* * * *
I was right about the music, and what’s more, nobody even questioned that I wrote it, despite the fact that I had never composed anything in my life. I suppose I was well enough known as a competent jazz pianist in certain circles so people just assumed I had suddenly been smitten by the muse one day.
I called the tune ‘The Magic of Your Touch’, and it became a staple of the jazz repertoire, from big bands to small combos. Arrangements proliferated, and one of the band members, who fancied himself a poet, added lyrics to the melody. That was when we really struck the big time. Billie Holiday recorded it, then Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald. Suddenly it seemed that no one could get enough of ‘The Magic of Your Touch’, and the big bucks rolled in.
I hardly need say that the sudden wealth and success brought about an immense change in my lifestyle. Instead of fleabag hotels and two-bit whores, it was penthouse suites and society girls all the way. I continued to play with the sextet, of course, but we hired a vocalist and instead of sleazy bars we played halls and big name clubs: the Blue Note, the Village Vanguard, Birdland, and the rest. We even got a recording contract, and people bought our records by the thousands.
‘The Magic of Your Touch’ brought us all this, and more. Hollywood beckoned, a jazz film set in Paris, and off we went. Ah, those foxy little mademoiselles. Then came the world tour: Europe, Asia, Australia, South Africa, Brazil. They all wanted to hear the band named after the man who wrote ‘The Magic of Your Touch’.
I can’t say that I never gave another thought to the wizened old black man playing his honky-tonk piano beside the brazier. Many times, I even dreamed about that night and what I did there, on instinct, without thinking, and woke up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding. Many’s the time I thought I saw the old man’s flame-reflecting eyes in a crowd, or down an alley. But nobody ever found his body, or if they did, it never made the news. The years passed, and I believed that I was home and dry. Until, that is, little by little, things started to go wrong.
I have always been of a fairly nervous disposition - highly strung, my parents used to say, blaming it on my musical talent, or vice versa. Whiskey helped, and sometimes I also turned to pills, mostly tranquillisers and barbiturates, to take the edge off things. So imagine my horror when we were halfway through a concert at Massey Hall, in my home town of Toronto, playing ‘Solitude’, and I found my left hand falling into the familiar chord patterns of ‘The Magic of Your Touch’, my right hand picking out the melody.
Of course, the audience cheered wildly at first, thinking it some form of playful acknowledgement, a cheeky little musical quotation. But I couldn’t stop. It was as if I was a mere puppet and some other force was directing my movements. No matter what tune we started after that, all my hands would play was ‘The Magic of Your Touch’. In the end I felt a panic attack coming on - I’d had them before - and, pale and shaking, I had to leave the stage. The audience clapped and the other band members looked concerned.
Afterward, in the dressing room, Ed, our stand-up bass player, approached me. I had just downed a handful of Valium and was waiting for the soothing effect of the pills to kick in.
‘What is it, man?’ he asked. ‘What the hell happened out there?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t help myself.’
‘Couldn’t help yourself? What do you mean by that?’
‘The song, Ed. It’s like the song took me over. It was weird, scary. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.’
Ed looked at me as if I were crazy, the first of many such looks I got before I stopped even bothering trying to tell people what was happening to me. Because that incident at Massey Hall was, I soon discovered, only the beginning.
* * * *
Playing in the band was out of the question from that night on. Whenever my hands got near a piano, they started to play ‘The Magic of Your Touch’. The boys took it with good grace and soon found a replacement who was, in all honesty, easily as good a pianist as I was, if not better, and they carried on touring under the same name. I don’t really think anyone missed me very much. My retirement from performing for ‘health reasons’ was announced, and I imagine people assumed that life on the road just got too much for someone of my highly strung temperament. The press reported that I had had a ‘minor nervous breakdown’, and life went on as normal. Almost.
After the Toronto concert, I developed an annoying ringing in my ears - tinnitus, I believe it’s called - and it drove me up the wall with its sheer relentlessness. But worse than that, one night when I went to bed I heard as clear as a bell, louder than the ringing, the opening chords of ‘The Magic of Your Touch’, as if someone were playing a piano right inside my head. It went on until the entire song was finished, then started again at the beginning. It was only after swallowing twice my regular nightly dose of Nembutal that I managed to drift into a comalike stupor and, more important, into blessed silence. But when I awoke, the ringing and the music was still there, louder than ever.
* * * *
I couldn’t get the song out of my head. Every minute of the day and night it played, over and over again in a continuous loop tape. The pills helped up to a point, but I found my night’s sleep shrinking from four hours to three to two, then one, if I was lucky. Only with great difficulty could I concentrate on anything. No amount of external noise could overcome the music in my head. I couldn’t hold intelligent conversations. People shunned me, crossed the street when they saw me coming. I started muttering to myself, putting my hands over my ears, but that only served to trap the sound inside, make it louder.
One day in my wanderings, I found myself back in the city where it all began and retraced my steps as best I could remember them. I don’t know what I had in mind, only that this was where the whole thing had started, so perhaps it would end here, too. I don’t know what I expected to find.
Soon the landscape became a familiar one of decaying warehouses, oily river, and factories venting steam and belching fire. I saw the junkyard looming ahead beyond the crossroads and followed the path through the towers of scrap metal, rusty cars, engine blocks, tires, axles, and fenders. Then I heard it again. Uncertain as first, hardly willing to believe my ears, I paused. But sure enough, there it was: ‘The Magic of Your Touch’ played on an out-of-tune honky-tonk piano, the music outside perfectly matching the loop tape in my head.
I could see the brazier now, a patch of light at the end of the narrow path between the columns, and when I approached, the wizened old black man looked up from his keyboard with fire dancing in his eyes. Then I saw what I should have seen in the first place. The flames weren’t reflections of the brazier’s glow. They were inside his head, the way the music was inside mine.
He didn’t stop playing, didn’t miss a note.
‘I thought I’d killed you,’ I said. ‘Lots of people make that mistake,’ he replied.
‘Who are you?’
‘Who do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You took my song,’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.’
‘No matter. Now it’s taken you.’
‘I can’t get it out of my head. It’s driving me insane. What can I do?’
‘Only one thing you can do, and you know what that is. Then your soul will come home to me, where it belongs.’
I shook my head and backed away. ‘No!’ I cried. ‘I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming. This can’t be real.’
But I heard his laughter echoing among the towers of scrap as I ran, hands over my ears, the insufferable melody I had come to detest now going around and around for the millionth time in my head, gaining in volume, just a little bit each time, and I knew he was right.
When I got back to my hotel room, I took out paper and pen. You have no idea what a struggle it was to write just this brief account with the music, relentless, precise, and eternal inside my he
ad, what an effort it cost me. But I must leave some kind of record. I can’t bear the thought of everyone believing I was mad. I’m not mad. It happened exactly the way I told it.
Now, like a man who can’t get rid of hiccups might contemplate slitting his throat, I have only one thought in mind. The pills are on the table, and I’m drinking whiskey, waiting for the end. He said my soul would go home to him, where it belongs, and that scares the hell out of me, but it can’t be worse than this eternal repetition driving out all human thought and feeling. It can’t be. I’ll have another slug of whiskey and another handful of pills, then I’m sure, soon, the blessed silence will come. Amen.
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The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology] Page 52
