The Collection (11 page)

And with that decision irrevocably made, and with the music
still caressing him like a woman and exciting him as no woman had ever excited
him, Dooley opened his eyes. And since his head had tilted forward while he had
concentrated, the first thing he saw was the very large goblet of red wine that
had been placed in front of him. He picked it up and, looking over it, managed
to catch the musician's eye; Dooley raised the glass in a silent toast and
downed the wine in a single draught.

When he lowered his head after drinking—the wine had tasted
unexpectedly good—the musician had turned slightly on the stool and was facing
another direction. Well, that gave him a chance to study the man. The musician
was tall but thin and frail looking. His age was indeterminate; it could have
been anywhere from forty to sixty. He was somewhat seedy in appearance; his
threadbare coat did not match his baggy trousers and a garish red and yellow
striped muffler hung loosely around his scrawny neck, which had a prominent
Adam's apple that bobbed every time he took a breath to play. His tousled hair
needed cutting, his face was thin and pinched, and his eyes so light a blue
that they looked faded. Only his fingers bore the mark of a master musician,
long and slim and gracefully tapered. They danced nimbly in time with the
wondrous music they shaped.

Then with a final skirl of high notes that startled Dooley because
they went at least half an octave above what he'd thought was the instrument's
top range and still had the rich resonance of the lower register, the music
stopped.

There were a few seconds of what seemed almost stunned silence,
and then applause started and grew. Dooley went with it, and his palms started
to smart with pain. The musician, staring straight ahead, didn
^'
t
seem to notice. And after less than thirty seconds he again raised the
instrument to his mouth and the applause died suddenly to silence with the
first note he played.

Dooley felt a gentle touch on his shoulder and looked
around. The fat little waiter was back. This time he didn't even whisper, just
raised his eyebrows interrogatorily. When he'd left with the empty wineglass,
Dooley closed his eyes again and gave full attention to the music.

Music? Yes, it was music, but not any
kind
of music
he
^'
d ever heard before. Or it was a blend of
all
kinds of
music, ancient and modem, jazz and classical, a masterful blend of paradoxes or
maybe he meant opposites, sweet and bitter, ice and fire, soft breezes and
raging hurricanes, love and hate.

Again when he opened his eyes a filled glass was in front of
him. This time he sipped slowly at it. How on Earth had he missed wine all his
life? Oh, he
^'
d drunk an occasional glass, but it had never tasted
like this wine. Or was it the music that made it taste this way?

The music stopped and again he joined in the hearty applause.
This time the musician got down from the stool and acknowledged the applause
briefly with a jerky little bow, and then, tucking his instrument under his
arm, he walked rapidly across the room—unfortunately not passing near Dooley's
table—with an awkward forward-leaning gait. Dooley turned his head to follow with
his eyes. The musician sat down at a very small table, a table for one, since
it had only one chair, against the opposite wall. Dooley considered taking his
own chair over, but decided against it. Apparently the guy wanted to sit alone
or he wouldn't have taken that particular table.

Dooley looked around till he caught the little waiter's eye
and signaled to him. When he came, Dooley asked him to take a glass of wine to
the musician, and also to ask the man if he would care to join him at Dooley's
table, to tell him that Dooley too was a musician and would like to get to know
him.

^"
I don
^'
t think he will,
^"
the waiter told him.
^"
People have tried before and he always
politely refused. As for the wine, it is not necessary; several times an
evening we pass a hat for him. Someone is starting to do so now, and you may
contribute that way if you wish."

^"
I wish,
^"
Dooley told him.
"But take him the wine and give him my message anyway, please."

“Ja, mein Herr."

The waiter collected a mark in advance and then went to one
of the three tuns and drew a glass of wine and took it to the musician.
Dooley, watching, saw the waiter put the glass on the musician's table and,
talking, point toward Dooley. So there would be no mistake, Dooley stood up and
made a slight bow in their direction.

The musician stood also and bowed back, slightly more deeply
and from the waist. But then he turned back to his table and sat down again and
Dooley knew his first advance had been declined. Well, there'd be other
chances, and other evenings. So, only slightly discomfited, he sat back down
again and took another sip of his wine. Yes, even without the music, or at any
rate with only the aftereffects of the music, it still tasted wonderful.

The hat came, "For the musician," passed by a stolid
red-faced burgher, and Dooley, seeing no large bills in it and not wishing to
make himself conspicuous, added two marks from his little pile on the table.

Then he saw a couple getting up to leave from a table for
two directly in front of the stool upon which the musician sat to play. Ah,
just what he wanted. Quickly finishing his drink and gathering up his change
and his clarinet, he moved over to the ringside table as the couple walked
away. Not only could he see and hear better, but he was in the ideal spot to
intercept the musician with a personal invitation after the next set. And
instead of putting it on the floor he put his clarinet case on the table in
plain sight, to let the man know that he was not only a fellow musician, which
could mean almost anything, but a fellow woodwind player.

A few minutes later he got a chance to signal for another
glass of wine and when it was brought he held the little waiter in
conversation. "I gather our friend turned down my invitation," he
said. "May I ask what his name is?"

^"
Otto,
mein Herr.
^"

^"
Otto what? Doesn
^'
t he have a
last name?
^"

The waiter's eyes twinkled.
^"
I asked him
once. Niemand, he told me. Otto Niemand.
^"

Dooley chuckled.
Niemand,
he knew, meant
"nobody" in German.
^"
How long has he been playing
here?
^"
he asked.

^"
Oh, just tonight. He travels around.
Tonight is the first we've seen him in almost a year. When he comes, it's just
for one night and we let him play and pass the hat for him. Ordinarily we
don't have music here, it's just a wine cellar."

Dooley frowned. He'd have to make
sure,
then, to make
contact tonight.

"Just a wine cellar," the little waiter repeated.
"But we also serve sandwiches if you are hungry. Ham, knackwurst, or beer
cheese        ."

Dooley hadn
^'
t been listening and interrupted.
^"
How
soon will he play again? Does he take long between sets?"

"Oh, he plays no more tonight. A minute ago, just as I
was bringing your wine, I saw him leave. We may not see him again for a long
..."

But Dooley had grabbed his clarinet case and was running,
running as fast as he could make it on a twisting course between tables.
Through the door without even bothering to close it, and up the stone steps to
the sidewalk. The fog wasn't so thick now, except in patches. But he could see
niemand
in either direction. He stood utterly still to listen. All he could hear
for a moment were sounds from the wine cellar, then blessedly someone pulled
shut the door he
^'
d left open and in the silence that followed he
thought, for a second, that he could hear footsteps to his right, the direction
from which he had come.

He had nothing to lose, so he ran that way. There was a
twist in the street and then a corner. He stopped and listened again, and—
that
way
,
around the corner, he thought he heard the steps again and ran toward
them. After half a block he could see a figure ahead, too far to recognize but
thank God tall and thin; it
could
be the musician. And past the figure,
dimly through the fog he could see lights and hear traffic noises. This must be
the turn he had missed in trying to follow the hotel clerk's directions for
finding the downtown bright-lights district, or as near to such as a town this
size might have.

He closed the distance to a quarter of a block, opened his
mouth to call out to the figure ahead and found that he was too winded to call
out. He dropped his gait from a run to a walk. No danger of losing the man now
that he was this close to him. Getting his breath back, he closed the distance
between them slowly.

He was only a few paces behind the man—and, thank God, it
was
the musician—and was lengthening his strides to come up alongside him and
speak when the man stepped down the curb and started diagonally across the
street. Just as a speeding car, with what must have been a drunken driver,
turned the corner behind them, lurched momentarily, then righted itself on a
course bearing straight down on the unsuspecting musician. In sudden reflex
action Dooley, who had never knowingly performed a heroic act in his life,
dashed into the street and pushed the musician from the path of the car. The
impetus of Dooley's charge sent him crashing down on top of the musician and he
sprawled breathlessly in this shielding position as the car passed by so close
that it sent out rushing fingers of air to tug at his clothing. Dooley raised
his head in time to see the two red eyes of its taillights vanishing into the
fog a block down the street.

Dooley listened to the drumming roll of his heart in his
ears as he rolled aside to free the musician and both men got slowly to their
feet.

"Was it close?"

Dooley nodded, swallowed with difficulty. "Like a shave
with a straight razor."

The musician had taken his instrument from under his coat
and was examining it. "Not broken
^.
," he said. But Dooley, realizing
that his own hands were empty, whirled around to look for his clarinet case.
And saw it. He must have dropped it when he raised his hands to push the
musician. A front wheel and a back wheel of the car must each have run over it,
for it was flattened at both ends. The case and every section of the clarinet
were splintered, useless junk. He fingered it a moment and then walked over and
dropped it into the gutter.

The musician came and stood beside him. "A pity,"
he said softly. "The loss of an instrument is like the loss of a
friend." An idea was coming to Dooley, so he didn't answer, but managed to
look sadder than he felt. The loss of the clarinet was a blow in the
pocketbook, but not an irrevocable one. He had enough to buy a used, not-so-hot
one to start out with and he
^'
d have to work harder and spend less
for a while until he could get a really good one like the one he'd lost. Three
hundred it had cost him. Dollars, not marks. But he
^'
d get another
clarinet all right. Right now, though, he was much
much
more interested
in getting the German musician's hautboy, or one just like it. Three hundred
dollars, not marks, was peanuts to what he'd give for that. And if the old boy
felt responsible and offered .. .

"It was my fault," the musician said. "For
not looking. I wish I could afford to buy you a new— It was a clarinet, was it
not?
^"

^"
Yes,
^"
Dooley said, trying
to sound like a man on the brink of despair instead of one on the brink of the
greatest discovery of his life. 'Well, what's kaput is kaput. Shall we go
somewhere for a drink, and have a wake?"

"My room," said the musician. "I have wine
there. And we'll have privacy so I can play a tune or two I do not play in
public. Since you too are a musician.
^"
He chuckled.
^"
Eire
Kleine Nachtmusik,
eh? A little night-music—but not Mozart
^'
s; my
own."

Dooley managed to conceal his elation and to nod as though
he didn't care much. "Okay, Otto Niemand. My name's Dooley Hanks."

The musician chuckled. "Call me Otto, Dooley. I use no
last name, so Niemand is what I tell any who insist on my having one. Come,
Dooley; it isn't far."

It wasn
^'
t far, just a block down the next side
street. The musician turned in at an aged and darkened house. He opened the
front door with a key and then used a small pocket flashlight to guide them up
a wide but uncarpeted staircase. The house, he explained on the way, was
unoccupied and scheduled to be torn down, so there was no electricity. But the
owner had given him a key and permission to use it while the house still stood;
there were a few pieces of furniture here and there, and he got by. He liked
being in a house all by himself because he could play at any hour of the night
without bothering anyone trying to sleep.

He opened the door of a room and went in. Dooley waited in
the doorway until the musician had lighted an oil lamp on the dresser, and then
followed him in. Besides the dresser there was only a straight chair, a rocker
and a single bed.

^"
Sit down, Dooley,
^"
the
musician told him.
^"
You
^'
ll find the bed more
comfortable than the straight chair. If I
^'
m going to play for us,
I'd like the rocker." He was taking two glasses and a bottle out of the
top drawer of the dresser.
^"
I
see I erred. I thought
it was wine I had left; it is brandy. But that is better, no?
^"