The Maestro

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  So Burl had to push him out, piano and all. Then he went back in and started to work again. He felt bad, though. The snow was thick on the deck. He mustn’t leave him there for very long. Must get the insulation done soon. Then he thought, Reggie will look after the Maestro. And sure enough, when he looked out the window, she was with him and had wrapped a large blanket around his shoulders. There was a cap of snow on his head. Reggie’s hair was pale blonde now. Which is the colour her hair should be, thought Burl. With a name like Corngold.

  A car honked. Tires squealed. A bus pulled noisily from a stop. Burl woke up. He had made himself a comfortable nest, although his bedding smelled of dust and mildew. He was at the end of a short corridor with chest-high walls. By the light filtering in from a small window at street level, he could see that the basement space was divided into storage spaces. One per tenant.

  He had no watch. He wondered if it was anywhere near noon. He wondered if it was even the same day. He sat listening to the creaking building above him, footsteps, the sound of traffic drifting down to him and the unmistakable sound of a piano.

  He sat up, stiff from a night of walking. Then he climbed up the back stairs and slipped out into a brisk but sunny day. The sun seemed quite high. He asked a man on the street the time. It was after noon. He didn’t phone. He went directly to Number Five. He knocked three times.

  “What do you want?” she said through the door. Burl slid her letter to Nog under the door and waited.

  She gave him orange juice, freshly squeezed. She had the radio on to a classical station where people wrote in with requests. She made coffee. She made muffins as well. She didn’t follow a recipe. She added a bit of this and a bit of that and stirred. She cut up apples with long nimble fingers.

  She moved around the kitchen in her bare feet. She was in old jeans, threadbare at the knee, and an extra-large starched blue-and-white striped shirt. Her hair was wet from a shower, combed back straight. Last night she had been all in black: her coat, high-heeled boots, stockings, earrings, what he could see of a turtleneck sweater—all black, her hair the blackest thing of all.

  She was pretty, Burl thought. Younger than Gow. He had never seen a woman so exotic. Last night she had seemed older. She had worn dark make-up, a little sorry looking, worn out. Now her face was clean and her eyes were as shiny as a painted turtle’s shell. The sunlight coming through her window picked up a reddish tinge in her hair. She had been playing the piano when he knocked at her door.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, as she let him in.

  “At his camp. His place up north.”

  “Camp?” “Ghost Lake.”

  She looked at him, amazed. “Noggy camping?” She smirked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  So he told her about the cabin. That was easy. She carved up apples, listening intently.

  She laughed out loud at the thought of Noggy strolling through the bush to the train with his suitcase.

  Her laughter and the warmth of her kitchen unwound Burl a bit. He explained about coming down on the bus the day before. He told her about the violinist on Spadina, and how he had never seen so many people walking around in the night and it made him think of how Nog had called it the Shadow. Then he realized he was talking too much and he clammed up.

  “Ghost Lake,” she said thoughtfully.

  Then she told him why she had been getting home at six in the morning. She was a producer for CBC Radio. She was packaging a show. The night was the best time for that kind of work—no one around. Alone with her tapes. Except when Noggy used to come around. He sometimes worked on his own radio projects at the station. He was a night bird, too. That’s how they had met.

  She poured the muffin batter into the tins and placed them in the oven.

  “When did you last see him?” she said.

  He told her.

  “How was he?” she asked.

  Burl shrugged. “Up and down.”

  It was as if he had said something very clever. “Oh,” she said. “I know—believe me, I know.”

  So they talked about Baron von Liederhosen conducting an orchestra from the deck, and they talked about the drugs. He didn’t tell her what he had done with the drugs.

  He told her about the bear. Her eyes grew huge with alarm and then a kind of wild delight and then concern. “It was lucky you were there,” she said. And then, quickly, “Why were you there?”

  “I had been … looking for him,” said Burl.

  “Why?”

  “My mom was sick. She told me about him. She told me…to go to him.”

  In this way Burl ventured cautiously into the territory of his story. It was like a creek with a loon-shit bottom giving way under each step.

  Reggie washed the cooking things in the sink. The muffins in the oven filled the air with cinnamon.

  “I did a double-take when I saw you,” she said. The room grew quiet. Burl played with the salt and pepper shaker. He noticed there was no clink of dishes in the water. He turned to look at Reggie. Her arms were still in the water, locked straight, the muscles standing out. Her back was to Burl, her shoulders clenched tight. He wondered if she was crying.

  “Do you think I look like him?” he asked, very quietly, like the Maestro murmuring under his breath while he played. She heard him. She looked at him and he tried to be the Maestro for her. She showed no sign of recognition. No sign of any emotion he could understand.

  He saw her jaw tighten just for a moment. He could see the pulse in her long neck. Her eyes were shining. There might even have been a bit of a smile behind the curtain of her face, waiting to come out and dance a little number on her lips.

  The timer on the stove buzzed.

  “Done.” She wiped at her cheek with the back of a soapy hand. Maybe there had been a tear. She dried her hands. She found oven mitts and took the muffins out of the stove. She made up a tray with the coffee things and muffins on a sunshine-yellow plate. There were two yellow napkins. “Come on,” she said. She led the way into her living-room.

  Burl had never been in such a beautiful room. The furniture was new looking, the floor polished oak. The sun shone through salmon pink draperies, making the oak glow like the embers of a fire. There were framed paintings and prints and photographs on peach-coloured walls. There was a wall of bookshelves and rows and rows of records and compact disks and tapes. There was a white piano—not a grand like Gow’s, but a low upright with a vase of blue flowers on it. There was a rug of many blues, like waves on a pebbly shore. Upon it stood a glass table and on the table sat the briefcase he had seen her carrying, now open, with papers spilling out of it.

  There was a tall black walking-stick-like creature frozen and camouflaged to look like a floor lamp shining down from behind a sand-coloured chair. Reggie sat there.

  Across the table there was a fat couch like a sandstone boulder softened by a million years of rain. There were plump cushions on it cased in material the colour of a hummingbird’s neck. Burl sat there gingerly. She placed the tray on the table between them, pushing her work aside with her naked foot. She poured coffee. Into it she poured hot, frothy milk. When she handed him the cup her gaze drifted from his eyes to the monogram on his shirt.

  Burl traced the initials with his finger. He suddenly felt uncomfortable in the shirt, though it was the softest thing he had ever worn. The muffins were too hot. Burl ate one all the same.

  “Please,” she said in her gentlest voice. “Now will you tell me why you are here.”

  Burl’s mouth was full. He swallowed. “I came because of the letter.”

  “I know that. But why?”

  “Because I’m supposed to go see his lawyers. But I wanted to talk to somebody who was a friend of his first. I haven’t met any of his people. I’m kind of afraid.”

  This was easy to say. Everything was the truth. He felt like he had just landed on a safe square in a hazardous board game. There was another pause. Without looking up he could feel her staring at him. He didn
’t want to lie any more, not to her. He wanted her to decide he was Nog’s son by herself so that he could go on pretending.

  “When people see lawyers, it’s usually because they want something.”

  Burl took another muffin. Said nothing. Then he looked up. “I want the camp,” he said. “That’s all I want. I think he would want me to have it.” His voice cracked when he said it. He looked away hopelessly. How could he have dreamed even for a minute he could pull this off.

  He heard the clink of her cup returning to her saucer. She was watching him.

  “He was going to … bring me down here,” said Burl. “He was coming up again in October to fetch me. He’d already chartered a plane—”

  “Hah!” she interrupted him. “Nog flying?”

  “No. For supplies,” cried Burl. Her voice had gone hard and he didn’t want it to. “He takes the train in. I said that already. He’s afraid of flying. I know that.”

  “Go on.” Her voice still sounded like she was testing him.

  “I was staying up at the cabin. I didn’t even know he had died until the float plane came back up. That’s Bea Clifford. She runs the airline. You can talk to her if you don’t believe me.”

  “And this Bea person—she’s the one who wants you to talk to the lawyers?”

  Her voice was gentle again, but penetrating.

  “Look,” said Burl nervously. “I don’t want to be here. In the city, I mean. I just want to be up there. I don’t want to bother anyone. But I don’t want anyone to take it away. I’ve never had anything until now. He wanted me to have it. It was like he built it for me. A place where we could get to know each other. Then he would have brought me down here to meet his folks. He was just… just…”

  “Just getting up the courage?”

  Burl looked at her to see if this was a trap. Then he allowed himself to nod a bit.

  Reggie looked at him shrewdly. He blushed.

  She looked away again, shaking her head. She was way off in her own thoughts. Then she laughed a little. “Nog roughing it,” she said.

  This sounded to Burl like safer ground. “He wasn’t really. There’s even a grand piano.”

  She seemed very surprised. Obviously she knew nothing about it. Some more of her doubt seemed to be peeled back a little bit. He began to think that she wanted to believe him.

  “This morning,” she said, “when I saw you in the lobby, I had the strangest feeling you were him. He was likely to turn up at the most outrageous times.”

  Burl had eaten two muffins already. Now he reached for another. Her glance shifted to his hand, and she took it in hers. Her hands were soft and creamy smooth. He didn’t know what to do. She fingered the cuff of his right sleeve. “This button,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, fearful that he had given himself away somehow.

  “I sewed this button on. Look.” She brought both his wrists together and compared the buttons. The original was like pearl. The one Reggie had sewed on was much more yellow. “It was the best I could do.”

  A horn honked loudly outside. She released him. He didn’t take the muffin. He leaned back, his hands clasped on his lap.

  “What am I supposed to do with you?” she asked.

  Burl shrugged. All he had wanted to do was to try out his disguise on someone named Reggie who had been a real friend of the Maestro’s. Who knew what would happen next? “It’s Ghost Lake,” he said. “It’s all I want in the whole world.”

  Reggie regarded him tenderly. “I’m not sure what to say, Burl. This is all so strange. You seem to be saying that you are his son. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Burl swallowed hard. He jerked his head up and down.

  Reggie regarded him. “His illegitimate son.”

  Again Burl nodded. It was all out now. There was no going back.

  He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. She sipped at her coffee. “He did come out of his coma once or twice before he died. A couple of relatives, close friends spoke to him. Colin saw him quite a bit. That’s his lawyer. He was also an old friend. I was away in Vancouver. I never got to see him at the end. But he certainly never mentioned anything about a son to me.”

  She checked to see if Burl had registered this information.

  “So your friend Bea is right, Colin is your best bet.”

  Burl hated the sound of these people who had talked to Gow when he was dying. His real friends. People he had known all his life. How could Burl expect anything when he had only known the Maestro one day? One day.

  Then he thought of the trip Gow was planning to make back to the camp. Desperately he clung to this thin strand of hope. Maybe he was coming for Burl. Maybe he had said something about him. Maybe he did want Burl to have the cabin.

  He shuddered.

  “Are you cold?” asked Reggie. “No,” he said. “Scared.”

  He had imagined being tricked, found out, cornered. He had imagined having to run. It had never occurred to him that being accepted, even a little bit, would be so hard to take. Keep thinking of Ghost Lake, he told himself. The lake, the lake, the lake. If he could just have the lake.

  Reggie was watching him. A telephone rang. She answered it. The phone was cordless. Burl had never seen such a thing.

  It was someone called Bernie who wanted to know how she was doing on a script. The script wasn’t with the work on the glass table. “It’s in my office,” she said to the man on the phone. She started heading out of the room.

  “Help yourself,” she said to Burl. ““I’ll only be a minute.”

  He heard her walk down the apartment hallway. A door opened and closed. Burl looked around. His gaze landed on the piano. It was the first piano he had seen since he left Ghost Lake. He stretched out his fingers. Did they still remember the opening passage to the Silence in Heaven? He peeked down the corridor first. He couldn’t even hear Reggie’s voice any more. He got to his feet and made his way to the sleek ivory-coloured instrument.

  Could he play the same tune on a white piano? He sat and placed his fingers where the Maestro had shown him. He pressed his foot down on the sustain pedal and then his fingers on the keys as quietly as possible. He remembered the chords perfectly. He played them again in a stately progression. He heard the door open down the hall, but he did not stop. He didn’t want to talk any more. He wanted Reggie to hear him play.

  24

  The Score

  HE WAS AWARE OF REGGIE LEANING ON THE edge of the piano. He had played his few chords through half a dozen times. It was his best performance ever.

  “I’d like to hear more,” she said.

  “I don’t know any more. That’s all he taught me.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “The Maestro.”

  Reggie looked inquisitively at him. “Do you mean Nog? Nathaniel Gow? He never took on students.”

  Burl shrugged. “He said if he taught me something, I’d have to call him Maestro. And that’s what I call him.”

  “Gifted pianists from all over the world have begged him to become their master,” said Reggie. “He turned them all away. Shooed them home to Oslo and Rio and Vladivostok.”

  Burl felt strangely elated. He placed his fingers on the keys again, but now he was far too shy to play.

  “What is it he’s taught you, then?” said Reggie. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “It’s the Silence in Heaven,” said Burl. “From the Revelation.”

  Reggie wandered across the room to replace the telephone. “Who’s it by?”

  Burl turned on the piano stool. “By him,” he said with some surprise.

  Reggie stared at him. “What did you say?”

  “The Maestro. It’s part of his oratorio.”

  Reggie came to him. She was grinning, her eyes were glowing. She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Run that by me again, very slowly.”

  So Burl repeated what he had said. “It’s from the Bible. The Book of Revelation.”

  She closed her eyes. Her f
ingers unconsciously massaged his bony shoulder. She took a deep breath. “Please let this be true.”

  “It is,” said Burl.

  Her hand tightened on his shoulder. Then she pulled it away.

  “He used to talk about doing something big,” she said. “I think he once talked about the Book of Revelation. But there was never any time.”

  “That’s because of the Shadow,” said Burl.

  “The Shadow,” she said. She let out a merry whoop of laughter. It seemed to surprise her; she covered her mouth. Then she walked away from him, slapping her hands against her legs. He watched, mesmerized. She stood at the window overlooking Spadina Road. She swung around.

  “You have no idea, do you, how important this could be?”

  Burl scratched his head.

  “How much of it is there?” she demanded.

  He remembered the old briefcase stuffed every which way, but a lot of the stuff in the case had been notes or sketches or rejected bits. He had looked through what he had thought was the good copy of the score. “More than a hundred pages,” he said. It came back to him. “All of the parts are there, I think. But some of the movements are only sketched in.” That was what the Maestro had said.

  “Oy!” said Reggie.

  It was dawning on Burl that the Revelation changed everything somehow. Now he had something to give.

  “Burl,” she said. “Listen to me.”

  She walked over to her record shelves. She indicated one shelf. “This is all Nathaniel Gow. I have something like fifty of his recordings. There are over ninety, not to mention reissues in compact disk. Do you know how many of these recordings are of his own work?”

  “Music he wrote?”

  “Yes. How many?”

  Burl shook his head. “I don’t know.” Reggie had been fingering through the collection. She drew out one album. She held it up between her hands. “This,” she said.

  Burl walked over to look at the album she was holding. There were two records in it. “Nathaniel Gow: The Northern Suite. The First Quartet. The Piano Sonata in F# Major. Street Music: Twelve variations on a theme by Orlando Gibbons.”