearly a well-practiced gesture.
She looked up at the Maestro with eyes calm and focused.
The Maestro hesitated for only a moment.
He knew what they would perform.
There was really only one appropriate choice.
He placed his baton on the music stand, stepped down from the podium, and walked to the grand piano.
He sat on the bench, looked back at the Musician, and said one name.
"Messiaen."
She acknowledged him by raising her bow and readying it across the bridge.
He plunged into the first movement of
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps
, deeply, soulfully.
He knew it by heart, and he knew she would, as well.
He imitated the clarinet's notes as best he could with the piano.
He released a halo of trills towards the rafters of the concert hall, and the Musician picked up the bass notes with her cello, playing the fifteen-note continuous melody that underpinned the music.
The piece had a sense of timelessness and melancholy that had always appeal
ed to the Maestro.
Now
it was all that was left, the only thing between them and the abyss.
They began the second movement on an energetic note as the Angel of the Apocal
ypse released his triumphal sound
, rending the world with his sacred trumpet-blast.
They worked together in perfect synchronicity, piano and cello, point and counterpoint.
The Maestro was lost in the music again, his soul soaring out beyond the crumbling symphony hall, out beyond the constraints of the ruined city, well past the mortal bounds of the flesh.
A far distant part of his mind waited for the bullet that would end it all,
know
ing he would feel nothing except the glorious sensation of his soul merging with the music, his consciousness escaping into the far corners of the world with a triumphal shout, a rich adagio rolling through the planes of existence past the firmament.
He was complete, he was full to bursting of life in this city of the dead, ready to refill it with spirit and power and grace.
They were in the fifth movement by now, the cello and piano duet, each playing true and straight.
The warm notes of the cello solo magnified the love and reverence of the power of eternity, the eternity that at this very moment opened before them all.
The notes were not of fear, nor of resignation, but of acknowledgement of the truth of life and the power of the spirit.
Here, on the very precipice of existence, they conversed on the mysteries of the universe in three-fourths time.
The Maestro gasped and took a deep breath.
He looked around, stunned, to realize they had completed the piece.
He was exhausted and his hands shook, but a power rang in his head.
With unsteady knees he stood, pushing the bench back, and turned to the Musician.
She stood as well, facing him, cello
already
secured in its case.
He nodded to her, and she returned the gesture.
She turned smoothly and walked back down the aisle to the door, disappearing in a
brief,
brilliant rectangle of daylight.
The Maestro turned to the balcony, hands clasped peacefully before him, eyes downcast, ready for judgment.
He waited several long mome
nts before there was a report. A sharp, loud sound
made him
flinch.
H
e was surprised how painless it was. There was another report, and another.
They began to roil together, coming faster, stronger.
T
here was no finger on the trigger, no hungry rifle aimed at his heart, no bullets striking him.
He lifted his eyes to see the darkened figure standing at the edge of the balcony, wrapped in rags, his piercing eyes on the Maestro.
He appl
auded
with large hands, strangler's hands, rough and calloused, the nails broken and dirty.
His body shook as he clapped vigorously.