The Mussorgsky Riddle

by Darin Kennedy

  If there is a later.

  I strain against the duct tape cutting into my wrists and kick my legs like alternating pistons in an attempt to loosen the bindings at my ankles. I’m just beginning to make headway, as evidenced by the sensation of a swarm of spiders crawling across my feet, when a noise captures my attention.

  No. A voice.

  Anthony’s voice.

  Strange. Though I’ve interacted with Anthony on almost every level through his various aspects along the Exhibition and explored the most unfathomable depths of his shattered psyche, I’ve never heard the boy speak, much less sing, until this moment.

  So quiet I can barely hear him at first, Anthony begins the last few bars of Pictures at an Exhibition. From a low humming, he eventually breaks into full on song. The lyrics he sings, of fire and fate, endings and beginnings, life and death, threaten to break my heart.

  “Anthony?” I keep my voice low. “What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

  Then three words, sung with all the triumph and glory of a chorus of angels.

  “Death… is… life.”

  Though Anthony’s face is hidden by the couch edge, I can imagine the concentration etched on his features, the strain in his voice doubling with each grunted word.

  “I’m here, Anthony.” Despite the pain from my bruised ribs, I pull myself into a seated position. “Tell me what to do.”

  Anthony’s answer is simple. He begins to hum Scheherazade’s theme.

  “No, Anthony. I can’t come back right now.” For the first time since our initial meeting at Thomas’ office, I begin to cry. “The danger’s out here in the real world and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  “Isn’t there, Scheherazade?” The voice coming from Anthony’s mouth has shifted. He speaks with the inflection and diction of the composer.

  “Mussorgsky?”

  “I’m a bit disappointed, storyteller.” Hearing the deep Russian accent coming from Anthony’s barely moving lips is as surreal as anything I’ve experienced along the Exhibition. “Have you already forgotten all you’ve learned?”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Composer, anything I learned in your musical madhouse doesn’t exactly apply out here in the real world.” I struggle anew against the restraints at my wrists. One of the bones pops out of joint, the sound turning my stomach even as pain and dull heat work their way up my arm. “I can’t talk my way out of duct tape, now can I?”

  “Can’t you?” The composer’s voice takes on a mocking tone as it shifts into Modesto’s charming British baritone. I do my best to hear what he’s saying over the back-and-forth screaming from the hallway. As best I can tell, Jason has barricaded himself in one of the bedrooms and Veronica isn’t handling it well at all.

  “Telling a story is much like performing a piece of music,” the troubadour continues. “If you don’t like the arrangement of a section, you rewrite until the sequence has a more pleasing sound.”

  “You want me to rearrange my way out of being tied up?”

  A crisp laugh. “You’re making a relatively simple situation rather complicated.”

  “Listen, Modesto, or whoever in there is running things at the moment. You all may have had the option to retreat to a nice, safe place when things got rough, but I’m stuck out here in the real world and we’re all going to die unless I get free.”

  “You still wish to save us, then?” Antoine’s voice takes over, the hint of French in his intonation coming through loud and clear.

  “Yes, Antoine.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then come back to us,” comes a voice like creaking limbs. How Anthony’s little mouth creates Tunny’s voice is beyond me. “It’s the only way.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. If I return, Anthony and I will both be vulnerable again. I can’t stop her from in there.”

  “I would argue your current plan isn’t meeting with much success either.” Modesto’s tone borders on mocking. “If you wish to survive this day and keep this woman from killing us all, then return to the Exhibition and finish what you started.”

  “You don’t understand. Regardless of what I do in there, it won’t mean a thing when she comes back.”

  “No,” comes the composer’s rolling Russian. “It is you who does not understand. What do your instincts tell you? You may believe our realm is separate from yours, but is not the boy’s sister in the hospital as we speak, suffering from injuries her other self acquired in my Exhibition? Have you not seen the gnome in what you consider the ‘real’ world? Been pulled into the Exhibition from half a city away?” For the first time, Anthony Faircloth turns his head and stares directly into my eyes. “Are you not conversing with the composer, Mussorgsky, at this very moment?”

  A chill works its way up my spine as I struggle to formulate a response.

  “Come back to us,” the composer says. “Come back to us and make this right.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. “She’ll kill us all. Me, you, Jason, maybe even Caroline when she returns.”

  “Perhaps. As Mira Tejedor, you are powerless to save the boy, but as the Lady Scheherazade, your potential is limitless. You’ve brought us all so far, yet one task remains.”

  “One task.” I bite back a mouthful of foul words. “And what would that be, oh great Mussorgsky?”

  “Simple,” the composer’s voice says. “Unite us.”

  “Unite? What do you think I’ve been trying to do? The witch won’t let me so much as―”

  “Return, Scheherazade.” From Anthony’s lips comes the first voice I ever heard along the Exhibition. “Return and unite us.” Anthony gnashes his teeth together, and though his aren’t made of iron, I have no doubt I’m speaking with the witch. “It is time.”

  Teetering on the verge of panic, a kernel of an idea sprouts inside my mind.

  “All right, Anthony,” I whisper as another gunshot sounds from the hall. “You want me, you’ve got me.”

  My first trip into Anthony’s mind required a supreme effort of will, as if the price of admission to the funhouse existing between the boy’s ears was no less than turning my soul inside out. This entrance feels as easy as stepping into a warm bath. Surrounded again in the prismatic whirlwind, I’m buffeted by the disparate melodies of “Promenade” and Scheherazade, but where before the two tunes were dissonant and harsh, they now articulate with each other as if written to be played as one. The back and forth between the two melodies reminds me strangely of the interplay between Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. I dread seeing their mutilated forms at the center of the devastated hall, though I have little doubt the body count will continue to climb if I turn back now.

  Seconds, minutes, hours pass in the maelstrom of color. Then, in a blink, I’m standing alone in a pristine version of Anthony’s Exhibition. The floor restored to its original state, the herringbone pattern of wood beneath my feet stretches to the nine alcoves of the various pictures. No bodies clutter the well-lit space and the frescoed ceiling lives again, the dark thunderstorm there mirroring the actual sky above the Faircloth house. At the far end of the hall, the wall-eyed janitor from the school performs one last sweep with a long-handled broom before raising his head to smile at me.

  “Now you’re here as well?” I ask.

  “You left the Exhibition quite a wreck, Lady Scheherazade.” He motions to the vast hallway. “But I was able to get nearly everything back to its original state.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just the Janitor, milady. Once, I was known as the Sage, but this is the shape I now possess.” He peers across his shoulder at the long hall of empty alcoves. “Wish I could stay and chat, but time is of the essence and your business with the others is far more important.” He kisses my hand. “How truly unfortunate we had no more than a moment, Scheherazade. I would have liked to have known you.” Before I can answer, he shoots me a mischievous wink and disappears in a scintillating flash
of silver. As my eyes readjust to the muted light, I find myself alone.

  “Hello?” My voice a rough whisper, the words still echo in the perfect acoustics of the space. “Is anyone there?”

  A single breath passes before the characters step as one from their various alcoves to greet me. To my right, I find Tunny’s mossy countenance grinning out at me from the Gnomus alcove, Antoine staring off into space at the entrance to the Tuileries garden, and Trilby’s graceful form framed en pointe in the doorway leading to the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. To my left, Modesto works his saxophone from the alcove leading to The Old Castle. Farther down the hallway, Hartmann stands at his station appearing disgruntled but content, the women from The Marketplace at Limoges stop their gossiping to point and stare, and even Goldenberg and Schmuÿle cease arguing long enough to each bow to me before turning on each other anew. At the far end of the hall, Baba Yaga sits atop her mortar, her switch broom swishing back and forth behind her like a dog’s wagging tail. Mussorgsky watches from beneath the witch’s perch, his arms crossed and expression impassive. Yaga points her wooden pestle at me, but where I’ve always found derision in her baleful sneer, I now find a strange warmth.

  “Come, Scheherazade. Our time is short.”

  “But how is this possible? Trilby, Goldenberg, Schmuÿle, Hartmann, the women from the market. They’re all dead.”

  Yaga’s nose wrinkles. “As you never fail to remind us, this is a realm of imagination. I have personally dispatched you from this place more times than I can remember and yet here you are again. Is it so hard to imagine others could do the same?”

  I walk the restored Exhibition hallway and meet the expectant gazes of each of the various characters from the pictures. All, that is, save one.

  “The women of The Marketplace,” I ask. “There are only the three.” My voice goes quiet. “Where is Madame Versailles?”

  Mussorgsky steps forward. “We hoped you would know. Despite all she has done, she is still a part of us after all.”

  “A part of us.” Yaga hawks a green wad of spittle onto the pristine floor. “Once, perhaps.”

  “Regardless of your feelings, we’re going to need her if we are to survive this day.” I raise my head and gaze at the ceiling. “Exhibition, I wish to see Madame Versailles.”

  The thunderstorm above our head parts to reveal an image of Versailles limping through the darkened streets of The Marketplace at Limoges.

  “Ah.” A vindicated smile spreads across my face. “There she is.”

  I motion for all present to hold their position and raise my voice to the ceiling. “Madame Versailles, come forth. I demand your presence.” The image in the fresco shifts. Versailles glances across her shoulder, her eyes frightened and desperate.

  “Madame Versailles.” My whispered words fill the space. “I will not repeat myself again. Come forth.”

  A shimmering ball of silver light blossoms before the alcove of The Marketplace at Limoges. The scintillating sphere grows brighter with each breath, eventually exploding into a million dazzling sparkles, leaving a bedraggled Madame Versailles standing amid the others of the Exhibition.

  “Quick,” Tunny shouts. “Bind her before she can escape.”

  “Bind her?” Baba Yaga gnashes her iron teeth. “We should tear her limb from limb for all the suffering she has caused.”

  Versailles screams as the characters of the Exhibition converge on her frail form.

  “No.” My whisper echoes through the place like a peal of thunder. “I didn’t bring her here to meet her end this way, no matter how much she deserves it.” I raise a fist and as one the various characters that make up Anthony’s fractured psyche freeze in place. “Now, bring Versailles to me.” I lower my hand. “I would speak with her.”

  Tunny and Modesto flank Madame Versailles and escort her to my side with Antoine and the others trailing not far behind. Crumpled on the floor at my feet, much like her canvas in the Tuileries alcove, she glares up at me.

  “What could you possibly want with me?” she mutters.

  I consider for a moment. “A confession, perhaps?”

  “A confession? And to what exactly would I be confessing?”

  “The truth.” I stare into her squinted eyes, the hate in her gaze mirroring the emotion found in Veronica’s face moments before. “You know of what I speak.”

  “Please,” Versailles says. “Enlighten me.”

  “Juliet. You said Hartmann was responsible for her disappearance and I believed you. Then you took her position in The Marketplace and convinced everyone you simply needed a new home after the destruction of Tuileries. I no longer believe your stories represent the truth.”

  “Quiet, Scheherazade,” she says. “You know not of what you speak.”

  “Don’t I? You desired Hartmann for yourself, and when he preferred someone younger, more talented, more beautiful than you…”

  “Stop it,” she hisses.

  “You killed her and took her place.” I draw close. “And later, when things didn’t go your way, you attacked the others. Goldenberg. Schmuÿle. The women of The Marketplace. You crushed their bodies to ensure the witch would be blamed.”

  “You’re the one that ended Juliet?” Hartmann lowers his chin, his eyes filling with hate. “And put her in my field?” The Cart Man rushes to my side to stand over the kneeling Versailles. “I’m with the witch,” he says. “She dies now.”

  “No, Hartmann. No more death. Madame Versailles is as much a part of the boy as any of you. I will not risk harming him any further than has already been done.”

  “A part of the boy.” Goldenberg and Schmuÿle speak as one, their respective ruddy and sallow faces each turned in my direction. “And look at us. All of us. Together.” Each of their gazes drift to the other, both of them simultaneously comforted and terrified.

  “Yes. As hard as it may be for some of you to understand, there is another place where all of you are but pieces of a wonderful boy, like the different facets of a cut stone. I believe he needs all of you if he is to survive.”

  “Wait.” Versailles raises a confused eyebrow. “You came here to save me?”

  “I didn’t say that.” As the remainder of the Exhibition gathers close, I gesture around the circle. “Gathered here stand a composer, a musician, a dancer, a storyteller. We each weave together disparate parts of our individual abilities to create a functional whole. You are many, but in truth, you are one. Something inside of Anthony called me back to the Exhibition to bring you all together. I’m ready to try, but I have no idea how to begin.”

  “Lady Scheherazade.” Mussorgsky smiles. “Or perhaps we should call you… Mira?”

  My heart quickens at the mention of my true name. “Perhaps you should.”

  “As before, Mira, you already have the answer. There, in your mind.”

  “The answer.”

  “A lesson you learned long ago in a happier time.” The composer’s eyes clench shut in concentration. “Think back on a favorite teacher. Not the tallest man you’ve met. Thick brown mustache. Blue eyes.”

  My mind seizes upon a name I haven’t thought of in years. “Mr… Hatley?”

  “The same.”

  “What about him?”

  “The banner above his blackboard. He quoted it constantly. What did it say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you do.” The witch speaks, her voice strangely kind, though the metallic clang of her teeth still leaves me weak in the knees. “Just as you have been in the boy’s mind, so has he been in yours. Even I can see it there among your memories. Now tell me, Mira Tejedor, what did the banner say?”

  “I don’t know.” My fingers ball into fists, and somewhere a world away, I feel my wrists strain against the tight duct tape binding my hands together. “I can’t remember. I… Wait…”

  Mr. Hatley. Eighth grade. Earth Science. Played the bagpipes at our eighth grade graduation. Served as chess club coach for one of my junior high boyfr
iends. In a blink, I’m thirteen again, walking into his classroom, taking a seat at my desk in the third row. There above the board, a favorite saying, blazoned in our school colors of black, white and orange.

  “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” The words fall from my mouth, as if another person speaks through me. “Aristotle.”

  “A truism that serves doubly in our situation.” In an instant, the composer is by my side. “Each of us represents some aspect of this boy Anthony you seek, and your instinct since first coming here has been to bring us together and sort out this puzzle the boy has become.” He glances at Baba Yaga, smirking. “Despite, evidently, the best efforts of some of the pieces.”

  Yaga raises her nose. “Laugh all you want, composer, but I did more to keep the boy safe than you ever did from your sepulcher of skulls.”

  “Bygones, Yaga.” He turns back to me. “There is something about the situation, however, you’re missing.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Your own role in this drama.” Mussorgsky takes my hand. “You’ve always perceived your visits to our Exhibition as you leaving your mind and entering Anthony’s, and yet, the two of us established when we first met that without you, the Exhibition doesn’t exist.” Mussorgsky gestures around the room. “Art without someone to perceive it is nothing. Anthony’s mind may provide the canvas, the substrate, the raw imagination, but without your thoughts, ideas, emotions, perceptions, understand there would be no Exhibition.”

  “No pictures,” mutters the witch.

  Tunny tugs at my sleeve, realization dawning on his gnarled face. “No us.”

  “This fractured state,” I whisper. “It’s not the problem.”

  “No, dearie.” The witch floats over and climbs down from her mortar. She takes my hands and places them in Mussorgsky’s. “The Exhibition has never been the problem, but the solution.”