Orfeo

by Richard Powers

  A weekday afternoon, and the streets betrayed no habitation. Even the corner park was empty. Everything human had taken itself indoors. The capering gray squirrels might as well have inherited the Earth.

  The Fiat nosed up to the empty curb. Els had seen pictures over the years—his daughter and her parade of misfit friends, standing in front of the house in all seasons. Soft yellow lights shone out from the discreet façade. He sat in the car, thinking how this ambush might be the worst idea he’d had since setting up his home microbiology lab. He dialed the long-memorized number.

  The phone rang, but the lights and shadows in the house didn’t change. At last, a deep, professional, and suspicious voice demanded, Hello?

  The once-soubrette had turned contralto. Who’s calling? Two accented eighth notes and a quarter: a descending fifth followed by a rising sixth. The soothing three-note tune turned exquisite, and Els took two beats too long to answer, Maddy.

  The rise and fall of her breath reverberated in the air of her cavernous house. Far away, Els heard what sounded like an exercise tape, the spritely orders of health fascism.

  I’m sorry, she said, unapologetic. Who is this?

  It’s Peter, he said, not recognizing his own voice.

  Silence came from the other end, in timbres beyond Els’s powers to orchestrate. That was the thing about sounds. Even their absence had more shades than any ear could hear.

  Peter, she said.

  He wanted to tell her: It’s all right; life happens.

  But the ID says Kohlmann.

  Yes, he said, in a way that suggested how many parties might be listening in. She’d always had a good ear.

  Where are you? Maddy asked, her voice thick.

  Half a laugh came out of Els. Funny you should ask.

  For some seconds, she said nothing. Then the teal drapes in the front bay window pulled back, and there stood the partner of his youth, the one who’d believed in the mind’s ability to levitate the Pentagon. She put her hand to the glass. He did the same, from the driver’s side of the Fiat. She hung up.

  All life long, he’d had that composer’s gift of being able to tell exactly how long a minute lasted. He counted four of them. At last he shut down the phone and started up the car again. There was no more plan. He’d drive until caught, in a motel somewhere in the Dakotas.

  The car nosed from the curb. Then the house door opened. She had on a long olive shirtdress and gray tailored vest. She was thicker and shorter than he remembered. Her feet edged down the front flagstone path like the taps of a blind person’s cane.

  She let herself into the Fiat, slid down into the passenger seat, and swung to him. She looked at his ragged face and shook her head.

  Rule Number One, he said. Zag when they think you’ll zig?

  The corner of her lip twisted. Neither leaned in, in the slightest.

  What are you doing here, Peter?

  He stared at her, flooded with the past. She flicked the back of her hand toward the windshield and said, Drive.

  He drove, to her direction. They followed a suite of quiet residential streets, emerging onto a commercial boulevard. They said nothing, as if they were a sunset couple taking their ten thousandth car ride together in this life. He wanted to give her the wheel, to see if she still drove like she was sailing an ice boat across a windy northern lake.

  I’ve missed you, Maddy.

  She sniffed and scratched her nose. Please. No nostalgia. It’s unbecoming in a bioterrorist.

  She guided him into the parking lot of a mall the size of a breakaway Balkan state. Els panicked.

  I can’t.

  You’ll be fine, she said. No one’s looking for a couple.

  He angled the Fiat into a slot and killed the engine. He turned to look at her.

  You’re beautiful, he told her. Perfectly unchanged.

  Oh, Christ! You never could see, could you? She held her sagging arms out and tipped her head forward, revealing her roots. The lines around her lips and eyes were cuneiform cuts in baked clay. Els shrugged.

  Seeing is overrated.

  They sat in the parked car, hands in laps. Down the lane in front of them, a woman pushed a cart loaded with a cardboard box big enough to live in. Maddy peered forward, intent on something Els couldn’t see.

  Well, she said. You can’t have done what they’re saying you did.

  I think I must have, Els said.

  You’ve just turned some stupid misunderstanding into a federal offense by acting like a criminal.

  A foolish hope welled up in Els. She was always so wise. The windows were fogging up. Maddy painted idle petroglyphs on the passenger-side glass.

  Modified bacteria? Phht. You can’t even microwave a bowl of tomato soup.

  No, Els said. I did that.

  She shook her head. Impossible.

  Any intelligent college kid—

  Oh, Peter. I don’t believe this. Her hand snaked out, fending off the fact. They were seventy years old. They’d been divorced for a third of a century. But here they were, fighting on their first date.

  Have they charged me with anything specific?

  The hand came back down over her eyes and massaged her forehead. Lordy. And I thought you were naïve at twenty-five.

  You thought I . . . ? You were the wild idealist.

  She looked out the window, at a different past. On the sidewalk in front of the burnished brass and black granite entrance, three women riding Segways handed out red, white, and blue tote bags. Half a dozen children dressed as boarding school wizards trotted into the mall, late for some arcane experiment. Maddy shook her head.

  And you’re the biggest threat to national security since that propane-filled Pathfinder in Times Square.

  He started to cackle. Maddy turned to him, and the fear in her face fed his laughter. His eyes watered at his absurdity, and he couldn’t stop. She put a hand on his knee. The shock of her touch sobered him. He raised his arm and caught his breath.

  Sorry. It’s the stress. Losing it.

  She tugged on his trouser crease. Come on. Let’s get some food into you.

  A carousel spun in the center of the food court, a swirl of colored lights, mirrors, and a calliope. At one end of a large ellipse of food stalls, four bulky men clad in denim and sweatshirts played guitars and sang into mics, songs to listen to while driving across desiccated places in trucks very high off the ground. At the other end, a chorus line of child wizards were getting gunned down one by one by the voice vote of a merciless crowd.

  With awful ease, Maddy secured two slices of pizza and a pair of fizzy drinks. They sat across from each other at a red molded table that would still be around long after the race had cooked itself to death. Four dozen people ate at nearby tables. A few hundred drifted around the ring of franchises. Most of them had seen his picture all week long. But none noticed him.

  From across the table, he looked at the woman who had driven to Boston with him in a seventeen-foot rental truck, while carrying his child. A minute of gazing, and it seemed she’d had crow’s-feet and paper skin and liver spots for as long as he’d known her.

  So how much trouble would you say I’m in?

  Maddy considered the question from a vantage far away. Oh, they want to put you in jail for a very long time. You’re the perfect bogeyman.

  Graves, her placid features seemed to say, were just the thing for dancing on.

  People are buying gas masks. Purification pills. You’re the toast of the Internet.

  Yes, he said. Finally famous.

  She flipped a piece of melted cheese back onto her slice and squinted at it, a horoscope. So you really did this thing.

  What thing?

  Genetic whatever.

  Yes.

  You modified the DNA of a living thing?

  He shrugged. Hundreds of companies do that every day.

  Why, Peter? What ever possessed you?

  A tune he couldn’t name issued from the twanging guitars of the old men in
denim on the soundstage.

  It’s astonishing, he said.

  What is?

  The things that happen down there.

  I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  He couldn’t begin to tell her. Life. Four billion years of chance had written a score of inconceivable intricacy into every living cell. And every cell was a variation on that same first theme, splitting and copying itself without end through the world. All those sequences, gigabits long, were just waiting to be auditioned, transcribed, arranged, tinkered with, added to by the same brains that those scores assembled. A person could work in such a medium—wild forms and fresh sonorities. Tunes for forever, for no one.

  He pleaded with her, palms bared.

  Not you, Peter. You’re doctoring toxic organisms?

  More throbbing counterpoint poured out of the PA system from down the concourse in the heart of the mall. It collided with the power rock from the stage, the calliope, and the chorus of beeps and chimes from a hundred smart and mobile devices. He could no more hear his thoughts than he could see the constellations at noon.

  A middle-aged couple sat down at the next table, sharing a soft-serve cone and holding hands like teenagers. But Maddy didn’t lower her voice.

  Was this some performance piece? Some kind of avant-garde stunt? Getting your revenge on the thankless public by scaring them shitless?

  He barked a single-syllable laugh. That would be an idea.

  Then what? Have you broken any laws?

  None. There aren’t many to break.

  Hope flashed across Maddy’s face. Then turn yourself in.

  The answer: so simple, so obvious. For a moment, he was ready. Then he remembered.

  I believe I’ve burnt that bridge.

  Why, Peter? I don’t understand.

  She looked up across the ellipse of eateries and pointed. There, near the food court entrance, two men in uniforms, a slant rhyme for police, nosed through the unnoticing crowd. Mall security. Panic filled Els. But he needed only fifteen seconds to do what he’d come here to do. He leaned forward, but didn’t touch her.

  Mad? Before I met you, I thought I was going to be a chemist. That’s what I studied in college.

  I know this, Peter. I was your wife, you know.

  I’m sorry. I’m rambling.

  So, what are you saying? That this was all some kind of vicarious fantasy? The road not taken?

  In a way. I was . . . I was trying . . .

  Oh, shit. Her hand rose and her eyes widened. You were composing. In DNA?

  It did sound ludicrous. But what was music, ever, except pure play?

  She stared at him as she’d done once, the night they broke. The night she’d said, The game is over. Nobody’s listening. They’re never coming back.

  What is it you want? she hissed.

  Her anger surprised him. The stored years. He’d never wanted anything but to give back something as fine as he’d been given. To make something worth hearing, and to send it out into the world.

  Listen, he told her. I made a mistake.

  She smoothed back her thinned hair. Apparently.

  No, he said. Not the genetics. I’d do that all again.

  The mall security officers looped up the concourse. They stopped to flirt with the Latina fast-food counter help. In another moment, they came abreast of the seating area, scouting the crowd. Els braced and hid his face. Maddy smiled at the heavyset officer as they passed the table. The man saluted her with one finger to the brow. The two guards ambled on, toward the wizard talent show. Maddy blew out her cheeks and exhaled. She would have made the greatest accomplice that any musical terrorist could have wanted.

  When he could talk again, Els said, I think I must have been mentally ill.

  Maddy swung to face him, twisted her head. This is what I’m wondering.

  No. Back then. I never should have left you and Sara for music. Even to change the world.

  He’d said the last thing he needed to say in this life. Peace came over him, one he hadn’t felt since Fidelio died. She looked away, her gaze now as blank as the past. The middle-aged lovers at the next table—married, but so obviously not to each other—stood and walked away, giggling and licking ice cream off each other’s fingers.

  We already had music, Els said. All the music anybody might want.

  The high lonesome denim band went into some kind of finale. The child wizard contest was coming down to the final four. Maddy inspected the food court—the sounds they had—then turned back to the sounds he still wanted.

  This cell thing. You were trying to live forever?

  Could be, Els admitted.

  Her chest rose and fell. That was always your problem. She looked for something in the bottom of her cup. I only ever wanted now.

  They sat in the cauldron of sound and light, as they once had in Cage’s Musicircus. He held his pepperoni crust aloft. This was our first meal.

  Was it? She asked.

  You’d just read through my Borges songs. I’d posted an ad at the Music Building, promising pizza for an hour of woodshedding. You answered.

  Did I? I was always hungry back then.

  I was mad at you for not loving them at first listen.

  Oh! She looked up, surprised. But I did!

  He fell back, puzzled. He’d driven here to admit to this woman the central mistake of his life. But more mistakes than he could number filled the air around him. Something loosened in him, a landslide of dread. Your quilt, he said. I buried it with the dog.

  She shook her head, not getting him.

  I was in bad shape. I didn’t know what I was doing.

  Oh, for God’s sake. She pawed the air. I’ll make you another while you’re in prison.

  Really? You’re quilting again?

  Retirement. Something to do.

  Careful, he said. That’s how it starts.

  She reached across the red plastic table and covered his fist in her palm. Her hand was cold. Her shot skin no longer held in heat. Peter. They’re going to use you. Make a lesson out of you.

  He opened his hand and took her finger. His life had been full of fearless music. The trick was remembering the sound of it, now that it was no longer playing.

  She squeezed his hand hard, then flicked it away. Speaking of which. Your daughter is beside herself. She’s tried every possible way of reaching you for the last three days. She told me last night she was afraid you might kill yourself.

  Tell her I’m good. Tell her I’ll be all right.

  You want me to lie to her?

  His eye fell on a kiosk near the center of the court. Its banner read Because there is no such thing as natural beauty . . .

  Tell her what I told you.

  All right, she said. I can do that. But you should tell her yourself.

  Maddy stood and stacked the trash, the plastic plates and disposable silverware.

  It was all fear, she said. Fear got us. By the way: Who’s Kohlmann?

  The name came from another planet. So did the note of jealousy. Els glanced at Maddy, but his ex-wife was taking a last, too-large mouthful of now-congealed cheese and trying to hide her pleasure.

  Friend. With a phone.

  She led Els to the garbage station, where they jettisoned their final meal. Then they ran the gauntlet of shops back toward the entrance, Maddy leading, Els stumbling two steps behind her, through the world’s endless profusion.

  Outside, it had begun to drizzle. At the car, Maddy said, Let’s blame Richard.

  Els snapped a finger. Perfect! Why didn’t I think of that?

  They slipped into the Fiat as if they’d just made a pit stop and it was now back to the highway, license plate bingo, and the annual trip to Yosemite. She fiddled with his shoulder, absently, as he cranked the engine.

  How does he seem to you these days?

  He goosed the pedal. You hear from him?

  Wait. You don’t?

  He backed out of the parking slot right in front of an SU
V, whose driver laid into his horn for a full ten seconds. The Fiat lurched forward. The lot was a maze of perverse and pointless turns, leading nowhere but toward more shops.

  He said, I haven’t spoken to the man for seventeen years.

  She took her hand back into her lap. He called me a few months back. He’s in a clinical field trial out in Phoenix. New Alzheimer’s-arresting drug.

  Phoenix? Els asked. His head was wrong. He was driving at random. Why Phoenix?

  Because that’s where the old people are.

  He turned toward her, but she looked away. He looked back to the parking lot, crisscrossed with hazards.

  She said, He calls sometimes.

  He’s calling you?

  Only at night. When he’s terrified. Mostly around two a.m. Charlie wants to kill him.

  Does he . . . is he . . . ?

  Much the same, Maddy said. For now. A little flakier. Early-stage. That’s why he’s in the trial. He’s pinning everything on this drug. He calls me up to prove that it’s working. He talks like the two of you are as thick as ever.

  Els didn’t even see the stop sign until he was through it. He pressed on, his field of vision narrowing to a brown tube.

  You’re in touch. I thought you hated him.

  Richard? I loved Richard. And I loved you. I just hated the two of you together.

  After two more capricious right turns, he asked, Where exactly am I going?

  I was just going to ask. Peter? Her chin rose and fell; her eyes shot down the road. What are you going to do? You don’t think I can shelter you, do you?

  Of course not, he said.

  I can help you, she told the glove compartment. Get you a lawyer. Run interference. Character witness. Whatever you need. There’s still the law, isn’t there? You are innocent, right?

  He caught her eye. Too late for foolish optimism. She closed her eyes and held up one hand.

  Let’s not go there yet.

  He’d gotten them onto a quiet residential street full of modest ranch houses. He nosed the car to the curb along a maple-lined parkway. The rain had turned real and the sky was indigo.

  I . . . he began. I don’t need anything. Just your forgiveness.

  Maddy grinned, a grim Minnesota girl’s grin. You’re an idiot. How am I supposed to forgive that?