Orfeo

by Richard Powers

  Then he remembered. He had written such a thing: his disastrous historical drama, The Fowler’s Snare.

  I think I should make myself scarce, he said. A couple of days. Give them some time to sort my laundry.

  Her look iced him. Els rubbed his nose and tried again.

  It’s just . . . I’ve got this thing about handcuffs.

  Kohlmann stubbed out her cigarette on her shoe sole and slipped the butt into her back pocket. She fished in her striped Incan jerky bag and removed the smartphone.

  I suppose this makes me an accomplice after the fact. She handed him the device, waving it away. There’s a map thingie in there. Knows where you are. Let me give you an address.

  He took the device and played. He stroked and pinched the screen, typing with his thumbs the way Fidelio used to sing. He pulled up the mapping app. The former music box was now a compass needle floating above the site of Shade Arbors, Naxkohoman, Pennsylvania. She dictated an address, which he keyed in. A thin green line materialized, running from the needle off the screen.

  Klaudia Kohlmann smacked her forehead with the butt of her hand. Shit. You’ll need the charger.

  She rose and hobbled toward the facility. At the automatic glass door, she wheeled around. Don’t even think about moving.

  More Partch: “I heard music in the voices all about me, and tried to notate it . . .” That’s all that I tried to do, as well.

  Els cradled the four-inch screen. Driving instructions unfurled alongside the postage-stamp map, too small for seventy-year-old eyes to read. He looked up, toward the garden plots. The air droned like the tinnitus that had plagued him in his sixties and made him want to mercy-kill himself. One low trill split into two, a minor second. The interval turned metallic. A moment more, and the pitches collapsed back into unison.

  The ringing resumed, a Lilliputian air raid. The new chord bent into more grating intervals—a flat third, widening to almost a tritone—a glacial creation like Xenakis or Lucier, one of those cracked Jeremiahs howling in the wilderness, looking for a way beyond. The sky-wide trill filled the air with sonic pollen, like the engines of a fleet of interstellar spaceships each the size of a vanilla wafer. It filled the air at every distance, too sweet for locusts or cicadas. Bats didn’t shriek in broad daylight, and birds didn’t sing in chorus. Something abundant and invisible was playing with harmony, and Els turned student again.

  A quartet of Shade residents came through the sliding glass, William Bock among them. Seeing his teacher, the ceramic engineer stopped to listen. Holy crap! What’s that?

  The guessing began, but no theory held up. In the distance, children with pennywhistles, wind clacking the branches, the hiss of pole-mounted power transformers, a murmuration of starlings, rooftop ventilation units, a muffled marching band drilling on a school football field miles away.

  That’s how Lisa Keane, dressed for gardening, found them, a geriatric flash mob standing on the front walk, looking skyward at nothing.

  Frogs, she told them. Tree frogs. Singing to each other.

  Amphibians improvising, toying with fantastic dissonant choruses: it seemed no less outrageous to Els than his own life.

  I can’t tell you what species, Keane said. Two dozen dialects, in these parts.

  Els asked, What are they saying?

  Oh: The usual. It’s cool and moist. We’re alive. Come here. What else is there to sing about?

  This was the woman whom music didn’t move. Els closed his eyes, transcribing airborne harmonies from a time when sending a message over distance was life’s best feat. Listen to this: listen to this.

  How long have they been going?

  Oh, I don’t know. A hundred million years?

  No. I mean . . . how long, this year?

  The ex-Benedictine calculated. Off and on every morning for the last month.

  Bock said, Get out of town!

  In another minute, the miracle wore thin and the group wandered off to the shuttle bus. Soon only Keane, Els, and a bent man who moved like a broken-winged eagle were left clinging to the harsh serenade.

  At last Kohlmann returned, dangling a power adapter. Oh, geez. What now?

  Els pointed treeward at the strobing sound. Kohlmann scowled.

  Ach—nature, again? The whole thing is out of control.

  Tree frogs, Keane said.

  It surprised Els: the ex-nun had a crush on the transactional analyst.

  Okay, Kohlmann conceded. Tree frogs. And we need to know this . . . why?

  Lisa Keane grazed Kohlmann’s forearm and shot her a crumpled smile. Amphibia would not trouble anyone much longer. She waved goodbye and headed down the walk toward her square of cultivated earth.

  Klaudia handed Els the adapter. You figure it out. Just do what the Voice tells you, even if you think she’s wrong. Her ways are mysterious, but the Voice has a higher plan for you.

  Els said, Can you tell me where I’m going?

  My son’s cabin, in the Alleghenies. He and his swarm go in for that kind of thing. Grazing in the poisonous plants. Picking diseased ticks out of each other’s scalps. Got it from his father.

  I can’t camp in your son’s house.

  They love having other crazies use the place. The four of them are cutting their way through Indonesia with machetes at the moment. You should see my grandchildren. It’s all the bovine growth hormone.

  You don’t want the federal government . . .

  Kohlmann clucked her tongue and wagged her finger like a tiny wiper. Phhh. The key is stuck in an abandoned wasp’s nest in the rafter above the back door. I think there’s a telephone hiding in that thing, somewhere. If you get in trouble, punch the little phone button and tap “Me.”

  I can’t take your phone.

  I’ve got two more.

  But your mail. Your music. Your Web.

  I’ve been trying to get off the thing for five months. You’re helping me manage my addiction. She sat up on the bench, pretending to rejuvenation. Hey! Listen. You hear that? Little reptiles, singing!

  Els stared down at the device in his lap. Why are you doing this for me? I mean, considering . . .

  Shut up and use it. I’ve got unlimited everything. None of this minutes shit.

  I’ll get it back to you. This weekend.

  She waved him off. Fine. And when you get to the cabin? Do me the favor and shower.

  He stood and stepped toward the parking lot, now far away. He glanced back at Kohlmann. Her right hand visored her eyes.

  Thank you? she asked.

  He didn’t understand the question. For what?

  She hooked a thumb back toward the entrance.

  For today. I’ve listened to that thing a dozen times and never heard it until this morning.

  My cultures can’t be called back now. They’re off and doubling, like the brooms of the sorceror’s apprentice.

  Richard Bonner took Els’s four art settings of Borges texts and turned them into madcap theater. He made Maddy and the ensemble—horn, oboe, cello, piano, and percussion—start all over again. At first Els tried to manage the damage. He stood at his new friend’s elbow during rehearsals, pointing out what might not be realistic. But realism was Bonner’s punching dummy. Let’s try this, he’d say every few minutes, and if Els or Maddy or any of the players objected, the giant Texan son of an abusive evangelist shot back, A little experiment is going to kill you?

  Richard paid Maddy strange court, wooing her for a larger plan. Els didn’t get it; he expected his wholesome, quilting girlfriend to shrink from the man’s mania. But Maddy lapped up Bonner’s every attention. He brought her jewels—rococo things that no sane person would let touch their body: a varnished gecko skull on a brass stick pin. A clasp made from a cicada corpse. Guileless Maddy wore them with gusto.

  Look at you! Richard said. You look like a vestal virgin in heat.

  But she held her own against him. Once, when he was trying to get her to walk like a robot, Maddy grabbed Richard by the chamois shirt,
twisted the cloth in her fist, and asked, You need this? I could make something interesting with it.

  Richard doled out props at every rehearsal: gas masks for the players to wear during the third song. Malay shadow puppets to wave in the air. Kalimbas, which he got Els to write into the percussionist’s part. Els prayed that the Salvation Army would run out of treasures before the players ran out of patience.

  Long after the performers headed off to Murphy’s each night, Bonner insisted that he and Els huddle up and keep tinkering. He had other obligations—thesis, theater performances, maybe even a personal life, though Els saw no hint of one. And yet, for this one volunteer project—someone else’s graduate recital—he had endless energy. Els wondered if he might be addicted to pep pills. But Richard had no need of amphetamines. He ran on sufficient built-in demons—hellfire father, suicide mother, a younger sister sealed up in cortical seizures—that no amount of labor would ever exorcise.

  Bonner’s plans for the Borges Songs called for costumes, a bank of sixteen-millimeter projectors, and dance. He alone saw how all the moving parts would come together. Richard mapped out the steps he wanted from Maddy—the spastic thrusts, flicks, and slashes. He demonstrated, and his clumsiness came so close to unfettered happiness that Els had to look away.

  Maddy froze up at the choreographer’s weirder requests. I can’t do that.

  You can. It gets easier.

  I’ll look like a fool.

  You look like a force of nature. You’ll see.

  Els sat in the empty theater, watching his songs turn as strange as death. Maddy thrust out her arms and canted her shoulders, a holy clown. Els wanted to protect the gawky, ambushed soprano from this fate she didn’t sign on for. But she needed no protection. The game was already lost, and she meant to face doom bravely.

  To Bonner, Madolyn Corr’s every inept plié was found art. The man couldn’t stop choreographing. He stood in front of the flinching quintet, left hand clasping his right elbow, two fingers pressed to his hairline, smirking as if all history were one long shaggy dog joke whose punch line he was now permitted to deliver. He’d scan the score, regard the palette of possible victims, and swoop.

  The percussionist dug Bonner’s hijinks; the pianist just laughed. The other three threatened a walkout. Bonner faced them down.

  You gonna sit there with a broom up your sphincter, afraid to tap your feet? You’ve all forgotten where music comes from. Why do you think they’re called movements?

  And, howling all the way, the musicians turned back into dancers.

  The piece was one of those commercial flights to Paris that found itself heading down to Havana. But by December, Els’s embarrassment at the hijacking turned into excitement. He expanded the score where Bonner’s shambolic theater called for more. The academic piece began to breathe and bleed. The pair of them—pushing and prodding and trumping one another—lifted the notes into a new place.

  Fights: Yes. Fits of temper and pique. Too many stressful hours together for anything less. But Richard turned even war into creative charades.

  The collaborators were crossing the dark Quad one icy night, wasted by hours of rehearsing, but carried along by the strangeness coming alive under their care. Richard stopped on the long diagonal, his hands conducting the air. How do you like seeing your cold little fish swimming in the great big ocean?

  Els drew up next to him. How do you like seeing your random thrashing get some form?

  The choreographer craned toward the gibbous moon. Maestro. We work pretty well together, don’t you think? It seems to me that half of life’s problems would be solved if one of us had a vagina.

  Els recoiled. His boots slid on the packed snow, and he would have fallen if Bonner hadn’t grabbed his elbow. Bonner smacked Els in the back of the skull and cackled.

  Oh, fuck off! Don’t look at me like that, man. You got a problem with something?

  Richard snapped his finger and waved the parade onward. After a hundred-yard silence that he seemed to feast on, he grabbed Els again. Maestro, listen. I’m happy, for you, that she has one. And a marvelous one, I have no doubt.

  Then he was all business again—Borges and Brecht and new plans for getting infinity up onto that cramped little stage.

  There’s joy in a minor key, a deep pleasure to be had from hearing the darkest tune and discovering you’re equal to it.

  The performance was set for late January, the day before Peter Els’s twenty-seventh birthday. Bonner’s notoriety was good for business. Maddy’s Vertical Smile groupies turned out to hear the band’s lead singer. Peter’s composer friends showed up, to gauge the competition. Mattison was there, near the front of the hall, waiting to be unsatisfied. Word had gotten around that the patients were running the asylum. It made for a decent house.

  As the room filled, Bonner staked out a seat halfway down the right aisle. When the players came onstage to polite applause, Richard retreated to where Els sat, in the back of the hall. The horn started its stutter-step stall, a figure picked up by the cello, then the oboe. As the three instruments played their patient delaying game, Madolyn crept down the right aisle in a gray tunic—Cleopatra with a gecko-skull brooch and a cicada in her hair. She edged toward the stage, stopped, cringed and recoiled, then retreated to the chair Bonner had vacated. The audience was baffled, but the band played on.

  Ratchet and wood block prodded the delaying motif, which cycled through dissonant parallel intervals in the cello, horn, and oboe. Maddy rose from her seat, lurched toward the stage, hesitated, lost her nerve again, and sat back down. The audience tittered, as nervous as they should have been.

  The piano blasted through the stuttering material and broke it loose. All five instruments fell into a flowing stream. Maddy bolted from her seat and jerked her unwilling body up the stairs and out to center stage, where, shocked by a sudden rush of will, she sang:

  The truth is,

  truth is,

  truth is . . .

  The truth is that we live out our lives

  putting off all that can be put off . . .

  On a downbeat, the pitch group changed to Hypophrygian, an old church mode. The instruments circled in tight stretti of dense materials. Then the projectors fired up—twin beams from opposite sides of the hall, coating the singer in colors. Near the bottom of her register, Maddy sang a legato line that twisted like a tunnel in an ancient tomb:

  Perhaps we all know deep down . . . that we are immortal.

  At the word immortal, the lines sailed up into a series of ringing forte chords in the piano and a frenzy of handbells.

  The three melodic instruments reached a blistering peak of arpeggios, then froze. The projectors blacked out. The sound decayed in the dampening hall. Awkward Maddy beckoned out over the audience’s heads. Her grasping hands and desperate glances made half the room turn and look. Then, over the pianissimo horn and oboe, she wove through the four pitches of a diminished seventh:

  And that sooner . . .

  Sooner or later . . .

  Sooner, or sooner or later . . .

  Later . . . or later . . . later . . .

  The projectors blazed again, along with a choir of antiphonal taped voices. Images pelted the hall’s walls in a time-lapse cavalcade that ran from Edison’s electrocuted elephant to Edward White tethered to his Gemini capsule by a twenty-five-foot umbilical above the blue Earth. The pianist placed his forearms across the keyboard and undulated. Horn, oboe, and cello built a corona of minor seconds while the percussionist rolled sponge mallets on a suspended china cymbal. On a fixed pitch in the middle of her range, rising three steps at the end of the line, Maddy, motionless, intoned:

  Sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.

  Who was in the audience that night? Students of cultural anthropology in tie-dyed kurtas and beards like shoe brushes. A doctor of philology about to embark on a career selling discount furniture off of flatbed trucks. A long-haired, sloe-eyed woman with the “Desiderata” on her bat
hroom wall, who woke up nightly, convinced she’d burn for what she’d done. Retired social scientists certain that consumer democracy had ten more years, tops. An agitator with a mind like lighter fluid who ended up owning a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade. A scholar of German idealism who believed that the universe was coming to know itself. An atmospheric scientist wondering if the planet might be about to slow-cook to death. An ethnomusicologist who’d spend the next forty years proving that music evaded every definition. In all, a hundred people whose offspring would someday know all things and become immortal.

  The first song ended; the audience coughed and shifted. Giggles rippled through the seats near Els. The woman to his left leaned toward her companion and pantomimed the winding of a crank. Els turned to Richard. Bonner’s face shone. He cackled like a melodrama villain and rubbed his hands, keen for the feast of abuse that only art can bring. Three songs left, and hot, tourniquet pains were shooting down Els’s left arm at ten-second intervals.

  The second song consisted of just two ideas: a dotted trochee pulse, like a lopsided metronome, overlaying itself at different intervals, and a cycle of suspensions forever falling into other suspensions and failing to resolve. Maddy flexed and squared her shoulders, leaning forward and reaching out while being drawn back, swaying in place, trapped in what struck her as someone else’s body.

  Time is a river which carries me along,