The Bronze King (7 page)

“Mmm,” said Paavo. “Nice.”

We went in. The man at the desk in the lobby gave us this look.

“It's okay, Barney,” Joel said. “This is Tina, from my school, and this is a friend, a violinist.”

“Somebody been bothering you or something?” Barney said to him, squinting suspiciously at Paavo. “You want me to try and reach your mother?”

“No, it's okay. I had a little trouble in the park, but it's not as bad as it looks. I'll tell my parents myself later. I wouldn't want to scare anybody.”

In the elevator the uniformed guy who punched the button for us said, “Mrs. Rouse isn't there right now, Joel.”

“It's okay, I've got my keys,” Joel said.

We went down the hall with the elevator man's eyes drilling us through the back. “Who's Mrs. Rouse?” I whispered.

“Housekeeper,” Joel said. He unlocked the door.

Well, I could see why they needed a housekeeper; there was a lot of house to keep. We walked into this enormous, bright apartment, lit by a huge window on an outside terrace. There was a lot of pale, polished wood everywhere, a lot of wall space, and a few hangings and prints full of exotic colors and designs. A jungle of potted plants crowded around the big window and spilled out onto the terrace beyond.

The living room had to be big. There was a grand piano in it. A bunch of music stands, like a little crowd of silver stick figures, stood nearby with a few chairs among them.

“Holy cow,” I said.

Joel said, “I'll go and see if there's anything to nosh on in the kitchen.”

He went.

Paavo walked over to the big window and sank down into a sofa facing it, looking out. I had a feeling he needed not to have anybody close by for a little while, so I sort of drifted around the room looking at things: books, shelves of music scores for chamber groups, some photos on the wall.

One of them was of a kid I thought was Joel, but younger. He was standing on a stage with his arms lifted, and a bunch of musicians were poised in front of him to play.

Now I knew: Richard Wechsler, of course, the prodigy. He was conducting whole orchestras even though he was only about twelve. A genius, they said.

“Hey, Joel,” I said, sticking my head in the kitchen. “Is Richard Wechsler your brother?”

He was putting cookies on a plate. “That's right,” he said. “And Abraham Wechsler is my father. He plays the cello. My mom's a singer, but you might not know her name, not unless you're an opera freak. Are you?”

“No,” I said. I was getting the picture, all right.

He said, “You want to take these out there? If he wants tea or coffee, there's instant in the cupboard, and I've got water heating in that pot.”

“Where are you going?” I said.

“To get him a violin.”

 

6
Tea and Cookies

 

 

P
AAVO ATE UP ALL THE COOKIES
and drank some tea full of sugar. Then he turned to the violin that lay gleaming in an open case on the sofa where Joel had put it.

Paavo touched his bow to the strings, tightened up two pegs, and played a few notes. I don't know what that music was, but in one instant I felt as if I was hovering in space someplace, on the verge of dissolving in some huge wave of feeling that would pass and leave me never the same.

Then the music turned all thoughtful and slow and beyond me. I mean I could hear how beautiful it was, but I couldn't follow it exactly. Nothing stayed in my head in the way of a tune or anything with a shape.

Collapsed next to me in a big old chair, Joel groaned. “Well,” he said when the music stopped, “I guess there's nothing left but suicide.”

Paavo said, “Shaa. Coming from a family with all that talent, you'll do fine.”

“I don't care about ‘fine,' ” Joel said angrily. “Anybody can do ‘fine.' ”

“Yah?” Paavo said, sounding interested. “Anybody? Val, here, if she wanted?”

“I didn't mean that,” Joel said.

“No,” Paavo said.

“I meant—” Joel stared at the floor. “You can't just lope along in the concert world, you know? It's all or nothing. Either you've got it, or you end up fifth chair in some lousy community orchestra in Podunk. Or on the street, fiddling for pennies.”

I gasped. I mean, that was an incredibly crass thing to say, considering Paavo's circumstances. Joel pushed on, sounding fierce. “That can happen even to good players. I know. Anything can happen. You don't even want to start unless you've got all the cards already stacked in your hand.”

Suddenly he leaned forward and said, “Teach me. I don't know what's going on, who you are, anything, but I'll help, I'll do whatever you want and not ask a single question—only teach me to play like that!”

I felt stabbed in the heart. Joel was trying to grab the only real wizard in the world for himself, and maybe, since they were both musicians, he could. I was just someone who wrote poems sometimes in her journal that she didn't show to anybody. My only claim on Paavo was that he knew my Granny Gran. Great. He probably wouldn't even have included me in his magic at all, except for that.

I couldn't look at Paavo. Suppose he told Joel yes?

He touched the strings again with the bow and a thread of song came drifting, like music you might hear from another world, eerie and piercing.

“There may be things I can teach you,” he said slowly. “There may be time to do it, too. But I can't make any promises. You understand?”

Joel said, “Just say yes, say you will. What's so hard about that? My father will pay anything you like. I know he will, once he's heard you play. I could catch up in no time, I could play the way I always wanted to, if you'll just teach me!”

“Otherwise you won't lend me this violin?” Paavo said.

“I'm not lending,” Joel said. “I'm giving. Take it.”

Paavo held the violin delicately in his thick hands. “It's a fine instrument,” he said. “Somebody put a lot of love in it when it was made. Is it yours to give?”

Joel said, “Teach me. Please.”

“Is that the condition?”

Slowly Joel sat back, looking down now. “No,” he croaked. “I can only lend it to you, and there is no condition.”

“Good,” Paavo said. “As long as we know where we are, here. Thanks for the tea and cookies. I'll meet you both again tomorrow.”

He put the violin away, hesitated a minute, and then put his own bow in the case with it. Then he shut the case and got up to go. I thought already he looked fresher, stronger than before, as if that little bit of music-making had helped him.

He handed Joel the case.

Joel looked at him. “But aren't you going to take it with you?”

“How far would I get with this? He didn't like the look of me, that watchdog downstairs. I came in with only my bow. What will he think if I walk out of here carrying this? No, you keep it for me. Bring it tomorrow. Not to the lake; they may be watching for us there now. In the little park by the planetarium, all right? I'll be waiting.”

I went with him to the door, leaving Joel sitting on the couch looking bruised and angry. Paavo said in a low voice to me, “Why don't you stay a little while? He's not a happy kid, and he took a big chance today. He might have banged his hand really bad. A little company wouldn't hurt him.”

“He's a selfish, self-centered pig,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down.

Paavo shook his head. “He doesn't know what you know. Tell him. See if it makes a difference. And Val, be careful going home. Go before dark, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

He left.

So I went back in and sat down across from Joel and I told him.

When I got finished, he said, “Well, I sure can't tell any of
that
to my parents. If I hadn't been there this afternoon, I wouldn't believe it myself. So that really was magic he was doing in the park today, talking to this—this missing statue with his violin?”

“Yes, asking it where it was, see? And it answered through me. That's why I had to be inside the outline of its shadow, so I could stand for the statue, sort of.”

He squinted at me. “Does it make sense to you?”

“Does what make sense?”

“The whole thing—the kraken, the magic, the missing statue, those bastards, what do you call them, the Princes?”

“I guess. I haven't thought about it a lot.”

“You just believe what he tells you.”

“Don't you?”

He flung himself back in the couch and sighed. “All right, all right. He's pretty impressive. More impressive than you even know, if you count the music itself. With those big mitts of his, he shouldn't even be able to play the violin. I've never heard a touch like that, a tone. Never. Jesus. My father would flip.”

“Sure,” I said. “And pay anything. Boy, were you gross there. I was really embarrassed, Joel.”

He put his hands behind his head. “You don't know the half of it,” he said. “I'm not just trying to cash in on this incredible thing that you've fallen into, you know. It's not as simple as that.”

“Tell me how simple it is, then,” I said, “but make it fast. I'm supposed to get home before dark, Paavo said.”

“Damn straight,” he said. “You're the one that's important to him, isn't that obvious? He didn't do any magic with me. He just used me like a goddamn tailor's dummy or something. It's different for you. You're
in
it, you're special.”

“I don't feel special,” I said.

“You are. I'm—” He jumped up and started pacing. “Accidental, you know? Marginal. Something like that. In everything, not just this. You know that band I'm in, playing guitar? They took me on because their lead man had to go to the West Coast with his parents, and I'd picked up enough to fill in on the electric guitar.”

“They wouldn't keep you if you weren't good enough for them,” I said, “would they?”

“Nope. But good enough for them isn't particularly good, and besides that—it makes me hungry, playing that music. It makes me feel itchy and hungry, you know? I have to tank up on something to do it for very long at a time.”

“Drugs?”

He shrugged. “Nothing hard, don't worry, you're not in the clutches of a dope fiend. Grass, mostly.”

“That's probably what makes you hungry,” I said, “not one kind of music instead of another.”

“Oh, what the hell do you know about it?” he snarled.

I grabbed my school stuff. “I better go home.”

“Wait a minute, wait! Don't fly off the handle. God, are you touchy! Listen, I'm not trying to get you to feel sorry for me or anything. I mean, look how I live, it's not so bad, right? But I'd like you to understand how it is.”

“Great,” I said. “How is it?”

Joel threw himself down on the couch again. “How it is, is lousy.”

“Classical music,” I said, remembering how he'd looked listening to Paavo play. “The violin. You really love that.”

He started pushing a glass ashtray around on the top of the coffee table. “It's in the family, I guess.”

“Well, who's stopping you? This city must be full of the best teachers, and your parents are connected.”

“That's right. Listen, I started. I played when I was little because everybody around me played or sang or something. I have an older sister, did I tell you? She's married, she teaches piano in one of the best music departments in the country. I mean, she's not great, but she's damn good. I used to do some playing with her, dubs and things. I studied with good people. I was coming along, not a genius or anything like that, but good, maybe better than good later on.

“So here comes my baby brother and without any instrument at all he takes over. I mean, he just
takes over
. He used to potter around at that piano when he was four, five. We thought he'd be a composer, maybe, if not a pianist. Well, came the day he picked up a bow and started conducting some chamber music they were playing here, my father and some friends. Turned out we had a goddamn prodigy on our hands. His instrument is the orchestra—all the instruments, every one. He plays the players, or whatever it is that conductors do. It's a mystery to me, believe me.”

“So you quit?” I said. “You could play like that, like Paavo, and you just quit?”

“Not like him, that's what I'm saying! And no, I didn't just quit. I lost interest, I practiced less and less. One day I stopped. By then I was fooling around with the electric guitar—I had to do something. They all think I rebelled against the classical mania here and that I was doing my music someplace else, a different way.”

He stopped and looked down at his left hand, which he was rubbing again. “Well, actually my mother took it hard. She doesn't like popular music much, especially the heavy amp stuff. She'd feel better, I think, if she knew it was like doodling to me, just fooling around to pass the time. But I can't talk to her about it. I can't talk to any of them.”

I said, “I like a lot of popular stuff, myself.”

“Me, too,” he said. “But it's not the same.”

I had sometimes missed not having brothers or sisters of my own, and I sometimes thought I wouldn't mind having a more glamorous parent or two. This tale of Joel's was kind of sobering.

To tell the truth, though, I thought he was more silly than tragic. I mean, in his place I'd saw away on my fiddle with whatever scrap of talent I had and be happy as a clam, tucked warm and cozy in the bosom of my nice, intact, cultured, very comfortable family. Also it struck me as just a tiny bit selfish to be more hung up on this sad story of being only talented, not a genius, than on the possible eating of the whole entire world by the kraken.

On the other hand, it could not be denied that Joel was a good-looking boy, and good-looking people are inclined to get stuck on themselves at one time or another, if not permanently. And I had to admit that he could probably wow the blazes out of everybody just by walking out on a concert stage with a violin tucked under his chin.