by Unknown
They would come overnight—tonight, maybe, or the night after. They’d see the note and take him away, with the insects burrowed warmly inside him. When I came back out into the park, tomorrow morning or the morning after, there would be only the Ferris wheel behind me and the carousel horses ahead, and the kind of quiet that would slowly become birds.
When I reached to turn off my phone, Lars had sent a message: Back to Dreamland? An overnight. Eddie’s asking.
Sure. Tonight. Meet you there.
I should call the police, I thought. All three of them should be arrested. Leave that place alone.
Greenland was beautiful in the dark. The rollercoaster snaked against the stars, and the curtain mist settled over everything along the ground. If they came to get the body, I wouldn’t even see it. If they came looking for me, I wouldn’t know until it was too late. If it was other explorers who had taken the card and put it back in a fit of conscience, then it would serve them right to piss themselves and get on a plane back home.
If there was no one, and it was just the corpse and me and some card that had gone missing and come back all by itself, I’d be waiting a long time. That was all right. It was quiet here. It was neither one place nor another, until somebody came.
A spider crawled across my shoe; then it stopped, perfectly still.
1.
I can hear the sound of a future that never arrives.
Music from strings that are not here, from a bow that is not here. Vibrato, pizzicato, harmonics—at this moment, I am a performer, and at the same time just a listener. From scale to scale, I drift, I dive, I swim, through the sea, through the shoals of interwoven airborne sound.
That would be the music I would be playing. In a future that has been shut off.
And so, I think, this must be a dream.
The note I hear at this moment is just the tiniest bit off-pitch. A little flat, the tone turning darker. Wait … no, it was deliberate!
I open my eyes, ever so slightly. This should be a direct flight to Tokyo. I am on my way home from attending a performance competition that one of my students entered.
But what is going on now?
The airplane is shaking, and a young man is playing the violin, passionately. I cannot name the tune, in part because of his bold interpretation. It is the violin part of the Sibelius concerto.
Some of the cabin’s portholes are hung with yellow curtains. The upholstery of the seats matches the red of the carpet. But the carpet is soiled with black stains, holes, and scorch marks Someone’s old suitcase is rattling. The metal of the armrests is rough on the elbows. Water drips from the ceiling onto my shoulder. I feel something strange, and reflexively I check my cello case. Whew, it’s there. I take out my cell phone, but then I remember I am in an airplane.
I pick up the menu. All I can make out on the faded blue paper is burns, and something like cognac ads or something.
I feel chilly, but I can’t find any blankets. I hear the calm voices of other passengers, and a violin’s accelerando. It is a strange sensation, out of place in an airplane.
Someone is standing in the aisle, speaking to me: “Old man, you are very lucky.”
I don’t understand right away. I think he might be speaking French, and I stammer out, “Pour quoi?”
And the man responds: “Sky Spider. You can hear his performance.”
“Who are you talking about?”
The man points his chin at the young man playing the violin, and then turns back to me.
“And you are … ?”
“Takaido.”
“Chinois?”
Japanese is the pat answer. The man has very masculine features. He is buff, like someone who’s into sports. Asked his name, he replies simply, “Cerdan.”
Wine is served. I choose white.
The attendant pours into a short glass, mutters something respectful, and moves on. Her blond hair is tied up and covered with a pillbox cap. My glass is yawing precariously, and I down the contents in one gulp.
The young man, Sky Spider, continues his performance.
His movements are awkward, but his sound is refined, meticulous even. I wonder who taught him. His technique is old-fashioned, but the effect is very powerful. I feel as if, within the melody, I can hear something like an unquenchable thirst.
The young man is unlike any pupil I have ever taught. Unconsciously, I begin to lean forward. Cerdan addresses me once again: “Jump in,” he says.
Jump in where, I wonder. I wonder if I have heard him correctly, and I do not answer immediately. He looks irritated, and he points to the cello case beside me.
“You play too, don’t you?”
“Not really,” I stammer.
Several passengers turn to face me, expectantly. I feel a pain in my chest. The young man smiles wanly, and launches into the next piece. Another Sibelius. This time the Canon.
Subtitle: For Violin and Cello.
My gaze meets the young man’s. The lightbulb in my head switches on. I open the cello case, and start to rosin the bow. As long as there is no problem with the left hand, the pitches will match. We can play a few bars, and then everyone will understand.
It happened when I was 21.
I am a performer, not a teacher. And I have confidence. At some point in the future, I will have the sound of my dreams. But that future will never come. I will have a car accident, and I will injure the tendons of my right hand. I will move to protect my instrument, and lose something even more vital. This is what the doctor will say: “There will be some aftereffects, but you will have no problems with your everyday life.”
Nearly a half-century has now passed. I stopped performing, and chose the path of nurturing the next generation.
My yearning is still with me.
And that is why I am still carrying this regret, to the point of buying two tickets.
How horrible will it be to die, still carrying this future that might have been?
The expression on my face must be awful enough. A young woman looks my way, and tells me, “Everything will be fine.” I feel like I have seen her face somewhere before. But that is not possible. In no way am I fine.
The violin runs up, and I play my first note, emphatically.
That is when it happens:
The feel of the bow hits me. It is a feeling I can never forget, no matter how long it has been. No matter how often I try, each time, it drops from my hand. That thing that I had finally “got,” that runs the length of the bow, from grip to tip. That feeling in my hand when I am playing the cello properly. The high I feel when my hands are in complete harmony.
Like the slow gathering of the tide, I can feel the healing of my deep wounds. Am I able to perform again, as I thought I never would? Or …
The violin carries the melody, and I follow, and then pass it back. Sky Spider’s lips move, just a bit. Oddly, I am able to understand what he is saying. I am certain that this is what he says:
“I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”
This is exactly what I am also thinking. Not just because it is my turn with the melody. We have each found a partner who understands us, and for the first time, harmony comes to life. We play, and over and over we return to the beginning. Here is a young man with whom I have never exchanged a word, but I am experiencing sympathetic resonance, as if I have a tuning fork inside.
What is happening here?
As I play, I look around the plane.
The plane is still shaking, but no longer can I hear the roar of the jets. Many of the passengers are dressed rather formally for the flight. One has a cigarette, relishing every puff. His clothing is dazzlingly colorful, jangly, like a black-and-white film that has been colorized. A female passenger waves. She wears a skirt with a wide hem, her hair has a soft wave, and she wears high heels. Seeing her, I remember
a certain story.
There is a ridiculous urban legend musicians tell. With all their flying around, sooner or later anybody might end up wandering onto a “Ghost Ship,” or so the story goes. And when that happens, such a passenger might hear a violin with a sound like the nectar of the gods. Some such passengers might be able to take that sound home with them. And some might be possessed, or even go mad.
That is the story a student of mine told me. I chided her. Instead of dreaming, move your hands some more, I said. At the time, she was my best student.
“Really?” she asked. “Don’t you think you’d like to try and see for yourself?”
I thought this response was brilliant. But on the forced march of a concert tour she suffered a miscarriage. Things between her and her husband soured, and at some point she put music behind her.
I think about this often. What is the life of a musician?
A ghost ship.
Something that should never be.
What then is this scene before my eyes? The truth is communicating with my right hand, I can feel the bow.
There is just one face I recognize. Who is he? Oh, that’s right, a man I often see at concerts. Did he too wander aboard here just like me?
I look behind me. There should be an aisle leading to the rear cabin, but instead, I see nothing, as if clouds have enshrouded my head. Is that the path to the real world? Or … ?
A cold something runs up my spine.
Sky Spider suddenly plays more vigorously: Johan Halvorsen’s Passacaglia on a Theme by Handel. The piece was originally written for violin and viola, but there is also a version for violin and cello. It is a difficult piece, but nothing to be afraid of.
A short way into the piece, there is a passage where the cello carries the theme. It is a slow, beautiful piece of music, but it gets much more difficult as it goes along. Up-tempo arpeggios are followed by pizzicato on the cello, and then legato, in a repeating pattern. For the violin, it is the reverse. The development strains the players’ nerves. Even so, it is a piece I could go on playing forever.
Across the aisle, Cerdan is swaying.
A passacaglia is actually a dance piece, so this is not an inappropriate response.
The two of us negotiate a passage with double triplets, and move into the marcato section. I match my breathing to the young man’s, and he his to mine.
The woman who told me “Everything will be fine” looks back and forth, from Sky Spider to me, with affection. There follows a section with a number of sixteenth notes that can only be described as sadistic, followed by two measures in adagio, and then the piece is at an end. The young man extends his hand to shake mine, and says, “That was fun. Between the near shore and the far shore, the passing of years can be a lonely thing …”
I hug the young man, and pat him on the back. At the same time, my eyes are drawn to the young man’s violin. The very head of it, the scroll has a distinctive line. Unmistakable.
His violin is a Stradivarius.
“Who is your teacher?” I ask. “Must be someone famous …”
The young man does not answer.
Instead, the woman who had been watching us stands up.
“It can’t be,” I say, under my breath. “It can’t be.”
It is not that I knew her from somewhere—she is someone any string player would know. She has a gentle smile, and that is her disguise. I know her by the grimace she generally shows when performing. Her eyes, though, exuding quiet determination, are the same.
Ginette Neveu.
A face any string player should recognize. The violinist of the century, recognized as a teenager as a genius. Which makes it all the more surprising to see her here now.
She had died young, at the age of thirty.
She and her beloved Stradivarius were on an Air France flight from Paris to America, and it had crashed in the Azores, in the Atlantic Ocean.
Finally I understand what this place is.
All the passengers in their outdated outfits. The burned carpet, the musician who does not belong.
This is that 1949 Air France flight.
2.
Several passengers approach, their hands extended in greeting.
I decide to sit down in the seat of one of these passengers, so I can hear what Sky Spider has to say.
He is fourteen, and is studying with Neveu. He wants to know what to learn next, what to learn after that, staring at me the whole time as he speaks. He seems sincerely desperate to play in larger ensembles. Duos just don’t do it for him.
I was unaware that Neveu had had a pupil before her accident. Somehow, though, seeing this young man’s talent, I understand.
I feel gentle waves, the after-echoes of the performance. Like after swimming in the sea.
If this is a dream, I do not wish to wake up. That is my true, unvarnished feeling.
I ask him to show me his violin. The old varnish feels soft, familiar. I play a scale on the A string. It has a surpassing, brilliant tone.
A Stradivarius—Neveu’s Stradivarius—must be worth at least ten million.
I reel off one phrase after another. Because I yearn, I listen to the music, and I listen to the music, and I yearn some more. I should be more restrained with this vibrato. Here is a quadruple stop, and in my imagination, I want to emphasize the empty fifth. But just because I want to doesn’t mean I can. I can say this because it’s as if I’m standing beside myself, looking at myself.
But there is no way of knowing!
And that is when it happens. Someone, or something, snatches the violin from my hands.
It is the passenger who wandered onto the flight at the same time as me. Before I can stop him he runs down the aisle toward the rear of the plane, into the haze. He had been thinking about stealing the violin ever since he got on board.
Give me back my sound!
I am surprised to realize I still have this much ego left. It is funny to be fighting over the same violin. I cannot stop him. I get up from my seat, and go after him. Cerdan taps me on the shoulder.
“It’s all right.”
“But …”
Just as I think he has gotten away, I hear a startled cry. It seems the man fell to the floor. But that isn’t it. He has evaporated. Simply crumpled, like a freeze-dried rose, turned to dust in an instant, leaving only his clothing, and the violin, behind. I run to the spot where he had just been.
All that is left of him is like cotton candy, wisping away at the slightest touch. Something protrudes from the breast pocket of his clothing. I pluck it away. It is an air ticket, and the flight number is the one I am supposed to be on. This is no longer just some story happening to someone else.
If this means I will never get out of here, that’s all right by me. If it means I can play the cello again, that is all I ever really wanted to do. But disappearing into a handful of dust like that does not appeal to me.
Cerdan stands up, a sour expression on his face, so I ask him what is going on.
“Well, you see, it’s like this …”
He looks around the plane as he racks his brain for the words. Several people are nodding as he continues, “It is just as you imagine. This is a Ghost Ship. Or, it might be more precise to say, a Ghost Flight.”
“And you all are … ?”
“Well, ghosts, of course. Truth be told, we don’t exactly know ourselves. And, as for that man just now, I’ve never seen anyone disappear quite that way before—and I’ve seen many people vanish in my time. As far as I can tell, he just disappeared. Just like the rest of us, caught between the near shore and the world to come. No loitering.”
“I have heard of this ship before. It means that travelers departing from here existed in the past. That man just now, though, well, it didn’t work out for him.”
“In this place, there are two rules
.”
Cerdan’s explanation is simple.
The first rule is that things that were here to begin with may not be taken away.
The second rule is that things brought here from somewhere else may be taken away.
The way out? Just take the cello case and walk down the aisle.
“… but I drank some wine …”
“A little thing like that is no problem. Eating and drinking: fine. But more important than that, I like it that you’re here. We have been lonely.”
Cerdan went on: “All of this is just your imagination. You are in control; stay if you like, leave if you wish.”
A shadow falls across his face. It seems something is tugging at his heartstrings.
Need to think about this.
That’s what I think to myself. What manner of place is this? What guarantee do I have that I won’t end up dead? My mind races, searching my memory.
I get it now.
If he really wants me to stay, he would not have to go to the trouble of explaining the rules to me. All he would have to do would be to make me so anxious I would never even think of walking down the aisle.
There must be some other reason he told me the rules.
Something else crosses my mind.
I can easily imagine how anyone might wander onto a Ghost Ship without realizing it.
One of my pupils told me this story.
I am sitting next to Sky Spider, doing my best to look like nothing’s wrong.
I whisper: “Is there someplace where we can see the outside?”
As he inclines his head toward me, I continue: “I’d like to talk to you alone.”
3.
Sky Spider chooses an office near the rear cabin of the plane. Outside the porthole, it is night. But is it real night, or an imaginary stratosphere? I come straight to the point: “Won’t you come with me?”
Sky Spider’s features sharpen.