Nightzone

by Steven F Havill

  Lott looked smaller out on that stage all by himself, but he pumped Archer’s hand and then turned to the audience with a welcoming smile—and no little cheat sheet to remind him of what to say.

  “Good evening. Leister Conservatory is proud to present another in our series of hometown concerts featuring the talented students we are proud to serve.” He gazed thoughtfully at the piano for a moment, as if it had something to say. “You know, I had every expectation of having to make some programming changes, but the two artists assure me that what you’re holding is accurate. Well…” and he let that thought drift as the audience laughed. “Your children never serve up surprises to you, do they.” He grinned and waited for the hall to fall silent.

  “From Dos Pasos, Texas, a senior flute major at Leister, let me present Mateo Atencio.” He held up a hand, and when the applause died, and sounding like a boxing match announcer, said, “From Posadas, New Mexico, senior pianist Francisco Guzman.” The roar of applause was enormous, and I leaned forward a bit and looked across at Estelle.

  “Senior?” I mouthed. What happened to the thirteen-year-old I knew.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The applause rose as the two youngsters walked onto the stage. Both looked impossibly young, but both moved with the grace that comes with being completely at home. The spots winked off the flute that Mateo carried one-handed as if it were nothing more than a tennis racket. Francisco, nifty in a black tux and shoes so polished that the spots winked off them, walked to the Steinway and rested his hand on the corner nearest the lid support. As if wired together, the two kids both bowed with reserve. Francisco smiled at our section, then straightened up and acknowledged the rest of the audience.

  He ducked his head again and turned to the piano. It was then that I noticed the lack of music. None on the piano, no music rack for Mateo. No wonder Dr. Lott was worried about the unexpected. I held the program again, trying to catch enough light to read the descriptive notes. Impossible. I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  Mateo had moved to the piano’s curved flank and gently placed the flute on the Steinway’s right candelabra shelf. Francisco waited with his hands in his lap. Withdrawing a white handkerchief, Mateo touched his nose then dried his upper lip. Just as he was pocketing the handkerchief and reaching for his flute, a cell phone deep in the audience burst into life, a warbling, raucous jangle. Without hesitation, Francisco exactly matched the pitch on the piano and began a rapid trill, at the same time turning toward the audience with his eyebrows furrowed. That prompted a laugh, of course, but the cell phone went away, with its owner no doubt wishing he or she could crawl under the seats.

  Mateo nodded, and Vivaldi sprang into life, his tribute to winter. Even I could count the square four/four time, and I sure as hell was no musician. The piano sounded with a cadence that reminded me of troops rapidly double-timing through deep snow until after a few measures the flute sprang into the scene with a series of gentle but insistent little shivers. Now we had a gang of kids playing in the snow, sliding, slipping, ignoring the winter winds. That was followed by a long sequence of teeth-chattering, and regardless of what impossibly high flights the flute took, Francisco never abandoned his relentless four-square accompaniment until the last bit when everything accelerated to a manic pace.

  Atencio didn’t just stand in one spot and hoot the notes. He engaged both the audience and his accompanist, rocking on his feet, punching notes, sometimes the flute pointing at the floor near his feet, sometimes arching to point to the heavens. The kid was amazing, the audience struck dumb.

  Between the first and second movements, we had two breaths to relieve the tension, and a few hands thought about clapping. The second movement was as lyrical and graceful as the first was maniacal, and it was over too soon—but not before the final note stretched for measures while the piano counted down, the flutist astonishing us all with the amount of air he could capture in his lungs.

  He needed that air for the third and final movement when winter winds shrieked, the piano danced, and the velocity of everything accelerated to a whirlwind of up and down, the spotlight flashing off the flute, with the two performers colliding in the end with the final “big note.”

  The audience didn’t know what to say. Mateo had time to lower his flute after the last note died, and glance at Francisco before the audience erupted with applause so powerful that I’m sure I could taste some of the dust filtering down from the gymnasium girders.

  I reached across Carlos, found Estelle’s forearm and squeezed it. The little boy captured my hand as I drew back, and didn’t appear ready to let go.

  What next? I remembered that Beethoven’s ghost was in the house, and sure enough, after the bows and applause, Mateo left the stage after establishing his bona fides with Vivaldi. Francisco settled at the piano. If I expected to be able to leave the concert hall humming the tune from Beethoven’s Sonata no. 10 in G-major, I had another think coming. Beethoven had other plans. I could see why the music appealed to Francisco Guzman, since it was rich with imagery. I could picture a cat chasing butterflies and a host of other cinematic clips, up and down the keyboard, all so precise, sometimes so soft that I could hardly hear it, sometimes loud enough for two gymnasiums.

  The second movement, to my mind a march that syncopated the base with the upper notes, suckered me—and lots of others—into an unexpected crash of an ending so loud it shook the stage. The final movement was a delight, bass conversing with treble, triplets fast and perfectly accurate, until a surprise ending with a little trill in the bass that sounded as if the artist had bounced on a whoopie cushion.

  Francisco’s wide smile greeted the explosion of laughter and applause, and then the stage was empty, almost as if something had been stolen from us. All we could do was turn to each other and marvel. But beyond the artistry of the two boys, there had been no surprises as promised by the artists. That meant that the intermission, even if it was only five minutes long, was going to seem an eternity.

  Old prostates can stand only so much fun, and I decided to buck the crush of people, many of whom would have the same problem. I made it as far as the last row of the reserved section before an elderly woman with two walker-canes maneuvered out to the aisle, assisted by her son, I supposed. He nodded in apology as he helped the woman maneuver, and I waited, taking the time to actually scan the crowd. They were all talking, animated and amazed.

  Eventually, I was able to step on the gas. Even so, if I had turned every “Hey Bill,” or “Hi Bill,” or “Evenin’ Sheriff” into a conversation, the trip to the far end of the gym would have taken a week. By bordering on the brusque if not actually impolite, I reached the large foyer, grateful that a long line didn’t block the restroom door.

  Even so, by the time I was rewarded with a turn, I was ready to start seeking out a dark corner.

  “If I listened to this concert with a blindfold, the last thing I’d imagine would be that I was hearing two kids,” Dr. Arnie Gray said. I turned and found the paper towels. “If I don’t see you all, give the whole family my congratulations,” the chairman of the county commission said.

  “You bet I will,” I replied. “I’m glad you could make it.”

  With a long way to walk, and I hoped not much more intermission to suffer, I made my way back toward my seat. The lady with the canes had reached the foyer, one hand against the door jamb for support. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her escort.

  Dr. Guzman was standing by his seat reading the program, and Carlos, still wound tight as a drum, was telling him what it said. Estelle, radiant in her black pants suit and white scarf, rose as I approached. She turned to say something to her mother, and I saw the angular bulge at her belt-line under her tailored jacket—a nasty little reminder that the rest of the world still existed, regardless of how wonderful the music might be.

  “This is an ambitious program,” Dr. Francis said, and I pulled my
own souvenir from my pocket.

  “What’s next?” I said. Border Themes and Variations opened the second half of the program, with Mateo Atencio at the helm as both composer and soloist.

  “How do these guys have the time to both compose and practice as hard as they must have to?” The physician shook his head in wonder. “At their age…”

  “You have the inside track on that,” I said. “I guess that’s what geniuses do. They work harder than anyone else.” Lynn Browning, CEO of United Security Resources, was working hard too. She had decided to remain in town for the concert, and now had cornered State Police Lieutenant Mark Adams over near the bleachers. The lieutenant was doing all the talking, his pretty wife at his side nodding away, and Mrs. Browning listening attentively.

  The lights dimmed then brightened, and then the big sodium lights above the sea of banners switched off with a loud crack of their switch.

  “So now we find out,” I said, and sat down next to the jittering Carlos. “What do you think?”

  He made a grimace of glee.

  “Did you get to visit Francisco during intermission?” He nodded eagerly. From where I sat, I could see Francisco standing behind the curtain, coat unbuttoned, hands in his pockets…again listening to Dr. Lott, nodding now and then as he regarded the floor. He looked more like a junior executive than a prodigy.

  The main spotlight bloomed to encircle the piano, the remaining house lights settled, and I took a deep breath. After a few seconds, Mateo Atencio appeared by himself, the spot erupting flashes from his silver flute. He favored the curved flank of the piano again, then moved a step closer to the audience, the spot recentering. He nodded at the applause, waited until it started to die, and lifted the instrument.

  Over the years, I’d managed to batter and scar my hearing, adding the constant symphony of tinnitus on top of it all, and it didn’t sound as if Mateo was playing. But he was, and eventually I became aware of a note so high, so true, just touched with a vibrato, that was held impossibly long. No one has that much breath, I thought. But he did. The single note intensified and then did an incredible thing. Just when the kid should have turned purple and fallen on his face, the note climbed first one step, then another, becoming round and rich as if the sun had risen over the border prairie.

  I had no trouble following the composer’s images as they tumbled one atop the other, and was delighted at one point when the music somehow shifted into the gentle flute music known in the Indian pueblos.

  The composition was long and challenging, but when the last complex arpeggio soared, we all knew that we’d heard a master at work. When Mateo finally drew the flute away from his lips, I discovered that I’d gone too long without breathing. He beamed and bowed deeply. I clapped as hard and long as anyone else, but I think little Carlos Guzman’s enthusiasm was more because he knew what was coming next. And sure enough, Mateo bowed once more and walked offstage, passing Francisco and Dr. Lott in the wings…at least what passed for wings on this makeshift stage.

  Francisco’s hands were empty of music, and to someone who can’t remember the simplest things in life, that in itself was remarkable. I had no idea how one went about recalling that many notes in some presentable order.

  The program notes said that Upward, Opus 7 in G Major, dedicated to Carlos Guzman, told the story of the construction of a skyscraper. I had heard Francisco improvise dozens of times, always most impressive. Somehow I found it more difficult to picture him methodically locking the music on paper, note by note, tearing his hair now and then, gulping the modern kid’s equivalent of Mozart’s red wine as he worked. Who knew? Maybe, as a modern composer, he used a goddamn computer.

  I was still reading when a distant throbbing interrupted me, along with a little gasp from my twitchy little seat neighbor. I looked up, surprised that someone would start a diesel backhoe right next to the gymnasium while a concert was in progress. At the piano, Francisco Guzman was leaning over the left end of the keyboard, both hands busy on a collection of notes deep in the bass. The engine throbbed and then tore into the ground, the notes racing through the bass, interrupted only by the sharp, staccato treble notes of the backup alert as the earth mover shifted into reverse to reposition itself. It didn’t take long to lay the foundations, but the dust from construction hung heavy when the sprayer drove through, its plumes of water cascading down from the treble with Francisco’s hands diving one over the other.

  And so it went for an uninterrupted ten minutes or so. The construction motives left me behind, but I could imagine the general image of the building towering toward the sky, sun winking off the new windows, cranes hauling their cargo up past the unfinished floors. At one point, it sounded to me as if someone had lost his balance and come perilously close to diving dozens of stories to his death. I made a mental note to ask the composer how the construction worker was saved.

  Finally, a light breeze tugged at the flag on the top mast, billowing it out as the building stood for all to see, great crashing chords marching up and down the keyboard. Night fell, lights came on, and the music drifted down to a tranquil closing.

  I glanced at Carlos and was surprised to see the tears coursing down the child’s face. He had certainly understood the whole thing. I held out my hand, and he shook it with a clammy little paw. “Good work, Bud.” He beamed. He might not have written or performed the music, but he had built the skyscraper, after all.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Opus 7 was a nice surprise, and the applause for it was tumultuous. As the applause died, the stage remained empty for a long moment. Several pieces remained for the ambitious program. The pair finally returned to the spotlight, starting a new set of short pieces with a composition I actually recognized. Wolf Mozart never knew that his Concerto No. 21 in C Major had been borrowed a couple hundred years later as the theme for the Swedish movie Elvira Madigan, the story of a couple of doomed lovers. Mateo’s flute work, with a gentle piano staying deep in the background, was heart-wrenching…he played the whole thing with his eyes tightly shut, and I wondered if he had a fair damsel somewhere who was making his heart ache.

  He let Francisco have his own share of meditation with Schumann’s Opus 15, number 7, the Träumerei. I don’t think I had ever heard anything so unrelentingly delicate, with the enormous bass notes reined in tightly.

  Mateo Atencio was too young to have served in the Middle East conflicts, but his unaccompanied rendition of Gold’s From a Distance certainly reached out and touched some of the audience. Across the aisle to my left, a middle-aged man dabbed his eyes now and then. As applause for that died, Francisco joined his compadre on stage, and they woke us up with a driving rendition of a Spanish piece by de Falla. And then, fresh out of program, the two boys left the stage. The performance certainly was exhausting for the kiddos, but the audience refused to let them go.

  They returned together for a series of bows, and then Francisco returned solo, to thrash the big Steinway with Rachmaninoff’s string-breaker in C-sharp minor, a piece that told me the Russian certainly had been upset about something. Somehow the kid was able to throttle back at the end, with the final chord almost inaudible. The audience wasn’t, though—a reaction that prompted an enormous grin from Francisco.

  He left the stage and almost immediately returned with Mateo in tow, but this time, the two were talking about something as they approached the piano. To the audience’s astonishment, the two boys stopped behind the end of the piano, and had a somewhat longer conference, Francisco standing with his back to the audience, one hand possessively on the piano’s flank, doing most of the talking. He made a series of me-you gestures toward Mateo, and the older boy finally shrugged in exasperated capitulation. Just about the time my stomach did a nervous flip, sure enough, the two artists figuratively dumped the cards out of their sleeves.

  Raising his eyes heavenward, Mateo handed the flute to Francisco, who accepted it solemnly. The younger
boy walked in front of the piano and made an exaggerated bow to Mateo, offering the piano bench. Mateo’s facial expression said, “Oh, sure,” but he walked around thoughtfully and sat in front of the keyboard.

  Still, no music had appeared. Taking the same position his partner had occupied, Francisco raised the flute, but even I could see something was terribly wrong.

  “No!” Mateo mimed loudly, certainly for the audience’s benefit. Feigning long-suffering weariness, he rose from the bench and took the flute from Francisco’s hands, swapping ends so that it faced the correct, traditional direction before handing it back. As he returned to the piano bench, he looked heavenward for the audience, who now had to realize they were part of this elaborate joke.

  Mateo raised his hands toward the keys, and then paused. Turning to the audience, and the gymnasium was as quiet as if there were no audience, he said, “Francisco says the flute is easy to play because there are no pedals to get in the way.” He bent over and looked down at his own shoes, poised near the three brass pedals. “Fortunately, the pedals didn’t exist when Bach wrote his B-minor suite.”

  The words drew a rustle from some of the audience, obviously more musically sophisticated than I. If I had ever heard the B-minor, I wouldn’t have been able to report when or where. I didn’t know what to anticipate.

  The first movement combined elements of a dignified march with just about every note ever invented, and Mateo played beautifully. For his part, Francisco’s flute was crisp and pure, rolling up and down and sideways as if he’d been playing all his young life. He played the major theme with back rigid and shoulders square, as if standing at attention for military inspection. I think my jaw hung slack with astonishment. But this was just the warm up. With hardly a breath between, the two launched into the second movement, an insanely fast thing that bounced down the octaves and back up again, a pure romp of joy. I had always thought of J.S. Bach as a staid old buzzard who intoned dismal things on the organ. Not this time. Not with these two immensely talented kids. They slowed only on the last six notes, and then held it, the sound rising and then becoming lost somewhere in the ceiling above us.