Danse Macabre

by Gerald Elias

  “I can’t go, Jake,” Mabel said. “It’s Mimi.”

  “Mimi?”

  “She’s choking on a fur ball. I can’t get it out. I have to wait for the petbulance to come and drive her to the ER at the vet.”

  “Can’t you just pour some sangria down its throat? That should dissolve anything.”

  “I don’t appreciate that comment, Jake,” Mabel said. “Maybe another time.”

  She closed the door.

  BTower and Lavender walked onto the stage. The applause was sparse and tepid. BTower tuned to the piano’s A, preparing to begin the Beethoven “Kreutzer” Sonata. There was a long silence before he started. Finally, as Yumi’s fingers dug into his arm yet again, Jacobus heard BTower’s first note. The moment of truth.

  The sound was pure as a bell and perfectly in tune. It was absolutely correct. But it wasn’t music. It came from nowhere and went nowhere. There was no musical connection between the first and second notes, nor between the second and third, nor thereafter. Jacobus’s heart sank. When should one die? he asked himself. Should one try to live as long as possible with the chance of dying miserably, or should one choose the moment of greatest joy to bring life to a close? BTower had been ready to die a happy man a month ago, but now he’s shattered, an empty shell.

  The music stopped, even before Lavender had played his first note. There was unsettling murmuring in the audience, even a few boos. Jacobus put his hand on Yumi’s, preparing to tell her it was time to leave.

  But before he could rise, he heard the first note again. BTower had started over. Technically the note was identical to the way he had played it the first time, but musically it was entirely different. It had direction, conviction, purpose. It was music.

  He completed the first phrase, and now it was Lavender’s turn. He grabbed on to what BTower had given him, only changing the color of the sound because whereas the violin’s music was in A Major, the piano’s tonality suggested a darker minor. Together, they wended their way through the opening Adagio sostenuto with increasing confidence, and dove into the Presto in full throttle. By the time they finished the first movement, they had regained the trust of the audience, which was providing them with the inimitable cosmic energy that distinguishes a live performance from a recording.

  The second and third movements rose to greater heights. The performance was technically superior and musically uninhibited, gaining momentum as the music progressed. Even before the final triumphant chords sounded, the audience was on its feet en masse, screaming bravo! It was a moment that would go down as one of the greats in the annals of the violin. BTower and Lavender were recalled to the stage four times, five times, six times.

  Finally, the crowd quieted as BTower began to speak.

  “We would like to dedicate our encore to Daniel Jacobus, and to the memory of my mother, Rose Grimes.” He paused. “And to the memory of René Allard.”

  The crowd was silent.

  From out of nowhere emerged the most distant sound, a silvery sustained D-natural from the violin that was simultaneously plucked twelve times, once per second. The stroke of midnight.

  “Danse Macabre!” Yumi said.

  “Allard’s ghost,” said Jacobus.

  When it was time to play the diminished fifths, the indication that the devil was tuning up for the diabolic waltz, BTower had a surprise for the audience. Rather than play them loud, as Saint-Saëns had indicated in the music, BTower continued to play almost inaudibly, and slowly. Lavender took his cue and followed suit. They played the entire piece that way. The effect was chillingly intimate, as if it were embedded in the subconscious of every member of the audience. Allard had never penetrated that deeply, and if Allard hadn’t, no one had.

  The final phrases faded into insubstantiality. Jacobus wasn’t even sure they had been played, though he thought he heard them. When the music finished, no one applauded. No one moved. Finally, the audience quietly filed out, the ghost of René Allard at last laid to rest.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply indebted to the usual suspects for guiding me through Danse Macabre: Josh Getzler, my buoyantly supportive agent at Russell and Volkening; Michael Homler, my uncannily perceptive editor at St. Martin’s Press; Geraldine Van Dusen, my production editor, and a violinist to boot; and my copy editor, Cynthia Merman, whose spicily insightful comments keep me on my toes. Thanks also to Anne Gardner, my former publicist at St. Martin’s, for holding my hand through the learning process of marketing my first novel, Devil’s Trill, and for energetically promoting the book as if it were her own; and to my new publicist, Bridget Hartzler. It has been a wonderful collaboration with all of them.

  With Devil’s Trill it could be argued that the main character was the Piccolino Stradivarius violin. One could make the same case for the elevator in Danse Macabre. I couldn’t have learned about the workings of antique elevators without the information and photos enthusiastically provided me by Stephen Showers, the corporate archivist of the Otis Elevator Company. And though the elevator in Danse Macabre is a figment of my own imagination, it is based upon the actual early Otis models, those wonders of turn-of-the-twentieth-century technology.

  I also need to mention Jennifer Toth’s disquieting 1993 book, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City. Years ago, there was in fact a gentleman we nicknamed “Drumstick Man” who played “the drums” using the asphalt of Fifty-seventh Street and a pair of sticks as his instruments of choice. I simply transferred his performance venue to Ms. Toth’s realm under Manhattan, where he could assist Jacobus in finding the subterranean lair of Sigmund Gottfried.

  A thank-you is in order to Beethoven for his Opus 135 String Quartet and his “Kreutzer” Sonata. Perhaps someday we’ll learn definitively what disagreement caused Beethoven’s dedication of this monumental masterpiece to be switched from George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, who had played it with Beethoven, to Rodolphe Kreutzer, a violinist whom Beethoven never met and who didn’t even like the sonata. For now, though, that’s another mystery to be explored.

  Thank you to Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wolf, Shostakovich, and all the other composers whose music is part of the story of Danse Macabre and who have inspired listeners over the years and the centuries.

  Finally, thanks to Camille Saint-Saëns for his evocative tone poem “Danse Macabre.” In his deft hands, the “devil’s interval” never sounded more diabolical.