Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

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Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly Page 5

by John Franklin Bardin


  Basil had intended to look for her key in his desk – of this she was now certain. But, on sitting down at it, his eyes had fallen on the manuscript, and the particular problem it presented; he had begun to work at it, and soon he had forgotten why he had gone to the desk in the first place. Later, when he was finished, she could ask him again, and he might admit that he had forgotten, go back and look. But if he did not, it really would not matter – although it was frustrating not to be able to open her instrument.

  She began to climb the stairs, remembering one place she had not looked – her old purses. When she had gone through the drawers she had seen two of them; there might be others in the closets. Purses and keys went together, the key she was looking for might well be in one of those purses. Reaching the head of the stairs, and catching a glimpse of the study through the door that she had left open, she had to go into the small, functional room. Functional, but not in the modern sense – congenial might be the better word. There was nothing out of place here, nothing unnecessary or merely ornamental. The harpsichord stood in the centre of the floor, where the light from the bow-window fell full upon it. By its side stood a great-bulbed lamp to illuminate her page at night. The walls were covered with a deep rose-coloured paper above the low bookcases that held the bound volumes of her scores, the set of Grove’s, St Lambert’s Principes du Clavecin, Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le clavecin, Dolmetsch and Einstein, Tovey and Kirkpatrick. A small rosewood table held a tabouret, a box of cigarettes and an ashtray, the long, low couch stretched itself in a corner; but otherwise the room was without furnishings. Standing on the threshold of this sanctuary from which she had been alienated for so long, she felt calmer, more at ease; the tight coil of her compulsion, that had been driving her from room to room and drawer to drawer ever since she had discovered the key’s absence, slackened and ran down. But she remembered her disappointment a few hours earlier, when she had flung open the downstairs door and run up the stairs, when she had stood on this threshold for the very first time in two long years, her eyes absorbed with the unquestioned reality of a scene that had existed for so long only in her memory – and then she had stepped to the harpsichord, run her hand over its old, smooth surface, had attempted to lift the lid, only to find it locked – she could not budge it – and the key was missing!

  Suky had rung the gong that announced luncheon before she could begin her search for the key; throughout the meal she had had only one thought – where might it be? Basil had been talkative and had told her all about his plans for the orchestra during the new season. He had gossiped about his fellow conductors, told choice anecdotes about famous soloists and their quirks, once more shown his enthusiasm for D—’s new symphony. She had forced herself to respond to his talk, to smile and laugh in the proper places, to exclaim and ask questions; but all the time she had kept thinking of where she might have put the key, trying to trace her mind back to the last day she had played the instrument – a hopeless task, for it had been a muddled day, a time she would rather not remember.

  And after lunch she had smoked a cigarette with Basil – her mind upstairs in her rooms, going through drawers, ransacking closets. He had come and sat beside her, had showed her the microfilm score of the new symphony. It had seemed only a jumble of notes to her, a blurred, black page. But he had not known her confusion, had mistaken her vague effusiveness for ardour, had taken her in his arms and kissed her passionately. And she had given herself almost completely to his caresses, rejoicing in the thrusting strength of his embrace, postponing for a little while her search. It had been two o’clock before she had begun to look for the key, telling Basil that she must unpack, not yet wanting to admit her carelessness, her frustration. Yet now that she had admitted it, he was peculiarly unimpressed.

  Sighing, she turned her back on the study and went down the hall to her bedroom. If she remembered correctly, she had kept her purses in the top drawer of the dresser. She opened the drawer, and was pleased to find them there: a moiré bag, a pigskin satchel, a small billfold and coin-purse that she used to slip into the pocket of her covert cloth coat, and a gold-mesh evening bag. Oh, here was another, a patent leather cube; it opened sideways, on the bias – she had forgotten this one. When had she bought it? She usually favoured more conservative styles than this. But, then, how could she expect to account for all her actions of two or more years ago, especially those of the last six months before she went to the hospital? She sighed again, and began to go through the purses.

  She found coins, a lipstick and a compact, a rhinestone-studded comb – this in the patent-leather bag – two tickets to Carnegie Hall for 23 January 1944, several handkerchiefs and a number of hairpins. But she had not found the key, although when her fingers, groping in one of the pocket-books, had first touched a hairpin, she had thought that at last she had it. Joy had leaped in her throat, she had held her breath; but a moment later she had realized that she was mistaken, that the key was still lost. By now she saw the small object in her imagination; it shone and glittered before her eyes; she could count the irregular indentations in its upper edge that fitted the tumblers of the lock, the tiny notches: there were five of them, and one was cut more deeply, more jaggedly than the others – seeing it so clearly was especially frustrating, it was as if she had had it in her hand only yesterday, had laid it aside in some safe place, and if she only thought about it, concentrated on what she had been doing and why she had laid it down, she would remember where it was. Actually, this was impractical, since it had not been yesterday or even the day before that she had last held the key, but years; and she knew that when she found it – oh, was she ever going to find it? – it would not look the way she saw it now, that she would not have remembered it accurately, but altogether different. It was like searching for a passage in a book when your memory tells you that it existed at the bottom of a right-hand page and somewhere towards the end of the last chapter, so you think, all I have to do is to leaf through all the right-hand pages of the last chapter and I shall find what I am looking for. But you look through all these pages, and all the left-hand ones, too, and then you repeat the process for each chapter of the book – working from back to front, from right-hand pages to left-hand pages – until at last you find the passage. And you are disappointed when you find it, since it really does not say what you had thought it did, it is not nearly as moving as you had remembered it – in fact, now that you think about it, isn’t it quite commonplace? – but what is most disturbing of all because it reveals what a gross betrayer your memory is, what makes the print blur before your eyes and a dry knot of futile anger clot your mouth, is the fact that this line is the first line of a chapter, the second chapter of the book, high up on one of the book’s earliest pages!

  There was no need for further search. It was late afternoon; dinner would be ready soon, perhaps; she should not work on the first day she was home. She would look for the key again in the morning, and if she wanted to play something in the meantime there was always Basil’s piano. If she did not find the key, she would call the locksmith and he could make her another one. It was really as simple as that.

  She stepped into the hall just as a loud, reverberating, crashing chord resounded through the house. The membranes in her ears, long-accustomed to the disciplined quiet of the hospital, twanged in outrage; a shudder seized her frame, shook her as a great fist might brandish a sceptre. Almost before the sound of punished strings had ceased echoing, a raucous, percussive melody rushed pell-mell forth, each note jostling its neighbour, cramped by a strong, crude rhythm. Basil was playing the piano.

  Resolutely, her back rigid and her facial muscles tensed, Ellen went down the stairs and toward the source of the sound. As a means of controlling the angry cry of protest that threatened to burst out of her throat, as a means of overcoming the desire to turn about, to flee back up the stairs and into her study, to throw shut the door and fling herself on the couch, clamp her palms to her ears, she tried to decide what
it was he was playing, who had written it, what tendencies the work represented and whether she had ever heard it before.

  The piece was not by D—: of this much she was certain. It showed none of his characteristic mannerisms: his love of the long line, his extreme modulations, his intervallic melodies. Nor was the harmony spare – lean and pared – enough for Hindemith. The intent of the piece was satirical – just listen to that banal reprise! – and, occasionally, there was a lilt to it. It seemed to combine the worst features of both jazz and European folk material. But its composer’s identity escaped her.

  She walked into the library, still straining with the effort to hold herself in, and saw her husband struggling with the piano. His body pranced and danced – it looked as if it might be being jerked this way and that by a puppeteer’s invisible strings – fought the keyboard with huge, hammering motions. And when he came to a gentle passage – this was a slow dirge that remembered the blues – instead of relaxing, he only returned to a state of readiness, as a wire, that has been vibrating but is now still, even in its stability cannot be said to be at rest, since its very shape and aspect belie the phrase. His hands now picked out the mournful notes as the claws of a crab grasp and roil the sand of a beach; suddenly his fingers poised for the attack – his shoulders hunched, she thought she could see his muscles heave under his coat – and as they dived into the ranks of the keys, like fleshly bombers strafing a column of ivory soldiers, the crude, bumptious rhythm rocked again, the melody of the dance returned, and he ended with a catastrophic cadence that hung about and pestered her even as he turned around, tossed his head and smiled at her, acknowledged her presence.

  ‘What is it, Basil?’ she asked. ‘I know it – I’m sure I’ve heard it many times before – the name seems to be on the tip of my tongue, but I just cannot say it.’

  He came to her and clamped his hand over hers, his touch gentle but his gesture authoritative. ‘It’s by Shostakovich,’ he said.

  ‘Of course – how could I forget! An early work, isn’t it? A rustic dance, a polka. From “The Age of Gold”?’

  He nodded his head and smiled more widely. How he adores my interest! she thought. He must have it, mustn’t he? What would he do if he were ignored, unable to attract anyone’s attention? Or, worse than that, what would he do if he had to live alone?

  ‘Have you been lonely, Basil?’ she asked, shyly.

  He had taken his pipe from his pocket and was cramming it into his pouch. Her question arrested the movement of his hands. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It occurred to me, I suppose. I wondered.’ She looked at him straightly, her eyes on his, to hide the confusion his response had forced upon her. His question had been the kind Dr Danzer asked: direct, unexpected, at first, seemingly incongruous, but later, obviously insight’s entering wedge.

  And he kept after her. ‘But you were just talking about music,’ he said, ‘trying to identify that piece I played. And then, suddenly, you asked me if I have been lonely. Why?’

  She laughed. ‘The next I know you’ll be giving me word associations and asking me what I dreamed last night. Honestly, it just occurred to me and I asked. Perhaps it was the way you played that quiet part. You made it sound like a dirge when it’s supposed to be comic…’

  His fingers returned to their task and finished packing his pipe. Slowly he put the stem into his mouth, struck a kitchen match against the rough cloth of his trouser. She felt that he did not believe her, and she hardly blamed him. Too many times in the past when she had wanted to lie, when her whole self had insisted that she protect it with a falsehood, she had not been able to bring it off. She could tell him the truth even yet – it would do her no harm. But it would hurt him, and uselessly; he was intelligent, sensitive, he would recognize the perspicuity of her observation, would be forced to admit to himself – although he might shrug it off in front of her – his own weakness.

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ she remarked lightly. ‘Perhaps there’s a reason why you don’t want to answer it?’ She walked to the table and took a cigarette from the silver box, looking back at him, her lashes lowered, over her shoulder.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you very much.’

  She averted her eyes, walked to his desk and picked up the massive silver cigarette lighter that lay upon it, busied herself with the ritual of igniting her cigarette. Now that he had said what she had wanted him to say, she was embarrassed. She felt foolish and slightly wary. Not that she did not believe him – he had been lonely, he must have been lonely. But he had not said it until she forced him to, and there was something in this fact that made her wish that he would leave the room, go away from her for a short while.

  Instead, Basil came over to her and stood beside her. He looked down at the desk and rested his hand upon it. ‘Did you find your key?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. And I’ve looked every place I can think of!’

  ‘You may look in my desk if you wish. I’m afraid I was rude before.’

  ‘No, thank you. I’m sure you would have found it if it were there.’

  He shook his head and looked away from her. From the way he held his shoulders, the unexpected slump of his bent head, she knew that he was about to apologize. Her embarrassment left her, giving place to a feeling of warmth, of sympathy. He has lied to me, she thought, and now he is sorry.

  ‘If you didn’t want to look for the key, you didn’t have to tell me that you had – that it wasn’t there,’ she said.

  He jerked around. ‘How do you know I didn’t look?’

  She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘By the way you stood. By the way you held your head.’

  ‘I sat down at the desk to look,’ he admitted. ‘But then I saw what seemed to be an error in the part for the bassoon. I started to study it, and I forgot. When you came in and asked me, I didn’t want to tell you that I had forgotten. I get stubborn streaks, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We could look now. Together.’

  ‘In a moment,’ she said. She laid her face against the roughness of his coat, the hardness of his shoulder. Her hand clenched his lapel, his breath was warm and tickling on her neck. ‘In a moment will be soon enough.’

  But when they looked through his desk, they did not find the key. She was not surprised – in fact, she had expected it. After all, what did it matter? Tomorrow she would have a new key made. But Basil, his interest aroused, insisted that Suky must have it.

  ‘It must be in the house,’ he said. ‘Suky has been most careful of that instrument of yours. He’s polished it lovingly every single day.’

  They went to the kitchen, arm in arm, and confronted the man-servant again. Suky bowed, and backed away; he was more polite than ever, but he did not have the key. Basil questioned him closely, and Suky answered in detail; his precise, aspirate speech seemed eager to her, solicitous. Yet when I asked him, he seemed hostile, she reminded herself – or did I just imagine that?

  Before she could think this through, Basil had turned and pushed his way past the swinging doors that led to the dining-room and the hall. The dining-room, the buffet, the curious little drawer in the buffet where she had always stuck those things you kept because they did not seem to be quite the sort of things you threw away – why hadn’t she thought of looking there before? Good for Basil! Now, she was sure, he would find the key!

  But he did not. He found an old penknife which he said he thought he had lost months ago, some spare parts for his oboe, a tube for the radio. Somehow these unrelated objects made them feel sad, made them remember that they had once been younger – although they were not yet old – symbolized the difference between then and now. Or so I think, she said to herself. How can I know what Basil thinks, what makes him look sad (if he is looking sad – he may not be; it may only be that his mouth, with his head half-turned aside as it is now, is shadowed), unless I as
k? And if I ask, how will I know that he is telling me the truth? Not that he would lie deliberately, out of malice or for selfish reasons, but just that he might prefer not to confess an emotion he would rather keep to himself. But, then, how does one ever know, since it is impossible to live inside any other skull but one’s own, how can one ever tell?

  Again she had to drop the discourse, abandon the question, leave her own inquisition in the lurch. Basil had walked abruptly out of the dining-room, down the hall, was standing by the stairs and was gazing at the console table.

  ‘You looked in there, didn’t you?’ he asked her, without turning around.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and he began to climb the stairs –‘I’m sure it isn’t there’ – and went up the stairs behind him.

  They looked in her room, in the closets, the drawers, in a trunk and some old suitcases. They went through his room and even the guest-room, but they found nothing. When they had finished, their hands were dusty and her body ached, her eyes were tired from bending over, pulling out, looking, always looking, peering, expecting to see, to touch, to discover, something that was never there.

  At last even Basil gave up. They were in the hall, outside her study. He laughed and drew her to him and said, ‘Well, Ellen, I suppose you were right. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow and have a new one made. Unless—’ He stopped and looked past her, stared at the door of her study. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘that’s one place we haven’t searched.’

  She smiled at his egotism. ‘But I did, silly. At the very start. I looked there several times in every nook and cranny. That’s the one place I’m absolutely certain it couldn’t be!’

 

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