The Bronze King (5 page)

“Somebody stole their cold case,” I said. “Full of food.”

He said, “Who, King Kong?”

I laughed, and we hung around and talked a little, pointing out to each other the cop who kept picking his nose and the one with the ketchup on his shirt, that kind of thing. He said what about some coffee or soda or whatever, and I said fine, and we ended up in a coffee shop on Broadway where I finally found out what he was after.

His name was Joel Wechsler. I liked his sort of cranky hawk looks and his bright scarf and his nervous, long-fingered hands that kept torturing the rim of his wax-coated paper Coke cup all the time we talked.

He asked about Paavo.

“Has he been playing there long, your friend the fiddler?” he said.

“No,” I said, getting cautious. Paavo was one heck of a big secret, after all, him and Sorcery Hall and the kraken, and who knew how much this kid had managed to overhear? I began to wish Paavo hadn't gone off and left me with this situation. I began to mentally limber up my I-have-to-go-home-now speech.

“I didn't think I'd seen him there before,” he said. “Most of these guys have fixed beats, you know? A kind of informal territory. Maybe he's just started trying it out there, though I don't think anybody could make much of a living playing on weekdays in Central Park.”

“He can,” I said, knowing nothing at all about what I was talking about. “He's good.”

Joel hunched over the Coke cup, peeling the wax out of the rolled rim. “Well, he sounds all right, even on that beat-up old fiddle. But if he was really good he'd be playing in an orchestra, wouldn't he? Or in a chamber group, or he'd even be an international soloist. Maybe he just had a good day today, who knows?”

“Listen,” I said, getting up, “I've got to go home now.”

He scowled up at me. “Is he a friend of your family's or something?”

“I only met him today,” I said, and I headed for the door. I was feeling kind of funny, too, sort of annoyed that this boy really didn't want to talk to me at all. He just wanted to pump me about Paavo.

He dropped some money on the table and came after me. “Didn't your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” he said, following me out onto the street.

“That's right,” I said, “and you're a stranger, so I guess I better not talk to you.”

“Hey, I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing,” he said, keeping up, which wasn't hard considering that he was a foot taller than I was. “But you should be careful in this town.”

“I know that,” I said. “I was born here.”

“Me, too,” he said. He swung along next to me with his hands in his pockets, staring at the sidewalk. “I always wanted to live in the country, but my father . . .”

“Your father what?”

“He needs to be here for his work.”

Funny having your dad around, and having to live where his work was. I looked at Joel curiously. He didn't look very cheerful.

When we stopped at my building, Joel said, “You live here?”

“Yes,” I said, standing there feeling half-impatient to get away from him and half-hoping he would stay and talk some more (but not about Paavo). I wouldn't have minded if some of the kids in the building should happen to see me out here talking to this interesting, though not particularly sunny-natured, stranger. He was really very nice-looking, if only he would smile.

“I used to know a very fine pianist who lived here,” he said.

I was surprised. “You mean Mr. Vishinsky? I remember him. I used to hear him playing when I went to sleep at night. The music came right down through the whole courtyard. I was sorry when he died.”

I didn't know anything about classical music except that a lot of it really got to me, and that was partly due to that ghostly music drifting down the air shaft from Mr. Vishinsky's open window.

“He didn't just die,” Joel said. “He killed himself.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Anyway, that's what I heard,” he went on, staring past me into the lobby. “Because it wasn't ever going to come back.”

“What wasn't?”

“The control in his left hand. Why do you think he quit concertizing? He got that creeping nerve disease pianists get sometimes. You lose the strength, the control you need.”

“God, how awful. I always thought his music sounded wonderful.” Joel gave me this sour look that said as plain as words, shows how much you know. “Well, I don't know a lot about good music. I only hear what my mom plays on the stereo.”

“If you'd heard Vishinsky live, when he was still okay, you'd know the difference,” he said, “probably.”

“How did you know him? Did you take piano lessons with him?” Mr. Vishinsky had had lots of students.

“My father knew him.” Joel shifted his weight again, looking up the block. I thought, he doesn't like me, he wants to be someplace else. He said, “So is he going to be there again tomorrow?”

“Who?” I said.

“Your pal, the fiddler?”

“I don't know,” I lied. I decided on the spot that I would rather fall dead where I stood than have Joel Wechsler show up in the park tomorrow when Paavo and I took on the kraken. “No,” I added, “come to think of it, no, he isn't. He told me it wasn't working out as well as he thought, so he was going to try someplace else.”

Joel looked hard at me. “Did he say where?”

“Someplace downtown, one of the other parks.”

“The other parks are mainly full of junkies,” he said.

“So?” I said. “Maybe he buys from the dealers, how would I know? Aren't musicians all dopers anyway?”

Joel made a contemptuous grunt and walked away, his hands still in his pockets.

“Thanks for the soda,” I yelled after him. “Creep.” But that, of course, I kept under my breath.

I went upstairs and stood at my window for a long time, wondering if Joel or Paavo or the Princes or even the kraken would show up down there on the sidewalk. Eventually I wrote a little in my diary about Joel and a lot more about Paavo, and then I actually got some homework done.

This turned out to be a good thing, because that evening was not very productive for work. At eight o'clock the landlord came barging into the apartment to accuse my mother of vandalizing his building for deep, dark reasons of her own. All the mail chutes had disappeared, leaving long, pale strips down the walls of the hallways across from the elevators. We were also to blame for the stuff missing from our apartment. The landlord called my mom an “urban communist cadre.”

My mother called her lawyer.

I took my homework into the bathroom and thought about various ways to tell my mother and the lawyer and the landlord that the disappearances were really about something I had that I didn't know I had that a kraken wanted.

That was also the night, according to the next day's news, on which the famed Sabatini string quartet played their final concert of a series in Carnegie Hall, but due to what the papers called an “accoustical freak,” nobody could hear a sound. The musicians said they heard their own music just fine. Everybody else sat there thinking they themselves had gone crazy or deaf.

This news report scared me. Maybe the kraken
had
taken Paavo's cap. Maybe the kraken was onto Paavo through me, and was trying to grab him now by grabbing at music, the kind of music Paavo played. Maybe the next thing connected with me that would disappear would be Paavo himself. Then I'd be out there alone with this secret that I barely understood and nobody to help, even if they knew how to.

Some things happened in school the next day, but I have no memory of what they were. The only thing I was interested in was looking up “kraken” in the library. The dictionary said the word is from a Norwegian dialect and that it means “fabulous Scandinavian sea monster.”

Great. Norwegian fairy tales. But Paavo hadn't sounded like a Scandinavian to me.

He was from someplace a lot farther away than that. He knew my grandmother and he came from Sorcery Hall.

As soon as I got out of social studies class I grabbed my books and stuff and ran for the park. I looked around to see if Joel was lurking someplace, didn't see him, and was glad. I did not want him sticking his nose into whatever this was that I had to do with Paavo.

On the terrace at the east end of the lake, Paavo was playing. There was a crowd, not big but respectable. I thought the music sounded good, very rich and strong.

And there was Joel, sitting on the side wall with his chin on his hands. I went over to him.

“What are
you
doing here?” I said. “Nobody invited you along!”

Joel glared. “Be quiet, I'm listening!”

The music wound up with a singing flourish, and the people applauded and stood around for a little bit. A man shook Paavo's hand, started talking to him, and handed him some cash. So I guess it really was good music. I felt proud because Paavo was my friend.

He came toward us, holding his violin by the neck with the same hand he held the bow in: so practiced and casual-looking.

“Hi,” I said, ignoring the fact that Joel was sitting there.

“Hello,” said Paavo.

“My name's Joel,” said Joel, before I could say another word. Paavo nodded. Joel said, “Can I ask who you studied with?”

“A lot of people, here and there,” Paavo said. From anybody else it would have been a vague answer, but there was nothing vague about him. His gray eyes were sharp and steady on Joel the way they'd been steady on me the day before. “What about you?”

Joel turned pink and put his hand up to his neck where he was wearing another scarf today, a red one. “I don't,” he said. “I'm not a string player.”

“Then what?” Paavo said.

Turning as red as his scarf now, Joel mumbled, “Lead guitar in a group, that's all. It's just a hobby.”

“You do your own compositions?” Paavo said. He dug around in his pockets. I thought, he's going to pull out his cigarettes and offer one to Joel and the two of them will stand around smoking and talking music together and I'm going to cry. I couldn't say a word. I was thinking about just walking away, since nobody seemed to be interested in my being there.

Joel said, “A couple of the other guys are strong on composition. I just play, man.”

Paavo nodded. What he brought out of his pocket was a lump of chalk. “Okay, you ready?”

He was talking to me. Feeling ignored and not ready to help out, I said, “Uh, what for?”

“To find Jagiello. Joel, can you get up there on that marble block where the statue used to stand?”

“Sure,” Joel said. I had been hoping that he would ask a question, get an answer that wouldn't make any sense to him, and take off, or better yet, be sent off by Paavo. But Joel was smart. He didn't ask anything, he just started showing off. He tried to chin himself up onto Jagiello's plinth.

It was too high. Joel got red in the face and grunted, trying to pull himself up there.

Paavo put his violin down gently. He walked over and grabbed Joel's foot and gave him a leg up. Joel was taller than Paavo, but Paavo was strong, which made me smile to myself, I guess because Joel was such a smart ass, though not when he was face to face with Paavo, I noticed.

“Okay,” Paavo said, dusting his palms together and looking up at Joel. “Now come stand at the front, that's right.”

“Am I supposed to be able to see the statue from up here?” Joel said.

“No. Just stand there. Good.”

Paavo lit a cigarette, sank onto his haunches, and began drawing with the chalk on the pavement. I hovered. He was humming. What he drew was an outline. It was a funny, lumpy shape, sort of oblong and aimed at the lake.

“What's that?” I said.

Paavo drew these two crossed shapes at one end and I knew. It was an outline of the shadow of the King's statue, except that there was no shadow on the ground but Joel's, inside the outline.

“What about the Princes?” I said. “What if they come?”

“They won't,” he said. “I gave them some things to do.” He hummed some more, and I knew without being told that when he was doing that, I'd better not speak to him. I could see how he was concentrating. His hair stuck to his forehead because he was sweating with concentration.

“Okay,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “You can come down.”

Joel swung himself down. “What now?” he said, very manly, ready for anything.

Paavo pocketed the chalk, stood, and tucked his violin under his chin. “I'll play. You sing, Val. Joel will write down the words.”

“I can't sing,” I said, panicking. I mean, God, out there in the open and in front of Joel and Paavo both?

“Sha,” Paavo said. “It's not the opera. Don't worry.”

“But I can't—there are people—”

“Don't worry,” he said. “Stand here, inside the chalk line. No, face the lake, like the statue did.”

I did. I could see the rising tiers of seats inside the Delacorte Theatre at the other end of the lake, and the trees, and then on the left the black crag with the little castle on top of it. I could see some mommies and little kids sitting on the grass on the north side of the lake with their baby carriages. Maybe if I sang very softly they wouldn't hear me.

Paavo stood behind me. I couldn't see Joel either. I started to sing, “What's the song? What am I supposed to be singing?” But the violin sounded and everything left my mind. My whole skin sort of prickled and shivered and settled quietly again, and I could hear exactly what the violin said. It said, in rich string tones,
Oh Defender, your place is empty. We seek you. Where are you?

I opened my mouth and out of my throat something like a cool wind came rushing. I heard a huge, hollow voice ringing all through my head. I couldn't understand a single word. It sounded like total gibberish. My cheeks got hot, and I had to shut my eyes.