Traveling back and forth to Rome would be out of the question if I intended to continue playing in the club. “What are you telling me?”
“C’mon over here, Maestro. Want you to see something.”
Alessandro walked to a velvet baffle hanging midway down the left-hand wall. With a nervous glance toward the bar, he pulled the heavy cloth over to one side.
“Take a look, Gianni. My lady’s gotten sick.”
A crack started at the floor and snaked right up the wall as far as I could see. At the thickest point it was perhaps two handspans wide and just as deep.
I leaned close, looked up, asked, “Is the wall bulging up there?”
“I had the engineers in today. And yesterday, and the day before. Guys from Milano specializing in old structures. Told me the weight of the glass is causing the wall to shift.”
“So what happens now?”
“They gotta shore up the wall with a couple of support girders. They say when it’s finished, you won’t be able to tell where they are.”
“The girders have to be on the inside of the wall?”
“One does. Another one or two outside.”
“You’re going to have to close down, aren’t you.” It was not a question. I thought about my conversation with Jake. “How long?”
Alessandro let the curtain drop back. “They told me a week.”
We shared a laugh over that. Italian builders made promises that would cause even the most hard-hearted Riviera Romeo to blush with shame. They would say anything, promise anything, to win a contract. Anything. Once the paper was signed, the words vanished like smoke in the wind.
I asked again, “How long?”
“A month, maybe six weeks. I figure we can reopen as soon as this inside girder is set in place. They’ll do that first. I’m paying them to work ’round the clock until that one’s in place.”
“So when do they start?”
“Week after next, Maestro. I’ve spent all day calling around, postponing reservations. I couldn’t get in touch with you since your cottage doesn’t have a phone.”
I shook my head. Despite my attempt at calm, I was shaken by the timing of it all.
Alessandro misunderstood, was suddenly all concern. “The contract for you and the boys still stands, Gianni. I can’t afford to pay you guys full rate while we’re closed, but you’ll be taken care of. You got money problems, caro, we’ll work something out.”
“It’s not the money, Alessandro, but thanks,” I said, trying to put real gratitude behind the words. “You told the others?”
“You mean the band? No, I figured you’d want to do that once you decided about the studio work.” He forced a smile, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes. “Rome in springtime is a magic place, Maestro. Maybe you oughtta take Antonio’s offer.”
“Maybe. I’ll think it over.” I could not get over how it had all come together. Jake would no doubt say that an invisible hand was guiding me along an unseen path. I wasn’t sure I liked being moved around like a pawn on a chessboard. “I better go tell the guys.”
* * *
Bruno and Claudio were arranging white powder in thin lines on the mirror when I arrived. “Alessandro’s got to close up for emergency repairs,” I told them.
“We heard.” Bruno planted the little pipe in his nose, bent over, did two lines, leaned back, sniffed hard, blinked his eyes.
Claudio took the tube. “Some of the staff are talking about renting a place at Portofino. You want to go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Antonio may have work for us in Rome.”
That brought a light to Bruno’s eyes. “Rome is an incredible place this time of year, Maestro.”
“So I hear.” I searched for words, said, “I’ve been thinking about maybe taking an offer in Germany.”
“You’d go to Germany over Rome?” Claudio looked shocked. “What for?”
“This got something to do with your friend Mario?” Bruno offered me the pipe. “Want a hit?”
“Not right now, thanks.” No drugs, Jake had said. He had made it sound like some mission impossible. “It’d just be for a week or so, until they find a new lead guitarist.”
They shared a glance. “You’re a good friend, Maestro,” Claudio said.
“I can’t believe you’d go back to Germany for them.” Bruno knew the faintest sketches of my early years in Dusseldorf.
“Neither can I.”
The room turned very close, the air heavy with its load of smoke. I grabbed my guitar, decided the first set could be done in my street clothes. “I’ve got some things I need to talk over with Alessandro,” I said. “See you after the set.”
A velvet rope barred the entrance, and almost all the tables were full. I dropped my guitar in the shadow of the stage and eased myself down to the main floor. Waiters paused to ask where I’d been; had I heard; was I coming to Portofino? Alessandro moved like a graceful bear, flitting from tables to bar to kitchen to entrance. He had a smile and a kind word for everyone.
Alessandro spotted me and exaggerated his surprise with wide eyes and slack jaw. I never came out front before playing. Voices called to me from various tables. I stopped here and there to shake offered hands, declined invitations to sit and share a glass of wine. Now that I was out there, I had no idea why I had come.
The bar was as crowded as Alessandro would permit during dinnertime. The prices were very high; bars to either side of us offered the same drinks at less than half the cost. Yet every night Alessandro turned away more people than he allowed in.
The only guests guaranteed nightly entrance were beautiful girls without escorts. The bar had become known as a relatively safe gathering place for models and actresses up from Milan, or girls who aspired to that game, or ones who simply wished they could. Local businessmen would have given their right arms for Alessandro’s address book. He limited male entry to the super-rich, the big names, the fortunate, and a few friends. According to Alessandro, a friend was somebody who would be there when the roof fell in, and those he could count on the thumbs of one hand.
The bearded bear glided up beside me. “Don’t let the action at the bar spoil your concentration tonight, Maestro.”
“A lot of young lovelies around,” I agreed.
“The Count’s back with a new granddaughter; see them there under the dead palm?”
“Amazing she can lift her fork with all that weight on her wrist.”
A dark-haired beauty detached herself from the bar crowd, walked to the fern border, smiled and beckoned me over. Because Alessandro was expecting it, I asked, “You remember her name?”
“Francesca something. Girl must have been in some all-time hurry to get over here. Looks to me like she forgot to put on anything under that dress.” He looked at me. “You decided what you’re going to do?”
I nodded. “Mario’s band lost their lead guitarist a couple of weeks ago. I thought maybe I’d go help out until they find a replacement.”
“Mario’s a good kid. Kinda crazy over this religion thing, though.” He patted me on the back. “Nice of you to help out a friend like this, Maestro. Says a lot about you.”
I felt shamed by his praise. “I think maybe I’ll go say hello to Francesca something before I start the set.”
“Real nice of you to come out front tonight, Maestro,” Alessandro said, resting a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Know how much you hate it before you play. Means a lot. Especially tonight.”
I nodded, felt my face grow hot. “Are you going to make an announcement?”
“Before your first late-night set. Everyone is being told as they come in, but I thought I’d just say a little something extra then, open up a few bottles on the house. Better go see to the girl, Maestro. It’s about time for you to go on.”
Francesca wore a form-fitting black knit dress that ended a long way above her knees. Her hair was an auburn frame encircling a beautiful face and eager eyes. The teeth that shone at my approach were small and perfect and touched by the
tip of a little pink tongue.
She pouted and said in greeting, “You haven’t called me in weeks, Gianni. Do you forget girls so easy?”
“Not you,” I replied. I reached over heads to shake the bartender’s hand, declined his offer of a glass of wine, asked for a club soda instead.
She trailed one finger down the edge of her champagne glass and eyed me over the rim. “You will play that special song for me tonight, Gianni?”
“Of course,” I said, and had to search frantically before remembering. She was a George Benson fan, and loved his rendition of “Masquerade.” “Are you going to come up and dance with us if we play it?”
“Up on stage?” Her eyes opened wide. “You mean it, Gianni? You want me to come up and dance?”
I regretted the invitation as soon as the words were out. “Maybe later, okay? It’s kind of a special night tonight.”
“Yeah, I heard. Too bad the place has to close for a while.” Her expression changed to one I could feel in my gut. She asked softly, “Maybe I could come dance for you after you’ve finished playing. Would you like that, Gianni?”
This time, besides the desire that swept up like a hungry flame came a sense of knowing. I looked at the beautiful face, saw the girl who would wake up beside me the next morning, and felt the dusty emptiness. She yearned for more than just a single night of flashing passion, yet knew that to ask for it would break the unspoken rule of my independence. She would be unhappy and I would sense it, although nothing would be said. I would spend my morning waiting impatiently for her to leave. I wanted her, yet I felt some silent whisper pressing me to see beyond the want. Beyond the moment. Beyond the physical desire.
A tap on the shoulder saved me from having to reply. “Hate to disturb you, Maestro, but it’s time to go on.”
I smiled at Francesca. “Maybe we can talk later.”
She smiled back. “Just talk?”
Weaving my way through the tables, I lifted myself onto the stage, brought guitar and stool toward the front, plugged in, waved and smiled to the scattered applause, and without preamble began.
It was different playing without the barrier of a high. Very different. The music seemed to come out mechanically, without real challenge or meaning. I brought up the image of a smiling Francesca and the invitation in her eyes, but found no answering desire within myself. I let the image slide away, and did something that I had never done before. I stopped at the end of the first song and looked out over the audience.
As long as the dinner crowd dominated the room, the lights remained on, soft and unfocused. When Mario had helped Alessandro with the sound system, he had also rigged a series of low-powered floorlights that rimmed the stage; they offered a sort of electric candle-glow to my early set. I could look out over the entire room, if I wanted to, which I never did. Until now.
No barrier separated me from the people now, no high enclosed me within the cocoon of my music. And I could hear no answering music within my heart. I looked out over the applauding people at their food-laden tables and out to the smiling bar-crowd. I searched within, and I found nothing. With no acknowledgment of the applause, I turned back to my guitar.
I stayed on classical pieces throughout the entire set, playing with the same unfeeling precision that I had fled from in Germany. I could not believe I was really thinking of returning, even for a few days. I had spent years struggling to erase every memory of that place.
Yet the truth of Jake’s words lay before me, a stark reminder of what I had failed to see for myself. I looked out over the crowd, saw the shallowness of it all. What would happen if I disappeared tomorrow? Would any of the smiling bar girls remember me, miss me, wonder what had happened to the musician? Which of them felt what I was trying to give? The question made me look inside, yet the view there was no better. What could I give from such an emptiness? If I had so little within, what was there to fuel the music, the giving? My pain at Jake’s words returned, and I decided to cut the set short. I was afraid of the desolate wind whispering through me.
****
For the first time in years I left after the last show as sober as I had arrived. I walked the streets, felt the brisk nighttime breeze whisk the cigarette smoke from my clothes and hair. I followed the cobblestone street back to the Piazza Duomo, fronted by shops and restaurants on one side and by the the central Como cathedral on the other. I had passed the structure several times a day for the better part of my life, and never thought of it as more than a majestic building, a monument to Como’s earlier days. Like all local schoolchildren, I had toured the massive place in the company of several nuns. I had been ordered to bow and make the sign of the cross before the altar, and had looked up in awe at the distant bowed ceiling with its intricate layering of gold. Tonight I stood in the silent plaza, my collar turned up against the chill, and stared at the cross upon the higher dome, a black form etched distinctly upon the star-flecked heavens.
I turned down the narrow way which connected the cathedral’s plaza with the one which fronted the lake. The Piazza Cavour was a massive affair, a full two hundred paces across. Three sides contained banks and cafes and exclusive shops and four-star hotels. The vast middle section held carefully tended flower beds crisscrossed by miniature paths and lines of heavy wooden benches. In the daylight hours the young people swarmed here. They filled the air with excited chatter and smoke from their “motos,” miniature two-stroke motorcycles permitted to anyone over the age of fourteen. Ice cream vans plied their trade, acting as gathering points for various cliques. Old men and tourists filled the sidewalk cafes, spending hours over tiny cups of coffee and idle chatter, eyeing the beautiful young people and wishing they could recapture what was lost and gone forever.
At four-thirty in the morning, the Piazza Cavour was dark and empty. A line of taxis stood outside the city’s largest hotel, while the drivers dozed and waited for a last call. I knew most of them by name. Tonight I walked in front of them, exchanged subdued hellos with the only driver still awake, and crossed the plaza.
The plaza’s fourth side fronted the lake. Piers for the city’s boat-buses jutted from the shoreline, the ancient vessels looking clean and new and stately in the vague lighting. A chain of faint yellow globes hung above the lakefront and continued down the road. Occasionally a car would downshift and barrel around the snaking curves, flicker into view, and just as swiftly roar away. The drivers swept through the nighttime vacuum oblivious to all but the momentary freedom of speed. Their fleeting presence amplified my own aloneness.
I crossed the road and walked out to the end of the long breakwater pier. The night breeze blew off the lake, carrying with it the biting chill of distant mountains. From across the waters shimmered the lights of Cernobbio, the second main village upon the lake. Sparkling yellow pinpoints of illumination beckoned, lifting the eye as they climbed the hillside. Beyond the lakeside hills rose the silent shadows of the Alps, a jagged line carved across the horizon.
I jammed my fists into my coat pockets, took deep draughts of the sweet biting air, and realized when I had known this feeling before. It was on the Thursday boat-trips into Como after four days off the smoke. It was the emptiness I hated to confront and which I usually pushed away in anticipation of the coming high. But there was no high to look forward to tonight, no drugged dullness to blank out my awareness. I was surrounded by beauty on all sides, and I felt nothing.
As long as I was busy, as long as the world crowded in with noises and sights and smells and people and action, I could remain blind to what was inside me. But the night’s silent beauty was a mirror. I looked out and searched inward at the same time, seeking an answering chord of beauty in my heart. Yet there was nothing—only the aching emptiness, the pain harbored over years and years, the memories I had spent my entire adult life running from. They were all there. I had never escaped.
I had everything I had always wanted. I was a professional musician, a celebrity known by almost everyone in the city. Heads turned
wherever I went. I fielded at least one offer a week for an album, a radio spot, a television interview. I ate the finest food, drank the finest wine. I knew the black sticky hash of Afghanistan, the pungent odor of fresh Thai sticks, the Nigerian elephant weed, the crumbly blond Lebanese hashish. My four guitars were the finest that money could buy. Beautiful women were available for me whenever I felt the faintest hint of desire. I had more money than I could ever want to spend. I lived where I wanted, in a cottage fashioned by the hands of my grandfather’s father’s father. I had it all.
I huddled down deeper inside my jacket, wiped a sleeve across tears drawn out by the wind. There was no escape here. I stood exposed. The cold seemed to blow straight through me, revealing the hollowness within. All the barriers and blockades I had spent years constructing were exposed for the lies they were. All the dreams, all the achievements, all the possessions, all the careful protections were meaningless. I was utterly naked, defenseless, empty.
There had to be more. This couldn’t be all there was to life. I was terrified by the thought of joining Mario and Jake and Amy, but I knew no one else who offered an answer, who said they knew a better way. I stood and shivered and watched dawn slowly erase the stars from a cloudless sky, and endured the pain that this new-found honesty had revealed.
I was going back to Germany. I could not explain it or find any logic to justify this decision. But I felt drawn there by answers to questions which I could not even express.
There had to be a better way.
Chapter 7
From Mainz to Koblenz the train journeyed directly beside the Rhine. I sat and watched an ancient landscape pass outside my window. Castles dotted hilltops, overlooking medieval villages and sculpted acres of vineyards. Under cloudy skies the river ran strong and sullen. Nothing in the towns moved—no cars, no people, no sign of life. The scene held a timeless air.
What was I doing here, I asked myself repeatedly. For me, Germany remained a place to flee from, and yet here I was, risking a dream-like lifestyle to come and play with a group I did not know. What was drawing me here? I gazed at my reflection in the window and condemned myself roundly for ever coming back.
The Maestro Page 20
