Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

by John Franklin Bardin

  Could she have put it in this drawer? What a key would be doing in her vanity drawer she did not know, but she had to be systematic about her search, she had to look every place, in every cranny – even the most unlikely places – if she hoped to find it. How barren a long-unused drawer looked, the stockings stiff in their dusty tissue paper, the powder that had been spilled smelling stale with the years. What a blatant, pinkish shade of powder! When had she used it? No, there was no key there. But, while she was at it, she might as well look in the other drawers.

  The flagstones had been uneven beneath her feet, the handle of the suitcase had begun to cut into the palm of her hand (she had insisted on carrying the heavy bag; the two travelling-cases were enough for Basil). The direct heat of the sun had made her dizzy, its steady brilliance had made the grass seem greener than ever before, the sky bluer. At the lodge they had stopped while Basil picked through his pockets for the slip of paper he must show the gatekeeper; she had been able to put down the suitcase, to rest her hand, to stand in the shade of the elms until the man had telephoned to the main office and verified her credentials. Actually, she had stepped through the gate because the shade was deeper on the other side, had not been aware that by taking this action she had crossed the line, had passed into the world and out of the cloister; later, she regretted not having done it consciously, had even forgotten when she had gone through the gate until Basil reminded her, ‘You went past it when you wanted to stand in the shade while I talked to the man, remember’ – this was when they were on the bus going down the mountainous road to the town and the railroad station – was sorry that so soon she was blinded to the greater reality by the immediate demands of cause and effect.

  The bus had been hot and stuffy, crowded with tired-looking people of all ages, solitary men and women, taciturn families, one young girl with staring eyes and an impassive face. She had felt self-conscious holding Basil’s hand, and childishly exuberant in the face of this mass restraint. They had been the first ones on the bus, and had taken a seat in the rear – they had watched the others file crookedly down the hill and past the gatekeeper’s lodge and out the gate.

  ‘Are they all patients?’ she had asked Basil, breaking a silence that had become uncomfortable, ‘and if they aren’t, why are they leaving so early?’

  ‘Visiting hours start at six on Sundays,’ he had told her. ‘If they didn’t, they would never be able to accommodate all the visitors. Each bus brings its load, and takes another away – they run every fifteen minutes all day. Sunday is the only day most people can come, you see.’ He had looked out of the window at the crowd that seemed to grow thicker as the bus filled. ‘Some of them are patients, of course,’ he had gone on. He pointed his finger at the girl with immobile features. ‘She is. I talked to her once on the train. She lives a few stations away in a town on the river. They let her go home every Sunday, but she must be back by nightfall.’

  She had held his hand tighter, smiled at him, fighting down the fear that had risen in her throat while he talked. She could feel the tether about her waist, feel it tighten, feel it begin to draw her back irresistibly. And then she realized that the bus had begun to move, that the driver had released the brake and slipped into gear, that they were rolling downhill, away from the crowd that was being left (people were standing in the aisles, the driver could not have taken any more), away from the man who had thought himself next to get on, a tall man with a florid face, who shook a great fist at them and mouthed inaudible curses.

  She had looked in her study, in the music cabinet, in the bedroom, in all the drawers of her vanity. Now she went downstairs again and into the library; she began to look through the desk; she would look in each cubbyhole, underneath the blotter, the secret compartment … ‘What are you doing?’ Basil’s voice behind her, questioning, a little curt. ‘I’m still looking for the key,’ she said, turning to face him, surprised to see his face flushed beneath his tan. ‘I can’t seem to find it anywhere, and I’m sure I left it in the keyhole. Where did you see it last?’ He shook his head and came to stand beside her, his hand resting on the desk, casually barring her from it. ‘I’ll look here,’ he said. ‘I have some manuscripts I don’t want disturbed. Why don’t you go to the kitchen and ask Suky if he’s seen it? I’ll bet you he has it safely put away.’

  The train had been dirty and just as crowded as the bus. Some of the same people were in their coach, along with others: farmers and their wives visiting the city to see a movie or go to the beach, several railroadmen riding as far as the next stop, a junction, and a few she could not identify. She had wondered how Basil and she looked to these people, if any of them were doing what she was doing – trying to deduce who they were, where they were coming from and where they were going. Basil, she knew, stood out in any group. What distinguished him was the way he held himself. He always seemed, to her, at least, to be standing on the podium. His hands gripped an imaginary baton. His head and neck were stiffly erect, his eyes shifted position quickly, found what they sought, turned from it as swiftly to something else, keeping the entire car under surveillance as they were accustomed to survey an orchestra – first the strings, then the woodwinds, the ‘cellos, the brasses, the percussions, the basses.

  ‘Any new scores this year?’ she asked him, abruptly deciding to abandon her game of trying to discover what the other travellers thought of her, because it was difficult and unprofitable.

  Basil had at that moment, when she asked her question, looked out of the window at the mountainous terrain, the dark-veined rocky cliff-face that overhung the right-of-way. He had turned about at her words, but not to look at her, his eyes elevated and musing. ‘There is a new symphony by D—,’ he had said, naming a contemporary Russian composer whose works, although they had been highly acclaimed and had won great popularity, she had always thought vulgar, stilted and derivative. ‘I have been lucky enough to obtain the exclusive rights to the first American performance. I intend to open the season with it.’

  She had quite forgotten how different his taste in music was from hers. Not that they did not often like the same things – Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky – but that there was so much which he either liked, or espoused because the public liked it, which she thought insipid or meretricious. D— was a case in point. Like most concertgoers, she had been forced to listen to a number of his works, since his music had been widely performed from the very start of his career. Except for some early chamber music that had been timidly experimental, she had found it all dull. And she had often suspected that Basil, even though she had never put him in a position where he would be forced to admit it, was of the same opinion. Yet he had championed D—’s works from the beginning, not the least of his fame as a conductor had been gained from his interpretations of them (he generally favoured a faster tempo than anyone else, and he took care to extract the last decibel of thunder from a climactic crescendo), so that now he had been honoured by being granted the right to introduce the composer’s latest production to the American audience.

  ‘Is it very long?’ she asked.

  ‘Surprisingly short,’ he replied. ‘There are six brief movements – two slow and four fast. One, believe it or not, is a charming minuet. A little ironic, perhaps – a few barbs of wit here and there. But, on the whole, melodic and beautiful.’

  ‘I should like to see the score,’ she said, knowing this was the thing to say, wanting, at any cost of pride, to avoid the old, useless antagonism. In a way, it was good that they inhabited separate worlds of music – there was no competition. He played Bach only in orchestral transcriptions, programmed Mozart and Haydn to pad out an evening of more bombastic works, to act as foils that in their drabness display the talents of a trickster.

  ‘I am having the parts copied now,’ he said. ‘I understand it won’t be published until spring. As it is, I have only the microfilm copy of the original.’

  ‘I’ll wait until you have other copies.’ She was relieved that it w
ould not be necessary to scan the symphony and comment upon it. If he had asked her opinion, she would have told him the truth – which, she feared, he would not have liked. Yet, by showing she was interested, she had pleased him, and she was reassured to find that he still looked to her for approval. He had taken her hand again, and was holding it more firmly than before.

  Basil, she thought, I love you; but, dearest, I have never thought of you as a musician. Oh, you can conduct – you can force a hundred men to play the way you want them to – but with you it is a business, a means of winning fame and fortune, a chance to lead and make others follow, not really an art. I think you look at D—’s symphony for the first time, eagerly thumbing through its pages, humming its themes to yourself, not to find out what it is, to appraise it and learn from it, but to discover, if you can, how effective it can be, how you can twist and turn it to display your personality as a politician looks for catch-phrases in a speech. I think, Basil, that what you want – and must have – out of music, is a sense of personal power. You pit yourself against the orchestra and the audience, and the composer, as well. You stand on the podium at their mercy and drive them all into bondage by a toss of your golden head, a restless shirk of your well-placed shoulders, your angry glance, your stamping foot. And what about me? Why, I like to watch you, darling; I admire your trickery and allow you to beguile me. But, then, our relationship, Basil, is not a musical one…

  A sandwich-hawker had come into the coach, his hoarse cry breaking into her thoughts and stimulating Basil to action. He had begun to gesture imperiously at the man – as if cueing in the brasses, quieting the strings – but when the man ignored him, he had to whistle peremptorily. This the hawker had heard, and he had offered them his basket, from which they chose cheese sandwiches on white bread and waxed cups filled with brackish-tasting coffee. For only then had they realized that it was after ten o’clock and they were inordinately hungry.

  Suky was polite, bowing and mumbling neat excuses, but he was also adamant. He did not have the key, it had not been given to him, he had not seen it. He stood aside, muttering, angry at her invasion of the kitchen, while she searched the drawers of the tables, the kitchen cabinet. She left the kitchen quickly, relieved to be out of range of his subservient animosity.

  She walked into the hall and went through the small drawer in the console table. It was packed with an accumulation of cards, and one lavender envelope, addressed to Basil in a small, cramped, feminine hand – whoever had written it liked to make a tiny circle in place of a dot over the letter ‘i’ – that gave off a faint scent of pungent perfume. She picked this up, saw that it had been opened, and even considered reading it. But she knew what it was – a mash note from some young admirer who had attended one of his concerts and had fallen in love with his noble back. Basil was always getting fan mail; he had probably found this with his letters, had read it on the spot before going out, had dropped it on the table, and Suky – who never threw anything away unless told to – had put it in the drawer. She pushed the drawer shut. The key was not there, and now she did not know where to look.

  She stood in the hall, gazing through the front door at the busy street, people walking up and down in Sunday clothes, vari-coloured taxis streaming past in the still-brilliant sunshine, thinking of where she could possibly have put that key. She had looked in her study, in the library, in the bedroom, in the kitchen. No, she had not looked in the library. Basil had been fussy about his desk, and had insisted on looking there for her. He might have found it by now.

  Turning her back on the door and the street, she went into the library again. Basil was at his desk, a score – D—’s symphony? – spread out before him. She hated to interrupt him at his work, but until she found that key she could do no work either. ‘Basil,’ she asked, ‘did you find it?’

  He looked up at her, his eyes questioning, his hand holding his pencil, tapping with it. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I asked you if you had found my key. You were going to look for it in the desk.’

  His eyes lost some of their distraction as he understood what she asked. ‘No, I didn’t find it,’ he said. And he bent over the score again.

  She was not sure he had even looked for it.

  They had stood far to the front of the Weehawken ferry, the late morning sun hot on their heads, their arms about each other, watching the spectacular skyline of midtown Manhattan loom closer and closer. There had been nights, when she had lain in bed unable to sleep, that she had doubted the existence of the city, of any reality greater than the four green walls of her room, the door opening on to the corridor, the latticed window with its view of the lawn and the elms. Now, already, as the ferry surged forward through the turgid waters of the Hudson and the bone-white buildings seemed to momentarily creep higher and higher into the dazzling blue of the sky, she could doubt the reality of that room, wonder if it had only been the worst of her dreams. She began to tremble with excitement as she sensed the nearness of the life this vista stood for; the bustle of 57th Street, the façades of Town Hall, of Carnegie Hall, the silence of broadcasting studios, the rose walls of her study at home, the clamour of voices at a cocktail party, the sound of a harpsichord.

  Basil felt her trembling and held her more tightly. ‘It’s a wonderful town, isn’t it?’ he said. And, for the first time, he referred directly to the circumstances of the day: ‘It must feel fine to be back after so long.’

  ‘I don’t ever want to leave it again,’ she said quietly, aware of the petulance in her voice, but not ashamed of it, because that was the way she felt.

  ‘Not even for a trip?’ asked Basil.

  ‘Not even for a trip.’

  The ferry shuddered as it struck the slip, rebounded sluggishly, nosed forward into the wharf. A clanking noise startled them into picking up their bags and pushing forward with the crowd – the ferry had docked and the gangway was being let down. In a few more minutes they were on a New York street looking for a taxi.

  As the cab turned into Forty-second Street she asked him the question she had wanted to ask all morning. ‘Are you glad to have me back, Basil?’

  He turned to her, his features not composed, his mouth slightly open, his eyes glinting. ‘You know I am glad,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I’d have to tell you that. You ought to know that for the last year I’ve lived in anticipation of today.’

  How nice to hear him say this! she thought – if only he had said it without my asking. But, since I asked, how can I believe him? Oh, I do not doubt he thinks so; but why did he need prompting? Why couldn’t he have come out with it naturally as another man might? And then she caught herself, stood aside and inspected herself, knowing that once more she was looking for trouble, seeking umbrage. Basil had not said he was glad to have her home until she asked, because Basil habitually withdrew, was normally aloof. They would never be married in the sense that they would share a community of thoughts, nor would she have wanted their marriage to be like that. Basil lived in his own world, and she lived in hers; their worlds were contiguous, sometimes they overlapped, but they would never coincide.

  ‘Suky and I have been lonely,’ he said, interrupting her internal discourse. He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid our house doesn’t look the same. It lacks your touch.’

  She leaned her head on his shoulder, shut her eyes. ‘A few weeks will fix that. Although it may take longer,’ she said. ‘I shall have to practise at least six hours a day. You know, I haven’t touched a keyboard in two years – I’m afraid I’ll have forgotten how.’

  His shoulder stiffened, his body grew rigid. She lifted her head and opened her eyes to look at him, to see what was wrong. His hands were clenched in his lap, his lips were compressed. ‘Do you think you had better?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it too soon? Shouldn’t you take it easy and rest up? You don’t have to give a concert this year, you know. The public will remember you – there will be no question of a “comeback”. Your records are all best
sellers still—’

  She interrupted him. ‘I am giving a concert in November, Basil. I’ve talked to Dr Danzer about it, and he agrees that I should concertize whenever I want. It’s my way of life, just as it is yours. It’s my function.’

  ‘There are other ways to fulfil yourself – ways that are less exacting. I know how you drive yourself when you shut yourself up in the little room. I think it is still too early for you to do that again.’

  They sat silent while the taxi sped down Park Avenue, coming nearer and nearer to their street and their house. Then Basil unclenched his hands and allowed his body to relax, turned to her and took her hand again.

  ‘I won’t stand in your way, Ellen,’ he said. ‘What you want is what I want. I don’t want you to think anything else.’

  She lifted her face, and he kissed her. She shut her eyes to keep him from seeing the tears of anger that had involuntarily arisen. As soon as he was not looking – when he paid the cab-driver – perhaps, she would take out her handkerchief. For a moment she had thought that he did not want her to play again.

  Ellen remembered thinking that now, as she stood outside the library door, after having asked Basil if he had found the key to her harpsichord. She did not believe he had looked for the key in his desk – did this mean that he knew the key was there but did not want her to find it? She walked slowly, deliberately, down the hall. Suppose, for some strange reason of his own, that her suspicion was right and he would prefer that she did not play again. Would hiding the key to her instrument keep her from playing? Of course not! Tomorrow morning, if she had not found the key by then, she would call in the locksmith and have a new key made. And had he not said in the taxi that if she wanted to practise, to give a concert in November, he did not wish to stand in her way? In the future she must be careful about her resentments, her suspicions. She must remember to stand aside and appraise herself at every juncture so that she might understand her fears and, in knowing them, dispel them.