Page 24 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Four

forward past their maestro’s moment of confusion. Arturo flailed
while his mind raced through the tangle of chords and notations he
had committed to memory. He realized how ridiculous he must look
to the audience: a huge, hairy quadruped swaying back and forth
while his trunk lashed out in all directions and the orchestra ignored
him.
Elephants do not sweat; they
can only cool off by flapping
their ears. By the end of the
performance Arturo’s ears were
fanning at a rapid rate. He
dreaded the coming reaction to
his mix-up in the second
movement: would the audience
hiss and boo, walk out on him,
demand their money be
refunded? To his amazement, the applause was as loud as ever, with
the usual cries of “Bravo!” ringing through the hall. Arturo slowly
turned and acknowledged the tribute with a slight knee-bend, as was
his custom. The next day was yet another sell-out; it was as if his
very serious and unprofessional error had never occurred.
The incident started him thinking. Before it, he was certain that
his meteoric rise to fame was the inevitable result of his genius being
given an opportunity to shine. Now he had doubts: why should he
receive the same enthusiastic praise following a clearly miserable
performance? Nothing in his young life had prepared him for such
a mysterious and frustrating phenomenon. After a few days of soul-
searching, his methodical mind came up with the answer: people had
been cheering him on not
because he was a prodigious
talent, not because his
conducting skill was nothing
short of miraculous, not because
he had memorized the scores of
several hundred symphonies and
concertos, but simply because he
was an elephant. That
conclusion was inescapable, and
it shattered Arturo’s confidence.