Page 74 - Vol V. #8

Monstrous Men (continued from page 16)
“And you can’t put a price on that.” The guide put We were walking by the river past the Gypsies’ an arm around my shoulder. “Usually.” part of the city. Their firelit eyes fixed on us, and
In the week before L’s unveiling, I filtered its
soundtrack through my insomnia. I stood on my
balcony during a storm, heard the birds in the
trees on the square chirping diminished chords,
imagined them cursed with the faces of the ge-
nius children L wanted to play at her concerto de
camera. I was privileged to teach some proto-vir-
tuosi; fifteen seemed to be the age at which they
attained the confident possession of talent. The
looks on the girls’ faces revealed that they had “I’m sure they’ll all let you know as soon as that mastered arcana; the boys just looked smug, dizzy happens.” I laughed.
with their own cleverness.
“I don’t expect men to change just for me,” L was saying. She looked beautiful, and insane, and weary of me. We were about to have a conversa- tion that, a year earlier, might have broken my heart. But by then I was glad of it, and knew all my lines. “What I do expect,” she said, “is for them to regret not changing, later on.”
Dismissing Genius
Betraying a momentary disbelief in her abilities, Quaintrelle’s Chorus had only ever been played by L said, “You’re mocking me.”
me, usually naked, sitting on L’s bed, using my tiny “Yes,” I had to admit.
Triestine guitar. To do it the full gothic justice its composer had meant for it, I began to see, it need- ed more, some woodwind, some brass, some low strings, perhaps. Over several breakfasts in the Eagle Café, ignoring the myopic factotum Hermes in his corner, I arranged it all over a percussion part using only handclaps.
She said, “Yes is a great last word to have.” “Is it, L?”
“It is. Yes.”
“How easily your art vanishes,” L had been fond of saying. “One just stops listening, and it’s gone.”
I dismissed the geniuses early. They were talent- ed, but too jaded; they would ruin the song by rendering it too perfectly. I had no further classes that afternoon, so I studied the plan for the next morning’s lesson with my eleven year olds. Elev- en was the age to be for that mix of sweetness to the edge of chaos, I had always felt; they would never be brighter, or more charming—after the age of eleven they would be distracted, and ru- ined, by hormones and ideologies, the intricacies of rifles and childbirth. They were the real genii, and we would work magic.
I would counter, “Well, one can easily burn a can- vas.” I had already lost the argument, though, because L only painted onto walls; foundries, factories, churches, museums, the lobby of the state opera house, the insides of triumphal arches – all edifices that would outlast the states that had built them. To suggest bombs and bulldozers would have been sheer sedition.
My geniuses reduced Quaintrelle’s Chorus to dull perfection. During rehearsals, the silence at the end of the piece revealed some of them looking at me quizzically, as if to say, Is that all it is?
On the night of the unveiling, I led my musicians through the city. When they began clapping in seven-eight, it disconcerted the tram passengers, and the presidential guardian who met us at the palace’s servants’ entrance.
“Wonderful,” I yawned, and told them to do it again, but better, and I heard Quaintrelle’s Chorus as the soundtrack of the night L and I broke up.
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dismissed us, not knowing of our genius with paint and sound. I remembered our song, and the day I exchanged it for the car.
The Father of My Child