The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  There was no smile of greeting for me this time. “I have asked the doctor to come speak with you.”

  “The signora, she is all right?” Signora Angeletti held the flowers so tightly the little blossoms quivered.

  “Why don’t we wait—ah, here he comes now.” She moved back in evident relief. “This is Dr. Walthers.”

  I turned to face a bearded man in a white coat with a stethoscope and several other instruments stuffed in his pockets. His eyes were gray and rimmed with dark circles. “Are you relatives of the patient?”

  “This is the woman’s grandson, Doctor.”

  “Ah. Well. Shall we sit here?” He motioned toward the wooden bench. “Bring me the forms, please, Sister.”

  Signora Angeletti seated herself. I stood beside her and let her take my hand. She clenched it with a strength that grated my bones together.

  “Do you understand German?” He sounded very weary.

  “Yes.” My heart was pounding so hard I could scarcely get out the word.

  “I’m afraid your grandmother has passed away. I’m sorry. We did all we could to save her, but she waited too long to come in. Her lungs were too weak to support her.” He crossed limp arms and leaned against the opposite wall. His voice was as dull as his eyes. “She surprised us, I’m afraid. She had a bad moment last night, but she survived it all right. We did not expect another attack so soon.”

  The sister gave him a stack of papers attached to a metal clipboard. He fastened his eyes upon them and continued to talk of fluid and breathing problems and heart failure. Signora Angeletti bowed her head and began to weep softly. I felt the chasm open at my feet and swallow me whole.

  It took a moment to realize that the doctor had asked me something. Forms were being held out for my signature. I looked at him, saw his mouth move, but could not make sense of the noise. I looked helplessly at Signora Angeletti.

  “You must sign them, Gianni,” she whispered. “They are for your grandmother.”

  I nodded slowly, but could not raise my hand to take the pen. I looked up at the doctor and said, “I want to take her home.”

  PART TWO

  I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.

  Isaiah 42:16

  Chapter 6

  When I awoke the sun was high above the eastern hills, the ones which rose behind my cottage and rimmed that side of Lake Como. My bedroom was already warm enough to be stuffy. I threw back the covers, immensely relieved to find no rumpled little music fan beside me. Some days it was harder than others to include a stranger in my morning routine.

  The wooden shutters were barred three-quarters closed. Even so, approaching the window was painful. I squinted and shuffled and opened first the window then the shutters. I stood there in the faint breeze and breathed the sweet mountain air.

  “Not much that can beat a pretty springtime mornin’,” a deep voice rumbled. I pulled my head back into the shadows, opened my eyes a bit, recognized the big black man from the club the night before. Jake. His name was Jake. And his wife with the incredible voice was called Amy.

  “For a while there I thought maybe you were gonna sleep all day.” He was dressed in faded jeans, skin-tight T-shirt, and slip-on leather boots. He looked more solid than the garden wall he leaned against. “You alone in there?”

  “Far as I can tell,” I replied. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Mario dropped me off ’bout an hour ago. He wanted to stick around but I thought maybe we oughtta talk just the two of us.” Jake swivelled around, looked out over the two hundred-meter drop to the lake and the mountains beyond. “Man, this sure is some view.”

  “Hang on a second,” I said, and backed away from the window. I found some pants, tossed on a shirt, slid into loafers old and broken-down enough to need no socks. I stopped by the bathroom to wash my face. The cold water didn’t reach the tingling ache at the back of my eyeballs, or cleanse the stuffiness from my head, so I swallowed several aspirin before heading for the kitchen.

  Sunlight streamed through the kitchen’s back windows, turning everything to aching brightness and impenetrable shadows. The rising sun provided strong morning light to the kitchen and the tiny back garden. By early afternoon the back would be lost in shadows and the lake below would sparkle like a liquid jewel. I was high enough up the hillside to watch sunsets turn the distant snow-capped Alps to burnished gold.

  I filled the coffeepot at the old stone sink, lit the stove, set the pot in place. The refrigerator was the only new appliance in the kitchen; the only other addition to the cottage was a massive stereo. Everything else was as it had been for as long as I could remember. I slept in my grandparents’ bed, ate at their battered kitchen table, spent my free evenings in my grandfather’s rocker, felt their silent presence surround me.

  As I stood and waited for the water to boil I wondered why I did not feel upset over Jake interrupting my routine. The village tradespeople had long since learned never to approach my cottage before early afternoon. I unlocked the cottage’s front door that opened off the kitchen pantry. Outside the door a waist-high stone wall curved around the garden’s perimeter, beyond which rose the tops of pines growing from the cliffs below. Through the trees the lake and distant mountains were clearly visible.

  I normally took my coffee here on the pantry bench, where my grandfather used to sit after work to take off his heavy boots and the woolen socks my grandmother had knitted for him. If he was especially tired that day, my grandmother would fill an enamel washbasin with hot water and pour in a liberal dose of healing salts. He would sit as I did now, puffing on his pipe, wiping his face with an old towel, and watching the sun set behind the Alps on the lake’s other side. As I sipped my coffee and looked out over the gathering day, I often thought of him, and how I had tried never to bother him until that first pipe had been tamped down and refilled.

  Today I leaned out the doorway, called, “You want coffee?”

  Jake rounded the corner of the house. “No thanks, man. You go right ahead.”

  “Amy has a beautiful voice,” I said, returning to the kitchen. I pulled bread from the old wooden bin and cut myself a slice. “You hungry?”

  “Just fine, thanks. Yeah, the lady’s got a lotta talent. She wanted to call you this morning, say how much she liked singin’ with you. Mario said this place don’t have no phone, though.”

  “I like the privacy. Anybody who wants to talk to me can come by the club.”

  “Yeah, a man needs time to himself,” Jake agreed. He leaned his massive form against the stone border-wall, picked at a flake of granite on a block that had been set down by my great-grandfather. “This is some place you got here.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and pointed out over the lake to where the white-topped peaks rose in gentle glory. “On a clear day like this you can see the old passes. That hump to the right is Bernadino. In the summer, pilgrims from all over northern Europe came down through there, oh, twelve hundred years ago.”

  Jake squinted against the morning glare, said to the horizon, “Bet you been wonderin’ why I’ve been after you like this.”

  “It crossed my mind,” I agreed, glad to have it out in the open. “Sure you won’t take coffee?”

  “No thanks, I’m all set.” Jake straightened from the wall, rubbed the knuckles of one hand. “Yeah, if I was in your place I’d think the guy had to be crazy, comin’ after me like that.”

  I turned back to the kitchen, lifted the pot from the stove, poured coffee into the waiting cup. “I like it here, Jake. It doesn’t have anything to do with not wanting to play with you and your group.”

  “I know what you got and I know what you think you got. It ain’t the same, man. I know it and deep down inside so do you. Don’t you think you been lyin’ to yourself long enough?”

  I took my
cup with me to the front doorstep. “What are you talking about?”

  Jake’s gaze had gone cold. “It’s the fire, man. Go look in the mirror. The fire’s goin’ out.”

  “You’re talking crazy.”

  “Go take a look at yourself,” he repeated. His voice carried a lazy power, as if he were flexing his muscles. “You been wonderin’ how the music don’t carry the same weight anymore. Sure you have. You’re a smart man. Ain’t so easy, is it, tryin’ to make it connect like it used to. Used to be, all you had to do was hold the music inside you, and you were alive. Now it takes a little smoke, a touch of the powder, a sip of wine. Don’t feel the same, does it?”

  “I—”

  “Easiest thing in the world, runnin’ away. All you gotta do is turn around and there they are, a thousand ways to flee. That’s what you’re doin’, man. You’re runnin’ away.” Jake turned so that he stood flat to the wall, his head lifted up toward a distant sky. “Spent half my life runnin’ away in hate. I’m talkin’ big time, Gianni. Yeah, lotta hate. Lotta good reasons. Just lookin’ to see how far I could get lost in the darkness. Pretty far, man, I tell you.”

  He dropped his gaze to me. “That’s why I can talk to you like this, on account of havin’ visited there myself.”

  I sipped at the coffee I could not taste. It was hard to stand there, yet it felt as though a nail had been pounded through a hollow point in my chest and on into the door behind me. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t.

  “Be true to yourself, Gianni,” Jake said. His eyes turned into dark wells. “All you gotta do is ask Him. Such a heavy burden, man, all those memories, all that pain. Don’t you ever wish you could lay it down, rest a spell? He’s standin’ there with His arms out, just waitin’ for you to turn around and call to Him.”

  He lifted himself up and onto the wall. “I don’t know myself what I’m doin’ here. Make a lot more sense to find a strong Christian, somebody who wouldn’t make trouble. Always thought we had to have people in the band who lived by the Word. Still do.”

  Part of me said it didn’t matter what Jake thought of me. But a louder voice cried out in wordless yearning, a voice I had not heard in a long while. All I said was, “I’ve made a profession out of never making trouble for the bands who hired me.”

  He ignored my explanation. “But the Lord spoke to me. I can’t tell you how because I can’t put it into words. Only words that make a lotta sense to me these days are in the Bible, and they say don’t mix my affairs with sinners. But the Lord spoke to my heart, and He said that you’re ready to be saved.”

  I reached toward the pantry bench and set down my cup; I found I could not control the trembling of my fingers. I hid my hands by crossing my arms across my chest and leaned back against the doorjamb. “Is that what you want from me?” I asked. “You want me to be saved, whatever that is?”

  “If you want to stay with the band it’ll have to happen, my man. Have to. I’m not askin’ that now, though. Can’t ask what I know you can’t give. But you’re gonna have to agree to come and listen when we talk Bible, and you’re gonna have to pray with us.”

  “Even though I don’t believe there’s anybody up there listening to what you have to say?”

  “Even though,” Jake agreed. “You gotta try. Gotta give the Lord a chance to speak to you. That’s part of the bargain.”

  I feigned a lack of concern. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Yeah, you do that.” Jake gave me a look like the ones I had come to know from Mario, full of ancient wisdom and the ability to see much deeper than I liked. His gaze had the power of a mirror, and the longer I looked the more I felt the barrier crumble. I saw the life I led as a shield of lies, constructed with painstaking care to hide me from the truth. I stood and met his eyes with a false calmness and felt torn in two. Part of me wished to use this newfound truth and search within; part of me screamed silently to turn and flee.

  “There’s one more thing,” Jake said, breaking the silence.

  “What’s that?”

  “You gotta give up the drugs. All of ’em. The booze, too.”

  I shrugged nonchalantly. “No problem.”

  He smiled at that. “I ain’t talkin’ just about when you’re up playin’ with us, Gianni. I mean full time. Gotta clean up your act.”

  I felt my face grow red. “I don’t see how I live in Como has anything to do with my playing in Germany. Seems to me I’d be doing you a favor to help out for a while.”

  “I know it does,” Jake said, easing himself down off the wall. “Never thought I’d be talkin’ to somebody in the band about this stuff.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “I can’t tell you not to do it because the Bible says it’s wrong, not when you don’t much care what the Bible says about anything.” Jake bowed his head, rubbed one hand against the other. “You ever heard of cortisone, Gianni?”

  “Sure.”

  “Had a buddy once, his adrenal gland started actin’ up, so the doctors started givin’ him shots of cortisone. Problem was, that adrenal gland caught wind of this new stuff, see, and just shut down all the way. Last I heard this guy was doin’ three, sometimes four shots of the stuff every day. Had to, to stay alive. Hooked on it for the rest of his life.”

  Jake raised his eyes and pinned me to the cottage wall. “Souls do that too, my man. You put these drugs into your body, keep lookin’ for that American dream in the bowl of your hash pipe or in that pretty silver spoon, know what happens? Your soul just plain stops tryin’. Stops talkin’ to you. Stops makin’ your days shine with wonder. So you gotta take more and more stuff to plug up all that emptiness, to give you some kind of fire for your music.

  “The trouble with this new fire is, sooner or later it’s gonna eat you up. You hear what I’m sayin’, Gianni? Eat you alive, suck you dry, leave you lost. Lost and dead, because one day you’re gonna wake up and find out the music ain’t there any more. The fire’s gone out. When that happens, it won’t make any difference whether that body of yours keeps on clickin’ or not. Soon as the fire’s out and the music stops, you’re dead.”

  He started for the gate, a massive black mountain which moved with incredible grace. Where he had been standing was now only empty space, and suddenly I was more afraid than I’d been since those first days after my grandmother’s death.

  I followed him down the gravel path. At the garden’s edge he stopped and turned back, his face set as though carved in eternal granite.

  “You gotta decide before it’s too late.” His voice rolled like distant thunder. “You go on like you’re doin’ right now, and you’ll just keep on down that tunnel ’til the fire’s gone out and there ain’t nothing ’round you but the blackest, evilest, most hopeless darkness there is. Either that, or you turn around and ask for help and start searchin’ for the real light.”

  Jake reached down for the garden gate, swung it open, walked out, latched it shut behind him. He gave me one more penetrating glance. “This ain’t no game, Gianni. Life or death is all it is.”

  ****

  That evening I waited until the last possible moment to arrive at the club. Jake’s presence remained with me throughout the day, along with a jumble of conflicting emotions that crowded and shoved and jostled for position. One would win out, and I would suddenly be confronted with an image and a brief snatch of words. I thought of a thousand excellent answers intended to cut him down to size. None of them helped; none of them quieted my mind.

  Bruno was busy on the pipe when I arrived. He looked up, offered the smoke, and said in greeting, “Alessandro’s been in half a dozen times looking for you.”

  I pushed the pipe aside, set down my guitar, shrugged off my jacket. “I better go see what he wants.”

  “He said to look for him at the bar. There or the office.”

  The bar, separated from the dining tables by a brass railing, marble statues, and a lot of leafy fronds, was constructed to meld with the walls. It was constructed of raw mountai
n stone so tightly fitted as to require only a smudge of mortar, and was topped by long slabs of varnished hardwood. The only other change Alessandro had made to the courtyard itself was to hang multicolored velvet drapes at intervals around the perimeter. They hid various storerooms and doors to the kitchen and to the office, and acted as baffles against reverberated sound. The floor was polished flagstone, flayed and chipped and weathered by six centuries of use. Alessandro had filled in the holes and replaced all that was beyond repair, then ordered tables with adjustable legs so that they would not wobble on the uneven surface.

  The bar was softly lit by candles on nearby tables and by dusk-light filtering through the glass far above our heads. The place was about half-full, a good crowd for that early at night. Alessandro stood by the wall between the bar and the entrance, directing waiters and greeting guests and chatting with all who stopped by.

  He spotted me and motioned with his head toward the reservation desk. I waited while he smiled and laughed and bowed his graceful bulk past a few newcomers, then watched his face fall as he approached me.

  “You didn’t stop by for dinner tonight.”

  “I got held up,” I replied.

  “Better go in and at least have a bite to eat. It’s bad to start a long night on an empty stomach.”

  “You didn’t keep coming by my room all evening to talk about food.”

  “No.” Alessandro smoothed his beard with a downward swipe of his hand. “I’ve got some bad news and some terrible news. Which do you want first?”

  “Let’s step into it gradually,” I said. “I’ve had a rough day.”

  “Tell me about it. Okay. Your agent called. Antonio says Giorgio Coppa’s put off starting his album for a while. The guy wants to rework a couple of songs. ’Tonio asks if you want to go down to Rome for a couple of weeks. He’s got some new guy down there looking for a lead guitarist. Says the guy’s using somebody now who plays with a hammer and a pair of heavy gloves.”