by Mitch Albom
“I have a phone, Papa. Everyone has a phone now.”
“Oh. Right.”
She leaned in and rubbed his knee.
“Are you okay?”
A rush of love and anguish hit him at the same time, like converging waters.
“When is the festival?” he asked.
John Pizzarelli
Jazz guitarist, singer, composer, son of famed guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli
YES, CERTAINLY. . . . MY NAME IS JOHN PIZZARELLI, I’M A MUSICIAN, I LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY. I’m here because Frankie Presto was an old friend, and because he asked me to do something before he died. . . . He asked me to find the original tapes of The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto and give them to his daughter. . . . They’re in this suitcase. . . .
Frankie and me? A long time. He first knew my father, Bucky Pizzarelli. They met in the mid-1960s, after Frankie appeared on The Tonight Show, where my dad was in the band. Being guitar players, they got to talking, and Frankie tried my dad’s seven-string and knocked his socks off. Dad loved him. He’d say, “And he ain’t even Italian!” We thought he was one of us. “Presto,” you know? It sounds Italian.
Anyhow, the next few years, if Frankie came through New York, he’d drop by our house and jam with Bucky and the jazz guys who came around after their gigs, mostly to eat my mom’s rigatoni. I was probably six or seven the first time I met him. He looked different from the older guys. He was handsome and had black hair and wore sunglasses. He was kind of like Elvis to me. Or as close as I was gonna get. I was learning the tenor banjo and after Frankie played a song on his guitar, I held up my banjo and said, “Yeah, but can you play this?” Obviously, I was a smart-aleck kid. But he took it and winked at me and played “La Malagueña,” that famous Spanish tune, and he went faster and faster until I was like—gah!—my eyes were bugging out. And this was the banjo, which wasn’t really his thing. He finished and said, “How was that?” And I said, “Pretty good,” and he said, “Pretty good is pretty good.”
He used to call me “LPJ,” for Little Pizzarelli John, because the president at the time was Lyndon Baines Johnson, LBJ. So I was LPJ. He loved to watch me play with my dad. I guess he didn’t really know his father, so the idea of father and son playing together was special for him.
Then, for a long stretch, we didn’t see Frankie. He came by once in the seventies, when he was married to Aurora and they were passing through New York. My mom made her pasta. I was in high school and had a big mop of wavy hair—I was really into Peter Frampton—and he said, “Is that LPJ under all that flop?” and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “How you doing?” and I said, “Pretty good,” and he said, “Pretty good is pretty good.” And then he said, “Have you learned ‘La Malagueña’ yet?”
It was a long time before I saw him again—not until I was in my thirties, already recording and traveling around the world. I heard that he was teaching in a music store in, of all places, Staten Island, under a different name. I drove out there, and sure enough, it was him. He made me close the door, and then he gave me a big hug and asked how my father was. He told me about his daughter and the Juilliard thing and why he was lying low, because all these people were curious about him. I was playing in the city at that time, and I begged him to come sit in with us—I promised I wouldn’t introduce him—but he declined. He said maybe he and Aurora would come by the house one night, but they never made it.
Then they moved to New Orleans, and we lost touch.
The last time I saw him was a year ago. Our band was doing some gigs in Asia, and we had a show in Manila. Afterward, a student from the university was hanging outside the stage door, and he said he had something important to tell me. A message from a man who used to eat meatballs at my house. And he said the words “La Malagueña” and gave me an address. Like something from a James Bond movie, right? But it wasn’t far from where we had played, so I asked a cabdriver to take me there. I went up to the apartment. No doorman or anything. I just knocked.
And Frankie answered the door and said, “Hey, LPJ.”
I did a double take. He didn’t look healthy. He was bent over and really thin and he was wearing reading glasses and his hair was all mussed up, like a discombobulated professor. I didn’t know Aurora had died. Once I heard that, I understood. They were so crazy about each other.
We talked for a while and he asked about my father, like he always did, and he wanted to know if we still played together and when I said yes, he seemed happy. I asked if he was recording or writing or anything, and he said he’d only written one song since his wife died. I asked if I could hear it. He sang it for me, and it was short enough that I can remember the whole thing.
Yesterday
I saw a bird
Whose tree had disappeared,
The clouds lay claim
To a moonless sky
You are gone
I’m here.
It broke your heart, it was so sad and beautiful. I asked if he was going to record it and he looked at me as if that was never going to happen and he said, “You can have it if you want.”
That’s when he asked me the favor. He said this bootleg of him playing guitar called The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto had been out there for years (I didn’t tell him every guitarist I knew either had it or had heard it) and he really needed to get the original tapes. I figured he wanted the money that was due him.
But I was wrong. He didn’t care about that. He wanted the tapes because he remembered that his wife and daughter were in the studio with him that day, and they talked and laughed in between him playing, and the original recordings would have all that stuff on it. He said when he died, he wanted Kai to have that happy memory of her parents.
Well, it took me a year to track the tapes down. But I did. Somebody in New Zealand had sold them to somebody in Australia, then England, then Japan. I was in Tokyo last month, and I found the engineer who had them, and he got kind of scared when I told him I was representing the real Frankie Presto—he said, “I thought he was dead”—and he just handed me the tapes after I signed something in Japanese that promised he wouldn’t get sued.
Once I had them, I called Frankie’s number in the Philippines. But I guess he’d already left to come here. I missed him by a couple of days.
That’s typical Frankie Presto timing, isn’t it?
61
FRANKIE AND KAI FLEW TOGETHER TO SPAIN. They waited at baggage claim for her guitar to be unloaded. Frankie did not bring an instrument, just a small suitcase. He was there as a father, he reminded himself. The less he had to do with music, the better.
The first day, he mostly slept in the hotel, while Kai registered and attended festival events. Frankie’s arthritis was bad and he took pills for the pain. That evening, Kai asked him to listen to her practice, so he sat in a chair, his shoulders slumped, his shirt unbuttoned, and gazed at her rapidly moving fingers, astounded at how proficient she had become, particularly at the music of his youth. As she played the most complicated passages by Spanish composers—the tremolos, the rasgueo fingerings—he nodded slowly.
“So?” she asked upon finishing. “Any tips?”
“Did I tell you how much I love you?”
“That’s not a tip, Papa.”
He shrugged.
“Ah, well,” he said.
Kai performed wonderfully in the first two days of competition and easily advanced to the final round. That morning, Frankie woke before the sunrise. His neck cricked. His knees ached. Feeling restless, he dressed by a lamp and left the hotel, hoping some fresh air would boost his spirits.
Villareal was shrouded in mist, like the morning Carmencita met the gypsies who gave her the strings. Frankie walked along a wide street then turned down a narrow one, barely able to see two steps ahead. The city was as quiet as a cave.
Frankie’s mind drifted.
He was scheduled to depart the next day, and was certain this would mark his final visit to Spain. As the first wisps of sunlight broke through the haze, he found himself in a small park centered by a statue.
He stepped up and squinted. Looking down at him, from atop a stone pedestal, was a large bronze sculpture of the great Francisco Tárrega.
It was like watching one of my children meet the other.
Tárrega had been cast in midperformance, his left foot on a small stool, his hands perfectly positioned on the guitar, which was pitched upward at the classical angle. Frankie studied the face of the master, now dead for one hundred years, the long beard and flowing hair slightly unkempt, reminding Frankie of El Maestro.
His eyes dropped to read the inscription. Then he glanced to the side and blinked.
There, resting against the stone base, was his guitar.
At least it looked like his guitar. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? He looked around as if someone might be coming. Then he lifted himself awkwardly over the low railing that surrounded the statue, catching his pants on a spoke and tearing a small cut in his skin.
“Ahh,” he groaned.
He put his hand on the guitar’s neck, and experienced a blinding flash of imagery, the faces of Django, young Aurora, Hampton, Ellis, and Alberto. He pulled back as if stung.
And he realized he was not alone.
Hiding behind the rear of the statue, holding a cane, was a hooded, heavily clothed figure.
“It is your guitar, Francisco,” a voice whispered. “Take it.”
62
FRANKIE ASSUMED HE WAS LOOKING AT A MAN, BUT AS THE HOOD LOWERED, HE REALIZED IT WAS A VERY OLD WOMAN. Her hair was wispy, cut short and mostly white, with rusty patches as if once red. Her eyes, lined with creases, were a hazel shade. When she opened her mouth, Frankie saw a gap between her front teeth.
“You left this at the monastery,” she said.
“I don’t want it.”
“Just the same.”
“Why have you brought it?”
“You are not finished playing.”
“Who are you?”
“Once, I was known as your mother.”
“My . . . mother?”
“It was undeserved.”
She bowed her head.
“I left you to die. The rest of my life, I have been forsaken.”
The old woman stared at the ground beneath the statue. Her face was weathered in deep lines and her skin hung loosely beneath her chin. When she spoke, it was in slow, deliberate tones, as if she had practiced this story many times and was now, finally, getting to deliver it.
“My given name is Josefa. In 1935, when I was sixteen years old, my parents came to Villareal to hide me in a convent. They were poor but pious, and the revolutionaries were hunting them, especially my father, who they called ‘El Pelé.’
“ ‘You will be safe here, daughter,’ he told me when he left. ‘God will reunite us soon.’
“I never saw him again.
“I found comfort with the sisters of the San Pascual basilica. I took part in mass, folded laundry, and helped tend to the tomb of our patron saint.
“On the night our church was destroyed by militia I had been outside taking food to a needy family, something only a novice was permitted to do. When I returned, nearly everyone had fled. I was preparing to run myself when I saw someone enter the front doors and kneel by the candles. A woman. Young and pregnant. As I approached to warn her of the danger, she collapsed and began her labor.
“That woman was your real mother. Her name was Carmencita. She came to pray for your safe arrival. But once your birth began, there was little she could do. The raiders had arrived. I rushed her upstairs to the chamber of San Pascual and I prayed his spirit would protect us.
“Minutes later, you were born, with evil below and the good Lord above. Your mother gave you your name, honoring our patron saint, and she held you only briefly. To keep you from crying, she hummed a song. It saved your life.
“And mine.”
Frankie was shaking.
“What happened to her?” he whispered.
“She could not move. She was weak and bleeding. I heard the men screaming. I extinguished the candles. In the darkness, I sensed her reaching out, and when her hand found my head, it pulled me in close. She whispered in my ear, just three words.
“ ‘Save my child.’
“I did all I could. I removed my tunic, because my life would surely end if they knew what I was. In those days, a nun could be murdered in the street. I took your mother’s clothes and wrapped her in mine. I whispered a prayer. And I ran out the back steps, carrying you in my arms.”
“You left my mother?” Frankie said.
The old woman looked at her feet.
“I have done worse.”
She coughed harshly, gripping the cane. The more the daylight spread over them, the older she appeared, and Frankie realized the great effort it must have taken for this woman to bring herself here. But she seemed determined to finish her tale.
“For many months, I raised you as my own. I lied about my past. I gave you all I could. But there was no work and no money and very little food. I was still a child myself. I did not understand an infant’s crying. I felt damned for leaving your mother and dirty for living a lie. I never slept. I heard devilish voices. The church had been my salvation, but I could no longer go there. With no family and a screaming baby, I was outcast. Alone. And so, one morning . . .”
“What?” Frankie said.
She took a breath.
“I threw you away, Francisco. Forgive the way I say it, but I do not deserve to say it more kindly. I put you in the Mijares River. And I ran. I ran until my chest could no longer take air. I collapsed in a thicket of muddy bushes. The world went black and for a moment I thought I would die. That is what I wanted.
“But then I heard the sound of something breathing and I opened my eyes to see a dog standing over me, dark, with no hair. It never made a sound. It just stared at me. A voice called out and the dog ran away. I saw, in the distance, a bald man carrying you off, the animal beside him.”
“Papa . . . ,” Frankie whispered.
“Baffa Rubio. I knew then that God had forsaken me, but he had not forsaken you. I was a wretch. Undeserving of a child. My punishment would be living with what I’d done. But my penance was clear.”
“What penance?” Frankie said.
“To guard you from afar. To honor your mother’s final request. Save my child. It was my only path to salvation. It gave me a reason to rise from that muddy brush. I followed behind Baffa Rubio until I witnessed him entering his home with you in his arms. From that moment forward, I became your sentinel. I vowed to keep watch no matter where your life took me. And that is what I have done.”
Frankie stared in disbelief. “For how long?”
She put both hands on the cane.
“Until this moment.”
Robert Schumann’s haunting composition “Träumerei” (“Daydream”) is a piece he wrote to recall his childhood. Frankie learned it from El Maestro. It features a repeated four-note passage, followed each time by a different chord that changes the music’s mood. It is simple yet captivating, evoking the dreams of a child. But the entire piece hangs on one crescendo, a remarkable sound that follows the final four-note build, a chord so piercingly beautiful that everything before only makes sense once you’ve heard it.
For Frankie Presto, the nun’s tale was that chord. It pulled him out of the cloudy dream that for so long had shrouded his story, tumbling details into place like the pins of a turned lock.
This woman, he learned, had been less than a mile from him for much of his life, a silent partner in nearly every band he’d joined. It was Josefa who distracted the police when Frankie stole the phonograph as a boy. It was Jose
fa who paid a gypsy to stop his cart as Frankie ran from soldiers. It was Josefa who trailed Frankie to England, who found him on the docks in Southampton and who sometimes dropped coins in his guitar case to keep him from starving.
It was Josefa who followed Frankie to America, bringing the hairless dog she had rescued from Spain. It was Josefa who shadowed the boy after Baffa’s sister rejected him, and who told police that he was sleeping in an alley, so they would bring him to an orphanage. It was Josefa who took work in the orphanage kitchen, to watch him as he grew, and who left the kitchen window open so the sad child and the hairless dog could be reunited.
It was Josefa who witnessed Frankie’s blue string incident at the Detroit nightclub, and Josefa who followed him to Nashville and New Orleans and informed a young Aurora York that a Spanish guitarist had been playing under a bridge and had been asking about her. It was Josefa who urged medics to the stage at Woodstock, to get a bleeding Frankie Presto to the helicopters, and it was Josefa who, working as a housekeeper in a London hotel, left the shades open every day in the room of a singer named Tony Bennett so that he might see Frankie sitting on a park bench and perhaps help him return to music.
Decades later, on a New Zealand island, it was Josefa who took an abandoned baby from the church and left it in the woods, knowing Frankie and Aurora would make a family.
And on that family’s fateful return to Villareal, it was Josefa, dressed in the heavy clothing that she used to disguise herself, who came to Frankie’s show at the taberna, and who hid in an alley after it was over, knowing that an old conga player was lurking there as well.
“Then . . . you killed Alberto?” Frankie said.
“May the Lord forgive me.”
“You turned yourself in.”
“I could do no less.”
“You went to prison.”